Elite a lifetime of work :)

[Hedge1970]

The epic journey is complete. I have been counting down the kills, checking off each 256 when Elite prints "Right On Commander" to the screen. To go from Dangerous rating to Elite you need to get 15x "Right On Commander". I started playing this game with real Microdrives and my Multiface One, I always backed up milestones - rating promotions to 2 microdrives and also a Tape save. Around a couple of years ago I moved to VdrivesZXs for a more secure SSD storage. However A few weeks ago I hit the multiface red button and over wrote a corrupted save to my only copy of SSD Elite saves, thankfully I still had microdrives and Tapes and was able to load an old copy - which turns out to be the promotion to from Deadly to Dangerous. Since then my Multiface has given up on me and so the last 100 odd saves where to good old fashioned FE tape.

I had expected the last 256 kills to end with a "Nice One Commander" as this is the normal promotion message, however it just flashed up "Right On Commander", my heart sank a little as its been a long journey. To put that in context for each 256 kills it takes around 6 game plays of between 25-40 mins each - which is enough to fill the 35T cargo bay with pilfered loot. Add to these 6 game plays, the times you get killed, the intermittent and very annoying "Ship Boarded By Pirates and they Showed No mercy" plus a sprinkling of game freeze crashes with the multiface and your racking up the hours playing this game... My first thought on seeing what I expected to be "Nice One Commander" was that I had some how overwritten my game and was playing from an unknown amount of kills and thus would never finish!!! But it turns out that it was ELITE My final ship was not some paralysing attack by hordes of Kraits and Sidewinders, no Thargoid revenge or Annoyingly accurate and punishing Police Viper, no it was a big fat lumbering Python scared half to death and turning to run from my unrelenting Ingram Model M1928A2 military lasers.

Now I am off to get on with the rest of my life, having finally put to bed the young 15yr olds yearning to be Elite back in the 80s.

Elite
by RC Paul, on Flickr

Kills
by RC Paul, on Flickr

[Ersh]

Congratulations mate! Remember to send for your badge.

I thought you would be grinding Thargoids in witchspace, iirc it was 45-60 minutes between ROC's doing it that way.

[Hedge1970]

Never thought of that route would imagine it’s tough though, been in and out if witch space and multiple thargoids soon gets the FPS dropping to like 2

[Ersh]

Yeah, the FPS drops quickly in witch-space (though it can be advantageous). There are several ways to handle the Thargoids there, I think my best strategy was to use the cloak (which neatly disables their E.C.M's), take out two with missiles then uncloak and hit the other two with a front mining laser (good to have one at the back as well when shields get low) as that does more damage than the military laser. I think it took around 3-4 minutes per skirmish and you got 50cr and 4 kill-points a pop.

[Firefox]

"Nice one, Commander"? I don't remember that...

Anyway, well done!

[Morkin]

Congrats on an impressive feat, especially loading it up on original hardware.

I never quite realised the effort you had to make to get to Elite. I knew it took a while but didn't twig you had to shoot quite that many ships.

[Hedge1970]

Congrats on an impressive feat, especially loading it up on original hardware.

I never quite realised the effort you had to make to get to Elite. I knew it took a while but didn't twig you had to shoot quite that many ships.

Yeah initially I miscalculated how many kills and once I realised I thought heck I am half way there, but even then it was still a bit of a grind.

Should add it was also quite enjoyable with different atta k styles and flying formats appearing and keeping me on my toes.