Elite: Dangerous or X3?

[InterCity]

Hello, guys

I was thinking about buying a new space game, this time sci-fi. I already own Space Engineers, and EVE Online is too expensive imo, so I am choosing between Elite: Dangerous and X3: Terran Conflict. I am basically asking which one gives me more bang for the buck, being frugal and all. There's also the matter of my PC, which is an older Lenovo Thinkpad with Ivy Bridge I5, 8GB RAM, nVidia GT 630M (2 GB) and 128GB Crucial SSD (Upgrade). Both games run on linux, so this should be fine. For now, I think I'll get X3, because I'm not sure whether my laptop can handle Elite. What do you think?

[Robotengineer]

IIRC, Elite: Dangerous is only OS X and Windows.

[Kinglet]

What irks me is that x3 has NO SUPPORT for the last AMD driver generations, so the game is completely unplayable for anyone with AMD graphics.

[Elthy]

Since when? I played X3 fine a few years ago on my HD 4850M and then HD 7970...

[Kinglet]

Since when? I played X3 fine a few years ago on my HD 4850M and then HD 7970...

Well, a couple of years ago. If you have the lastest drivers which are impossible to revert, the game will go to 2 FPS anytime you open a menu.

[InterCity]

What irks me is that x3 has NO SUPPORT for the last AMD driver generations, so the game is completely unplayable for anyone with AMD graphics.

Thanks for the warning, but I was asking which one is better. IGN says it's Elite: Dangerous, Metacritic says that it's X3. Which one should I buy? I'm running NVidia (See OP), so AMD issues don't really bother me.

[Harry Rhodan]

As far as I know in Elite you only command one ship and fight/trade with this single ship only while the X series is more of an economic simulation in disguise where you can (and actually have to) build up huge armadas of trading ships, fighters and capital ships to aid you defending your countless factory stations that you need to actually equip all your ships well enough.

[KSK]

They're very different games. Harry has pretty much nailed X3 - it's an economic sim /empire building game set in space. It's pretty but the actual spaceflight part is quite limited. All the nicely rendered planets and stuff that you see in the background - well good luck getting to them.

Elite Dangerous on the other hand is much less of a building game. It's just you and your ship. You can purchase other ships to play in but you only get to fly one at a time. No capital ships (for you at any rate), no factories, no legions of remotely controlled trading ships and fighters. You can trade, you can mine, you can go shoot stuff, you can participate in galactic politics but - at the moment - it all happens from the cockpit of your ship. It's also a lot more hands-on than X3. The autopilot is very limited and a big part of the game to start with is just learning to fly your ship.

However, I've missed out the absolute key part of Elite - exploration. You have the entire galaxy to go and explore, you can go anywhere you like and it's all to scale.

It's a little like KSP in that there's (currently - this will be changing when the first expansion hits) not a lot to actually do once you flown to another planet, but the sheer scale of the world around you is just a joy to be in. I've seen binary ice moons, I've flown around hot Jupiters, I've seen volcanic worlds that would put Mustafar to shame. I've seen water worlds and earth-like worlds, I've heard rumours of black holes and neutron stars. I've flown through the rings of gas giants, watching the myriad chunks of ice and rock tumbling past me.

I've heard it's even better with the Oculus Rift. If you want a good review of Elite Dangerous, head on over to Ars Technica and search through their old articles. Their reviewer is clearly an E: D fan but he's certainly not a blind fanboi. He points out the flaws (some of which have been addressed - the review is quite old) but he also does a superb job of telling you why the game is so good despite its flaws.

Edited August 8, 2015 by KSK