I haven't played Elite: Dangerous yet so my thoughts are kinda of one sided here and I am going off the published info on SC thus far. I personally think that Star Citizen/Squadron 42 will be giving you more of that Freelancer feeling than what E:D is giving so far. There is even going to be some FPS elements to the game where you can board stations and ships to gain control. The visuals in both games are good, but I would have to give the edge too SC. You will need to upgrade your PC to play this game though, I know I will have too ... heh my machine stumbles a little bit with the dog fighting module and Chris Roberts has stated (unles it changes) that this game will not be brought to the console.

Something that I like a lot is that you can have ships that you and a few friends can pile into and fly around in and they all can do things like man turrents and things like that. So I think from a ship standpoint SC has E:D beat so far. Universe size E:D has SC beat because I don't think it will be the size of E:D because I think they are going for a smaller scale where people are going to run into each other more often and have engagements.

But one of the better features I liked most and they announced a while back is player run servers, so I can't wait for more info on this. I have always been a huge Chris Roberts fan of Wing Commander, Privateer, Starlancer and Freelancer and I haven't been disappointed yet and with the money pouring into this game I think they might actually be able to deliver all these promises. For me the worry is time... how long will it take to see this game as a whole running?

Well, at least for the near future the answer is quite simple: Elite Dangerous is a finished product (to some degree, depending on who you talk to), and Star Citizen won't be anything resembling "finished" until 2016.  

That said, at the moment I am personally more optimistic about the future of SC than of Elite.  Granted, this is undoubtedly largely because Elite is more finished an therefore easier to criticize in a specific way, where as not much seems set in stone yet for SC.

I can say one thing without question, I like the flight model in SC way better, however it seems like a major problem to me that in most ships the ratio of maximum angular acceleration to maximum linear acceleration seems way too high.  I've also been assuming that they will raise the current (very low) speed limit once they go to double precision, but not seeing them say so explicitly is making me rather nervous.

The greatest joy of Elite so far has been being able to move around freely in a 1:1 scale galaxy.  Sadly, I doubt even individual star systems in SC will be to scale.

So I don't know, SC seems to promise a lot more, I've felt somewhat less frustration and disappointment in what I've seen from it in it's early stages than when I first started playing Elite, but SC really does have such a long way to go.

In the end: If you want a WWII-plane-in-space flight model with some awkward decisions about maneuverability but with a breathtakingly gorgeous to-scale galaxy, play Elite.  If you want a space-sim with the opportunity to actually feel like you are in a spaceship, but with a claustrophobic universe with everything for some reason looking like pieces of an A-10 welded to pieces of an F-15, play SC. 

 Elite Dangerous cost £40.00 or $60.00 the same as a triple A game for that you get a very basic game with by all accounts some poor multiplayer features.

 Elite Dangerous cost £40.00 or $60.00 the same as a triple A game for that you get a very basic game with by all accounts some poor multiplayer features.

Despite whatever I didn't like about it, in my opinion it was DEFINITELY worth the money.  They also charge $60 for new versions of Assassin's Creed or Far Cry which are pretty much the same thing as their predecessors (nothing against that idea, I happen to really like Far Cry 4, but having Far Cry 3 it is far less value for the dollar than Elite).  I recently bought Wolfenstein when it was on a Steam sale, but that game was originally $60 and it is only a modest improvement over a hallway shooter.  Bioshock Infinite originally cost $60 and it's pretty much $5 worth of lousy gameplay, and that didn't stop it from becoming the most over-rated game in history.  

I have my complaints about Elite, but if you like what you see, I don't think fearing that are being ripped off should stop you.  I've already gotten more gameplay per dollar out of that than anything else in a long, long time.

Well, at least for the near future the answer is quite simple: Elite Dangerous is a finished product (to some degree, depending on who you talk to), and Star Citizen won't be anything resembling "finished" until 2016.  

 

That said, at the moment I am personally more optimistic about the future of SC than of Elite.  Granted, this is undoubtedly largely because Elite is more finished an therefore easier to criticize in a specific way, where as not much seems set in stone yet for SC.

Very true there ExpandingMan is that we are ranking SC from a vision and combat/hanger demo. Elite is a completed game and officially released and I am sure it will add a lot more to the game in the next 1-1.5 yrs while we wait on SC to be finished, so if your on the fence you have time to play Elite: Dangerous and when Star Citizen is finally release we can make a good comparison. Are there some aspects where of these games that each is better... of course. I know a lot of my faith is in Chris R. in the hopes he will create his vision and won't release it until it is what he wants it to be. Do I think Elite was rushed a little to market, yeah I do and I hope FD rolls out some good patches and content over the next few months and I will probably pick it up in the summer.

To be fair, I think it is very hard to compare these two games because they are truly two different games with different play style goals. I remember reading a bit about the future of Elite: Dangerous and it looks like they want to implement a lot of what SC is going to be doing so we'll see. I would be interested in knowing how many copies of E:D have been sold thus far, I haven't read too much on the size of the community of E:D. Do we think it will grow or shrink? That will be a huge factor to compare both SC and E:D when they are competing against each other. 

Actually this question is as "Who do you love more, mom or dad?"

both are simulators, with different mechanics, different concepts, different graphics, different public targets, the only similitude is: Both are space games.

Star Citizen is a big project with a big concept (personally i don't like Chris Roberts, but the game looks interesting)

Elite Dangerous is another big project with another big concept (David Braben is the FATHER of the space sims and the game is one ELITE game, but with modern graphics)

Both have different financing methods: Star Citizen: Buy ships, update ships, buy objects for the ship (Personally i dont like this method) and in Elite you can buy skins for the ship, t-shirts, etc. 

They are different games... (Call of duty vs Battlefield) or (Need for speed vs Trackmania) both are games of the same genre, but are different between they.

Regards 🙂

If you don't mind its single-player nature, Elite is OK.  It is pretty and has some decent features.  I'd love to try playing it with Oculus Rift, but just can't justify spending the money given the "meh" flight engine and the weak MMO game design.

Star-Citizen is still just an over-hyped fund-raising mechanism ... so really nothing to compare with there.

IMO.  😉

I'd like to bought Elite dangerous and Star citizen but when i saw that i have to stay connected to the server i decided to give up with this games.  I like real single player games, this is only a MMO and i don't like it.

They ruied that games.

Well I think  E:D price will be it's Achilles heel in the long run when all the present problems have either been fix or forgotten about that price will come back and bite them. Remember E:D needs buyers for Frontier to do any of the content they have talked about  and that means appealing to people who may never have played one of these games before, and it not just Star Citizen they will be up against but also No Mans Sky and Valkyrie and who knows what else.