In no time you can be watching the cash roll in. So head on over there, and sell your cargo at a profit.
There, they will command a far higher price. Then find another system that imports the goods. These will be on sale cheap, so fly over there and fill your cargo hold.
Calling up the appropriate screens and maps, look for goods a star system is listed as exporting. However, the mechanics of trading in Frontier are really pretty simple. Which I can sympathise with, as that was pretty much my reaction to the infamous Battlecruiser 3000AD – which if you haven’t heard of, is a similar kind of game. Then put the game aside and never look at it again.
The danger is that you might take off, fly around randomly for a bit, hit some buttons to see what happens, get lost, shoot at something, get shot at and then triumphantly crash into a space station. You’re sat there with your little ship squatting on a landing pad on some backwater planet, unable to purchase anything more than a few tons of grain or metal ore, and wondering exactly how to get started. Nowadays a game like this can seem to pose a pretty daunting start, especially as there are no in-game tutorials to set you on your way. It’s up to you where you go and what you do in your pursuit of cash. There is little structure to the game and no storyline to follow, it’s entirely free-form. The concept remains more or less the same: you start off with a tiny, basic ship, a meagre amount of cash, and a desire to make money. That arrived in 1993, under the title of Frontier. That ringed planet isn’t just a backdrop – you can fly over there and orbit it. Not a quick knock-off mind you, but a bigger and better reworking of that space-trading theme. However, it was begging for a proper sequel. It even managed a PC revamp in 1991, essentially the same game but featuring VGA graphics (oooh) and adlib sound (aaah!). Appearing initially on the BBC Micro – a computer known best for its use in schools – Elite was ported to numerous other platforms and become one of the most highly respected titles of the time. In short, by the standards of the day it was an amazingly large-scale and complex game bear in mind this was at the time when Donkey Kong was all the rage in video gaming. It also featured AI controlled pirates, freighters and police, along with upgrades for your own ship, and a pretty spiffy 3D engine. At the helm of a Millennium Falcon style vessel, your aim was buying low and selling high, flying cargo between the stars and finding the best prices. It was no mere shoot-em-up, the core theme of Elite was profiteering and the pursuit of material wealth. Released in 1984, Ian Bell and David Braben’s Elite was the first great space-sim and a significant step forward in gaming.
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