I spent about an hour navigating to the barnacles on Maia, and now I can't figure out how to make them turn into alloys. I shot the... main thing? But to no avail.
I got to the exclusion zone. It's interesting that you can barely see it unless you're right up in its grill. I guess I'm also in a nebula, because space is green.
Looks like the barnacle is bugged, which is just... incredibly disheartening. It took me so, so fucking long to get here. I might need to take a break.
I got to the exclusion zone. It's interesting that you can barely see it unless you're right up in its grill. I guess I'm also in a nebula, because space is green.
Looks like the barnacle is bugged, which is just... incredibly disheartening. It took me so, so fucking long to get here. I might need to take a break.
Hmm, was it bugged or dead? The barnacles we originally found were destroyed by over-harvesting. I bought some meta-alloys at Darnielle's in the Maia system (it's a planet settlement). Frontier started selling them there because the Farseer engineer needs one to unlock.
I finally flew out to Sothis and Ceos to see what all the fuss is about. This place is packed first of all. I've never seen so many commanders in one spot. That was pretty interesting. I saw one of them bite it when the station opened fire and killed them. I have no idea what they did, but the station didn't like it!
Anyway, the Sothis and Ceos area is fantastic for long haul missions, but also great for Federation rep. Both systems spawn tons of data missions to the other one (they are like 8 LYRs apart). So all I did was load up on data missions and jump back and forth several times to rep up some with the factions, while also picking up some long haul missions. The missions are 400 LYR+ (back to the bubble), but very profitable. Deliver 9 biowaste for 1.5 million credits profitable. I think once you get allied with the factions, you can get smuggling missions between Sothis and Ceos, which would be the easiest thing ever, really.
I've also made a bit of progress on Elvira just from selling exploration data to her from making the round trip. Pretty close to unlocking grade 5, which will be nice for the FSD upgrade.
I pretty much doubled my credits in two runs. (43 mill to 96 mill). So now I'm just deciding if I want to try out a type 9 as a dedicated mining vessel, or if I want to grind a bit more Fed rep and FINALLY get an FAS.
So, anyone else out at Jaques? It was a bit longer that I expected getting there, was a bit bothersome doing it Buckyball-style even in a 43.5 ly jump-range modded Asp. Took me about 2 days doing 2000 ly/h. On the way back I think I'll take my time and see the sights! I delivered some meta-alloys and have started looking for barnacles out here, but it really is like searching for a needle...
If anyone else is thinking about coming, plan ahead. Ideal is going in a multi-role Conda, Asp works as well but since it's uncertain what will be needed out here, it's hard to fit everything you might need. Swing by Darnielles progress and bring meta-alloys, since the station has been ua-bombed and currently has no services. That means no repair so fit the repair module if you have room. Oh, and if you wan't to roleplay a real rescue-mission, bring food, medicines and booze in addition to the meta-alloys! :-)
So, anyone else out at Jaques? It was a bit longer that I expected getting there, was a bit bothersome doing it Buckyball-style even in a 43.5 ly jump-range modded Asp. Took me about 2 days doing 2000 ly/h. On the way back I think I'll take my time and see the sights! I delivered some meta-alloys and have started looking for barnacles out here, but it really is like searching for a needle...
If anyone else is thinking about coming, plan ahead. Ideal is going in a multi-role Conda, Asp works as well but since it's uncertain what will be needed out here, it's hard to fit everything you might need. Swing by Darnielles progress and bring meta-alloys, since the station has been ua-bombed and currently has no services. That means no repair so fit the repair module if you have room. Oh, and if you wan't to roleplay a real rescue-mission, bring food, medicines and booze in addition to the meta-alloys! :-)
I've read that they need mining materials to rebuild. I'd be there with bells on, but first they need to be able to restock limpets! When/if they get that going, I'll fly on by and do my part. I imagine if they get the Restock option back, they'll probably do a community goal to go along with it.
Maybe after the current Dangerous Games CGs? (Which I confess I have zero interest in)
So, anyone else out at Jaques? It was a bit longer that I expected getting there, was a bit bothersome doing it Buckyball-style even in a 43.5 ly jump-range modded Asp. Took me about 2 days doing 2000 ly/h. On the way back I think I'll take my time and see the sights! I delivered some meta-alloys and have started looking for barnacles out here, but it really is like searching for a needle...
If anyone else is thinking about coming, plan ahead. Ideal is going in a multi-role Conda, Asp works as well but since it's uncertain what will be needed out here, it's hard to fit everything you might need. Swing by Darnielles progress and bring meta-alloys, since the station has been ua-bombed and currently has no services. That means no repair so fit the repair module if you have room. Oh, and if you wan't to roleplay a real rescue-mission, bring food, medicines and booze in addition to the meta-alloys! :-)
I've read that they need mining materials to rebuild. I'd be there with bells on, but first they need to be able to restock limpets! When/if they get that going, I'll fly on by and do my part. I imagine if they get the Restock option back, they'll probably do a community goal to go along with it.
Maybe after the current Dangerous Games CGs? (Which I confess I have zero interest in)
No demand for metals or minerals at present, sadly. I brought a basic mining setup, but as there is no demand presently not sure what to do. Get the feeling that it was a bit early coming out here, but I'll stick around a while longer and see what happens, at least until thursday. We'll see on thursday what the update brings.
I unlocked far seer and built a shield booster because I had the materials lying around. Seems like a fun system! I spent the rest of the evening gently fighting in a res and got... Nothing I needed.
The ai is definitely better. I fought some dead fish guys and then it taken to school by a courier who wouldn't get in my sights. Eventually had to use an asteroid to confuse it.
Tube, make sure you use the resources available when searching for materials. I nearly went mad trying to find everything on my own. inara.cz/ is agood place to start (look under the galaxy tab), here is a nice spreadsheet and there are more useful things in this thread on the Frontier forums.
My understanding is that to get the thing I need, I need to shoot haulers. So... probably not going to do that? Seems a bit out of character. I think they went a bit nuts with the amount of different materials. I have tons of shit that could do fucking anything.
Ah... yeah. I refuse to shoot innocent cargo ships since it's not what my character would do either. However, if you go to compromised nav-beacons, there are wanted trade-ships if that makes it easier. Otherwise, there are missions that give those materials as well as USS and POIs. As for the things that actually take up cargo-space, I sell those straight away. No way I'll haul things around that I have idea when I'm going to need. Storage can't come soon enough...
My understanding is that to get the thing I need, I need to shoot haulers. So... probably not going to do that? Seems a bit out of character. I think they went a bit nuts with the amount of different materials. I have tons of shit that could do fucking anything.
From what I can tell, there are at least two ways to get every engineer material. Some of the commodities are mission only, but just a very few. If you're looking for things like Heat Conduction Wiring, etc. yeah, you want to be blowing up traders. Or, you can find traders already blown up in USS. Scouting them out in a USS will be more difficult.
My theory is that you're more likely to find them in the shipping lane. The shipping lane is roughly the area between the Nav Beacon and the closest commodity station or settlement. Make sure you're flying on the galactic plane. If you look to the lower left on your HUD, it will tell you if you're in the shipping lane or not.
Shipping lane patch notes:
Originally Posted by V2.1 Patchnote Details
- Add traffic density system for generating USSs
- Shipping lanes are created between the primary star, stations, and planets with settlements. Shipping lanes that are too similar to others, or too short, are removed
- Traffic density is calculated based on shipping lane, station and settled planet proximity. This traffic density value alters the probability of USSs
- Balance pass on low level scenarios that can be found as USS in shipping lanes. More Threat 1 opportunities for low ranking combat ship
If you do decide you want to take a walk on the wild side, then go to a populated anarchy system and fly just above the shipping lane to catch haulers coming to and fro. You want to be further away from heavenly bodies than they are, as you will be faster than them this way. Speed on approach matters quite a bit when interdicting.
I'm working on my silent running ship right now (just using all engineering mods to decrease thermal build up as an experiment/role play) and you wouldn't believe how many of these mats I need for that. I spent an hour last night blowing up the poor buggers. Most of those materials are common, but some (like Heat Vanes) seem to come only from the bigger or higher ranked ships.
The best part of the night was when I attacked a Dangerous Keelback and got my teeth kicked in HARD in my little DBS. I flew right at him like an idiot, because I was tired and I'm only using fixed multis on the DBS. Turns out, Keelbacks can shoot back. So that was a fun ride to the station without a canopy! Good thing I sprung for the A grade life support, because the game decided to twist the knife and interdict me several times when I had that broken canopy and 34% Hull.
Just as an FYI for anybody out at Jaques station: if you travel about 75 ly directly down from the station, you'll stumble across an absolutely massive field of neutron stars - hundreds, if not thousands of them. Filter the galactic map to non-sequence stars to see them all. There is still no repairs or Universal Cartographics at the station though, hopefully coming soon.
I suppose that most people in this thread already have access to Elite:Dangerous Arena/CQC, but until monday you can get it for free. Tell you friends! Since I'm out at Jacques, where there is presently not much do to, I've started playing cqc. It's actually really fun, even though the matchmaking sucks... getting matches is pretty fast, but I suppose the player pool is to small to really do balancing as there tend to be REALLY good players who just dominate.
I finally splurged and picked up a Type-9. For her maiden voyage, I'm going with a mining load out.
So far I love just flying this thing. It feels MASSIVE, cumbersome, and slow. Like the huge workhorse I suspect it is.
Later on I might try some bulk trading. I confess I don't know much about how to do that (especially with the changes in 2.1). Might as well try with this cargo space, though!
Yep, this guy is a HOSS, and so that will be his ship name.
I did a fine job mining with him, last night. I had a 3 medium mining laser, 9 collector set up. Chewed right through those asteroids, with no problems. From that mining job, I'm going to take some of the mining materials and grab some engi upgrades. I definitely need to overcharge the power plant and distributor (to better run 3 mining lasers... hopefully continuously), and I might as well get an FSD upgrade while I'm out and about.
For money reasons, I'm going to keep the D grade thrusters. Even with A grade, I'm not going to outrun anything. And while yes, this sucker is SLOW, if you flight assist off and use thrusters to their maximum, he's still nimble enough around asteroids and such. Landing at higher than 1g planets is a bitch though. He wants to drop his ass on the surface no matter how much I put into engines, FA:OFF or not. So, A graded thrusters are on the list, but HOSS is going to have to earn that upgrade.
3 interdictions survived. I'm sadly not at all sure the shock mines are doing a damn thing. I did use an ECM for the first time. Seems neat, but the recharge is too slow to really deal with the barrage of dumbfires the npcs like to throw out. I wonder if point defense would work better?
Update: Beam laser upgrades do not apply to medium mining lasers. womp womp.
The T9 certainly is an imposing ship. I've will get it one day, maybe for a community goal where bulk hauling is needed! Mining can be very relaxing, but I've found that if I'm not gathering materials for engineers (pro-tip, you can do this without a refinery, in that case the limpets will only pick up the materials!), I prefer to do it in smaller ships. Since my Cobra mk4 is not good for much else, it is my dedicated mining ship. Once it's filled up, I'm usually bored and ready to go back and sell the haul anyway!
From my experience, the shock mines do work. If they connect, you will see the pursuing ship get rocked of course. On the Cobra mk4, I have 2 ordinary launchers and one shock, seems to do the job just fine. Another fun thing with the cobra mk4 (which is likely a bug), is that a turret mounted in one of the medium mounts can fire straight backwards... works nicely together with the mines!
The T9 certainly is an imposing ship. I've will get it one day, maybe for a community goal where bulk hauling is needed! Mining can be very relaxing, but I've found that if I'm not gathering materials for engineers (pro-tip, you can do this without a refinery, in that case the limpets will only pick up the materials!), I prefer to do it in smaller ships. Since my Cobra mk4 is not good for much else, it is my dedicated mining ship. Once it's filled up, I'm usually bored and ready to go back and sell the haul anyway!
From my experience, the shock mines do work. If they connect, you will see the pursuing ship get rocked of course. On the Cobra mk4, I have 2 ordinary launchers and one shock, seems to do the job just fine. Another fun thing with the cobra mk4 (which is likely a bug), is that a turret mounted in one of the medium mounts can fire straight backwards... works nicely together with the mines!
I just have a fondness for the big, industrial ships. I had a Type-7 as a miner before I bought my Python, and I just loved that thing. Everyone else seems to hate on it, but not me. The material mining tip is a neat trick. I'll keep that in mind.
I've done a little small scale mining for upgrades for different ships. I find it pretty hilarious. Here's a screenshot of me mining in my DBS with one mining laser, one collector limpet, a super small refinery, and just enough to squeeze in a cargo rack.
If I was smart, I would have just pirated what I needed from a RES site on the DBS, but I didn't think of that until it was far too late. Still, it was fun just for being so silly.
Since I've become the proud owner of an Oculus Rift, I'm finally hoping to get into Elite Dangerous, having played it for a couple of hours a year ago or so. Can anyone here recommend a good beginners guide to me, whether it's video- or text-based? I'm not looking for anything overly exhaustive or feature-length, just something to take the edge off that learning curve. A bit of a focus on VR and/or HOTAS would be a bonus, but anything would be appreciated.
Also, how useful is Voice Attack, especially if you're playing the game in VR?
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I watched the ObsidianAnt one, which was okay, but I thought it could've been tightened, and he's not a brilliant speaker/presenter. He's okay, but the whole thing meandered a bit IMO. Will check out the Scott Manley ones.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I think Troa Barton has a nice starter guide, a bit long maybe bit it looked ok when i sampled it. If you are looking for advanced combat tips, Vindicator Jones has some really nice videos on the more esotheric (and basic) points of Elite:Dangerous combat.
So, is there no one else who is playing Arena/CQC? Like I said in my previous post, I've been spending my time in it the last couple of days after completely ignoring it for the longest time. It is so much fun! Also, while the small, nimble ships makes combat very different from the main game (no hiding behind massive shields and boosters here!), the manoeuvring and positioning is very similar and will teach you so much that is applicable to the main game. Also, since everything goes so fast, combat in larger ships will feel easy once you've spent some time in CQC! In cqc you have to make decisions FAST, and the murderous pace really punishes your mistakes. Practising here will make you a better pilot in the main game since things move so much more slowly there.
Additionally, zooming around the asteroids with a Condor set up for speed and equipped with plasma-repeaters is a dog-fighting experience that really brings me back to the old days of Wing Commander and X-Wing Vs. Tie-fighter. It's a really intense experience against good opponents!
I think it just had a free weekend. So possibly better than usual.
But just prior to 2.1 my queue times approached infinity.
They need to take their kickass AI and move it into that game mode. Bot matches would do a lot to flesh it out/make it playable, and more people might actually appreciate it there.
Yeah, bots would be a good idea. I think in Theory CQC is a good idea. I've never tried it. I did really like the SWTOR version of that when it first came out.
I would feel an incentive if I could get some benefit in the main game. Like maybe you could do a CQC mission and get some engineer materials or commodities, or even just credits. If they had that, and some bots to ease queue times, then I think that would be a pretty solid feature. I could see myself going on an exploration trip in the main game, and break that up with CQC stuff every now and then when I started to crave some dogfighting action.
I don't see a reason that CQC couldn't be a very modular kind of feature. If you want to do PVP? Cool. Here's a PvP mode. If you want to fight some bots by yourself? Cool, do that. Group up in a wing against a team of bots- here you go. If you could do the team wing thing against bots, I would definitely be able to sell it to my buddies. That's the kind of thing we like to do in SC2, and when we're playing WoW it's pretty much the same thing- team based PvE.
If they do add bots, it would be real nice to be able to choose the difficulty as well. If they put in 2.1 Beta Murder Bots the AI would be too hard for 90% of the people that tried to play it.
The wait times have been really low the last couple of days, usually under one minute (although it sometimes seem to hang for some reason, even with 8 players present). There are some rewards that carry over to the main game. You get a small amount of credits for each match, and once you hit level 50, you gain access to Attilius orbital in the CD-43 11917 system. Attilius offers all modules for all the ships in the game, and also have some discounts on certain ships and outfitting. If you have access to Jameson Memorial this is probably not that appealing, but it can be useful for those that don't have access to Shinrarta (way faster to hit level 50 in cqc than elite in the main game, I think).
I can agree that Frontier should do things differently. You can really tell that this is a company that has not done much work with competitive on-line games... bots would be a good idea, as would polishing the lobby. With that said, I'm still enjoying the experience much more than I thought I would, and I really hope that people don't abandon the game after the free weekend. If Frontier had any sense they would leave it as a free-to-play game indefinitely as a gate-way to recruit people to the real Elite...
Thanks for the info, Lodbrok. I'll give CQC a shot. I already love to fly around in an Imperial Eagle for bounty hunting, so it might not be a huge shock to step down to the smaller vessels in CQC.
@Thirith I was looking at some guides for you, but I couldn't come up with anything better than what's already been posted. I did find/rediscover the guide section on Frontier's forum site, and it's packed with good stuff (but kind of hidden away). https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php/77-Guides-and-Tutorials
So if you have any particular interests, you can certainly find something that can help.
If you have any questions on anything, go ahead and ask. Between everyone that's involved in this thread, we likely have a pretty diverse skill set on game mechanics.
I'm thinking about maybe going exploring and heading all the way to the other side of the map and back, then selling that data to farseer to max out her rank. Seems easier than finding random scrap and I've been meaning to do a big exploring jag.
I'm thinking about maybe going exploring and heading all the way to the other side of the map and back, then selling that data to farseer to max out her rank. Seems easier than finding random scrap and I've been meaning to do a big exploring jag.
IIRC you need about 10-12 mil worth to unlock rank 5, so get double that and do both of the engineers that buy exploration data. (Not sure what Palin requires for extra rep). If you don't have Palin listed yet make sure you fly at least 5000 ly out from your starting system (so maybe go like 5500 to be sure).
Don't you need to get in good with another engineer before you can find Palin?
Yeah. Palin has one of the most sought after modifications (rank 5 thruster modifications), so I think he's pretty much the "ultimate" engineer at the moment. You have to get rank 3 and some change with Elvira to unlock Qwent, and rank 3 and some change with Qwent to unlock Palin.
That's simplifying a bit. You need to get rep with the Sirius faction to unlock Qwent as well as 25 modular terminals (mission reward only?). Palin wants unidentified artifact bits or something from blowing them up, which could also take a while. I think there's a site with a crashed Anaconda that has a respawning artifact that greatly accelerates this process.
That was a lot of "I think" because I haven't bothered to unlock Qwent yet. Rep grinding is no big deal but 25 modular terminals sounds like a pain in the ass. I'll get around to it eventually, but I haven't gotten that particular wild hair quite yet.
In other news, the Saitek X 52 is on sale on Amazon today. Sadly, I think I will let it pass. I'm rocking the Thrustmaster X HOTAS right now. It's a fine starter stick, but I really do need something with better fine control at this point. Anyone know when the Thrustmaster 1600 HOTAS is hitting the shelves?
[edit] Handy picture guide for trading. I'm just going to link it because it's probably huge- http://i.imgur.com/QsxScn1.png
After the 1721872th time an elite anaconda has interdicted my Asp because I am carrying 4 units of engineer components worth a staggering 1300 CR, on top of power play bugs, I am taking a trip to the black (to get elite rank and finish off rep for the two engineers who buy that exploration data). I'm going to take a DBX instead of an Asp though, just because I can. I'm not going to be doing any SRV roaming so I don't need the extra bays.
I guess I'll go far enough to knock out the Palin engineer requirement too.
Does SRV stuff add to explorer rank? I remember hearing that distance from the bubble increased the value of some SRV exploration stuff, which could be big money if you get far enough.
I believe Syngyne is correct. It's just related to how much data you have sold, and there is no extra data added from using an SRV. Though you can mine for FSD boost mats etc as you go.
Posts
How close did you get to it?
Looks like the barnacle is bugged, which is just... incredibly disheartening. It took me so, so fucking long to get here. I might need to take a break.
Hmm, was it bugged or dead? The barnacles we originally found were destroyed by over-harvesting. I bought some meta-alloys at Darnielle's in the Maia system (it's a planet settlement). Frontier started selling them there because the Farseer engineer needs one to unlock.
I finally flew out to Sothis and Ceos to see what all the fuss is about. This place is packed first of all. I've never seen so many commanders in one spot. That was pretty interesting. I saw one of them bite it when the station opened fire and killed them. I have no idea what they did, but the station didn't like it!
Anyway, the Sothis and Ceos area is fantastic for long haul missions, but also great for Federation rep. Both systems spawn tons of data missions to the other one (they are like 8 LYRs apart). So all I did was load up on data missions and jump back and forth several times to rep up some with the factions, while also picking up some long haul missions. The missions are 400 LYR+ (back to the bubble), but very profitable. Deliver 9 biowaste for 1.5 million credits profitable. I think once you get allied with the factions, you can get smuggling missions between Sothis and Ceos, which would be the easiest thing ever, really.
I've also made a bit of progress on Elvira just from selling exploration data to her from making the round trip. Pretty close to unlocking grade 5, which will be nice for the FSD upgrade.
I pretty much doubled my credits in two runs. (43 mill to 96 mill). So now I'm just deciding if I want to try out a type 9 as a dedicated mining vessel, or if I want to grind a bit more Fed rep and FINALLY get an FAS.
If anyone else is thinking about coming, plan ahead. Ideal is going in a multi-role Conda, Asp works as well but since it's uncertain what will be needed out here, it's hard to fit everything you might need. Swing by Darnielles progress and bring meta-alloys, since the station has been ua-bombed and currently has no services. That means no repair so fit the repair module if you have room. Oh, and if you wan't to roleplay a real rescue-mission, bring food, medicines and booze in addition to the meta-alloys! :-)
I've read that they need mining materials to rebuild. I'd be there with bells on, but first they need to be able to restock limpets! When/if they get that going, I'll fly on by and do my part. I imagine if they get the Restock option back, they'll probably do a community goal to go along with it.
Maybe after the current Dangerous Games CGs? (Which I confess I have zero interest in)
No demand for metals or minerals at present, sadly. I brought a basic mining setup, but as there is no demand presently not sure what to do. Get the feeling that it was a bit early coming out here, but I'll stick around a while longer and see what happens, at least until thursday. We'll see on thursday what the update brings.
The ai is definitely better. I fought some dead fish guys and then it taken to school by a courier who wouldn't get in my sights. Eventually had to use an asteroid to confuse it.
From what I can tell, there are at least two ways to get every engineer material. Some of the commodities are mission only, but just a very few. If you're looking for things like Heat Conduction Wiring, etc. yeah, you want to be blowing up traders. Or, you can find traders already blown up in USS. Scouting them out in a USS will be more difficult.
My theory is that you're more likely to find them in the shipping lane. The shipping lane is roughly the area between the Nav Beacon and the closest commodity station or settlement. Make sure you're flying on the galactic plane. If you look to the lower left on your HUD, it will tell you if you're in the shipping lane or not.
Shipping lane patch notes:
Originally Posted by V2.1 Patchnote Details
- Add traffic density system for generating USSs
- Shipping lanes are created between the primary star, stations, and planets with settlements. Shipping lanes that are too similar to others, or too short, are removed
- Traffic density is calculated based on shipping lane, station and settled planet proximity. This traffic density value alters the probability of USSs
- Balance pass on low level scenarios that can be found as USS in shipping lanes. More Threat 1 opportunities for low ranking combat ship
If you do decide you want to take a walk on the wild side, then go to a populated anarchy system and fly just above the shipping lane to catch haulers coming to and fro. You want to be further away from heavenly bodies than they are, as you will be faster than them this way. Speed on approach matters quite a bit when interdicting.
I'm working on my silent running ship right now (just using all engineering mods to decrease thermal build up as an experiment/role play) and you wouldn't believe how many of these mats I need for that. I spent an hour last night blowing up the poor buggers. Most of those materials are common, but some (like Heat Vanes) seem to come only from the bigger or higher ranked ships.
The best part of the night was when I attacked a Dangerous Keelback and got my teeth kicked in HARD in my little DBS. I flew right at him like an idiot, because I was tired and I'm only using fixed multis on the DBS. Turns out, Keelbacks can shoot back. So that was a fun ride to the station without a canopy! Good thing I sprung for the A grade life support, because the game decided to twist the knife and interdict me several times when I had that broken canopy and 34% Hull.
Karma's a bitch.
For the optimal experience, some form of headtracking so your pilot jams along with you is highly recommended.
Get it here:
https://www.frontierstore.net/games/elite-dangerous-cat/elite-dangerous-arena.html
Or, if you for some reason I can not understand prefer Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/443080
So far I love just flying this thing. It feels MASSIVE, cumbersome, and slow. Like the huge workhorse I suspect it is.
Later on I might try some bulk trading. I confess I don't know much about how to do that (especially with the changes in 2.1). Might as well try with this cargo space, though!
I did a fine job mining with him, last night. I had a 3 medium mining laser, 9 collector set up. Chewed right through those asteroids, with no problems. From that mining job, I'm going to take some of the mining materials and grab some engi upgrades. I definitely need to overcharge the power plant and distributor (to better run 3 mining lasers... hopefully continuously), and I might as well get an FSD upgrade while I'm out and about.
For money reasons, I'm going to keep the D grade thrusters. Even with A grade, I'm not going to outrun anything. And while yes, this sucker is SLOW, if you flight assist off and use thrusters to their maximum, he's still nimble enough around asteroids and such. Landing at higher than 1g planets is a bitch though. He wants to drop his ass on the surface no matter how much I put into engines, FA:OFF or not. So, A graded thrusters are on the list, but HOSS is going to have to earn that upgrade.
3 interdictions survived. I'm sadly not at all sure the shock mines are doing a damn thing. I did use an ECM for the first time. Seems neat, but the recharge is too slow to really deal with the barrage of dumbfires the npcs like to throw out. I wonder if point defense would work better?
Update: Beam laser upgrades do not apply to medium mining lasers.
From my experience, the shock mines do work. If they connect, you will see the pursuing ship get rocked of course. On the Cobra mk4, I have 2 ordinary launchers and one shock, seems to do the job just fine. Another fun thing with the cobra mk4 (which is likely a bug), is that a turret mounted in one of the medium mounts can fire straight backwards... works nicely together with the mines!
I just have a fondness for the big, industrial ships. I had a Type-7 as a miner before I bought my Python, and I just loved that thing. Everyone else seems to hate on it, but not me. The material mining tip is a neat trick. I'll keep that in mind.
I've done a little small scale mining for upgrades for different ships. I find it pretty hilarious. Here's a screenshot of me mining in my DBS with one mining laser, one collector limpet, a super small refinery, and just enough to squeeze in a cargo rack.
If I was smart, I would have just pirated what I needed from a RES site on the DBS, but I didn't think of that until it was far too late. Still, it was fun just for being so silly.
Also, how useful is Voice Attack, especially if you're playing the game in VR?
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Also am I the only person who noticed that in Batman Vs Superman the Batmobile/Batwing are both using a thrustmaster warthog stick.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I think Troa Barton has a nice starter guide, a bit long maybe bit it looked ok when i sampled it. If you are looking for advanced combat tips, Vindicator Jones has some really nice videos on the more esotheric (and basic) points of Elite:Dangerous combat.
Troa's guide: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8rtajDGnqAo
Vindicator Jones: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XjYeCs5MA18&list=PLST2VzDxDCrwvkU6wYfo-z4UhGbObjl_M&index=2
So, is there no one else who is playing Arena/CQC? Like I said in my previous post, I've been spending my time in it the last couple of days after completely ignoring it for the longest time. It is so much fun! Also, while the small, nimble ships makes combat very different from the main game (no hiding behind massive shields and boosters here!), the manoeuvring and positioning is very similar and will teach you so much that is applicable to the main game. Also, since everything goes so fast, combat in larger ships will feel easy once you've spent some time in CQC! In cqc you have to make decisions FAST, and the murderous pace really punishes your mistakes. Practising here will make you a better pilot in the main game since things move so much more slowly there.
Additionally, zooming around the asteroids with a Condor set up for speed and equipped with plasma-repeaters is a dog-fighting experience that really brings me back to the old days of Wing Commander and X-Wing Vs. Tie-fighter. It's a really intense experience against good opponents!
But just prior to 2.1 my queue times approached infinity.
They need to take their kickass AI and move it into that game mode. Bot matches would do a lot to flesh it out/make it playable, and more people might actually appreciate it there.
CQC was an inherently stupid idea. It was part of season 1, or "the season of horrible ideas".
I would feel an incentive if I could get some benefit in the main game. Like maybe you could do a CQC mission and get some engineer materials or commodities, or even just credits. If they had that, and some bots to ease queue times, then I think that would be a pretty solid feature. I could see myself going on an exploration trip in the main game, and break that up with CQC stuff every now and then when I started to crave some dogfighting action.
I don't see a reason that CQC couldn't be a very modular kind of feature. If you want to do PVP? Cool. Here's a PvP mode. If you want to fight some bots by yourself? Cool, do that. Group up in a wing against a team of bots- here you go. If you could do the team wing thing against bots, I would definitely be able to sell it to my buddies. That's the kind of thing we like to do in SC2, and when we're playing WoW it's pretty much the same thing- team based PvE.
If they do add bots, it would be real nice to be able to choose the difficulty as well. If they put in 2.1 Beta Murder Bots the AI would be too hard for 90% of the people that tried to play it.
I can agree that Frontier should do things differently. You can really tell that this is a company that has not done much work with competitive on-line games... bots would be a good idea, as would polishing the lobby. With that said, I'm still enjoying the experience much more than I thought I would, and I really hope that people don't abandon the game after the free weekend. If Frontier had any sense they would leave it as a free-to-play game indefinitely as a gate-way to recruit people to the real Elite...
@Thirith I was looking at some guides for you, but I couldn't come up with anything better than what's already been posted. I did find/rediscover the guide section on Frontier's forum site, and it's packed with good stuff (but kind of hidden away).
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php/77-Guides-and-Tutorials
So if you have any particular interests, you can certainly find something that can help.
For instance, I found this thread which will be great for doing bulk trading in my new T-9-
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/91538-Yokai-s-guide-to-recognizing-(and-finding)-a-great-trade-route
If you have any questions on anything, go ahead and ask. Between everyone that's involved in this thread, we likely have a pretty diverse skill set on game mechanics.
IIRC you need about 10-12 mil worth to unlock rank 5, so get double that and do both of the engineers that buy exploration data. (Not sure what Palin requires for extra rep). If you don't have Palin listed yet make sure you fly at least 5000 ly out from your starting system (so maybe go like 5500 to be sure).
Yeah. Palin has one of the most sought after modifications (rank 5 thruster modifications), so I think he's pretty much the "ultimate" engineer at the moment. You have to get rank 3 and some change with Elvira to unlock Qwent, and rank 3 and some change with Qwent to unlock Palin.
That's simplifying a bit. You need to get rep with the Sirius faction to unlock Qwent as well as 25 modular terminals (mission reward only?). Palin wants unidentified artifact bits or something from blowing them up, which could also take a while. I think there's a site with a crashed Anaconda that has a respawning artifact that greatly accelerates this process.
That was a lot of "I think" because I haven't bothered to unlock Qwent yet. Rep grinding is no big deal but 25 modular terminals sounds like a pain in the ass. I'll get around to it eventually, but I haven't gotten that particular wild hair quite yet.
In other news, the Saitek X 52 is on sale on Amazon today. Sadly, I think I will let it pass. I'm rocking the Thrustmaster X HOTAS right now. It's a fine starter stick, but I really do need something with better fine control at this point. Anyone know when the Thrustmaster 1600 HOTAS is hitting the shelves?
[edit] Handy picture guide for trading. I'm just going to link it because it's probably huge- http://i.imgur.com/QsxScn1.png
Really for real.
Press release says September.
I guess I'll go far enough to knock out the Palin engineer requirement too.