Been playing a bit of Elite Dangerous: Horizons this evening and realising the "dream" of something I've wanted to do since I started playing: hop in a ship, point it in a particular direction and just go see what's out there.
I haven't got that far yet, to be honest — I'm still in populated space, albeit getting down to the dregs of the tiny factions rather than the warring empires of the PowerPlay system — but I can see interesting things on the galactic horizon, and I fully intend to check them out and see what's there.
The nice thing about Elite is that you can do this and it's a viable way to play the game. Its exceedingly freeform nature — more freeform than pretty much any other game I think I've played outside of Minecraft — allows you to play how you see fit, and enjoy it how you want. If you want fast-action combat dogfighting, it's there. If you want to run courier missions, that's there. If you want to collaborate with other players to strategically expand the influence of one of the major powers in the galaxy, that's there, too. Or, as previously mentioned, if you just want to hop in a ship, point it in a particular direction and just go see what's out there… well, you can do that too, because the galaxy is one hell of a big place.
Exploration gameplay is relatively straightforward. Equip a ship with the appropriate scanners — basic versions of which come as standard — and when you hyperspace into a new system, you can scan for astronomical objects. Once you've located some, either via your scanners or visually, targeting them and flying close-ish to them allows you to run a detailed scan of them and record the information in your ship's computer. You can then sell this information when you get to a suitable space station or colony that is at least 20 light years away from where you acquired the data — it's assumed that most areas are familiar with the region immediately around them — and profit accordingly. It's a valid career path with its own progression and the opportunity to make your own distinctive mark on the game universe: whenever someone visits something that you were the first one to discover, they'll see your name there, proudly recorded for all time as the first person to find that thing, whether it's a big burning ball of fiery sun, an unremarkable lump of rock or a spectacular planetary system.
I haven't travelled far enough to be one of these pioneers as yet, I don't think, but I'm already getting into a region of space that is less populated, both with the computer-controlled factions and players. The station my ship is currently parked at as I type this has seen just 12 player-controlled ships pass through in the last 24 hours, compared to the hundreds or thousands the more "core" stations in the centre of the populated area see every day.
I find the exploration aspect inherently satisfying for some reason, despite the fact that objectively speaking it's quite boring and repetitive — although I did get interdicted by an unpleasant NPC called "Starquake" earlier, who battered my ship about a bit before I was able to activate my Frame-Shift Drive and jump away from him — but mostly I'm curious to see what's out there, if anything. The original Elite had some strange things going on in the far reaches of the galaxy — most notably the spectacularly irritating Thargoids, who had a habit of pulling you out of hyperspace and killing you horribly — so I'm curious to see if there's anything interesting hidden in the furthest reaches of the galaxy.
There are a bunch of places I'm just curious to see, too. The "Coalsack" area looks most intriguing, what with its ominous black cloudiness, and, of course, the immense density of the galactic core is surely worth trying to see. Of these places, the Coalsack is probably reachable relatively easily; the galactic core perhaps less so, but I'm interested to see how far I can go. Theoretically, my current ship has infinite range thanks to its Fuel Scoop hardware, which allows me to refuel by harvesting the gases of appropriate stars, so as long as I don't get stranded in a region with crap stars and/or blown up by pirates or aliens who are hiding deep in "unpopulated" space, I should be good to go for quite some time. And think of the money I'll make when I eventually get back to human space to sell all this exploration data.
Oh, God, I have to fly back as well, don't I… Maybe I shouldn't go too far…
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Exploring is what I've been doing too. I haven't gone that far out of inhabited space but have made enough money to fully upgrade my first exploration ship. Some tips:
–Exploration is the slowest way to earn money in the game I hear. The most important tools for exploration are exorbitantly expensive for starting players. I also hear the economy is ridiculously balanced towards bounty hunting. I had to make the money for my first exploration ship through bounty hunting actually.
–Stick to white or orange main sequence stars if you want to find the best planets. That typically means F, G, and K-class stars. M-class stars — red dwarfs, can have good planets too, and they'll usually be closer to those stars since they're so cool, but the main sequence stars more commonly host good planets.
–The most worthwhile planets are obviously water worlds and Earth-like worlds. In 40 hours I haven't found a single Earth-like planet, but I've found a few water worlds. Water worlds can be worth like 20,000 credits. High metal content worlds are good too, and are what you'll make most of your money from. Gas giants can be good too if they're not too far away, but their moons are almost never worth scanning. "Rocky bodies" or "ice worlds" are basically worthless. Those will show up as relatively featureless small disks on the system map. Generally, if a planet on the system map looks like it has a lot of features (or looks like a blue ball), scan it. Don't forget to scan the star too.
–You want your ship to have a long jump range. I think that means making it as light as possible. Eventually you'll have to sacrifice cargo space and possibly weapons or shields too. My Hauler has a jump range of just under 25 light years but I still have basic shields and a basic pea shooter.
–The Advanced Discovery Scanner is almost an imperative. If you don't know yet, it instantly tells you what's in a system (but won't do detailed scans). The Detailed Discovery Scanner too. It increases the amount of money you get from close-up scans.
–If you don't have the Advanced Scanner, there's a trick to spotting planets out of scanning range: speed up to around 30c (you'll have to get really far away from the star to do this), and look for any dots that are moving in relation to the stars in the background. Those are planets. Though, you'll have to be coming up on a planet's dayside to see it like this, as its nightside will be almost invisible on the cosmic background. Turn on orbit lines when you do this this so you can see the system's orbital plane — that's where the planets will be hiding. Just keep pinging the Basic or Intermediate Scanner when doing this. The Basic Scanner has a range of 500 light seconds which roughly corresponds to one Astronomical Unit. You'll typically find all the inner, rocky planets of a main sequence system in that range. The Intermediate scanner has twice that range.
–I personally stayed out of multiple-star systems until I got the Advanced Scanner. Multiple systems are usually not multiple stars with planets orbiting them, but actual multiple systems of planets orbiting each other. The stars in each of these systems are usually ridiculously far away from each other. It can take several minutes to fly between them.
But yeah, one thing I like about this game is how free-form it is. It's basically a "true sandbox game." This is what a lot of people seem to be confused about whenever No Man's Sky comes up in conversations. They keep asking "but what do you do?" thinking it's a walking simulator. That in my opinion is going to be its biggest obstacle when it actually comes out. In these kinds of games you pretty much have to set your own goals.