We wrote about the upcoming semi-private alpha and beta releases of both Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen and David Braben’s Elite: Dangerous a couple of weeks ago. Star Citizen’s dogfighting module missed its scheduled release by a few days but became available on June 4 , while Elite: Dangerous’ premium beta opened up right on time on May 30, flooding what was previously a small alpha test with about 10,000 new players. Though the current version of the game is only a fraction of what Elite: Dangerous hopes to be at release, what’s playable today was more than enough to keep me totally engrossed for days.

Participants in the E:D premium beta are playing essentially the same game that alpha testers had their hands on since mid-May. There are a number of single-player combat scenarios that players can use to familiarize themselves with the game’s ship controls, and then a multiplayer area consists of five star systems where the "real" part of the premium beta takes place. Players can fly around and between the five systems, trading goods and shooting NPCs—or each other.

Video: a musical interlude with the Elite: Dangerous premium beta. Soundtrack is "Arrival," by Lee Rosevere.

Greetings, Commander Jameson

1984’s original Elite saw players taking on the role of the faceless "Commander Jameson" (though the name could be changed in some versions), docked in orbit around the planet Lave with nothing to your name but a new Cobra Mk. III spacecraft and 100 credits. Although the eventual release of Elite: Dangerous will include a variety of starting ships and positions, the current premium beta version of the game takes a page from the original. Players all start out in the same, small one-man Sidewinder fighter, which can carry a tiny amount of cargo. You get 1,000 credits to start trading and a single laser to start blasting.

You can buy up cargo (four tons at a time) and slowly grind your way up to a better ship, or you can immediately zip out to one of the dogfighting encounter areas and shoot up NPC ships for bounties. When you die—and I say "when" because almost every public area is PVP-enabled, and a tremendous number of the game’s beta players appear to be homicidal kill-crazed maniacs—you can start over with the basic single-laser Sidewinder for free or pay some of your credits for a ship equipped similarly to the one you’ve just lost.

The goal in premium beta is to get cash to upgrade your ship (both by equipping it with more and better weapons and by purchasing bigger and better ships all together), and the fastest way to gain cash in the premium beta is to take your starter ship and grind away blasting baddies in one of the starter system’s conflict zones. It takes a while, and you’ll die a lot, but at 500 credits per kill, it’s a lot quicker than trying to trade four tons at a time. Once you’ve amassed maybe 20,000 credits, you can attach some solid gimballed lasers on your Sidewinder to massively increase its lethality. Plus, you'll still have money left over to cover the insurance fee for when you’re blown up.

If shooting’s not your thing, you can buckle down and try to trade your way to riches. However, since the Sidewinder can only carry four tons of cargo (and each "unit" of cargo is one ton), this again takes much longer than just killing for credits—it took me probably five or six hours to break 10,000 credits, and you need more than 10 times that many credits to upgrade your Sidewinder for a ship that can carry more cargo (the cheapest option at this point is the venerable Cobra Mk. III). However, if shooting is your thing, then you only need a bit over 40,000 credits to pick an Eagle Mk. II—it still only carries four tons of cargo, but it’s an agile dogfighter.