C64 Elite - A rare encounter: The Cougar ship

[@paulsluman3428]

Thank you - you have solved an ancient mystery for me... One Christmas, my cousins came over and we spent the afternoon taking it in turns to do cargo runs in Elite. It was my turn and we encountered this weird ship that didn’t show up on radar. I paused the game and took a photo of the screen but when the film was developed, you couldn’t really make out the ship as the flash had occluded the image! To this day, I’ve not known what it was - but here it is! I’d almost convinced myself I had imagined it! This is a great game, full of mysteries...

[@_nc513_]

Cool story, thanks for sharing! :) It's an amazing game, for sure.

[@pwnmeisterage]

23:54 is the very edge of survival.

[@_nc513_]

Yep, that was a close call ... 😄

[@MrLorenzovanmatterho]

Tough customer if it can survive that many hits from a military laser!

[@theseeker3771]

When I am old and tired and have given up on life... I will play old school Elite on an old beaten up C64 and drink whisky and smoke weed, until I reach Elite... and then I will finally die a satisfied man.

[@DarkoBednjanec]

LOL exactly my plan. Actually, I bought TheC64 "Maxi" with that plan in mind (no kidding, barely opened it yet, just to flash the firmware). Best playing of Elite is by using keyboard, imho (I was playing piano as a kid); I hope there will be no lags and my skills will still suite me. Jackie is already here, unpacked bottle with glasses; now I just have to find some ganja, no rush, I'm not in a hurry...

[@fortnitekiddy1315]

FINALLY! PROOF! So many years later! ;)

[@zzodr]

Ahh the memories. I have recently moved to OOlite. The military lasers don't seem as powerful in it as the C64 version.

[@Muppetias]

Coolest ship to destroy in Elite, much harder than the Constrictor.

[@boogieknee3781]

I recall finding this ship whilst on a bounty run. Jumping randomly from system to system using fuel scoops,and realising the jumpdrive(timeskip) was blocked even though the radar was clear. The ship didnt appear on radar whatsoever. Being very lowtech,the only way to capture the footage was by hooking up the vcr to record it on vhs. Naturally my mates didnt believe me til I showed them the 20 minute dogfight. (fyi use mining laser and use the targetting system itself to tell you when you have a guaranteed shot,) Military lasers would overheat too easily,mining had an 8 second delay between shots but didnt drain your energy,so as long as you could dogfight better than your opponents you could outfight multiple ships. The best way to use the mining laser was to have a friend hold down U and T when you needed it. .....as the target lock would give you an audible tone.....thus confirming a clean shot.

[@kuro.mp3126]

That's a very long fight.

[@boogieknee3781]

​@@kuro.mp3126yup. The point of that fight was to get several different views up close of "the cat" so that my friend could verify with his own eyes that it was present but not on the radar..... ....and that it was a unique design and not one of the previously known ships.... as most folk thought it was "the cougar" which of course was the ship you had to track down as part of one of the missions. Bear in mind that in that era the only way to record your gameplay was with a standard vcr,and successfully finding "the cat" was a feat in itself,since she would hide outside of visual range on a parallel course. The only clue that she was there was "condition yellow" The easiest way to start the fight was to shoot her using left or right laser at extreme range.

[@kuro.mp3126]

@@boogieknee3781 alright. (the very surprising thing is it took atleast ONE YEAR to reply. Gotta say, have a good life.)

[@hueyiroquois3839]

Just a few minutes ago, trumbles ate my narcotics. That probably explains their weird behavior.

[@aldoskyz8]

Thargoid ships was the real nightmare..

[@theseeker3771]

There's a story that mining lasers worked better on Thargoids.....

[@KevPage-Witkicker]

How did I play this for days at a time (had no save facility on my cassette deck) and never hear of this ship?

[@sturmjagd]

had a same enounter on enonla after finidhinf travelling all 8 galaxies.. was the scariest event of 5 years elite playing

[@simonscott1121]

You need to learn to use your rear laser :D

[@haightw0]

If you had managed to scoop the cargo after destroying the stealth ship (instead of smashing into it and blowing it up like you did) you may have gained the cloaking device for yourself?

[@haightw0]

Actually I was mistaken, rewatched it and you did get the cargo and it’s just “radioactives”, kind of anticlimactic :( I never did defeat that ship when I played in the 80s but I always wish I had so I could get that cloaking device.

[@_nc513_]

@@haightw0 Yep, I think e.g. the MSX version did have that feature, but unfortunately it seems it wasn't implemented quite like that in the C64 version. :/

[@OldCityBob]

If there is no mission tied to it, how do you the name of the ship is Cougar? How did you find it?

[@_nc513_]

I used WinVICE and a disk image of an original Elite disk. I started with an old saved commander of mine and just flew off to some random location far away from the planet and the sun. Then I just made sure I stayed alive until WinVICE's ML monitor alerted me that an enemy of type 0x20 had spawned. At that point, I used a Super Snapshot .crt to save a freeze state of the game, so I would be able to go back to that exact moment whenever I liked. As for the name of the ship, I'm not quite sure, but at least Ian Bell (as you know, one of the authors of the game) mentions the Cougar on his homepage. He writes e.g. that "The Cougar can be found as the "Cat" on the BBC Elite 2 ship sources disk.".

[@Muppetias]

If you are bounty hunting in deep space, you have to shoot at it once before it leaves. It only shows shortly before leaving. But if you don't shoot at it (need Military laser), the ship will come after you. (so it won't attack you normally)

[@boogieknee3781]

@@Muppetias Military laser overheats to quickly. Mining laser can break most opponents if used wisely. (In the old days we used to get a buddy to hold down U and T and to tap the fire 🔥 button only when/if the tone went to constant) Thus most of the ship energy goes into your shields rather than into empty space. (I still play oolite and alite occasionally as I foolishly leant out my c64 disc of elite)

[@kevinbroderick3779]

You shouldn't cheat.

[@_nc513_]

There is no cheating in this video, so I'm not sure what you mean? Obviously I did freeze and save the game at the point when the Cougar initially spawned. Otherwise it would have been pretty much impossible to catch this on camera. It's a rare ship; you'd probably have to sit and record and play for DAYS until even finding the ship, let alone managing to kill it. I explained my entire procedure in a lemon forum post back in May 2018.

[@kevinbroderick3779]

@@_nc513_ , my apologies, after reviewing I saw my mistake. I thought your CR were 1,560,660.8 an unrealistically large CR. I've finished the game several times and only seen CRs the millions when someone has modded the save file. Although you do need to work on your stick work or get a joystick with switches and a very short action. It makes it easier to keep a ship in your crosshairs. I know I've been destroyed by one and there are certain systems where you have a better chance of running into them but I don't know which ones they were. Nice kill.

[@_nc513_]

@@kevinbroderick3779 Oh, I see. :) Yes, 156,000 Cr isn't anything remarkable; surely achievable by making as little as 200-300 trips, even despite relatively bad strategy. A quick glance at my 30 years old saved commanders shows that I typically was earning over 1000 Cr per trip after I had reached Dangerous status and hunted down the Constrictor. This demonstration was keyboard only, which might be part of the reason why the aiming looks a bit embarrassing at times. I guess it's also possible I was slightly out of practice after the 30 year break. :D Needless to say, the Cougar is a resilient ship. However, when it comes to agility and speed, I guess it's not that much more impressive than a Viper.