Go and play Babylon 5: I've found her. See those bars at the edges of the screen? That's so you can see your momentum in all three directions

It took a lot of getting used to, but holy crap, it's satisfying when you do. The game doesn't give you any aids - when you stop accelerating, you don't ever lose speed, and you continue moving in the direction you have accelerated in unti you apply the same amount of opposite force to stop. So yes, when you keep maneuvering and turning around, your speed in all directions constantly changes - and when you turn around, you just fly at that speed backwards. That means two things:
a) Your projectiles inherit your speed. So unless you're completely aligned with your target, you won't hit shit
b) Fast fighters are only voulnerable when in the stage a), because they can change their speed unpredictably in any direction when they're not in the process of attacking (and that applies to you as well)

It completely changes the dynamics and strategy of the fights. It's brilliant (I'm not sure how exactly was this implemented in either Elite or Wing Commander)

That's a relief. :P

Any news? I got the canned reply now too, that they investigate my case. Wtf is there to investigate...they should just refund everyone who is pissed.

I wonder if this new "early access" policy also has something to do with the Elite affair, besides the Spacebase DF case.

And that's exactly what I would answer. "There's nothing to investigate. I backed an offline singleplayer game and you won't release an offline singleplayer game. Investigation closed."

Unless of course, so many people are demanding refunds they don't have the money, and are trying to delay so that they can get someone to stump up the cash.
In other words, they can't afford to refund everyone.

If I remember correct that's the way Elite 2 worked. I barely managed, never got used to or mastered it before my frustration level reached critical mass and I gave up.
It's not a rare feature any more so I'll probably have to learn it sooner or later. It's good to know that there IS a reward for going through the pain of learning. :)

Edit: Hm. How to describe Elite and WC: Privateer combat? Maybe like Descent if you've played it?

they reopened my ticket so there may be some hope after the previous one got shut down with their standard copy and paste text on it.

That's what I loved Frontier Elite 2 for. First Encounters worked the same, but my Frontier days were my Amiga days... played until Deadly rating and was second highest rank with the Empire.
In this game you could do a lot of fun stuff, like trying to find the right trajectory that (with engines shut off) would take you through half of the solar system - the planetary sling shot. "Fuel scooping" at gas giants also was a lot of fun. And suddenly not anymore when you had a huge ship and the gravitational pull of Jupiter would just suck you down because you'd lost too much speed "scooping" and the engines are too weak for the mass of the ship.

Yes they are reopening tickets now. Probably because the refund tickets have reached enough numbers that they can't ignore them any more. As I said before it's all in the percent/numbers. Everyone that does a stunt like this have calculated how much damage they can take before they have to really react. FD is probably getting at least near that number now.

Something I think is affecting this too is articles on the net. First they was kinda informative and now they're getting to be critical too. E: Ds gamma version is getting released very soon and really bad press at this time isn't something they would like.
I've never been a simulator gamer so asking the kind of skills of me that Elite 2 did was too much for my...poor brain. :P

Here's a interesting find I did on the "Refund" thread on E: Ds forum.

-------------
This line from their Cancellation policy worries me.

"Once a permanent download of a Digital Product has been made available for download by you, the order cannot be cancelled and no refund will be offered."

According to that I don't even need to download it, if they make it available for download then no refund.

---------------

Also some are talking with their credit card companies and they seem to not give them the standard "No".
I'm waiting for news about someone suing FD, a government agency (Whatever it's called in english. Myndighet in Swedish.) is opening a case against them to test some laws and a drawn out battle between a credit card company and FD.

People are angry on a magnitude I have rarely witnessed on the net.

Edit: Add to this that if you pay for the Alpha, Beta or something similar that is actually what you pay for. Literally. The finished game is a bonus. The sale is very sneaky and cleverly done and everything about E: D is starting to look absolutely shock full of legal loopholes.

Edit 2: People are also dragging their ordinary bank into it and are having them trying to get a refund.

Edit 3: Disclaimer. I should say that most of this comes from people on E: Ds forum so it should be taken with a grain of salt. But you never know with people this angry. :P

Gamespot added an article about it too

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/elite-dangerous-creator-reassessing-refund-refusal/1100-6423742/


"Offline support was not one of our original aims, though we did believe we could support it at the start of the project."

Mark my words, they are only reopening the tickets just to buy time until the game is released under the false pretence that everybody will forget about calling their credit card companies or organize for a class action lawsuit once they can downloaded E:D 1.0 (without offline single player) and be happily spammed to death with advertisement.

No doubt they planned to announce the day of release that E:D will be an mmo with a monthly fee, but they are so gracious to give a 30 day free trial to all the <s>suckers</s>gamers that have already paid for the game.