Elite (Archimedes) - Reintroduction

Welcome to the return of the first great open world game, Elite. Return, as in, this isn't the first time I've tried to tackle it. Before, I tried the BBC Micro original, because sometimes I don't quite go for what's the smartest option and I often regret it. What happened is what usually happens when one is presented with a wire-frame 3D game with no real guidance to the player, nothing.

This was a bit trickier to get running than I'd have liked. Normally, I'd use RPC, an emulator for later, post-Archimedes Acorn computers. It comes with an installation of it, even. Except...it wouldn't start. Okay, we'll find a floppy and use Arculator. That's easier, except that the major Archimedes website went down when I wasn't looking, which is honestly horrifying to me. I eventually find it...and it has manual copy protection.

There isn't a manual for the Archimedes version online anymore. At least not one I could find on the Internet Archive or with a few searches. Of course, internet searches have somehow gone more downhill than usual thanks to AI, but if I started complaining about that this playthrough of a game would never get there. Suffice to say I eventually figured out that I could just copy the Elite files from RPC to Arculator because both filesystems are just folders in my real world OS.

For those of whom this is the first time hearing about Elite, well, Elite is the game that put the open world space simulation and trading genre on the map and the genre has been trying to get around that ever since. You have a nice ship, now go across the universe, do whatever you want. Trade goods, trade people, fight criminals, blast other traders. Find your own fun.

As a result, I've kept bouncing off this in the past. Every time I've played Elite, I'll mess around with it a bit, then go do something else. Every time I've played something in the genre, if there's no real objective to go for, I'll eventually bounce off. Archimedes Elite changes that, because we have an objective, the evil alien empire Thargoids need to be stopped. For some reason. Come to think of it, that is a fitting story for a game originally from 1984.

At least, that's what I was going to say. Because as I was looking up the game's missions I found out that isn't quite true. Those are for the Amiga version and Elite Plus on DOS/PC-98. Probably in the case of the PC-98 version, since there's not the usual "floppy and hard drive" rip for easy playing for most PC-98 games, there's just a loose floppy. I messed around with the DOS version a bit, but decided that the Archimedes was the only way I was going to get any semblance of anything done. Hopefully those four missions are just exclusives and we actually get to stop an invasion here too.

The way this works is unusual. Open up the game executeable and you get the default state, but when you save your commander, you get the option to save it as a different name, at which point you open that file. Both saving and loading is done through the OS, which is a quirk of the Acorn 32-bit line, but one that feels charming when you get used to it.
 

You start with a Cobra Mark 3 and 100 credits. By default, the Cobra comes with a set of front-facing pulse cannons, three missiles and a radar which tells you where other ships and objects are. But it isn't a true IFF system. Ships are green and objects are blue. You go through the menus with the function keys, F12 minimizes the screen and returns to desktop. The rest are context sensitive.

 

Controls are strange. This version uses the mouse, mostly for good effect. Up and down turn in that direction, but left and right turn counter-clockwise and clockwise, respectively. I believe this was done to be realistic, yet the game still uses a traditional thrust mode of transit. Which is hardly realistic in space. I appreciate the idea in theory, but between that and the looseness of the controls, I've never gotten that far. This version uses the first mouse button to fire, second to decrease speed, and third to increase speed. This...eh, it kind of works.

In order to travel between stars, you need to first open the local or galaxy map, then click on the star you want to go to. Then, when you find it appropriate, press the H key to initiate a jump. After ten seconds, you'll travel to where you selected. Now you have to travel to the space station by getting the dot on that small screen on the lower right to be both yellow and at the center. It's several minutes, real-time. No, you can't just pull out a book, if you don't fancy looking at a screen doing nothing while nothing happens for that time, you'll need music or something. For now, I've chosen an opera by Johann Georg Conradi...because I'm not going to listen to a three hour opera in one sitting otherwise.

Every so often, or when you press J to go forward, another ship appears. These range from other traders/random ships, which just fly across you. Hopefully not THROUGH you. Sometimes you'll see a mixed group, hostiles, randoms or space police. Sometimes space police. Once I saw what I can only describe as a triangle of things in space. Then there are hostiles.  

Sometimes they come alone. Sometimes in small groups. Other times in massive groups and at that point, you might as well just reload, because you aren't getting away. You can tell when someone is hostile, because of the sound of laser fire and your shields getting lower. Possibly even a hostile missile being launched. The radar only tells you if something is a ship, not if it's currently shooting at you. Which doesn't matter, because I found matching someone to a radar signature to be risky in the heat of battle.

At first, I have missiles and a pulse cannon. I'm not using a missile against some randoms, at least not at this point, so I'd just eat that reload. The pulse cannon is your basic laser cannon, hit someone a few times and they explode and leave behind debris that someone with fuel scoops could pick up. That is, if you can hit them.

The controls are fine for just noodling around, but in combat they're weird. You're spinning and then moving up or down all the time, and the AI is no different. That means the mere act of finding them is, at first, tedious and annoying to do. Until you get on someone's rear, this results in a strange form of space jousting, almost literally. If you're lucky, you can crash into them, and the problem is over if there's no one else fighting you. If there is...uh...hope they decided to flee.

What's annoying here is that the AI is pretty good. You can't outrun them, they can't really outrun you, so they've started a battle of life or death. Hey, they might have a bounty on his head, and 2 credits really helps a lot! 

The problem with Elite as a game specifically is the real opening loop of the game. You can't really live off bounties starting out unless you fancy grinding a TON, and you can't scavenge debris without a fuel scoop. That means trading. Since you can't find this out without first traveling to a solar system, and taking hyperjumps costs fuel, which costs money, this means that you're constantly reloading earlier saves. Since there are multiple encounters on each flight, that means just figuring out how to get beyond grinding out hostiles is going to be somewhere between five and fifteen minutes depending on whether or not they're hostile. There's no automating it.

I hit paydirt on a route on my second trip to another star. Well, in as much as paydirt can be had, anyway. From my starting planet of Lave, I can buy one ton of firearms at 77.6 credits, then sell it at 78.7 credits. Very low profit? Yes, but on the way back, I can buy a considerable amount of food at 3.2 a ton, and get 3.8 a ton for it. Which is a profit, assuming I can manually fly into the station.

One of the features of Elite is that docking stations, I.E., where you go to trade and get new equipment and fuel, move. This is realistic in the sense that they do that, but also very annoying in the sense that this is not entirely automatic. You have to move with them. Angle your ship in such a way that you slide in through the hanger. This is a particularly nasty example of it, since it's so very easy to crash into the station. I had about a 10% success rate. You can pay for an automatic docking computer, about 500, or pay for a one-time use of the station's docking computer, 40.

This is one of those things that shatters my immersion in the game world. You're telling me that the people running these stations are okay with ships occasionally just smashing themselves into them just to save on docking fees? It's a pure game-ism. Between that and the opening reloading to actually get any real funds, it feels a lot like work. In a sense, this blog IS supposed to be work, but man, this one's a heck of a lot like it. 

After what I guess was over twenty tries and two hours, I make it back where I started. After filling up my fuel, I had 118.9 credits. Which in the grand scheme of things, is one more ton of an item at 60 credits. I need about thirty more trips like that to afford Fuel Scoops, wherein I'll be able to pick up cargo after taking out a hostile ship, which means I won't have to deal with the whole pesky buying of goods and can now go straight to selling.

Let's see, thirty times two means...well, looks like I'll be able to actually play the game at the sixty hour mark. Akin to a full time job. Assuming of course, that prices remain stable and goods replenish after every hyperjump. Don't be surprised if next time I mysteriously find myself in possession of more credits than I left this session with. In the meantime, I guess I better start practicing docking.

This Session: 3 hours 20 minutes