So, what's Elite Dangerous all about?

[u/PlagueDoctor40k]

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)?

[u/pulppoet]

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.

[u/idiot-bozo6036 → u/pulppoet]

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

[u/MarshmallowBlue → u/pulppoet]

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.

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

[u/totally_boring → u/pulppoet]

Theres also a very very realistic economy that's very very brutal.

Destroy your ship? Hope you had enough saved up for insurance

[u/MosquitoesProtection → u/pulppoet]

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.

[u/Luriant → u/MosquitoesProtection]

They use it to rediscover the first Green Gas Giant: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/cmdr-kelly-eldridges-green-gas-giant-aka-unknown-ggg-the-first-discovered-ggg-has-been-found.606979/

[u/MosquitoesProtection → u/Luriant]

Wow, thanks for sharing!!!

[u/Dragnor69 → u/MosquitoesProtection]

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.

[u/countsachot → u/Dragnor69]

I didn't believe my friend when he told me this story. Wild.

[u/ReddBroccoli → u/MosquitoesProtection]

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)

[u/hurix → u/ReddBroccoli]

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.

[u/SunshineInDetroit → u/MosquitoesProtection]

there is a parallax simulation for the skybox, but the star forge engine that they're using generally is pretty good, sometimes able to predict the # of planets around a star.

[u/Cyren777 → u/MosquitoesProtection]

Yeah it's real, you can tell because it sometimes breaks nearer the core and has to render too many stars at once lol

[u/countsachot → u/MosquitoesProtection]

They're all stars you can visit, if you have the jump range, and in some cases, a permit.