UPDATE August 2025:

After the introduction of the Trailblazers update in March, I came back and built up several star systems, making them useful places for obtaining things like CMM Composite and other materials needed for other players to build their own creations. If you're nearby to HIP 13175, HIP 15037, HIP 17800, 75 Piscium, HIP 15675, or Ross 349, drop by for a gander if you like. The first four produce most of what you need for colonial expansion!

I also got the Exobiology bug, bought a fleet carrier (finally) and have been raking in cash finding plants wherever I can a good 15,000ly from the bubble. So yeah, I'm back and enjoying this nearly 11 year old game just as much as before. Cheers!

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I love this game, and the franchise holds a dear place for me in my heart. From playing Frontier: Elite 2 in my youth to this, I played the franchise a ton. I even modded Elite 2 back in the day with a star system edit (Arisata mod for F:E2 circa 2000, grind Google hard for it if you're interested) because I loved being able to tinker.

I've explored to my hearts content for years, and I still love the game (1,000+ hours worth of fun for me makes it easy to give it a positive review), but it's still lacking in key areas. But most importantly, this game desperately needs landable atmospheric planets. The same boring rocks and ice worlds get to you after a while.

We really need to get to the point of parity that the old 90s games had: Being able to land anywhere. I miss landing at the spaceports in Tokyo or London or New York etc, or any of the Alliance / Imperial earth-like worlds, heck even a molten volcanic hellscape. Early 90s pseudo-3D graphical limitations aside, it was a breath of fresh air at the time.

After a thousand hours, I've left ED behind for now, but not for good not by a long shot. It's a lot to ask of a dev to try to add something that grandiose in nature, especially with what it would take in 2020 to implement in a realistic and visually satisfying way, but once the game gets to that point I may become lost in it again for another thousand hours or more.