Kick Start My Heart [Elite Dangerous]

There's a faint glimmer of light at the end of the (docking) tunnel: a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to fund a new Elite game, Elite Dangerous.

When the classic space-opera Elite first appeared on the BBC Micro it was ground-breaking and a work of genius. Eight galaxies of 3D open-ended interstellar trading, fighting, adventuring, asteroid mining, docking and ship upgrading were squeezed by programmers Bell and Braben into less memory than an e-mail.



Elite is still the watchword for non-casual computer gaming. The learning curve was brutal: it took me three  weeks of playing to figure out how to launch my ship, turn it around and return to dock (you are required to match spin with the space station) – only then could I venture out beyond the safety zone, try out my shiny new hyperdrive and get blasted to pieces by space pirates. Elite rewards the dedicated player: some events in the game are only seen rarely, or are scheduled to occur on reaching a particular rank which could be weeks or months into playing.

Elite created something which still marks out the best computer games: a player community. Micro User, Acorn User and BEEBUG magazines regularly printed letters describing dubious in-game discoveries e.g. “I found another secret mission!” “I was ambushed by Thargoids!” “I saw a space dredger!” sometimes accompanied by pencil sketches and followed by weeks of debate as to whether the space dredger was real, or whether the pilot had indulged in one too many narcotics trading runs.

Versions of Elite appeared on different computers: each with its own graphic style and quirks. An early PC version was extremely playable however the best and most quirky version was produced for the Acorn Archimedes: features included an ongoing war between police and criminals, and fleets of unarmed Space Missionaries calling on you to repent. A popular hack for this version kitted out your Cobra with fluffy dice and a bumper sticker.

Elite also spawned two sequels: Frontier and Frontier First Encounters, both groundbreaking in their own way, and then - nothing. Rumours of a planned Elite 4 have come and gone, and all but a few of the waiting pilots had given up hope.

So last week's announcement, more or less unexpected, came as a pleasant surprise. The story is by no means over: the campaign is live and the video and concept art look serious, but Frontier have yet to achieve their ambitious Kickstarter goal, and then they have to actually write the game. As a backer Sci-Fi Gene is hopeful and looks forward to completion - Godspeed Elite Dangerous.

Multi-dimensional book series

The novels making up a trilogy or series don't have to follow each other serially. Steven Baxter's trilogy Time, Space, Origin and the short story collection Phase Space are connected unusually - each tells a stand-alone story, but the characters and plot elements recur. Baxter uses parallel universes, and sends each story literally in a different direction, following a different space-time axis. Time follows the protagonist into the distant future, in Space he undertakes a very different voyage to the limits of space, while in Origin he finds himself cast from parallel universe to universe. The Origin here is also a reference to Darwin's Origin of the Species, and this novel explores alternative evolutionary possibilities.

As in many of Baxter's novels, the author shows off his knowledge of the world's space programmes (each novel features a different, though equally plausible "Big Dumb" launch system) and of astronomy, physics and evolutionary biology. The science is so clearly described that these could easily replace secondary school textbooks. Space also features a good, if scary, answer to the Fermi Paradox.

What about the crew?

I've played a number of space sims looking for a way to live out the space-opera experience (think Star Trek, or even better David Weber's Honor Harrington series). I'm not hugely interested in mission-based fighter sims, however many wingmen you get - what I'd like is to be able to captain a large, complex capital ship, to be able to make both military and non-military decisions, and to manage crew dynamics. My search so far:

Frontier series: allow you to interview, hire and fire crewmembers who have names and faces; they occasionally quit of their own accord; the offer of work on one bulletin board may correspond to a missing persons or wanted notice elsewhere. However we're only usually talking about three to seven crew; and apart from remove the chocks at take-off they don't seem to do all that much. This is also not really a capital ship game as in the Elite universe the small one-ship import-export entrepeneur is king (think Only Fools and Horses in space) however Frontier is the only game that gets ship choice right: it's not about working your way up to the biggest, fastest, blingiest ship with the most weapon ports, it's about specialization and the right sized hull - that enormous cargo-hauler is great for profitable trading routes or exploration, but will be too slow for a high-speed parcel courier or an assassin overtaking his marks in hyperspace. The equipment you need e.g. cabins for a passenger ship, takes up so much of the hull space that you can't afford to be a generalist.

Battlecruiser series: larger crew complement, varied roles, crewmembers actually seem to do their jobs, move around the ship and come on and off duty. The ship feels like a capital ship, particularly as you can scramble fighters and shuttles to deal with some situations. However only bridge crew and fighter pilots have any names or personality and they are fixed - you clone them if they die; other crew members can be hired at space stations but are just numbers.

Both series were let down by bugs and other issues around release. BC should have been closer to what I was looking for but FFE was in fact much more enjoyable and immersive despite the bugs.