The home of the Nomad...aka Asp, Elite Dangerous. I can say if it wasn't for the poor state of Star Citizen I wouldn't have bothered. But thank you CIG for giving me motivation to try the rival. I learned a lot from E-D. So first thing I noticed is how their launcher is far more cluttered. This is good and bad. The good is their launcher is packed with in game lore events with dates next to them set to the correct date. So if it is May 10 in the real world it is May 10, 3307 in lore. The launcher doesn't have music... Honestly why does Star Citizens launcher have music? But I will say SCs launcher is FAR easier to navigate due to its clean design. Now for the big difference. Elite is a fully functional game and it shows. I can run that game on ultra high and never drop below 70fps unless I am streaming. This is on a 1650 gpu.... I am impressed. The game looks amazing, the attention to detail on the landing zones and the NPC life out there is pretty well done. There is even background chatter in voice and even chat. Now with downside. Ships in Elite all tend to look the same from the inside. Aside from some minor things all of the UI is pretty much the same. Elite does space flight better. Let me be clear, I am talking with Flight Assist off, or in SC Decoupled. Elite if I introduce a roll with flight assist off it will continue to roll until you stop it. To me this is huge, coming from Kerbal Space Program where that was a fun skill to learn. Star citizen should flat out take the station landing pad idea from Elite. Pad ramming will become a thing of the past. And don't act like they are to good for that.... Need I mention the Nomad/Asp Scout. Then you have the driving physics. The SRV has to be one of the best things I have seen in a sci-fi game in years. It even has a fuel gauge! But SC does vehicle mining way better. Mining.. Elites mining is surprisingly good. I thought it was going to be as easy as SC and I was wrong. That is a system with depth, you can surface mine, which is nothing more than shooting a laser at a rock and having collector drones aka limpets pick them up for you. To the rather complex task of placing explosive charges in the right spots and yields to crack a rock open to get to the far more valuable core. Then you have the combat. This is where I have to say Elite wins hands down. Having been doing conflict zones in a community event over the weekend.... The first time you have a capital ship frame shift into the area, with the sound and the size of that thing and all of the NPCs and players if you are in open.... It feels like an actual massive dogfight. You are close often well within a 1km range if not less, turning and angling to get into a better firing position. Being able to sub target modules on ships is great. Don't want them to run target the drives, don't want them to try and jump out target the FSD. Want to cause them to explode aim for the power plant. Then you have the armor hardness value. Every ship has a set value for the thickness not hardness of the armor. Every weapon has a penetration value. If your weapon penetration value isn't high enough to get through the armor of the target your damage is reduced by the percentage you are below. The you have different resistance values which you can change. The levels of customization for the ships is amazing. The bad, engineers. I like them but they can be a grind. To get the absolute best of of your ship in Elite engineering is a must. So kind of a pain. Trade... Without using outside of the game tools the in-game tools are quite good. You get a very clear and easy system to see what is in demand and what they have excess of. And in game events will effect this drastically day to day if not month to month. Ship customization... You can buy skins, and parts kits that are strictly cosmetic. You can earn these ARX with doing things in game.. so you don't have to spend money, but it is a definite advantage. Take note CIG... That is the way you do a cash shop for skins and trinkets. Right now I will say Elite Dangerous is by far the superior product. If CIG can get Star Citizen to run well for longer than a couple of hours it would be great. But right now ED is where I will most likely be for the foreseeable future.