Tried out the 1.4 Beta today, here's my thoughts on it.
First of all, a VOD of it should show up on my YouTube channel momentarily, so you can watch all this stuff if you would like:
https://gaming.youtube.com/hyliansevendota
The first ship I tried was the Imperial Eagle, it is very very very fast, I was breaking 400 easily in it, and I had outfitted it quite a bit. It's definitely a more effective version of the Eagle, and I think probably falls at a middle ground between the starter Sidewinder and the Viper or Cobra. It's speed is definitely it's biggest asset, not to mention the thing looks damn nice! The Empire really knows how to design ships. One of it's major weaknesses I noticed though was it's little heat tolerance. One Plasma Accelerator shot was giving me a "Heat Levels Critical" warning, and things got a big hairy sometimes when I got slightly too close to a star. Overall I like the ship, but of course it's at a much more entry-level price.
Next I tried the Federal Assault Ship. This one, I would say was like the superior, better-looking brother of the Federal Dropship. It has two huge hardpoints, one located on the top and the other on the bottom. I put cannons on both of the m, and it was very nice the damage I was putting out from those. It also has two medium hardpoints located under the ship, so I put Beam Lasers there. It was kind of weird realizing I had to put my nose slightly above my target so the gimbals would lock on my enemies, but I got used to it. The shields on it are no joke, and the power plant is great on it too. I was able to put quite a bit into it and I was 0.18 under power capacity WHEN DEPLOYED on the best Power Plant available on the ship. Not a fighter class ship obviously, and does have a similar weakness of the Anaconda or Dropship, being that it's not as manuverable as the lighter, fighter ships such as Vultures. It also doesn't have hardpoints in more places to put turrets, like the Anaconda. Overall another good ship though, definitely more on the "battlehship" side than a fighter. A lot of fun to fly.
The other ship was the Federal Gunship, but unfortunately, even with everything costing 10% or normal price, I was still about a mil short to buy a Federal Gunship and didn't feel like taking the time to grind out the mil in beta, plus whatever I would need for outfitting. I might give this a try another time, but I didn't feel like it at the moment.
I also gave CQC a try. I have mixed feelings about it. I don't particularly care for the "Call of Duty" style progression in it, especially that if I understand it correctly you don't get much of a choice in your loadout. You also start out with gimballed Beam Lasers on an F63 Condor. Now the Condor isn't a bad ship for this per se, but I really think they missed an opportunity and should have had fixed weapons instead of gimballed. The Gimballed weapons feel kind of "cheap" here as it's just kind of "aim in the general vicinity of your opponent and hit them". Don't get me wrong, I know gimballed weapons exist in the main game, but this is ALL ABOUT combat and dogfighting, I think the added skill required to use fixed weapons (and the damage output), should make them the standard here. I looked at the unlockable ships, and you can only really unlock the fighter ships, which makes sense, but I found it really strange that the Vulture is missing, even as the last ship you unlock. I feel like the Vulture would fit right into this mode.
There were three modes, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag. They were all definitely fun to play, I particularly liked Capture the Flag. You fly through a capture point to get the flag and when you carry it, you leave a long trail behind you, making it easier for enemy players to find you and take you out. Of course when I flew through a capture point, my game crashed. I gave a detailed bug report to Frontier though.
I found it kind of strange that when you load into a match, there is no countdown or anything, it's just "Okay here you are go!" Felt kind of jarring and out of place to me, I hope some kind of countdown gets added later on. The maps themselves were cool, they weren't kidding about the CQC stuff, and you can fly in narrow spaces inside buildings, things of that nature. There was a stage that had tons of icy asteroids in the area that made for really nice manuvering.
CQC is fun, definitely a nice break from the main game of Elite, especially if you are a trader or explorer and want to take a break from that just for some combat that doesn't involve you throwing out chaff and trying to jump out of there.
