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Constructively wasting time One of the coolest things I liked about Elite was that while you could play in a way that required your attention all the time, you could also play so that you could wander away and leave it going - as you might in a real ship. When I was 10AUs from a planet, I'd sometimes set on the autopilot - hopefully E4's will be a little cleverer - and maybe accelerate time to the second slowest setting. This means the distance will take a fair while to cover, but I'd be off studying, or reading a book, or cooking food, or writing letters, getting on with things that I really should be doing, rather than playing computer games. I felt that gave a bit more realism to the game, flying a space ship shouldn't require your immediate attention. The problem was, with the volume turned up, I'd hear alarm systems blaring, and I MIGHT have time to turn off the grill, take the chicken out, turn off the stove, dash through and fight off the bad guys. Sometimes I didn't, the warning system in FFE didn't seem long enough by a long shot, particularly if you're like me, and like drawing out the time it takes to get from one place to the other. I really appreciate the way that you could spend hours hanging about waiting for things to happen, but that was completely a choice. Freelancer needed you to keep an eye on the game all the time, even when you weren't really doing much. EVE has kind of managed this somewhat, but being online it makes accelerating time impossible - when you're heading to a place 20 jumps away you set the autopilot and then fill your time looking at web pages in game, or chatting etc. I hope E4 manages to bring an efficient and clever(er) autopilot, a better warning system to alert you to threats, time acceleration (for single player) and plenty of space to roam about it - so you're not tripping over pirates every 15 seconds. That way, I can play Elite, and hand in my University assignments on time. Stewart Johnston |