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From: gleason@task.enet.dec.com (Daryl Gleason)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Elite!
Message-ID: <7328@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 9 Jan 90 21:21:01 GMT
References: <18389@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <844@orange9.qtp.ufl.edu>
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Reply-To: gleason@task.enet.dec.com (Daryl Gleason)
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Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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> I finally got around to playing Elite!  Great game.  I have been playing 
> for a week and I have finally gotten all the fun toys for my ship.  I have
> a few question Elite status pilots might be able to answer.

I'm only "Dangerous", but I've accumulated some 24+ hours of playing
time and would be glad to share my experiences.

> Can you play the game without becoming an 'Offender'.  I blew up a pirate
> and picked up his cargo and it was guns.  I couldn't get rid of the stuff
> so I had to sell it.  I don't see how you would get anywhere if you didnt 
> hunt pirates on the side so are you reqired to be semi-illegal?
> 
> If your status is not clean you occasionally get cops chasing you.  You can't
> outrun them (unless you hyperspace out) but if you kill one you become a 
> fugitive and then they chase you around forever.  Wouldn't be so bad if
> they didn't try to kill you; you are forced to kill them.
> Am I missing something?

There are a couple of ways to avoid this.  The obvious one is to never
pick up cargo from a pirate -- you have no way of knowing what he was
carrying; it may well be contraband goods.  You can still use them for
target practice without affecting your status.  By the same token, you
should never try to pick up escaped life pods from pirate ships; they
come in as slaves.  Thargoids are OK, though; they're alien items.

If somehow you lose your clean status, you can escape from your ship if
you have purchased a life pod.  The status stays with your ship, and you
end up docked with a ship furnished exactly the same as the one you
ditched (thanks to the "insurance policy" provided by the life pod
purchase), minus the life pod.

Or, you could just restore the game from a point at which you were clean.
 
> The docs say there is room for two people in the ship.  Does this come to
> play in the game?

At various points in the game, after several hours of play, you'll be
offered the opportunity to go on missions.  The extra passenger room
comes into play on one of these.
 
> What do the colors in the 3d section mean?  Are they explained anywhere?
> I have figured them out (for the most part) but I can't find them explained 
> in the docs.

Let's see...  A flashing object of any color is an enemy and will fire
on you.  Purple objects are cargo cannisters and asteriods.  Yellow
objects are non-hostile ships of various kinds.  Gray objects are
pirates, thargoids, and thargons.  There seem to be two shades of gray,
but I haven't yet related them to any differences in the ships.  Those
are all I've seen.

I'm currently stuck on mission 5 (which I won't detail to avoid
spoilers).  If anyone knows how to complete it, I'd like to hear from you!

				*** Daryl ***