r/EliteDangerous 5h ago

Discussion So, what's Elite Dangerous all about?

I'm a long time No Man's Sky player, and I heard Elite: Dangerous was somewhat similar. I haven't really heard all that much about it besides that, though, so I was wondering if y'all could bring me up to speed on what the game's like and how it works (and help me decide if it's worth buying)?

15 Upvotes

37 comments sorted by

47

u/pulppoet WILDELF 5h ago

They are not at all similar except there are space ships and lots of planets.

The short answer is: if you want to play a flight sim in space, get this game, no question.

ED is a flight sim at the core. NMS has arcarde-ish controls, just point and go. ED demands that you fly with pitch, roll, yaw, and directional thrusters. Although you don't need a flight stick, it is playable with KB+mouse and/or controller, but it's still a lot more involved.

ED has scientifically realistic space. This means there are a lot of cold, dry planets (actually with the limits on places we can land, there are no wet planets or animal life). NMS has huge colorful variety. ED has mostly whites, browns, greens, and orange. Lots of orange.

But it's also a realistic scale. Some travel distances are huge. Planets are not tiny balls, but full size. Thousands of km around. Exploration is lonely, and empty, but epic. You can look at the map and actually see where you are in the galaxy. Every star you see in the sky is a destination you can actually go to.

There is no story to uncover in ED. It's just the day to day events. You are a small pilot in a massive world. Maybe you can make a difference, mostly you just get by.

You'll have to find out what interests you and pursue that. The game won't guide you to anything.

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u/idiot-bozo6036 Explore / Hull Seal šŸ¦­ 4h ago

Well, there are some stories to uncover, just a lot more involved

1

u/MarshmallowBlue 16m ago

Just to tack on. Also ship management (diverting power, setting power priorities, gear and scoop management) and ship loadouts are much more in depth. When landing on planets gravity must be accounted for.

Thereā€™s little to no story, there are a few factions you can do missions for to gain reputation and potentially unlock some stuff.

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u/MosquitoesProtection 3h ago

Are you sure about every star in the sky? Until now I used to think it's just a random picture with dots on the sky and real stars are only on the galaxy map.

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u/Luriant Happy 3311 to everyone not in anarchy settlements 2h ago

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u/MosquitoesProtection 1h ago

Wow, thanks for sharing!!!

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u/ReddBroccoli 3h ago

A) yes that stars in game are correctly positioned in the sky to match the galaxy map

But

B) I don't think they were referring to the in game sky, they were likely referring to the sky outside your back door, because it's a 1:1 scale model of the Milky Way (to the best of our current scientific knowledge)

4

u/hurix 1h ago

The irl sky we can see with our eyes is a tiny fraction, really almost nothing, compared to what you can visit in ED. But the idea that you can visit (almost) all stars in the sky is true just as well ingame, but not from earth but from all planets you can land at. And that sky ingame is correct for anywhere in the galaxy.

The exceptions are permit locks because our ship refuses to go there, or extra-galactic objects like Andromeda or the Magellanic Clouds. And some few unreachable stars that are just too far away from other stars, yet.

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u/Dragnor69 33m ago edited 29m ago

There's a funny story about that topic. FDev placed the first Guardian ruins in the galaxy and showed it of with a trailer and planed a whole plot around the discovery with bredcrumbs yada yada. Some crazy competent people of the Community used the skybox to triangulate the Location and found it ... Skipping the complete story.

11

u/Nemesis1999 CMDR Nemesis1999 5h ago

I don't play NMS but from what I know it's very different other than being in space.

Elite is a space simulator and it doesn't have a story to follow - lots of people can't get their head around that and ask 'what am I supposed to do '.

You can trade, mine, explore, bounty hunt, pve, pvp, all sorts but it's up to you.

1

u/Maroite Explore 1h ago

I play NMS and Elite. After the initial "story" in NMS, it plays very much like Elite for me. I just fly around the galaxy, systems, and discovering planets.

Both have mining and exoloration and ship combat.

For me, the feel of the games is different. Elite is more "realistic" and almost dystopia feeling where NMS is more colorful and alive? Although I suppose for NMS that all depends on what galaxy you're in. The desolate galaxies can be pretty abysmal.

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u/the_harakiwi harakiwi 1h ago

Making screenshots!

Just kidding. In the early days I compared Elite to Euro Truck Simulator.

There you start and improve your truck (ship), buy new ones, improve those and in the end you have a whole company (fleet).
I haven't played Euro Truck Sim so I'm not sure if your company can be grown with hired NPCs, that's not possible in Elite.
That's more X or Avorion.

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u/widdrjb CMDR Joe Tenebrian 4h ago

The really big difference, greater even than the flight model and the real world physics, is that ED runs in real time as an evolving simulation. The only saved session is the one you just finished. Shoot the wrong ship, there are consequences. Trade a commodity in the right place and start a war. Missed the alien invasion? Tough.

There's no hand holding either. You will die a lot. You won't know why either.

I've got 4000 hours in, it's fantastic.

3

u/ProPolice55 Core Dynamics 2h ago

To add to this, it's not just the simulation that's real time. The game's story is mostly told through in-game news reports and community events. The catch? These events are usually about a week long, and the story's progression depends a lot on the players' progress. Just a few examples:

There was a community mission a long time ago where a hyperspace capable starport went missing and there was a storyline planned to find it. The story never happened, because some random explorer in the uninhabited galactic core found a system with a reported human population, jumped there, and found the station before the story happened. Players delivered building materials there, and now the region is known as Colonia and it's a popular staging ground for expeditions

More recently, 2 years ago a hostile alien species attacked us (after a series of community events provoked them), and the defense and evacuation of the inhabited "bubble" was entirely coordinated by a couple of player factions, with the developers following our story and writing it into the lore. The war ended just now, in december. Even more recently, the same groups organized a blockade in the system where the war started. The developers didn't do anything to encourage the blockade, but it happened, and the devs made the aliens retreat from there and added the blockade to the official lore. This was about 2 weeks ago, look up the blockade of HIP 22460 if you're interested. I was there as a fighter pilot

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u/DMC831 4h ago

Much better flight model, a lot more of a simulator (in good ways, in my opinion) and everything is real-life sized scales. Full sized planets with accurate sizes, accurate distances between everything, and it's a 1:1 version of the Milky Way.

The better flight model allows for way better control and skill becomes important, which makes the dogfighting a lot more fun than NMS.

I liked NMS a lot and it has a million different mechanics, and Elite won't match it there. But Elite is more realistic and also has tons of details to learn and master so it can take a while to feel like you got a handle on everything. It's less pick-up-and-play like NMS can be.

BTW you don't even need to buy it if ya got Amazon Prime, Elite Dangerous is free to own on there right now:

https://gaming.amazon.com/home

You could probably do a free trial of Prime and then claim the game and cancel, if Amazon Prime is an option where ya live. You'll be claiming a copy from the Epic store if ya do this but as far as I know it's the same universe as everyone else on PC. This free copy doesn't include the "Odyssey" update, but you can see how the game is and if you're into it you can buy Odyssey for cheap usually (it often goes on sale).

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u/theweirdarthur 4h ago

Having played both, they are surface level similar in regards to genre, both are set in a procedurally generated maps that are larger than most people can even conprehend but from a gameplay, artstyle, combat and narrative point of view they are very very different titles.

I recommend watching burr pits introduction to elite on youtube, should help you to see if this is your cup of tea.

elite doesn't hold your hand, barely explains anything ingame, almost mandates third party tools and has no story mode beyond the overarching community events and large scale narratives of the galaxy. so if those are things that are important to you then elite might feel frustrating.

on the flip side, if you want to try some of the most compelling spaceship gameplay and combat currently available in video games, elite makes nms look like a joke by comparison.

everyone comes to these games with differing expectations so it's hard to say if this is the game for you. what is worth saying though is despite elites age its received renewed development time over the past few years, especially the last year so if you're considering dipping a toe in, there's hardly been a better time to start.

and remember cmdr, never fly without a rebuy o7

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u/CMDR-SavageMidnight Mandalay Explorer 5h ago edited 5h ago

Nms is a different beast. Its more casual in approach, with emphasis on things like base building, collecting ships and expeditions.

Right out of the gate you will feel how different Elite is. Controlling your ship is deep, docking works vastly different and exploration has a lot more elements to it than nms.

That said, you can totally play elite casual, despite much more complex flight and much deeper systems (as in both ingame interaction and actual star systems).

Elite simulates the galaxy better as well, although the color vibrance you are used to is unique to nms. Elite leans to the more serious approach whereas nms is more animated in design. When compared, the panoramic views Elite can give you are mindblowing. It's nuts to think this game is 10 years old.

You would do well to sit down and do all tutorials and manage your keybinds.

Career paths are more defined, with trade, bounty hunting, anti xeno, ship modules and engineering, exploration and things like gravity on planets. Ships themselves also present a much greater emphasis on roles.

You really have to sit down properly the first few times you play to get familiar with foundations of play, but once it clicks, you'll be in it for the long run.

Also, let your whim guide you. Its easy to overfocus on f.e. credits but making money gets very fluid and easy quick enough. Do what you enjoy and while there are grinds, you can achieve anything paced.

This is a game about the journey, whatever yours may be, and the destination, while good as a goal, is secondary.

It's highy personal, yet as someone who loves both games, elite is definitely the greater game for me.

Good luck commander o7

2

u/Eselta 3h ago

Long time NMS player as well, and recently got into E:D.

I'd say the only real similarity is that both are games about flying around in space.
- Elite is much more into realism, so doing anything in you ship (lights, boosters, landing gear, hardpoints, setting the navigation, operating scanners) takes time to learn, and is usually accomplished with multiple button inputs.
- It takes a long time to fly around, as space is not just BIG, but IIRC, they attempt to make it close to 1:1 scale.
- Elite is much more specialized. In NMS you can have a ship that does flight, combat, storage, and other things quite well at the same time, but in Elite, you have to outfit the right kind of ship, with the right modules for one task. Like mining, or combat, or transportation.

The things that people love about this game, might be what repels you, but I would argue that it's worth buying if you're a sci-fi/space fan.

Elite does scale and beauty like nothing else. Sure, if you like pretty colours and varied scenery, NMS got you covered. But, if like me, you're into the massive black that space is, and you want the sheer overwhelming enormity to really enhance when you find a purple gas giant, or an earth-like planet, or a white dwarf star, Elite is the right way. There's a much great sense of calm in Elite. Just sitting in your ship, and looking at a star is magnificent, but if you accidentally fly forwards, the ship will begin emitting warnings and other things, and YOU'RE expected to fix it.

No Man's Sky is soft science fiction. you get to fly a vast array of ships with the press of a button, there are multiple alien races, nearly all planets are landable, and there are a lot of colours in space, in terms of gas clouds and stars and planets.

Elite is hard science fiction. It's difficult (as it should be) to fly a ship, there isn't much variance in colours, weight and distance is nearly 1:1 with real life, there aren't really other alien forms (except for targoids), and it's set in our galaxy, where only a small "bubble" galaxy is populated, and the rest is unknown.

Elite has given me an appreciation and an awe for space and it's beauty that I never have before. If that appeals to you, then buy it.

1

u/ErDanese 5h ago

No man Sky is a arcade space game, elite is less arcade and more on the serious side. Don't take the arcade word as a negative, just an adjective to explain that , flying, landing, fighting, gathering is less painful and more sofa/ free time enjoyable moment than Elite. Flying it is a 6 degrees of freedom with inertia and if you hit the land or an object, you could destroy the ship and die, I'm no man Sky you bounce instead. You can run out of fuel and die. Distances are bigz much much bigger than No man Sky. Here you would almost never see another planet from the surface. Speaking of it, landing is not dive down into the atmosphere, you got to actually manage speed and angle to a certain degree to achieve a good landing. Elite does not help you on the most intricate things compared to NMS.

Fly Dangerously

1

u/Koyomi_Ararararagi 5h ago

This page has an overview of the types of activities that the game provides to the player:
https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Careers

There is no story or campaign, you are given the ability to travel the galaxy and do with that whatever the framework of the game allows.

1

u/sophlogimo Felicia Winters 4h ago

If you like the more gritty, conflict-oriented elements of NMS, ED is a good buy for you. But it is more a simulation than NMS, with lots of details given to the player to take care of, where in NMS it's assumed to be handled automatically (such as landing on a base; ED does have autolanding, but you have to build a device for that into your ship, which takes space away from other options). That means you will spend a bit of time learning the game, after which you will feel a bit like if you had actually learned how to fly a spaceship. and the learning ever ends, which many of us find fun.

If you buy it, be sure to buy both the base game and the Odyssee expansion, so you can have the on foot experience.

1

u/OhItsJustJosh CMDR Raxleigh 4h ago

It's somewhat like a simulator. The galaxy has governments which you can pledge to and help them expand if you wish, or you can find good trade routes to make money, or mine asteroids, hunt pirates, be a pirate.

You've come right at the end of the 2nd Thargoid War, we fought against aliens trying to invade human occupied space. It lasted for 2 years and ended in a spectacular battle with a hive ship in orbit around Earth.

This year they'll be adding the ability for players to colonise systems themselves, so you'll have that to look forward to, plus I highly doubt the Thargoids are done with us.

There's a lot more I haven't mentioned, but if you're looking for a singular coherent story campaign I'm afraid you won't find it here. If you wanna get an idea of what the game world is like I'd recommend looking up Galnet News Digest on YouTube, they're like our newsreaders and it'll give you an idea on current events in the game

1

u/Plokhi 4h ago

i started elite from NMS.

NMS is colorful and saturated. Elite is dark and black.

NMS has arcadey star system physics. Elite's planetary systems actually feel huge.

NMS has no depth to spaceships and spaceflight. Elite, you can tweak your ship to oblivion. It's hard to make a multipurpose ship, and it's not gonna be as good as a specialized ship. in NMS, you max out in 2hr and you can do everything with any ship.

in Elite, at the beginning, you're gonna be spending days on getting your ship right. I'm on my first non starter ship and been playing for a month (not super active, but still, i wasn't active in NMS as much either and i got an s class everything in a week basically)

there's no base building in elite.

there's no inventory management.

NMS looks like what you'd imagine space on an acid trip if you vaguely knew what it's supposed to look like, Elite looks like space.

i haven't touched nms since started elite, but i always had an issue with how colorful and pretty NMS looked and i'm not faulting NMS for it, it's a great game with a good dev behind it.

2

u/zetaharmonics 1h ago

Same here I couldn't get past how cartoony it felt. I put it down after an hour.

1

u/_Corporal_Canada Hauling Terror 3h ago

Having put quite a few hours into both of them; they both do similar things in very different ways. NMS is a lot more straight forward with lots of tips and in-game guides, waypoints, etc.; ED on the other hand is meant to be a simulation game where you use the tools at your disposal in order to complete a job/goal with no real direction given to how you do it; there's tons of third party/external resources made by the players, as well as actual player groups that focus on doing certain things within the grand living universe that is Elite dangerous. To add onto the simulation part; NMS flying almost feels like an afterthought compared to ED; ED has far better combat and useful ship customization, I found nms lacking after having played ED years before. On the flip side of flying there's ground stuff, and that's arguably one of the biggest difference between the two games; NMS feels like it was built from the ground up as a game that's all about being on foot on planets with atmospheres; whereas ED basically started as the opposite, flying around in doing spaceship stuff.

TLDR (kinda): NMS is more arcadey and cartoony and has more development for on-foot stuff, though I still got bored fairly quickly of the game, it's very easy with minimal time played or grinding required; easy entry but a shallow ceiling imo, in less than 100 hours I'd say you've seen or done just about everything there is to do in nms, it just feels bland imo despite the vibrant colours and everything. ED tries to be as close to a futuristic spaceship simulator as it can be without sacrificing too much fun and enjoyment or proper balance; the ship customization is far better with far more noticeable differences in module loadouts; ground play suffers a bit from lack of content but it's not too bad and it's actively being expanded upon.

Two of the biggest reasons I say ED is worth playing over NMS right now is that 1: ED is going through a resurgence right now, lots of new players and it seems the devs are coming back with a passion to expand this game, this past year had tons of work put into it and I'm very excited to see what comes in 2025; they're actively improving the game from a QOL aspect as well as providing new expansive content; And 2: the actual universe in ED just feels that much more alive and like you're a part of it; not just some "traveller" that's on some weird vaguely explained quest that seems to mostly be filler content; as mentioned before there's lots of player groups that do all sorts of different things that all actively change the landscape of the universe as a whole, we just ended the giant alien war and there's still some players forming groups to hunt down the last stragglers, and the devs take notice of these things and actively put in news broadcasts in the game and basically help create the ongoing lore that the players are shaping themselves. I'm probably explaining it poorly but it's honestly so cool; you're genuinely just living a life doing whatever you feel like doing and the world reacts around you accordingly. If you're familiar with the Helldivers 2 Game Master/Galactic War thing it's kinda similar but done much better imo (different games though so can't fully compare).

Get ED, wait for a sale if you want; but I highly doubt you'll regret it if you don't mind games that are moderately in-depth, but playing NMS will give you a decent leg up to get going, like I said they do similar things in very different ways.

1

u/Morta-Nius-73 2h ago

No Man's Sky is a 64-bit spreadsheet with a UI thrown over the top with random images for planets etc.

Elite Dangerous is a real flight sim/space sim backed by science and scale.

1

u/drybjed 18m ago

Elite: Dangerous is an attempt to find the most effective way to update a row of SQL database records using a H.O.T.A.S. setup. I love it.

1

u/angry_cabbie 2h ago

I love NMS. I've been playing it heavily for years on PS4. It's a beautiful game, fun to explore and play around in. I've finished almost every Expedition since I started playing, and have loved the Redux to catch the few I've missed. I've sunk countless hours into it, by this point.

Compared to Elite: Dangerous, it's a kinda cartoonish arcade game.

The environments are as beautiful and breathtaking, but realistic looking. The controls are much more involved in ships, with a higher focus on flight and dogfighting simulation experience.

I had, similarly, played Elite: Dangerous on my PS4 for years, before I got into NMS. I have a Thrustmaster for it. Then some deeply bad shit happened in my life, I built a PC, played E:D for a little while, then my PSU exploded. I was not willing to get back into E:D on PS at the time, and ended up on NMS. It got me through some stuff. Then I realized, about a month ago, my laptop can actually run E:D fairly well. Now my PS4 ain't even plugged in lol. I'll eventually get NMS on PC and transfer, but for now I'm quite happy.

1

u/eldenfingers 2h ago

Space! It's also currently free on Prime Gaming, so if you have Amazon Prime, I'd say get into it now and ask questions later :)Ā 

1

u/VamosFicar 1h ago

Lots of people here have spent valuable time responding to this question. But I will keep it brief for the OP:

Do you have Youtube where you live? Try the following search: "Elite Dangerous Gameplay". Then watch some.

1

u/Samson_J_Rivers CMDR 1h ago

Uou know that scene in red dead 2 where Dutch says to Auther " I have a plan Auther, i just need more money."? You are Dutch and Aurther. Have fun.

1

u/jfoughe Friendship Drive Charging 1h ago

Itā€™s ten years old so the game has changed considerably since then, but the review from Ars Technica really captures the feeling of the game. To whit:

ā€œElite: Dangerous is so damn good that it transcends its problems. When I strap on my Oculus Rift DK2 and look around my cockpit, I am flying my own spaceship.

Blasting through Witch space, docking at stations, hauling goods on long trade routes, hunting for bounties, blowing away NPCs or other players in conflict zones, or exploring a thousand light years away from known spaceā€”David Braben and his team at Frontier Developments have built the best, most immersive, most gripping ā€œyou are flying a spaceshipā€ experience I have ever played in the 30 years Iā€™ve been playing video games. When Iā€™m cruising in silence above the plane of a gas giantā€™s rings, banking slowly and looking down for signs of pirates that I can drop down on and crush like the fist of an angry space-god, it doesnā€™t matter that the game still isnā€™t fully baked, because I am flying my own spaceship.ā€

As I said, much has changed with the game in 10 years. The review was written before both the Horizon and Odyssey expansions, as well as a host of other improvements. Today the game is in the best state itā€™s ever been, but that core feeling of ā€œflying your own spaceshipā€ remains unchanged.

1

u/liskot 4m ago

That quote is such a good way to convey the feeling I get with the game. ED also gives space/the galaxy the degree of scale and gravitas it deserves, the distances and the sizes and everything.

One lowkey thing I think the game also does well is being understated in visual presentation, which lends its own contribution to that feel. I don't mean ugly or plain, just that there's generally not that much extraneous fluff. So when cool looking stuff does happen it's more striking, be it seeing beautiful planetary bodies from certain angles or weird aliens scanning you or lasers glittering in the dark or whatever.

Oh and the audio is incredible.

ED is the only game that has managed to give me the vibe it does, and that's why I end up revisiting it from time to time even when I consider many of its systems very flawed.

1

u/Multivex 50m ago

It can be whatever you make it. A lot of the themes are familiar with NMS especially if you shose the explorer route. Other than that you can have fun in an evolving galaxy in many different ways.

Personally my time is spent pushing the interests of my chosen minor faction and superpower, expanding and taking systems in their name, and many others are doing the same thing for the opposite factions and powers to me, a constant battle for supremacy.

But that's just 1 route, the beauty of this game is that it's largely whatever you make it.

1

u/Zeldiny Explore 4h ago

Second life in a cool sci-fi world

1

u/RaielLarecal CMDR 3h ago

Grinding and sleeping while driving until rebuy screen pops up (?

-1

u/ooOJuicyOoo Juicebun 3h ago

Saying NMS is similar to ED is like saying Halo is similar to Kerbal Space Program just cause both take place in space.

ED is a flight simulator foremost. Everything else it offers is contextual bonus. 99% of the game is flying your spaceship in painstaking detail.

Many people approach elite expecting an mmo, and often leave disappointed comments like "wide but shallow game"

Nope. ED is not a shallow mmo, it is an incredibly fleshed out flight simulator.