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Hints and Tips
These hints and tips are not part of any official guide (there are plenty
around; see the links page) but are merely the
fruits of my own gameplay. Some may not be useful or have any obvious
point to them, and indeed may not have any point whatsoever. But for those
of you who have played this game to its death, you may find they give
it a little added longevity. So, to begin:
- Mysteries : Part of what makes the game interesting.
Not always answered.
- TYCDTFUTGIAFSOW : Read it and find out.
- Missions : What can you do apart from play them? Lots,
as a matter of fact...
Mysteries
Datacard/ingame discrepancies - Whatever happened to the original Asp? I think that's a rather a long story... then there's all the confusion between Moccasin/Special Moccasin/Urutu (you may want to look at my ship/object listing), the initial IFF confusion between the Boa Mk II and the Anaconda, and of course, speaking of the Anaconda, did you know that the datacard's side view of it is upside down...?
Urutu vs. Moccasin Debate - Too long to get into here. Maybe in the future I'll make a whole page just on this debate...
Police lasers. Such a pretty shade of blue, unless they happen to be pointing in your direction, but they seem to be only the power of a mining laser. Nice formations though (4 civilian, 6 civilian, 6 military) which can be seen on the screenshots page. By the way, for those of you who always wondered, the number of police Vipers you need to kill, starting from a completely clean profile, to reach the vaunted status of fugitive... is nine. On the first kill your status becomes "offender" and stays there until the eighth. When you bag your ninth, it changes to "fugitive". And the number of pirates I then had to kill to bring it back down to "offender"? Two.
Dredgers and Generation ships. Unfortunately we seem to have established that these were never implemented in the code. It's a shame, but we're not all convinced - whatever the code tells us.
Hognoses. Why? Harmless, weak, unarmed ships originally
created for target practice by the navy and bought up en masse by a religious sect of missionaries who fly
around dangerous planets spreading the good word. As the AFE FAQ says, Darwin in action. REPENT, SINNER, REPENT!
Crazy craft. These ships fly in erratic circles. They are mentioned in the handbook. From the game's
perspective, they are in fact trying to shoot themselves!
That space station in witchspace. Could it have been one of the Tri-Alliance's illegal preemptive strike bases? A secret Thargoid war base, or a secret military base of the Galactic Navy? Not. Actually, this one was ruined for me, by Ian Bell himself, no less. Apparently it's because when a system is generated, the things generated are the sun, then the space station, then the planet between them, and if necessary, a moon. In Witchspace, the planet and sun are blanked out, as is the compass. But the space station is still generated. When you emerge into witchspace (and are mobbed by Thargoids), you are emerging straight towards the station. If you don't touch the mouse at all, and energy-bomb the Thargs, you can keep interspacing until you reach it. It will release no Vipers if attacked, and although it interacts with the docking computer, you will simply fly straight through it as if it weren't there.
some notes on witchspace - did you know that you will never meet another ship in witchspace apart from a Thargoid? Not so. If you press the hyperspace button and then keep interspacing forward, you will always meet some more ships before you jump - usually traders, but sometimes pirates too. I have no idea why this is.
speaking of docking at space stations, why not have a little fun with the docking computer? If you manage, through dint of wrestling with the controls, to actually shoot another ship while your docking computer is engaged, the computer will then try to dock you will the ship you fired at. This will continue until one of you is dead. The same is also true for the space station itself - if you shoot it while docking by computer, the computer will attempt to ram you into the station. However when you fire at something the computer retains docking thrusters but will not speed up or slow down via the main engine, and can only drift unless you apply your own velocity.
Hermits. The curious thing is, while it's an offence to shoot the buggers, you still get a 2cr reward for
doing so. There's a bug in the hermit shape, though which leads to visible gaps in it from some angles - this could be the entry/exit for ships as stated in original BBC Elite... well we can dream, can't we?
Space Beacons. Navigational aids on the spacelanes, not meant to be discovered and refuse to show up on scanners, but they are what keep
your compass correct. There are none in Witchspace, hence no beacon lock. Apparently scooping them will foul up your fuel scoops...
from the AFE FAQ:
Brightly coloured tetrahedrons registering as cargo on the scanner, no benefit is
gained from shooting them, and they do not appear on the hold contents register when scooped. They do
take up 1t of storage, however, and cannot be shifted short of using an escape capsule.
"I vaguely remeber something about ejecting one in association with every tonne of X jettisoned, but I
cannot remember what X was, and have tried it with minerals and food without success." Space beacons do
not stop you jumping, while of course Rock Hermits do.
If you manage to crash into a cargo cannister and then scoop it while it's still exploding (e.g. Furs (dead) )
you get the Furs and the IFF message changes to Unrecognised (dead).
Known oversight in the IFF reader: if you scoop an Escape Capsule then jettison the cannister of slaves it isn't recognised
and the IFF simply reads (0) (or (dead) if you shoot it).
If you missile (rather than shoot) to destroy ships like the Gecko which normally release escape pods, they won't.
There are many injokes in ArcElite - for example, on the Boa II's datacard, it says that "Burch Industries on Birerea will respray any Boa for free" - this refers to a quarrel between the authors, Warren Burch and Clive Gringras, where Warren Burch objected to the programming of a pink spacecraft. It remained in the game, however. Also please forgive the authors their atrocious sense of humour - the Caimen have Ni-L8 lasers.
Also, vintage gamers should be able to recognise the Copperhead. You've seen it before, haven't you? To quote the
datacard, "Due to it being equipped with a rejected precursor of the Cobra MkIII Mous, this ship is often
observed flying rather erratically." Zarch, anybody? (Virus on the PC).
Some interesting notes on combat:
Pirates may fight you, each other or the police; but they will never
go after another trader when you are near (maybe your reputation got ahead
of you, or they were friends of Rantan Pino). Unless they are already
attacking a trader when you come upon them, in which case things get interesting.
If you interrupt a scuffle and attack A) the defender, the attacker can
either attack you, ignore you, or go to scoop cargo before rejoining melee,
or B) the attacker, BOTH ships will then attack you. If you're a fugitive,
Vipers attack you on sight unless there're pirates in the area in which
case they go for them first.
Beware the sudden increase in reinforcement likelihood two Right On Commanders
after deadly, and the increased tendency of Copperheads to use missiles.
Also note that in ArcElite ramming a Thargoid will destroy it but will not
inactivate its associated thargons - although these can easily be scooped
while active, and indeed have on occasion tried to ram me and been instead
sucked up as alien items.
Shots to an enemy's thrusters do no damage. Strange, but true.
Before ships enter from the edge of radar, they will flicker on briefly somewhere
near the centre. If you catch this extremely rapid flash of green it can
act as a reliable early warning system.
It's fine by the police for you to shoot pirates in the station zone.
- Fer de Lances no longer seem to behave like Vipers in that they
attack pirates or the fugitive player, although I have heard information
to the contrary.
Note that if you come across a Cobra Mk I, Urutu or a Bushmaster being mobbed by pirates, it may well
have shields in excess of 20 or 23. It's not often that other ship classes under attack are innocent traders though, so this may or may
not be a general rule for innocents. By the way, Cobra Mk Is, when being mobbed by pirates, are usually fugitives; they will preferentially attack either
you or any police who happen to be near (depends on who is nearer and whether you've already fired at
them, just like any normal pirate). So don't bother trying to rescue the selfish buggers.
A curio... the documentation for !EliteExt IFF says there are four distinct variants of Mocassin, as well as what is assumed to be the Urutu. From the documentation: "I've looked through all the ships you can get in Élite (to provide a complete identify system),
and have noticed a few interesting things. First, there's often more than one variant of a ship. Most ships
have one alternative version that looks slightly different, and doesn't turn up very often. In IFF, these will be c
oloured yellow, and you get twice as many I-Spy points as for a normal ship! The Moccasin is quite a good
one, there are four distinct variants on the the theme, some looking rather strange." This surely must be a spelling error. Including both variants of the Moccasin, and the Urutu as a confusion, there is still a fourth ship that the author is referring to...?
TYCDTFUTGIAFSOW: Things You Can Do To Fuck Up The
Gameplay In A Fun Sort Of Way
#1: Use the game editor. Well, the possibilities are infinite...
Missions
Genesis Mission
Medicine Mission
Zartid III Mission
Zurid Pino Mission
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