Frontier - First Encounters(Elite3)

[child of Thor]

Ok this is an oldie that i'm considering getting. Its now a shareware release, you can get it to download from here http://www.frontier.co.uk/ .

The deal is you download it and can use it for 30days, then you have to send £5 off to play it as if you bought it.
I was quite an Elite fan in the early days of computer games, and later got into the second game on the amiga.

Do people feel this game is worth £5 as i've arleady played and enjoyed the other two. I've heard its pretty buggy(but then the second game was as well) and it will look really old graphicaly.

Anyone play this still, or played it recently and have any words of wisdom to a prospective purchaser?

JJFFE(windows friendly version(linux too!)) available here:
http://www.eliteclub.org.uk/jjffe/about.htm

NOTE: you will still need the shareware(DOS) version to get sound/music etc.

[Hueij]

Elite 3 is just a remake of Elite 2 with better (for the times) graphics. And the return of the Targoids I never played it though, I just roam around in my Imperial Courier in Elite 2 every now and then. May be you should google for it, there are loads of sites about Elite.

Oh, and since this post made me an Emperor I'll just edit this one instaed of making a new post : Elite 3 has a plot, although you don't have to follow it.

[Skanky Burns]

Download it.

If you still happen to be playing the game 30 days later, it seems you feel it is worth £5.

[Barinthus]

Well said, SB

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Download it.

If you still happen to be playing the game 30 days later, it seems you feel it is worth £5.

Well your logic has won me over : - i downloaded it and have been playing non-stop

Originally posted by Hueij
Elite 3 is just a remake of Elite 2 with better (for the times) graphics. And the return of the Targoids I never played it though, I just roam around in my Imperial Courier in Elite 2 every now and then.

I played Elite 2 on the amiga and i'm finding the graphics for FFE much more pixelated, i would call them blocky for sure! even with graphical detail set to maximum. And i really am not keen on the Hud sight for your weapons - its massive!
Apart from these little grumbles - i'm finding the game more fun than Frontier(Elite 2). The space combat is much harder for one thing.
On the amiga it was incredibly rare to get attacked by more than one ship at a time(there might be a few ships after you, but they would rarely be able to get a shot on you all at the same time), FFE seems to fix that and its more like the battles from the origonal Elite, with multiple attacks at the same time. Shields are essential in all but the smallest craft!

Bugs are still here like in Frontier. Auto pilots crashing you on landing/takeing off etc. Various little glitches on the ships control panel and Hud - targeting glitches from time to time when things get frantic, and in the navigation targeting mode. I've seen most of these in the Amiga Frontier version, so i've got my work arounds for these.
But generally really enjoying it so far, and these are my impressions:

Good

New music is cool
New ships always good to have
New Journals are a really great idea(could be worth the £5 by themselves - they really bring you into the game universe)
Real Thargoids.....somewhere
Its still Elite!

Not so good
Using real actors on the bullitin boards(not that you get them in the shareware version - thankgod!)
Bugs...as usual
the ammount of time that this game will suck up


So far it's battleing with Halo2(on my xbox) for my attention, and putting up a great fight!

[Skanky Burns]

Good to hear.

[DrSpike]

Personally I wouldn't play this now.........but if you think you'll get something out of it £5 isn't very much.

[child of Thor]

well yes, it is tricky to get it running all ok. You need DOS drivers for mouse and soundcards etc, and i'm not that keen on the dark blue colour of space.

Still there is another option i've discovered - from the website you can get a link to one that gives you a program called JJFE(something like that).
This program allows you to run it under windows, so no need to mess around with DOS drivers etc. I can also select just how black i like space to look.
Plus i can use the power of my AWE64 Midi to get really great sounds - none of the 'bleepy boopy' stuff

I'll send off my £5 after xmas/new year postal rush has died down a bit - just hope Frontier Development are still running to be able to accept my money.....?.......?

I would say if your a die-hard Elite fan, then this is the best version available, somehow all the other attempts at elite since never quite manged to get the vibe?

maybe its because they look too good?

I'm looking forward to getting hold of the new 'Quest' ship that is available - its the one in the opening title animations, at the momment my trusty Asp will have to do, just need a new crewman as the one i had to get was wanted by some people - they keep sending ships to attack him(and me!!).

Remember, in space no one will hear you scream 'Thargoid!'

[DrSpike]

Tip: Find planets where you can buy slaves really cheap to make monster cash early on. Don't forget life support though, all they all turn to rotten food.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by child of Thor
well yes, it is tricky to get it running all ok. You need DOS drivers for mouse and soundcards etc, and i'm not that keen on the dark blue colour of space.

Still there is another option i've discovered - from the website you can get a link to one that gives you a program called JJFE(something like that).
This program allows you to run it under windows, so no need to mess around with DOS drivers etc.

http://www.jaj22.demon.co.uk/download.html#idiot

Much less messing around

[child of Thor]

@reds4ever - yeah that was the one, but you still need the shareware version to get the sound/music.

Originally posted by DrSpike
Tip: Find planets where you can buy slaves really cheap to make monster cash early on. Don't forget life support though, all they all turn to rotten food.

c'mon - i'm a citizen of the allied planets! I have no truck with the evil Imperials and slave trading.
Plus i lost my save game, so i'm back in my Saker MkIII - i dont think i have room for cargo bay life support. slaves=fertilizer for the time being

But what i do to make some safe+quick money early on, is to take of from the spaceport of Hope and manualy fly to Currie spaceport - then you can take part in the 'Wiccan Run' challange(its talked about in your journals). You'll need 2tonnes of fuel as its two jumps to get to Alioth in your ship. An easy 1010 credits and a mention in the game journals.

Then fly medical supplies to Sohilia(again mentioned in one of the journals) to help in the outbrake of a plague. You can get 2000 credits per tonne for a while on that run, and bag a few pirates(or jelous losers of the wiccan run race?) on the way

After that the universe is your oyster, and slaves can be on the menu if you so choose

[DrSpike]

There also used to be a planet you could buy gems really cheaply at (I think it was a bug). Shame I can't remember its name really.

[child of Thor]

well we could make it a 'Name that Elite planet of super gem trading' Game - although i notice that in the later Elites, gems are no longer traded in ounces but in tonnes like all the other goods.
In the origonal game finding a good gem trading route was the way to make the big money - as long as you could afford the outlay.

The combat is much more tricky in FFE(Elite3), atleast compared to in Frontier(Elite2) on the amiga. I'm finding myself actualy being scared to enter certain systems, as they are certain death it seems?
Anyone else find this - or are my reactions just getting slow in middle age? It might even be harder than in the origonal Elite, but its more difficult to judge as the flight models are very different.

You get rather weird looking ship interior backdrop screens in FFE, depending on your ships class(size?). There is something disturbing about them - the good news is you can change them if you create your own, so i might give that a bash sometime. I think im going to try to make an interior shot of the Millenium Falcon, with the chess table

[child of Thor]

I'm hooked [Warning: Long Post - only Elite fans need apply]

Here's why:

Got enough money together to get myself an Asp with all the trimmings(Military Drive/10xSheild generators/Energy booster unit/Laser cooler/1MW beam laser/Naval ECM/Go-faster stripes etc, and 39tonnes of cargo space to be useful).

I trying to play as a "sporty trader" - in that i got the speed and hardware to get me pretty much out of any scrape - and enough cargo ability to make a decent profit if i plan my cargo runs well.

So i'm not being mr evil or anything like that - no assasinations, no faction favouritism or anything like that. Just fill my ship with the best merchandise and take it from A to B, do the odd package drop off if its convenient. The kinda stuff that takes about 5-10 mins real world time when you use auto-pilot.

I've decided to head of to Tillia, as an interesting sounding civil war is brewing according to the in-game journals.(and as the planet in question is Valhalla - my curiostiy is triggered )

So i'm making my way using the old agricultural to industrial to agricultural planet hopping method. Not sure of the names now, but heading south west from Federation space avoiding anarchic systems.

By the time i'm near enough to Tillia to jump in, the journals hint that money can be made ferrying in Hand-weapons etc for the coming battle; so i take the hint and become a gun-runner!

I make the jump to Tillia - i'm just over 10AU out from the planet Valhalla, where i hope to make a tidy profit

Alarm bells and i'm approached by two craft, both small - no problem.

After dealing with them i speed up time and basicaly get attacked by another wave of craft. This happens four times, the numbers of craft between one and three at a time - i get through with only a little damage to my hull(i hate NV500 missiles!).

I'm about 4AU out now.

Alarm bells again - sigh! Hmmm but the ships appear very close this time!

Four boggies - cool, a couple of big ones and two small.
I like big ships - they are easier to hit.

I notice the big blue beam from the biggest ship. Interesting.
At the same time i notice the small ships are a pair of the latest Viper mk2's - and the missiles they've been fireing dont give a damn about my Naval ECM. I've got six extra blue blips cluttering up my scanner.

The Cobra Mk 3 has a 5MW pulse laser, and both the Vipers have the same laser as mine - 1MW beams.
Oh yeah the big ship is one of those large Imperial Explorers with as many shields as i've got, and a seeming never ending supply of ECM beating missiles.

Combat is a serious deal in FFE, atleast i'm finding it so compared to the previous Elites.

To cut a long story(about 15 real world minutes!) short, i make it. But my hull integrity is down to 7.1%. Supprisingly my computer is telling me all my systems are fine - and none of my cargo has been damaged!! A miricle i think.

Auto pilot set with just a few AU left and as the distance creeps down i'm feeling lucky - no more attacks coming in.

But i just zoom by valhalla, my autopilot spinning me around and using valuable fuel to slow me down to start the approach again.

I set the time scale to real world time and a quick check through my message log shows me that both my retro and left thrusters have been destroyed. Oh joy - no putting my feet up and leting the computer fly me into dock then. And i'd been hopeing to view the latest Jjagged Bbanner dream-vid while the auto-pilot did the work

To add to the seriousness of the situation my fuel isn't good - all i got is about a third of the tank left(It was about half until the extra burn when my auto-pilot missed the planet).
This time i'd given up extra fuel to pack in a few more tonnes of hand-guns.

What follows next is a bit like the return stage in the apollo-13 movie. But i got no computer to tell me how fast to go - i've got to 'use the force' and try to catch me that damn planet, but with no room for errors i'm thinking as i look at the fuel gauge.
And its 'slow time' all the way in, allowing my self the luxery of 2x speed everynow and then, fast time and any mistake could be fatal.

Engines set to 'Off' - its thrusters only as i got to save the fuel, but to slow down i got to flip 180 degrees to fly backwards and use my working main thrusters, as the retro's are gone.....along with nearly all my hull



I spent about 4 and a half hours in real time, getting my bird home. 2AU is a bl**dy long way i realise. And catching a planet isn't as easy as it sounds.

But i loved every crazy minute of it. This is what gaming is about for me, its an emotional attachment - a bond between you and the virtual world.

I was put through the emotional mangle with this one: Excitement,Joy,relief,worry,disspare,intensity and again relief with a touch of amazement when i'd finaly limped into dock.

Oh and to top it all off, my hand-guns only sell for the pathetic sum of around 600 credits per tonne(i got them for approx 400 per tonne).
And most of the time in the back of my head i've been wondering just which part of my hull that makes up the 7.1% could keep my ship together?

I needed a cup of tea(in RL) to relax after that adventure

Halo2 - i loved you for all your dozen hours of fun.
Fable - i love you for not demanding too much of me.

FFE(Elite3) - you look like the back end of a dog, in all your 640x480 glory, but you PWWN the ass of all the pretty gang

[Snotty]

Serious Elite fan here!

This brings it all back If theres one thing better than watching people play games, its listening to people talk about playing games. I loved FFE despite all its flaws. I remember getting the first 'Frontier' on the same CD I first got the original civ on. Ive still got that somewhere, despite all the battering it took. I was a bit young to have the patience for the original Elite, but I first remember playing it on my grans spectrum

I bought FFE on floppy, and it came with a manual and another of the same size of short stories! A good 100 pages or more of just setting the scene, really helped my imagination run riot. Hmm, wonder if Ive still got that.......

[child of Thor]

And this little story was one of the times i survived a serious battle. I've lost count of how many times i've had to reload after the RIP tombstone in this game!!!!

They've seriously upped the combat capabilities of the AI it seems? This game is a real challange and with all the patch stuff etc - its the best Elite fun i've had

Snotty - you should go blow of the dust and see if your computer can still run it(if not the JJFEE thing should help out), its a mans game

[Barinthus]

hey there, child of Thor. Could you provide with a link for downloading JJFEE? I tried DOSbox with no luck and only link I could find on JJFEE was one for Linux. I have XP.

[Barinthus]

Ah never mind reds4ever had the link. I will just figure out the rest tomorrow.

[Snotty]

Well Ive Dled the shareware version, Im sure my floppys would be corrupt, and I didnt bother to replace my floppy drive after it broke (why bother these days when Ive got usb memory sticks and the like)

the controls start to come back quickly enough im airborne, and things seem to run ok. Ive got this idea to go mining off in the distant reachs of space, something Ive never really done before.

Ive not got my speakers set up here, a must if Im going to enjoy this game! Any idea how to make it run in full screen in windows?

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by Barinthus
Ah never mind reds4ever had the link. I will just figure out the rest tomorrow.

It's totally plug'n'play and idiot proof. Even I got it working

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by Snotty

Ive not got my speakers set up here, a must if Im going to enjoy this game! Any idea how to make it run in full screen in windows?

the only way i found is to set your display to 640x480, not a very elegant solution i know.....

[Snotty]

Bizarrely enough, I dont ever remember finishing that Wicca run quest before, although I managed it first time round now. I seem to remember not even being able to land at the first space port because it was too full I was playing unpatched version though.

Well, by the end of february 01 Ive made my fortune Im in a cobra mk3, and Im off to wander the universe. To be fair Ive only got here thanks to cheesy saving and reloading on that medicine run, stripping my ship down to only the essentials (the auto-pilot and hyperspace drive! )

I cant run on 640x480, my graphics card wont go that low! dropping it to 800xetc gives me enough of a screen to be satisfying though

[Snotty]

Bugger me, this game is shockingly hard! Ive stuffed my hull full of fuel and fled for the Sol system (sector 0,0) If theres anywhere I can be safe from packs of pirates, its there. Im sure I remember being mugged by packs of pirates before, but Im getting hammered this time. Groups of 4X 1mw beam. or 3X 4mw beam! Ive got a 4mw beam strapped on myself, and it tears apart any ship I get in my sights. Still, the pirate packs can rip through my 3x shields before I have taken them all out. Of course then you see the fateful message that your auto pilot has been damaged.......

[child of Thor]

Cool its not just me then!
I'm finding 10 shields plus a booster unit in anything bigger than a Cobra mkIII a must have. You can take a few laser shots plus a missile or two while you take evasive action and run away abit.

As for the getting it all setup - just have a good read of the link reds4ever put up.

Im running it(JJFFE+shareware version) on my trusty P166 in a windowed enviroment.
My desktop is set at 1024x768 and when i launch the program i get it in window on my desktop.
Then i press Ctrl+F12 which makes it run in full screen - it seems to set itself up in 640x400 by itself(i editied something to make it 640x480).
In windows you should have no problems with sound either.
My Awe32 midi mode makes a huge difference to the standard midi software synth it defaulted to, so i changed it(not sure about most modern cards though?) Still those blips+beeps are fun sounds too

I'm sending of my £5 tomorrow, as i've never owned FFE before - and i must say thats its a bargin

It doesn't give much info in the license.txt to say how they want it though? Still i figure as its to do with Elite i might get away with £5 worth of Live Animals, i got quite a few squirrels where i live .......well ok its a postal order really - the squirrels are too cute looking.

[Barinthus]

Well you'd be surprised at how stupid I can be

[Barinthus]

Ah told you. I couldn't figure how to fly the damn ship.

I will try searching on the Internet on game controls

[Barinthus]

http://www.lotf.co.uk/

[Barinthus]

More I play this game it reminds me of a shareware game for Macintosh I used to play - it started with V... it's like 2D version of this game.

[Snotty]

Useful site Hopefully youve got the hang of the controls now. One thing that might trip you up is having to refuel your internal fuel tank. You need to have bought some fuel, then press f2 then f10 and refuel is up the top.

[child of Thor]

One tip in combat i've found quite useful:

As soon as the alarm bells sound for your ship being under attack, use the 'Tab' key to set your engines to OFF(there are three settings 1.Autopilot 2.On 3.Off).
You should not have the little blue flame jets on the left of the control console.
It just makes you more manouverable in combat - which is quite important in FFE!

In Frontier(Elite2), i never used to bother as the combat was much easier.

And Snotty, dont feel too bad - after a few trips around the Alliance worlds I also fled to Sol to recuperate! I had to do a few Barnards Star to Sol trips until i felt i could get a ship i could feel safer in(my adder at the time was a flying graveyard!).

I'm wondering if its possible to play without bothering with saves too much? At the momment i use a 'safe' in dock one and a 'non-safe' between dock one.
If i die(which happens often), then i reload. To balance it out if i survive an encounter, whatever the damage i take, i play through it - even if i have to downgrade my ship to be able to afford to carry on

Over the last week i'm having to reload less, and i'm surviving more combats - still every now and then i get a nasty group of ships and the only option is to jump out(if you have the spare fuel) or die

Hmmm I never been 'Elite' in any of the games - i wasn't that dedicated. It would be interesting to know how the great pilots found combat in FFE?

I've been trying many different craft - the Asp is an old fav, but just doesnt have enough space to cater for all my needs. In Frontier i would usualy end up in an Imperial Courier - but i dont want to this time, as i didn't really like the way it looked(and it was Imperial!).

The Wyvern was a disapointment - a huge fat beast(for its tonnage) is the best i can explain it.

I've also just done my first 'cleaning' job for a cool 50,000 credits - I like the remarks about it in the game journal afterwards.
My character in this game will make it the exception over the norm, until i get good at combat that is

Anyone know how many differnet journal entries there are - i'm guessing they cant go on forever(unlike the game), but i'll be sad when they end - unless Mr.Braben has used some clever maths?