Every nerd at one point of their lives has been filled with the overwhelming desire of making The Space Game, the game where you play as a Space Trucker In Space and where you visit infinitely generated star systems and have Han Solo adventures from one world to the other, trading, fighting pirates, and making your own life in the endless stars. Steam, GOG, all indie videogame stores, they are littered with the proud yet ultimately unsatisfying attempts at making The Space Game, from Starfield to obscure Star Trek flash games. Even I've tried to make the Space Game, many times.
Only two British guys have managed to make the Space Game. It was made in 1984 before Super Mario Bros for a primitive PC so obscure it was only sold in England, and it had 3D graphics, hundreds of star systems, NPCs with their own routines and procedural generation before most people knew what a polygon was. It was called Elite and every single Space Game since then has tried to be Elite. None has succeeded. Every Space Game, including the latest version of this ancestor (Elite Dangerous), far, far removed from that BBC Micro, is Elite in one form or the other. That was the Space Game. It was made only once.
game is 10 years old now!
and even tho i haven't played in a good year or two, i did used to invest most of college into the game AND i was a backer.
I wanna ramble about my journey below the cut but first.
Frontier sent me an email with my backer account's stats!
which is really interesting!
So before i do a big ramble below the cut, i want everyone to know that i'm in the top 0.1% of people who fly a hauler in the past 10 years. so take that!
(for those who don't play this is like the third cheapest ship and considered by many the worst or a taxi to get to your better ships)
Thanks for reading my ramble! I wanna tell you my storyyyyyyyy
So at first i must tell you just how big of a game this was for me. just like minecraft! I was really into space back then and i saw a video by scott manley about this new game on kickstarter which allowed you to fly to earth and had promises to allow you to fly inside a 1:1 scale of our universe! billions of stars!
And how realistic the flight model was and how guuuuuud the sounds were.
Right after that video i asked my mom if she could buy it for me with me paying her back later. I'm telling you i was HOOKED at the tutorial, in my tiny sidewinder. I saw the weapons pop out and the gatling gun ooohhh the sounds.
and just how big the space stations were and detailed! I'll never forget that. I even have an accidental screenshot of it on a harddrive somewhere. I remember my first jump to another start system, i had my curtains closed and my speakers set a bit louder and i was just like, this is giving me goosbumps this is epic!
(the screenshot in question circa 2014)
So what did i do after everything was explained to me by the tutorial?
I started bounty hunting! And after the game released later in 2014, I got my kickstarter reward of a free eagle fighter (second cheapest ship in the game) And went back to bounty hunting! I dreamt of owning the biggest ship in the game, The Anaconda. But each ship kill was about 3k credits for me back then. And i had school and played minecraft and call of duty with friends so i didn't get the conda many years later. But i had so much fun! I ended up flying in a cobra mk3 for most of my time back then. Then around 2017 I met an artist friend online who also played! which was my first multiplayer experience in elite. I had just done the Sothis/Ceos runs which allowed me to get a python haha. For those who remember hauling biowaste back then due to the mission reward bug being insane, 07 to you!
(my biowaste luxery vessel circa 2017)
Later i remember hauling passengers with some friends i made after joining a community for the first time and that gave me so much money (another mission reward bug after the biowaste got patched) that i finally was able to just buy every ship in the game!
I went and grinded all the millitary ranks to get both a federal corvette and an imperial cutter. And i was set for life! I got an exploration ship to go to the galactic core which was about 8 hours of realtime pressing J to jump to another star haha, it got so boring after a while! i wanted to return to combat but i had to fly all the way back too! (netted me so much money tho from selling star data oh lordy! i had about 1 billion credits and if you remember the anaconda i wanted years ago that one is about 120 million)
(my imperial cutter and federal corvette(The cutter costed me about 1.2 billion if i remember correctly))
In my last year of elite before i quit that account (due to drama in the player group i was in, i won't say too much but it was baaaad).
I got really into mining, combat had grown stale, hunting aliens got too easy. I was basically sitting still in a difficult spot and had the ship on turret mode and was able to make lunch and come back victorious. I liked seeing the little mining drones pick up ores and put them into my ship! Also back then it was the most profitable thing you could do.
But after you have everything, and so much money that you don't know what to do with it. What do you do?
I bought a hauler as a joke. It was known as a meme ship. And i had some laughs! I went to a hauler meetup with a few players, Went to community missions and gave people free stuff and repairs.
Even went to the galactic core again in it! And it was around that time that i realized that the hauler is actually the best ship in the game!
Everything you do in it is a challenge, you have to carefully build it for a specific job. It dies super easily in combat and you only have 1 small weapon to give it. Making every encounter a fun and skillfull engagement. This post loops back to one of my previous blog posts about how space sandbox games like this reflect real life. When i started out, i want to have it all! big moneys, big ships. but in the end? I just want to do my favorite activities in a small starter boat that i love way more than anything in the entire game!
Like i said, i stopped playing on that acount years ago after a falling out with a friendgroup, and after epic offered the game for free! bought the odyssey expansion on there and now i have an alt acount where i just fly a hauler on every once in a while. Doing combat or mining or sometimes trading.
Thanks Elite for being probably one of my top 3 games ever! Maybe i'll install it again to fly in my ship some more.
Thanks for reading and before i go have some pictures of my hauler.
Leaving Titan Cocijo with a hold full of rescued Earthlings.
I took a break from bombing the titan and did a rescue run this evening. It's fun watching fellow Commanders bombing the Titan while getting chased around by the Thargoids. I had a few close calls myself, but my Imperial Clipper avoids trouble easily.
Tips for leaving a Titan and making it through the cloud:
Some pilots let the TG pulse push them out of the cloud, but that risks a cargo hold malfunction, so I block it with the neutraliser. I brought two caustic sink launchers for the journey in and out. Rescue requires a pulse wave xeno scanner. I don't have room for heatsink launchers on this ship, so just need to watch my heat.
To keep my temps down, I go silent running when the TG pulse hits to avoid overheating. Normally it will cook your ship!
Target a star or a nearby planet so you can orient your ship towards it. You need to keep moving straight out of the cloud, but you can see I had to go around a couple of hazards. Heading for the sun will keep you on course.
I have a shield but I switch it off so it doesn't recharge and drain my SYS capacitor. I use silent running, so the shield will be switched off anyway. The SYS capacitor needs to be available for caustic sinks and the TG pulse neutraliser.
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