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Elite48.txt
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1998-02-02
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THE SPECTRUM GAME DATABASE
ELITE
PUBLISHER
Firebird
AUTHOR
Torus
YEAR
1985
CATEGORY
Strategy 3D Trading
DESCRIPTION
Elite is a space trading game, where you fly from planet to
planet buying and selling goods, and use the cash to upgrade your
ship.
CONTROLS
Space Flight Controls
Anticlockwise roll N - or joystick
Clockwise roll M - or joystick
Dive S - or jotstick
Climb X - or joystick
Increase speed SPACE
Decrease speed SYMBOL SHIFT
Front view 1
Back view 2
Left view 3
Right view 4
Space Combat Controls
Fire laser A - or fire button
Target missile T
Fire missile F
Unarm missile U
ECM E
Energy bomb W
Energy capsule Q
Docking computer on C
Docking computer off C
Navigation Controls
Hyperspace H
Intergalactic jump G then H
Distance to system D
Cursor cross home B
Cursor cross control N, M, S, X (left, right, up, down)
Galactic chart I
Local cluster chart O
Trading Controls
Launch from station 1 - only while docked
Buy cargo 2 - only while docked
Sell cargo 3 - only while docked
Equip ship 4 - only while docked
Galactic chart I
Local cluster chart O
Data on system P
Market prices K
Status page L
Inventory ENTER
Find planet R - only while docked
Game Controls
Torus jump drive J
Freeze game CAPS SHIFT
Continue game SPACE
Initiate save SYMBOL SHIFT - only while docked
Other Controls
Note: these controls can only be used when the game is frozen
Keyboard recentering toggle R
Keyboard damping toggle D
Keyboard/joystick toggle K
Reverse joystick Y - Y-direction only
Reverse joystick B - both directions
Sound effects off Q
Sound effects on S
Start new game 1
The keyboard recentering toggle R will disable and re-enable the
recentering in roll and dive/climb control. When recentering is
enabled, a small amount of climb (or clockwise roll) cancels any
dive (or antclockwise roll) and vice versa.
The keyboard damping toggle D will disable and re-enable the
automatic damping of a roll, dive or climb while in keyboard
control.
The B key will reverse both directions of the joystick enabling
it to be held either way around. The Y key will reverse the
Y-direction only so that pushing the joystick forward will result
in a climb and pulling it back will result in a dive; roll will
not be affected. The B and Y keys can be used in conjunction.
INSTRUCTIONS
Command your Cobra space ship in a fantastic voyage of discovery
and adventure, a supreme test of your combat, navigational and
entrepreneurial skills.
Trade between countless planets, using the proceeds to equip your
ship with heat-seeking missiles, beam lasers and other weapons
- corporate states can be approached without risk, but unruly
anarchies may be swarming with space pirates.
Black market trading can be lucrative but could result in
skirmishes with local police and a price on your head!
However you make your money, by fair means or foul, you must
blast onwards through space annihilating pirate ships and hostile
aliens as you strive to earn your reputation as one of the Elite!
YOUR RATING AS A COMBATEER
To become an elite combateer requires great skill and great
patience, because expert trading is essential before the
necessary more powerful armaments and equipment available to the
Cobra ship can be bought: beam lasers, more missiles, energy
bombs, a docking computer, galactic hyperdrive, etc.
As you sail through space between the stars, and as you trade,
you will live with your combat rating. You will begin as
HARMLESS. If you survive your first skirmish you may be
reclassified as MOSTLY HARMLESS. But on the slow climb to a
status level that reflects a growing talent for combat you
will have to engage many different ships, in many different
skirmishes, in the System Space of many different worlds. You
will then be classified as POOR, then AVERAGE, then ABOVE
AVERAGE, then COMPETENT. Then you will become DANGEROUS, then
DEADLY. And at last a few will become ELITE.
Your kills are photographed and transmitted by TS ComDirect to
the nearest GalCop Federal Law Centre. Your rating as a combateer
will increase in direct proportion.
Fly your Cobra craft wisely and carefully. Remember: other pilots
may be attempting to increase their own combat rating by
attacking either innocent traders, or police Vipers (the ships
of the GalCop Police Force). If you resort to such tactics (or
if you adopt the fast-credit routine and trade in illegal goods)
then your combat rating may rise, but your legal status: CLEAN
-> OFFENDER -> FUGITIVE, will make you Public Enemy Number One
with the Federation Crime Monitoring Authority and you will not
be left alone.
SCREEN DISPLAY
Front shields Status (Green, all safe; Yellow,
Aft shields possible danger; Red, immediate
Fuel level danger; Flashing, critical.)
Cabin temperature Compass (Centres on planet or
Laser temperature space station; when dot is not
Altitude solid, object is behind you.)
Missile status ECM detector - ECM activity near
EQUIPMENT
Item Tech Level Price/CR
Fuel Always Varies
Missile Always 30
Large Cargo Bay Always 400
ECM System 2 600
Pulse Laser 3 400
Beam Laser 4 1000
Fuel Scoops 5 525
Escape Capsule 6 1000
Energy Bomb 7 900
Extra Energy Unit 8 1500
Docking Computers 9 1500
Galactic Hyperdrive 10 5000
Mining Lasers 10 800
Military Lasers 10 6000
HINTS AND TIPS
* Agricultural worlds need specialist food and raw materials, but
mostly basic machinery and spare parts. If they are rich, they
need luxuries and high tech industrial machines. They produce
food in quantity, raw materials and specialised 'organic' items,
like some textiles.
* Industrial worlds need agricultural produce, raw materials (for
refining), resource exploitation machinery, and (if rich) high
tech goods. They produce basic items of need for civilised
worlds: beds, seals and gaskets, power storage units, basic
weapons, mass produced fertiliser, mass produced medicines, etc.
* Trade in illegal goods (Slaves, Narcotics and Firearms) is the
most profitable, but may harm your Legal Status.
* Destroying pirate vessels earns a bounty, but attacking
innocent traders may harm your Legal Status.
* Once your Cobra is within automatic-docking and protective
range of the Coriolis space station, the scan console will
display an S next to the compass.
* Asteroids (and spacecraft!) can be mined with the appropriate
lasers, and the debris collected in fuel scoops.
* Thargoid (alien) battle-cruisers may 'hover' in Witch-Space
(hyperspace) and attack through-coming craft.
* Using an Escape Capsule effectively resets your legal status
to Clean.
DOCKING PROCEDURE
Docking with a Coriolis space station is never easy, unless the
ship is equipped with an automatic docking computer (in which
case C will activate it). The Navy Training Manual recommends the
following approach and dock sequence.
Locate the Coriolis station and approach it. The entrance tunnels
to all these stations face the mother planet. Fly near to the
station and then on towards the planet (monitoring altitude
carefully). By turning a half circle you will now find your ship
orientated towards the entrance.
Approach the final moments of docking at DEAD SLOW SPEED. Failure
to dock cleanly can be fatal but may simply result in your
scraping the sides of the aperture, with consequent loss of
defensive shield(s) and quite possibly your cargo. Manually
control the Cobra's roll motion to match the rotation of the
Coriolis station. The entry port must be nearly as horizontal as
possible.
If docking is successful, the protective field across the station
entrance is penetrated, and a break pattern appears on the
screen. Berthing is handled automatically.
CHEATS
As soon as the game loads, and you're given the option to LOAD
a new commander, press "Y", then save your position. Go back to
the game, and hey presto. Not much easier than that...
If you are having trouble docking you can try this cheat. Once
you have launched, pick new destination, and fly towards the
planet a bit. Spin around (and you'll still be dead straight with
the station entrance) and fly towards the station and hit H for
hyperspace. If you docked before the countdown ended you docked
at the new station!
There was also a cheat so that you always launched into Witch
Space. Pause the game. Press 'f' - you'll hear a beep.
Un-pause the game, and hyperspace, as normal. You'll now appear
in Witchspace, and will continue to do so until you pause and
press 'f' again. You *will* use a full journey's worth of fuel
though, even though your location (on the Short-range chart) is
halfway between the planets, so make sure you choose a planet
that's nearer than 3.5 light years, or you'll be stuck! The same
sequence gets you out again (assuming the Thargoids don't frag
you before you can jump!)
There is a way to stay in Witchspace forever, or at least until
you have 35 tonnes of alien items. If your fuel scoops are
active when you enter witchspace they stay active and your fuel
just keeps going up and up.
Elite POKEs:-
43071-43074 3 Big lasers
43078 1 Lg cargo bay
43079 1 ECM
43082 1 Fuel Scoops
43083 1 Escape pod
43084 1 Energy bomb
43085 1 Energy unit
43086 1 Docking computer
43049 200 Lotsa dough
43122 192 ECM & *cloaking device*
43087 192 Chance to save refugees 'mission'
43053-43069 x Cargo bay
43077 4 Missiles
42428 0 Infinite Energy (useful for cloak)
42870 0 Infinite missiles
37482 0 Inf. energy bomb
42897 0 Inf. escape pods
54682 0 Inf. Galactic hyperspaces
SEQUELS/PREQUELS
There are several versions of Elite on the Spectrum, most notable
a 48K and 128K version, although there is very little difference
between the two.
Elite was followed up with Frontier (written by Elite's original
author David Braben), although not on the Spectrum. There was
also the *original* ELITE Tuner, which was written by the same
bloke who wrote the WHAM Music Box. I forget his name though.
Elite Tuner had some superb 2-channel music - Waltz of the Blue
Danube. (funnily enough!)
SCORES RECEIVED
It received a Sinclair User Classic award.
GENERAL FACTS
These are the number of kills needed to reach each particular
status:
0-8 Harmless
9-16 Mostly harmless
17-32 Poor
33-64 Average
65-128 Above average
129-767 Competent
768-2815 Dangerous
2816-6655 Deadly
6656+ ELITE
If you reached 65535 kills, your rating reverted to 0 - Harmless,
which is a useless but interesting fact, 8-bit register fans.
ELITE is possibly the most well-known computer game ever. When
it made it's appearence on the Spectrum, it was thanks to
Firebird Gold - the full-price range of their software, and
programmed by a team called TORUS (who also coded the Amstrad
version, hence why apart from added colour, the two look & play
the same.) All the space trading tactics were faithfully
translated from the BBC original, and there were new missions for
the format - SuperNova, Cloaking Device & Thargoid Invasion, and
many of the spacecraft made it to the 'humble' Spectrum. Many
of the rumours also made it across - there was, alas, no space
dredger in the ZX ELITE...
ELITE was also one of the first games to be found not compatible
with the brand new 128k Spectrum. A patched version was released
almost immediatly, although it was rather sad that with all the
extra memory, nothing new was added to the enhanced machine.
Are the Save games compatible throughout all of the different
versions? If you saved to tape in the 48k version, could I load
it back into the 128 one? Yes. That may have been one of the
reasons that the 128K version was essentially the same as the 48K
- so all flags that needed to be set for missions could be
preserved, etc.
Another oddity for ELITE - it used the LensLok protection device.
Lenslok was a plastic prism, which when viewed through, made a
jumble on the screen turn into a password. LensLok never caught
on, and was only used in a few games, including Tomahawk. It was
notoriously difficult to use.
ELITE is still a protected program - ie: It is not freely
distributable in any type of snapshot image.
When Elite was first released, it was part of a competition to
see who the first person was to become elite. The winner was
supposed to get some prize or other. This was to do with all the
secret missions and what have you. In fact, this may even have
been from the original Beeb release, but I think it was for the
Spectrum. Anyway, the publishers got cold feet about it because
it was alleged that people had hacked in and found it out the
'easy' way, so it was cancelled and anyone who entered was fobbed
off with a badge or something. It caused quite a bit of
controversy at the time as I recall.
Does the Speccy version include any of the secret missions, such
as destroying the secret ship, the rogue space-station, etc?
Yes. The first mission, is 'Nova' and requires you (to manouvre
down this trench... sorry - wrong game!) rescue the crew of a
Space Station whose sun is about to explode. When you arrive in
the system, the screen is red, not white, you get a 'Fuel Leak!'
warning (A cunning way of making sure you don't chicken out, and
witchspace outta there,) and you only have a short time to get
to the space station. Your reward is 100g of gems, and to
trigger the mission you need to be ranked competent or above, and
have purchased a galactic hyperspace - When you activate your
space drive, (presumably) the radiation from the Nova bumps you
into the next Galaxy.
Mission 2 involves a bunch of ships that flicker in and out of
vision. They're quite easy to kill though. Eventually, you'll
come up against a single ASP II, which when (finally) destroyed
will release a single cargo canister, as opposed to the 2 alloys
normally released as debris. Scoop this cargo, and you'll find
yourself automagically cloak-capable. Pressing "Y" will activate
the cloak - your screen goes blue, and all other ships
float/drift, power-down, including Thargoids. The Cloak has a
pretty hefty drain on the energy units though...
Mission 3 you get to destroy a Space Station! The Space navy
equips you with an ECM Jammer, which replaces your standard ECM
unit, and off you go to have a bish at a Space Station over-run
by Thargoids. You can make a fortune on this mission by blasting
Thargoids, and scooping Tharglets.
ZX Elite only has the one type of energy unit. The reason for
the Military Energy unit was from BBC Elite, where a mission was
to hunt a new type of ship - The Constrictor - which was equipped
with the Military Energy unit, and was thusly impervious to
anything less that Military lasers. Constrictor mission isn't
present in ZX Elite, so no Military Energy unit.
The following are approximate shapes drawn based on the cards
supplied with the Archimedes version (Darren Salt):
Adder Anaconda Asp Boa
__________ /\ _______ /\
| ______ | //\\ / \ / \
| |______| | //\\ // \\ / \
| | //__\\ // \\ / /\ \
|__________| / / \ \ /_/_ _\_\ / /\ \
|| || // \\ \ \ ----_____---- / / / / \ \
|| /||\ || / / \ \ \ \ /|\ / / / / \ \
|| \||/ || / / \ \ \\ / | \ // /________\
||__________|| \_/______\_/ \\/____|____\// |________|
Cobra Mk I Cobra Mk 3 Fer-de-Lance Gecko
______ __ /\ _____
/__== \ | \ / \ / \
| \ |\-_ \ / \ // \\
| \ | \ --_\ / \ // | | \\
| \ | \ --\ / / \ \ / / | | \ \
| _- | | \ _- \ / /| |\ \ / / /| |\ \ \
| _- ||| | \_- | / / | | \ \ / / /| |\ \ \
| -_||| | / -_ | / / | | \ \ / / /| |\ \ \
| -_| | / - / / /___| |___\ \ \_/___________\_/
| / | / _--/ /___ ___\
| / | /_-- / \ ---______--- /
|___ / |/- / \ __-- --__ /
\__==__/ |__/ \==__________==/
Krait Mamba Moray
. . . /\ ________
| /|\ | //\\ / \
| / | \ | // \\ / / \ \
| / | \ | / /[]\ \ / / \ \
| / | \ | / / \ \ / / \ \
| / | \ | / / \ \ /___/____________\___\
|/ | \| / / \ \ ---____ ____---
--__ | __-- /___/______\___\ ---__---
--__|__--
-
Orbit Shuttle Python . Sidewinder
____ /|\ _________
_==----==_ / | \ /\ /\
| /\ | / | \ / \ / \
| /\ | / | \ / \ / \
| / \ | / | \ / \ / \
| / \ | / | \ /________\/________\
| / \ | / _|_ \
| / \ | / __-- --__ \ Thargon
| / \ | /_==___________==_\ ___
| / \ | \ / | |
|/ \| \\ // | |
|/________\| \ \ / / | |_| |
\__\ /__/ | |_| |
--\_/-- --___--
Thargoid Transpoter Viper (Police)
________ ___ /\
/ \ / \ __--\ /--__ //\\
/ \____/ \ ==_____V_____== // \\
/_ / \ _\ | | | / / \ \
| --/ \-- | | | /|\ | / / /\ \ \
| | | | | ==== | | / // \\ \
| | | | | ___ | . | / // \\ \
|__--\ /--__| | \|/ | /_\ | / / \ \
\ \ ____ / / | | | --/________\--
\ / \ / |_______|_______|
\ /______\ /
Worm
_____
/|/_\|\
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
--|_______|--
NOTES
Thats about everything!
