http://www.elitehomepage.org/manual.htm#A13
The manual was bundled with the cassette or disc, and it states in the 'Docking Procedure' section:
Approach the final moments of docking at DEAD SLOW SPEED
However this is dead wrong! If you put some speed on before entering the 'letterbox' you're actually far less likely to crash, unrealistic though this may be. It's perfectly possible to dock successfully at full speed. Try it out here:
https://www.bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=366
Oddly enough, the docking computers are also capable of crashing your ship.
Haha, I have been there too!
Elite's rating is solely a measure of the number of kills you have. No trading performance or any other metric included. Here's the table: http://www.elitehomepage.org/faq.htm#A4 As the page says, different versions had different "kill points". At a straight 1.0 on the BCC, Elite would truly be a slog.
I fetched it out of the bargain bin for about $2, probably still one of the better game purchase I've ever made, though the modern Steam sales certainly have some stiff competition. It's been a long time. I'm pretty sure I made Dangerous, I may have made Deadly, I never made Elite, and looking at that page I can see why. Even with more than one point per some kills that's a tall bar to leap without getting bored.
I do remember docking though!
I remember on Saboteur 2 the room where your character could 'duck'and would get god-mode/full energy. And I hadn't played the game since... I'll say 1985?
I had a nostalgia phase a couple of summers ago, found it in one of the abandonwares and with DOSBOX I played it again. Yes I could remember the room!
In the internet age, is it still possible to have this type of experience? When the final boss is always on Youtube, and a strategy guide is a click away? Sure, maybe you don't look it up, but the cultural knowledge will seep in.
Docking was bloody hard indeed. Luckily you could buy a Docking computer. It took me another few years before figuring out why it would play The Blue Danube waltz by Strauss. :-)
The only way I ever got anywhere was that the Spectrum version had a bug where if you saved the game on the start screen after dying, it would save the state as if you had successfully docked at the space station in the system where you died. Do that a few times and before long you have all round military lasers and can actually survive in combat.
You would set where to hyperspace to, then trigger a hyperspace jump as you are docking. You would then land in the space station of the other system.
Also - fuck docking.
in dealing with any alien life form, for the purposes of trade, there are three cardinal rules:
- Learn the body language of the alien race
- Cover up your body scent
- Beware of Carapace concealed weapons
But there were some hints about obscure functionality - It is rumoured that the Galactic Navy are designing their own remote-controlled fighter, and will pay well for Thargoid ones to study - this could be done in the game. Also there were some hints about the possibility of capturing enemy escape capsules and then selling them as slaves.
I played the Electron version, which was even more limited, as the Electron's video chip couldn't do all the tricks the BBC Micro's could. (I think you even got some of the game memory looking like random garbage on screen. But that could have been a different game.)
They were though in an Edge Magazine article of Sep 2000 https://i.imgur.com/nV38XjA.png except the screenshot is fake.
As is the one on the back of the BBC Micro versions packs, actually! :)
Chris (erstwhile Acornsoft Publications Editor)
thats interesting, tell us more about how those fakes came to be?
This mechanic was so interesting - it would happen to me, I'd manage to survive the assualt, and then be so far away from anywhere to refuel, and without enough fuel to jump again, that I'd be dead-in-the-water every time. It was so weird to win the battle and then.. not. But I couldn't help but always get excited when it would happen! Did anyone ever survive this?
- Pause the game and press the ‘x’ key. You’ll hear a beep. I don’t know what this does.
- Engage hyperspace. As soon as you see the concentric hexagon animation, press and hold the ‘Ctrl’ key. You should see the animation a second time as you drop out of hyperspace surrounded by Thargoid ships.
I was lucky enough to have a pair of non-self centring graphics paddles attached to my BBC. Docking with these was easy as you'd just line up, get the rotation right and then leave the stick where it was. I was 12.
40+ year old me tried docking on an emulator using the keyboard. It didn't end well :D
My family and me happened to be on holiday that weekend so then I had the fancy box and manual (and novella) to read but we weren't going to be back home for a few days (where the actual computer was). So I spent the whole weekend reading the manual. The manual was amazing, and done in 'in universe' style, as if you had just purchased a Cobra Mark II spaceship, the main control panel of which just happened to look like a BBC Micro Model B. I was reading it thinking 'Is all this in the game? docking, space combat, trading, all those different types of spaceship to encounter, upgradable weapons and peripherals, eight galaxies, police spaceships, planets with descriptions of their inhabitants, mysterious aliens that pluck you out of hyperspace. Readers: Yes, it was all in the game.
edit: original manual at internet archive: https://archive.org/details/elite_acornsoft_manual/mode/2up
As a ten year old it was a very hard game though. Docking was HARD. Understanding trading was hard, what should I buy with my 100 credits at Lave that I could profitably sell at Leesti? There wasn't an internet to look this up on. I suppose there might have been articles in magazines, but not sure it would have occured to me to go looking for those. Space combat was great though, the 3D scanner with the vertical bars made it very intuitive. The magic of locking a missile and then firing it off!
I dont think I ever got above rating Poor though, because I never really grasped how to get the best out of trading (I was 10, ok? And no-one had ever seen a game like this before). A few years later Elite Cheat got released - a program to make fake 'save files', and then I really got to explore what the game could do.