Does that work if you're not already friendly with the faction in question? Most of the lucrative missions I've seen definitely were linked to my standing with the faction.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Does that work if you're not already friendly with the faction in question? Most of the lucrative missions I've seen definitely were linked to my standing with the faction.
You do need to have good standing with the faction in order for those quests to open up. It's not difficult to do this (especially with the dominant faction). Go bounty hunting, go mining, do some trading, and if you go out exploring- make sure to turn it in at a station controlled by your desired faction. Exploration data is insanely good at building faction rep. Take a mission here and there for them while doing one of those things, and you'll be in their good books in no time.
An Orca is 48.5 mill. I have mine A rated, reinforced hull, with luxury cabins for about double that. You can get by with much less. She's a fast little bugger for her size, so escaping danger doesn't seem to be too rough. You also don't need an Orca or Beluga for the passenger missions. You can install the modules like normal on any ship. An Anaconda is probably better for passenger missions than anything else? Anas have crazy jump range, and plenty of room for passenger modules.
Steam and CFN: Enexemander
0
Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
I actually brought a hauler because it sounds relaxing to haul around commodities while listening to an audiobook or something. Now to figure out how to trade things in this game.
I actually brought a hauler because it sounds relaxing to haul around commodities while listening to an audiobook or something. Now to figure out how to trade things in this game.
Look up rare goods trading. It's great for smaller vessels. Basically you take a rare good from one end of the bubble and fly around collecting and trading them in when you get far enough away from that particular rare good vendor to be profitable.
Now, that being said, I've never done it, so I'm not really the guy to ask (I made my starting money mining).
Something like this, though-
Steam and CFN: Enexemander
0
Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
I tried mining but it felt like I needed collector drones for it to be efficient.
0
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
I actually wonder if it's possible to mind with the scarab but I haven't try getting back on the scarab ever since I had a small panic attack when I was trying to board the scarab back on the ship and watching my ship take off and fly away and having no idea on what I did.
I actually wonder if it's possible to mind with the scarab but I haven't try getting back on the scarab ever since I had a small panic attack when I was trying to board the scarab back on the ship and watching my ship take off and fly away and having no idea on what I did.
You gather basic engineering materials with the SRV, but the wave scanner you find them with is a bit broken at the moment.
If you dismiss your ship by accident (it's in the same menu as board ship), you can just recall ot again from the same menu once it disappears into orbit.
I tried mining but it felt like I needed collector drones for it to be efficient.
Yeah. If you want to actually make money at it, you need to have some limpets and a limpet controller. I wrote up a mining guide a while ago (around 2.0 I think?) that should still mostly be relevant. I'll put it in spoilers below.
So full disclosure here- I've been drinking. Fuller disclosure- I had to reformat my computer a while back and lost all my resource bookmarks, so most of this is off the cuff.
Just ask yourself, "Hey, do I want to shoot space rocks?" If yes, then read on. If not, then go shoot mans, play Ice Ring Trucker, or just fuck off into the wild black yonder for exploration data.
Still have your attention? Good.
Where to find rocks-
Okay, so you may be asking yourself "Self, I want to shoot rocks. Lots of rocks. But which rocks to shoot? There are so many!" And indeed, there are many rocks. Where do you want to shoot rocks? Primarily, you want to shoot rocks in rings around gas giants. Specifically, you want to shoot rings that are Pristine in reserves, and Metallic in nature. Metal Rich is not the same thing, by the way, it's one step down in quality. Gas giants can have different type of rings around them, as the system map will tell you. You want the ones that look silvery from hyperspace. Generally, the Resource Extraction Sites will be on the "right" rings for you. But you don't want to actually go into the RES, unless you like to fight in your mining vessel. (In which case, I'll look at your askance and wonder what the Hell is wrong is with you.)
Just take it slow and dip into the ring, and you'll drop down semi-naturally and not take any damage. If you took damage, you went in too damn fast, didn't you? Slow it down, whipper snapper!
Okay, so now you know where to go! Or wait, maybe you want to know EXACTLY where to go. Well here- http://www.hozbase.co.uk/elitedangerous . Find yourself a spot. Got it? Good.
Daddy, what's a rock fishin' pole look like, anyway?
Now, You know where to go for sure. But what do you want to bring to this fishing trip? Well, you probably already did the mining lasers, small refinery, and not much else thing. Do you hate yourself yet? No? Well, then you didn't do it long enough. Gathering space rocks manually sucks. Or I guess is a "Niche Interest" whatever that means. *takes a drink* What you want are nice little collector puppies to do that bullshit for you. Also, you kinda want to know if a space rock is a literal goldmine or a shitbrick before you go shooting at it, right? 'Course. So you want some prospector puppies too. Puppies bein' called "limpets" by those tightwads in the stations that sell 'em.
To get those, you need to buy the parts. I'm going to link my mining vessel right here. You can use this site to create your builds ahead of time. Nice little tool to use, but it helps to know what all the various stuff and sundry means first, so I'll link my rig and give you an idea of what's what.
9 bin refinery. You don't want to have to constantly swap out materials in your refinery. Shit's annoying. A nice big'un is just what the doctor ordered.
192 tons of Cargo- ideally, 192 tons of precious metals to take back with you. This can be a lot of money. Or a little. It's on you, in more ways than one. More on that later.
Two collector limpet controllers for a total of 3 out at one time (2+1. Try not to hurt yourself mathin' this one out, sonny).
One prospector controller.
2 and 2 mining lasers (total of 4, but only kind of.)
The rest is mostly bullshit that no one cares about, but for you weird o's out there, I'll go into it. Do you want to fight in this brick? NO. You want to run. There ain't no shields here. There aren't no fancy pew pew lasers here. To that effect, I've got fancy smancy scanners to see assholes a-comin' and not much else. We ain't jumping out of the system much in this rig, nor are we trying to impress the space rocks with our fancy flyin'. So we're pretty much nitty gritty on anything that ain't mining. You want to spend more on that stuff? Go ahead. I ain't your Daddy; do what you want.
On limpets, they take up cargo space. So go to the restock tab in a space station to load up. I like to take about half my cargo space in limpets when I head out. If you have extra, you can jettison the extra. If you don't have extra and need em, you're shit out of luck, ain't ya? So plan accordingly. If you're going to be real picky on your rock types, then you're going to need more prospectors.
How I mine for rock fish?
Okay, so now you've got your fishin' rig situated and you know which pond to dip your pole. Now how do you fish? Goddamn kid, you're full of questions. Here's a tip or two to get you started, but I should start by sayin' "Just shoot the damn rocks." For those more interested in the finer "art" of such a thing, here we go.
The Basics (as pertains to this rig, or one like it. What I would call a medium grade rig. That earlier thing you were doing with the manual pick up? That's shitbrick's cousin, pissbrick. Get out of pissbrick tier as fast as you can, mmkay?)
Prospectin'- Shoot your P-Puppy out at a rock. Having a prospector on a rock increases the yield for the rock dramatically. This is important for rare materials that sell well. You can aim dead center of your view and s P-Puppy will go straight for a long way. No need to kiss every random boulder. Your momma would be ashamed.
But what are you lookin' fer anyway? Well, you want rocks that fetch a lot at market of course. That's why you're here. (Unless you got other reasons. I'm not judgin'.... weirdos). Open your inventory for a rock you've cobbled together and it will tell you the price. Small explano- The refinery refines the chunks that blast off the asteroids into their pure form, that you then sell. When you reach 100% on something in the refinery, it plops on over into the Inventory.
The more rare, the better. You want Painite. You want Platinum. You want Palladium. In a pinch you'll take gold, but it's not really what you're after. Anything cheaper than gold is not worth your time. If you find a rock full of Indite, that's a shitbrick. Pass on it.
Position- You want your ship's nose to be pointing at the center of a rock's rotation. That means at a spot that doesn't move, for those smarties out there. For those real smarties out there that say "Well literally everything or nothing moves if you think about it, with Einstein's general relativity and all." At which case, good on you. If you want to just use your thrusters to maintain a proper stationary spot on the asteroid, fine. Your limpets will still need to do a little more work running down the space rocks (your rocks ain't thrusting, buddy. They're doing good old Newtonian equal and opposite reactions to getting blown off the rock perpendicular). We're getting off course, here. Anyway, you want to be shooting that not moving spot, so your limpets ain't movin' too much to keep up with em, and you ain't movin' at all. That way, limpet puppies are lapping up rocks like a dog drinking water. QUICK-LIKE, you see. Time is money, as those station-folk like to say.
Efficiency- Remember how I said 2 and 2 mining lasers? That was for a reason. This rig maintains 2 mining lasers continuously with 4 pips in weapons. If you find a great rock (say 40% Painite or whatever makes your sheets damp during shut eye), then you can just get in POSITION, shoot out your laser and use ctrl-alt-space to afk until the job's done. Easy. If your limpet to laser ratio is right, then as soon as a rock pops off the asteroid, then a puppy is picking it up and heading to your cargo hatch. Lasers don't stop, and puppies aren't standing around with nothing to do "No valid collection target" in other words.
But say you have a pesky rock that is 8% Painite and 42% Shitbrick. Now what? Well, you don't have to take the 42% Shitbrick all the way to the refinery stage. As the limpets come back (and there is a very distinct sound, and you can watch them from your radar and from just lookin' right out in front of you) you can open your refinery and gas the shit out the back while you munch on the good stuff in the front. But! If you do that with only 2 lasers, then your puppies are going to get bored and that's inefficient. So that's when you pour on all 4 lasers to a dead capacitor, swap over to the refinery and gas out, then pour on again. that way you're only fully refining the good stuff. EFFICIENTLY.
You see, puppies are stupid. They will try to pick up any refined rocks you jettison out, and they won't fucking quit. So to do that, you either need to wait for puppies to die (sadface), or you jet out into the black a bit so the puppies get outranged and die from being lonely (You heartless bastard.) Then feel free to be a Shitbrick Pioneer and start your own little colony before you fly back to do something useful.
Money- How much money can I make doing this? I don't know. How much can you make? Less than trading, and a damn sight less than smuggling, I'll wager. But the actual yield varies a lot. How picky are you with your rocks? If you're just afk-blasting every shitbrick, sure you'll come back faster. But people don't pay too much for shit. Some, but not much. The second thing is that some people like to pay a whole lot of money for certain rocks. Painite, Platinum and (oddly) Osium. So make sure you have some of that when you get back to the station, check the bulletin board, and see if you've got any rock hungry idiots willing to pay 3x or more trade value for your rocks. If you want, you can cycle through Open, Solo, and whatever Group PVE groups you're in to get new bulletin board missions. Some people think that's cheatin'. Up to you, says I.
Well that's that. And this is getting to be less good of an idea the more I sober up. But there it is, hombres. If you have any questions, let me know.
[edit] A note on those station livin' assholes- don't trust 'em. If you take out a bunch of bulletin missions for extraction BEFORE you leave the station, you can bet your sweet ass, cargo, and fancy ship that those station assholes will sell you out. You'll be interdicted faster than my Aunt Francis passes Taco Bell. Take those missions AFTER your hold is full and you're safely back at the station selling to those long-toothed bastards.
[edit 2- random tip edition]
Your Refinery does not count as inventory space. So if you're maxed out on inventory space, but still have open space in your Refinery, go ahead and fill it up. Every 100% material in there that can't go into inventory when it's maxed out, WILL go into your inventory as soon as there is space (like when you're selling everything at the station). So it's basically free inventory space.
Being allied with the local factions definitively opens up even lucrative economy class missions. I've seen missions paying above 5 millions for less than 8 economy passengers going about 100 ly.
I'd need some screens for that. I haven't seen economy going anywhere.
I've seen some economy missions that paid well for short jumps. I noticed it because I don't have any economy seats in my Orca. It's pretty much all Luxury, and I think I need to change that.
For reference, my home system is Okinura (or really all of Earth Defense Fleet space, which is several systems. I'm allied with that faction). Okinura is a (I think?) a High Tech system that was in Boom last time I was playing. Lots of lucrative passenger missions in there of all stripes for me.
The Orca is a pretty great little ship, by the way. Feels like it handles more like a Python than the space bus I was envisioning. I haven't upgraded anything on it by way of engineers. First trick is going to be that jump range (because damn. 13 lyrs or whatever is rough). Not sure if I want to upgrade the drives. She's fast enough as is.
Steam and CFN: Enexemander
0
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
edited October 2016
So I gave this game a shot yesterday; first impressions in the spoiler.
I spent the first twenty minutes configuring controls but I think I'm almost happy with them. I refuse to give up my 360 controller and just wish I could map a button combo with the joysticks.
No wait the first fifteen minutes were spent trying to get the game to launch because I needed to add the keys via Frontier's site before my email confirmation code would be accepted (which took me a while to realize because I kept getting a new code after each failure).
Then it took me about ten minutes to understand how supercruise works, or specifically how to stop. Didn't realize you had to target the thing you're approaching at first. Now I'm not sure why I seem to accelerate as I approach if I don't decelerate early enough, but I figure I'll just slow down in time.
I've gotten into a couple of fights; the combat seems pretty nice. I don't think I've managed to turn in a single bounty yet, though. The first time I got cocky and stopped to check out a high threat thing on the way back and got almost instantly obliterated. The second time I targeted one of the friendlies after the fight was done, couldn't find a way to untarget them, and i think that they got mad when I "redeployed" my hardpoints (my keybindings would almost constantly redeploy them when I tried to put them away; I've, uh, fixed that now). The last time I was just about to drop out of cruise at the station when the interdiction escape vector thing popped up, and I got so confused I let it happen.
I tried swapping out for a mining laser to give that a shot; it was neat to actually shoot bits off, and I like the cargo scoop minigame for now, but apparently I need a processor for ice or something?
Having played EVE I'm tremendously appreciative of the built in shipping of stored items. I assume the wait time is to prevent market shenanigans?
I have not yet forgotten to deploy landing gear, I'm pretty proud of that.
So far I've had fun with it. Priority number one seems to be getting a bigger jump drive, since most everything I tried to plot a route to had no route found, and I'm assuming that'll resolve itself.
Approximately how many credits am I aiming for if my goal is to get a ship that I can just fly around in to look at stuff without having to worry too much about the distances?
For supercruise: it's acceleration/deceleration is affected by gravity wells. The closer you are to a planet/star, the slower you will do either. A handy tip is when you have your destination targeted and are slowing down, adjust your throttle until the ETA (which is not really an ETA) is at 7 seconds or so. This is a sweet spot that ensures when you reach your target you'll be within the range to safely drop.
+1
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
I remembered reading something like that but couldn't remember the specific number, thanks.
I've just been going by the blue markings on the throttle indicator doodad, which I assume mean "put throttle here."
I never paid attention to the blue zone in supercruise, but it's important when flying around normally. Your ship is at its most maneuverable when your speed is in the blue zone.
I can't decide if it matters in SC or not, it does seem to make a difference in staying behind what you are interdicting though.
Someone posted about this on the official forms - it doesn't so much seem to be that you're in the blue zone, as much as you are staying farther away from your target, so their maneuvers don't cause quite as much deflection.
I'd need some screens for that. I haven't seen economy going anywhere.
I haven't seen any quite as good mission since then, but this one is indeed for 8 economy passengers 70 ly and pays decently:
I'm pretty sure something is screwed up with the algorithm calculating passenger payout. I just did a tourism mission with 3 stops for 6 first class passengers that payed 26 millions. Maybe about 1000 ly travel distance total, but still seems to be very good pay for little effort. It didn't even require luxury cabins, so the rich CEO got to take his tour on the War-Conda.
In SC there is no drift either, and that really is what screws me up (I spend most of my time flying a Cutter).
oof. I think mediums are the biggest I'm ever going to go as far as ships. I love my AspX, but man, she slides all over the place.
Speaking off the AspX, I know it's game balance and all, but it's still a little silly how poorly it yaws compared to some of the other ships. It has two freaking huge retros in front. Just fire them one at a time, and kill the opposite main engine, and you should be all
So I gave this game a shot yesterday; first impressions in the spoiler.
I spent the first twenty minutes configuring controls but I think I'm almost happy with them. I refuse to give up my 360 controller and just wish I could map a button combo with the joysticks.
No wait the first fifteen minutes were spent trying to get the game to launch because I needed to add the keys via Frontier's site before my email confirmation code would be accepted (which took me a while to realize because I kept getting a new code after each failure).
Then it took me about ten minutes to understand how supercruise works, or specifically how to stop. Didn't realize you had to target the thing you're approaching at first. Now I'm not sure why I seem to accelerate as I approach if I don't decelerate early enough, but I figure I'll just slow down in time.
I've gotten into a couple of fights; the combat seems pretty nice. I don't think I've managed to turn in a single bounty yet, though. The first time I got cocky and stopped to check out a high threat thing on the way back and got almost instantly obliterated. The second time I targeted one of the friendlies after the fight was done, couldn't find a way to untarget them, and i think that they got mad when I "redeployed" my hardpoints (my keybindings would almost constantly redeploy them when I tried to put them away; I've, uh, fixed that now). The last time I was just about to drop out of cruise at the station when the interdiction escape vector thing popped up, and I got so confused I let it happen.
I tried swapping out for a mining laser to give that a shot; it was neat to actually shoot bits off, and I like the cargo scoop minigame for now, but apparently I need a processor for ice or something?
Having played EVE I'm tremendously appreciative of the built in shipping of stored items. I assume the wait time is to prevent market shenanigans?
I have not yet forgotten to deploy landing gear, I'm pretty proud of that.
So far I've had fun with it. Priority number one seems to be getting a bigger jump drive, since most everything I tried to plot a route to had no route found, and I'm assuming that'll resolve itself.
Approximately how many credits am I aiming for if my goal is to get a ship that I can just fly around in to look at stuff without having to worry too much about the distances?
The cheapest ship with decent jumprange is the famous taxi-hauler:
It will run you a bit over 200k, could also be used for light courier duty and maybe also actual taxi missions. You will not do any fighting in that ship though, the next ship up with good jump range that actually has some teeth is the adder, and outfitting it to a good multi-role will cost you a 1-2 millions.
Edit: I should also mention that the Hauler is not recommended for long journeys as the engines are powered by the souls of the damned. Prolonged exposure may cause loss of sanity on extended exploration missions into the black.
For good supercruise drop out bind a key to 75% throttle , you want to be 6 sec away from your target,take a wide arc if you come in too hot/fast and know you will overshoot, the rest sorts itself out. Its agreat feeling when you drop out of supercruise and see the slot 9k in front of you, but it takes some practice!
it's not just 70 ly, it's 70 ly then 180 ly then possibly another 0-2 stops.
the sight-seeing ones can be alright. I've seen sight-seeing missions with 1 or 2 stops that paid alright, but you really gotta get that rng roll. I sometimes see 10-15 million sight-seeing payouts that don't take you more than 200 ly on any one particular stop. Those are rul good.
0
Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
So I'm flying an eagle trying to make enough credit to get myself a nice comfortable ship and trade and not constantly putting myself in danger.
I really hope this game get to the point where players can build stuff and walk around stations. That'll be the perfect game.
I found a tear down review for the new Thrustmaster throttle. Exactly what I was looking for in a review. Take the bad boy apart and tell me what you think.
I bought it immediately after watching. Looks like it's a bit better than I hoped for, with the obvious drawbacks of having some corners cut here and there for the sake of price. (plastic instead of metal, etc). But I didn't see anything that caused alarm in the review so I think I'm golden. Now I just need to wait until I guess this weekend to get my mitts on it. Well, mitt.
I really want that analog directional thruster control. I feel like it's the final piece to the puzzle so far as flying FA:OFF (in terms of gear, at least).
it's not just 70 ly, it's 70 ly then 180 ly then possibly another 0-2 stops.
the sight-seeing ones can be alright. I've seen sight-seeing missions with 1 or 2 stops that paid alright, but you really gotta get that rng roll. I sometimes see 10-15 million sight-seeing payouts that don't take you more than 200 ly on any one particular stop. Those are rul good.
Ah, I highlighted the wrong mission, the one I was thinking of was the one below, 1.3 mil for 70 ly... still, I don't mind the sight-seeing missions when they work (on the flip side, scouting for the tourist beacon is a mini-game in itself! Not when they are on planet surfaces though), they can be relaxing and you get to see some nice views.
I set up my 780 m/s courier as a surface explorer and spent some time looking for silicate vapour geysers but didn't have much luck. Couldn't even find any geysers, and the 2.2 patch has made flying at surfaces really hard for me with all the stutering and bad framerates.
However, flying at such high speeds is pretty interesting, even a very light ship like the courier starts behaving like something much heavier with lots of drift. The maneuvering thrusters can't keep up at all and the flight turns into something much more newtonian, to use an over-used term. It kinda reminds me of flying in I-War 2 if anyone remembers that game.
0
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
Is there any type of active scanning, or is it just setting range/power consumption? Also, is there a list of signals or do I just have to look around? I've only tried once, but on the bounty mission I took I had no clue how to actually find the ship.
I've also not had too much trouble with threat level 1 signals, but got obliterated almost instantly on the last few level 2s. I mean seconds after I pop in. I'm assuming there's not much to be done except get bigger ships? The first time I tried one I was able to put up a bit of a fight, but I have no idea if that was just luck or if they vary that much within threat levels. The level 4 I tried had an Anaconda being shot at by the police so I got to plink away at it for a while before it turned on me.
I also, uh, can't figure out how to get back into the ship from the rover. Haven't googled it yet but I was totally mystified in game.
Anything that has big ships going up against the police, hang around and see if the latter can take the former down (unless you're automatically marked as an enemy, that is). If so, wait until they're at 10% and then take the occasional potshot at them. You'll get fairly nice bounties that way.
With respect to getting back on board with your SRV, you need to drive underneath the ship, which adds "Board ship" to your SRV menu. This video shows you how:
Bring up the role panel between your legs and Recall the ship, if it isn't already landed nearby.
Park under the hatch.
Use the role panel again and select Board.
0
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
Huh, I must not have stopped quite in the right spot, because I am pretty sure I checked that menu (what with accidentally dismissing the ship and then needing to recall it). Thanks!
Depending on the topography, it's quite easy to get stuck between the ground and the ship, in which case you could be almost but not quite where you need to be to be picked up.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
There's a pretty funny story about a guy with the name Bomba Luigi getting stuck on a planet after he tried to recall his ship and it blew up on terrain. He was stuck in a canyon or something, it's on the official forums.
In that particular case, Bomba put out a call for "ship-rats", and lot's of people responded. Sadly, boarding another ship is not possible in game, but in the end things worked out ok as a replacement ship eventually was sent out to him! You can read about Bomba's adventure on planet Wilson here:
On the continuing series of "Asp-in-front-of-things", here is my contribution:
Not exactly an Asp, but close enough. Last night I took a sightseeing mission that among other destinations (Maia and some others in the bubble so it took me a while), took me to this huge waterworld. It was a nice trip with splendid views, passenger missions can be a relaxing way to spend a play-session, and in this particular case it payed 40 millions!
Unrelated: a nice video showing ships in relation to the mail-slot. Watch out for that space-loach!
Posts
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Even mediocre luxury/first class passengers are lucrative. Don't remember how much the orca is.
You do need to have good standing with the faction in order for those quests to open up. It's not difficult to do this (especially with the dominant faction). Go bounty hunting, go mining, do some trading, and if you go out exploring- make sure to turn it in at a station controlled by your desired faction. Exploration data is insanely good at building faction rep. Take a mission here and there for them while doing one of those things, and you'll be in their good books in no time.
An Orca is 48.5 mill. I have mine A rated, reinforced hull, with luxury cabins for about double that. You can get by with much less. She's a fast little bugger for her size, so escaping danger doesn't seem to be too rough. You also don't need an Orca or Beluga for the passenger missions. You can install the modules like normal on any ship. An Anaconda is probably better for passenger missions than anything else? Anas have crazy jump range, and plenty of room for passenger modules.
Look up rare goods trading. It's great for smaller vessels. Basically you take a rare good from one end of the bubble and fly around collecting and trading them in when you get far enough away from that particular rare good vendor to be profitable.
Now, that being said, I've never done it, so I'm not really the guy to ask (I made my starting money mining).
Something like this, though-
Or target the right spot on the asteroid so that the spin sends the fragments directly towards your cargo scoop.
That's impossible! Even for a computer.
You gather basic engineering materials with the SRV, but the wave scanner you find them with is a bit broken at the moment.
If you dismiss your ship by accident (it's in the same menu as board ship), you can just recall ot again from the same menu once it disappears into orbit.
Yeah. If you want to actually make money at it, you need to have some limpets and a limpet controller. I wrote up a mining guide a while ago (around 2.0 I think?) that should still mostly be relevant. I'll put it in spoilers below.
So full disclosure here- I've been drinking. Fuller disclosure- I had to reformat my computer a while back and lost all my resource bookmarks, so most of this is off the cuff.
Just ask yourself, "Hey, do I want to shoot space rocks?" If yes, then read on. If not, then go shoot mans, play Ice Ring Trucker, or just fuck off into the wild black yonder for exploration data.
Still have your attention? Good.
Where to find rocks-
Okay, so you may be asking yourself "Self, I want to shoot rocks. Lots of rocks. But which rocks to shoot? There are so many!" And indeed, there are many rocks. Where do you want to shoot rocks? Primarily, you want to shoot rocks in rings around gas giants. Specifically, you want to shoot rings that are Pristine in reserves, and Metallic in nature. Metal Rich is not the same thing, by the way, it's one step down in quality. Gas giants can have different type of rings around them, as the system map will tell you. You want the ones that look silvery from hyperspace. Generally, the Resource Extraction Sites will be on the "right" rings for you. But you don't want to actually go into the RES, unless you like to fight in your mining vessel. (In which case, I'll look at your askance and wonder what the Hell is wrong is with you.)
Just take it slow and dip into the ring, and you'll drop down semi-naturally and not take any damage. If you took damage, you went in too damn fast, didn't you? Slow it down, whipper snapper!
Okay, so now you know where to go! Or wait, maybe you want to know EXACTLY where to go. Well here- http://www.hozbase.co.uk/elitedangerous . Find yourself a spot. Got it? Good.
Daddy, what's a rock fishin' pole look like, anyway?
To get those, you need to buy the parts. I'm going to link my mining vessel right here. You can use this site to create your builds ahead of time. Nice little tool to use, but it helps to know what all the various stuff and sundry means first, so I'll link my rig and give you an idea of what's what.
https://coriolis.io/outfit/type_7_transport/04C5C5D4D3A3A5C2l2l2l2l000000020505040420C0P4C5.Iw18aQ==.Aw18aQ==
So what does this amount to that's of interest?
9 bin refinery. You don't want to have to constantly swap out materials in your refinery. Shit's annoying. A nice big'un is just what the doctor ordered.
192 tons of Cargo- ideally, 192 tons of precious metals to take back with you. This can be a lot of money. Or a little. It's on you, in more ways than one. More on that later.
Two collector limpet controllers for a total of 3 out at one time (2+1. Try not to hurt yourself mathin' this one out, sonny).
One prospector controller.
2 and 2 mining lasers (total of 4, but only kind of.)
The rest is mostly bullshit that no one cares about, but for you weird o's out there, I'll go into it. Do you want to fight in this brick? NO. You want to run. There ain't no shields here. There aren't no fancy pew pew lasers here. To that effect, I've got fancy smancy scanners to see assholes a-comin' and not much else. We ain't jumping out of the system much in this rig, nor are we trying to impress the space rocks with our fancy flyin'. So we're pretty much nitty gritty on anything that ain't mining. You want to spend more on that stuff? Go ahead. I ain't your Daddy; do what you want.
On limpets, they take up cargo space. So go to the restock tab in a space station to load up. I like to take about half my cargo space in limpets when I head out. If you have extra, you can jettison the extra. If you don't have extra and need em, you're shit out of luck, ain't ya? So plan accordingly. If you're going to be real picky on your rock types, then you're going to need more prospectors.
How I mine for rock fish?
The Basics (as pertains to this rig, or one like it. What I would call a medium grade rig. That earlier thing you were doing with the manual pick up? That's shitbrick's cousin, pissbrick. Get out of pissbrick tier as fast as you can, mmkay?)
Prospectin'- Shoot your P-Puppy out at a rock. Having a prospector on a rock increases the yield for the rock dramatically. This is important for rare materials that sell well. You can aim dead center of your view and s P-Puppy will go straight for a long way. No need to kiss every random boulder. Your momma would be ashamed.
But what are you lookin' fer anyway? Well, you want rocks that fetch a lot at market of course. That's why you're here. (Unless you got other reasons. I'm not judgin'.... weirdos). Open your inventory for a rock you've cobbled together and it will tell you the price. Small explano- The refinery refines the chunks that blast off the asteroids into their pure form, that you then sell. When you reach 100% on something in the refinery, it plops on over into the Inventory.
The more rare, the better. You want Painite. You want Platinum. You want Palladium. In a pinch you'll take gold, but it's not really what you're after. Anything cheaper than gold is not worth your time. If you find a rock full of Indite, that's a shitbrick. Pass on it.
Position- You want your ship's nose to be pointing at the center of a rock's rotation. That means at a spot that doesn't move, for those smarties out there. For those real smarties out there that say "Well literally everything or nothing moves if you think about it, with Einstein's general relativity and all." At which case, good on you. If you want to just use your thrusters to maintain a proper stationary spot on the asteroid, fine. Your limpets will still need to do a little more work running down the space rocks (your rocks ain't thrusting, buddy. They're doing good old Newtonian equal and opposite reactions to getting blown off the rock perpendicular). We're getting off course, here. Anyway, you want to be shooting that not moving spot, so your limpets ain't movin' too much to keep up with em, and you ain't movin' at all. That way, limpet puppies are lapping up rocks like a dog drinking water. QUICK-LIKE, you see. Time is money, as those station-folk like to say.
Efficiency- Remember how I said 2 and 2 mining lasers? That was for a reason. This rig maintains 2 mining lasers continuously with 4 pips in weapons. If you find a great rock (say 40% Painite or whatever makes your sheets damp during shut eye), then you can just get in POSITION, shoot out your laser and use ctrl-alt-space to afk until the job's done. Easy. If your limpet to laser ratio is right, then as soon as a rock pops off the asteroid, then a puppy is picking it up and heading to your cargo hatch. Lasers don't stop, and puppies aren't standing around with nothing to do "No valid collection target" in other words.
But say you have a pesky rock that is 8% Painite and 42% Shitbrick. Now what? Well, you don't have to take the 42% Shitbrick all the way to the refinery stage. As the limpets come back (and there is a very distinct sound, and you can watch them from your radar and from just lookin' right out in front of you) you can open your refinery and gas the shit out the back while you munch on the good stuff in the front. But! If you do that with only 2 lasers, then your puppies are going to get bored and that's inefficient. So that's when you pour on all 4 lasers to a dead capacitor, swap over to the refinery and gas out, then pour on again. that way you're only fully refining the good stuff. EFFICIENTLY.
You see, puppies are stupid. They will try to pick up any refined rocks you jettison out, and they won't fucking quit. So to do that, you either need to wait for puppies to die (sadface), or you jet out into the black a bit so the puppies get outranged and die from being lonely (You heartless bastard.) Then feel free to be a Shitbrick Pioneer and start your own little colony before you fly back to do something useful.
Money- How much money can I make doing this? I don't know. How much can you make? Less than trading, and a damn sight less than smuggling, I'll wager. But the actual yield varies a lot. How picky are you with your rocks? If you're just afk-blasting every shitbrick, sure you'll come back faster. But people don't pay too much for shit. Some, but not much. The second thing is that some people like to pay a whole lot of money for certain rocks. Painite, Platinum and (oddly) Osium. So make sure you have some of that when you get back to the station, check the bulletin board, and see if you've got any rock hungry idiots willing to pay 3x or more trade value for your rocks. If you want, you can cycle through Open, Solo, and whatever Group PVE groups you're in to get new bulletin board missions. Some people think that's cheatin'. Up to you, says I.
Well that's that. And this is getting to be less good of an idea the more I sober up. But there it is, hombres. If you have any questions, let me know.
[edit] A note on those station livin' assholes- don't trust 'em. If you take out a bunch of bulletin missions for extraction BEFORE you leave the station, you can bet your sweet ass, cargo, and fancy ship that those station assholes will sell you out. You'll be interdicted faster than my Aunt Francis passes Taco Bell. Take those missions AFTER your hold is full and you're safely back at the station selling to those long-toothed bastards.
[edit 2- random tip edition]
Your Refinery does not count as inventory space. So if you're maxed out on inventory space, but still have open space in your Refinery, go ahead and fill it up. Every 100% material in there that can't go into inventory when it's maxed out, WILL go into your inventory as soon as there is space (like when you're selling everything at the station). So it's basically free inventory space.
If you want to haul 48 economy class people to a space football game, go for it, but it's like 100k or something instead.
I'd need some screens for that. I haven't seen economy going anywhere.
I've seen some economy missions that paid well for short jumps. I noticed it because I don't have any economy seats in my Orca. It's pretty much all Luxury, and I think I need to change that.
For reference, my home system is Okinura (or really all of Earth Defense Fleet space, which is several systems. I'm allied with that faction). Okinura is a (I think?) a High Tech system that was in Boom last time I was playing. Lots of lucrative passenger missions in there of all stripes for me.
The Orca is a pretty great little ship, by the way. Feels like it handles more like a Python than the space bus I was envisioning. I haven't upgraded anything on it by way of engineers. First trick is going to be that jump range (because damn. 13 lyrs or whatever is rough). Not sure if I want to upgrade the drives. She's fast enough as is.
No wait the first fifteen minutes were spent trying to get the game to launch because I needed to add the keys via Frontier's site before my email confirmation code would be accepted (which took me a while to realize because I kept getting a new code after each failure).
Then it took me about ten minutes to understand how supercruise works, or specifically how to stop. Didn't realize you had to target the thing you're approaching at first. Now I'm not sure why I seem to accelerate as I approach if I don't decelerate early enough, but I figure I'll just slow down in time.
I've gotten into a couple of fights; the combat seems pretty nice. I don't think I've managed to turn in a single bounty yet, though. The first time I got cocky and stopped to check out a high threat thing on the way back and got almost instantly obliterated. The second time I targeted one of the friendlies after the fight was done, couldn't find a way to untarget them, and i think that they got mad when I "redeployed" my hardpoints (my keybindings would almost constantly redeploy them when I tried to put them away; I've, uh, fixed that now). The last time I was just about to drop out of cruise at the station when the interdiction escape vector thing popped up, and I got so confused I let it happen.
I tried swapping out for a mining laser to give that a shot; it was neat to actually shoot bits off, and I like the cargo scoop minigame for now, but apparently I need a processor for ice or something?
Having played EVE I'm tremendously appreciative of the built in shipping of stored items. I assume the wait time is to prevent market shenanigans?
I have not yet forgotten to deploy landing gear, I'm pretty proud of that.
So far I've had fun with it. Priority number one seems to be getting a bigger jump drive, since most everything I tried to plot a route to had no route found, and I'm assuming that'll resolve itself.
Approximately how many credits am I aiming for if my goal is to get a ship that I can just fly around in to look at stuff without having to worry too much about the distances?
I've just been going by the blue markings on the throttle indicator doodad, which I assume mean "put throttle here."
Someone posted about this on the official forms - it doesn't so much seem to be that you're in the blue zone, as much as you are staying farther away from your target, so their maneuvers don't cause quite as much deflection.
I haven't seen any quite as good mission since then, but this one is indeed for 8 economy passengers 70 ly and pays decently:
I'm pretty sure something is screwed up with the algorithm calculating passenger payout. I just did a tourism mission with 3 stops for 6 first class passengers that payed 26 millions. Maybe about 1000 ly travel distance total, but still seems to be very good pay for little effort. It didn't even require luxury cabins, so the rich CEO got to take his tour on the War-Conda.
oof. I think mediums are the biggest I'm ever going to go as far as ships. I love my AspX, but man, she slides all over the place.
Speaking off the AspX, I know it's game balance and all, but it's still a little silly how poorly it yaws compared to some of the other ships. It has two freaking huge retros in front. Just fire them one at a time, and kill the opposite main engine, and you should be all
The cheapest ship with decent jumprange is the famous taxi-hauler:
https://coriolis.io/outfit/hauler/0p3t3F0l3d3s3f2---01303u2h.Iw19A===.Aw19A===
It will run you a bit over 200k, could also be used for light courier duty and maybe also actual taxi missions. You will not do any fighting in that ship though, the next ship up with good jump range that actually has some teeth is the adder, and outfitting it to a good multi-role will cost you a 1-2 millions.
Edit: I should also mention that the Hauler is not recommended for long journeys as the engines are powered by the souls of the damned. Prolonged exposure may cause loss of sanity on extended exploration missions into the black.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=deGevQ1vnLY
it's not just 70 ly, it's 70 ly then 180 ly then possibly another 0-2 stops.
the sight-seeing ones can be alright. I've seen sight-seeing missions with 1 or 2 stops that paid alright, but you really gotta get that rng roll. I sometimes see 10-15 million sight-seeing payouts that don't take you more than 200 ly on any one particular stop. Those are rul good.
I really hope this game get to the point where players can build stuff and walk around stations. That'll be the perfect game.
I bought it immediately after watching. Looks like it's a bit better than I hoped for, with the obvious drawbacks of having some corners cut here and there for the sake of price. (plastic instead of metal, etc). But I didn't see anything that caused alarm in the review so I think I'm golden. Now I just need to wait until I guess this weekend to get my mitts on it. Well, mitt.
I really want that analog directional thruster control. I feel like it's the final piece to the puzzle so far as flying FA:OFF (in terms of gear, at least).
Super stoked for it.
Ah, I highlighted the wrong mission, the one I was thinking of was the one below, 1.3 mil for 70 ly... still, I don't mind the sight-seeing missions when they work (on the flip side, scouting for the tourist beacon is a mini-game in itself! Not when they are on planet surfaces though), they can be relaxing and you get to see some nice views.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/303036-Fungal-Life-Found-on-Colonia-3-C-A
Obisidan ant talks about it here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iSorRmyrd4s
I set up my 780 m/s courier as a surface explorer and spent some time looking for silicate vapour geysers but didn't have much luck. Couldn't even find any geysers, and the 2.2 patch has made flying at surfaces really hard for me with all the stutering and bad framerates.
However, flying at such high speeds is pretty interesting, even a very light ship like the courier starts behaving like something much heavier with lots of drift. The maneuvering thrusters can't keep up at all and the flight turns into something much more newtonian, to use an over-used term. It kinda reminds me of flying in I-War 2 if anyone remembers that game.
I've also not had too much trouble with threat level 1 signals, but got obliterated almost instantly on the last few level 2s. I mean seconds after I pop in. I'm assuming there's not much to be done except get bigger ships? The first time I tried one I was able to put up a bit of a fight, but I have no idea if that was just luck or if they vary that much within threat levels. The level 4 I tried had an Anaconda being shot at by the police so I got to plink away at it for a while before it turned on me.
I also, uh, can't figure out how to get back into the ship from the rover. Haven't googled it yet but I was totally mystified in game.
With respect to getting back on board with your SRV, you need to drive underneath the ship, which adds "Board ship" to your SRV menu. This video shows you how:
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Park under the hatch.
Use the role panel again and select Board.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/268862-Help-I-need-Ship-Rats!
On the continuing series of "Asp-in-front-of-things", here is my contribution:
Not exactly an Asp, but close enough. Last night I took a sightseeing mission that among other destinations (Maia and some others in the bubble so it took me a while), took me to this huge waterworld. It was a nice trip with splendid views, passenger missions can be a relaxing way to spend a play-session, and in this particular case it payed 40 millions!
Unrelated: a nice video showing ships in relation to the mail-slot. Watch out for that space-loach!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=LRYWlezRLE4&feature=youtu.be