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Stolen with permission from Drake
Elite: Dangerous is an online spaceships game in a completely simulated Milky Way galaxy in the year 3300. Mankind has settled a volume of space hundreds of light years in diameter. Three superpowers exist here, the Federation, the Empire and the Alliance. Each of these three major powers are teeming with factions. Then there are independent factions of all types, from egalitarian democrats to dictatorial slavers. Commanders (the in-game reference to all players) can gain and lose reputation with any of these powers, including the three superpowers. And there are three ways to build your reputation. Three paths to become Elite.
COMBAT
Become a fearless combat pilot. Engage in military conflict, assassination, mercenary wetwork, bounty hunting, piracy or just go plain psycho fucking nuts and see how long you can keep going.
TRADE
Become a shrewd merchant. Ply the trade lanes, scraping every last credit you can from your cargo hold and Frameshift Drive. Collect necessary resources for a particular faction, reinforcing their strength and position. Gather food and guns for the starving and oppressed, and if are particularly charitable you just may gain allies that much faster.
EXPLORE
Roam the uncharted systems, looking for the next big strike. Planets rich with resources, the orbits of stars, planets, moons, asteroid and more are out there for you to discover and chart. The right data can make a man rich. And there is the frontier, a place stalked by alien menaces and escaped rogue AI. Wonders surely await amongst the danger.
All of this takes place in an online sandbox simulation of the Milky Way galaxy. The players are members of an elite organization, the Pilot's Federation, a kind of self policing loosely organized spacer's guild. Humanities interstellar civilization depends upon this nominally neutral organization for survival. Without them the life blood of trade and exploration would cease. The Commanders of this group have a ranking system rooted in combat kills, the starting rank is Harmless and the highest ranking is Elite. Over the years the ranking has been expanded to Trade and Exploration as well bringing us to the ultimate ranking of Triple Elite. And rank hath its priveleges. As a pilot in this federation you will engage in all manners of activity, all of your choosing. You can be a defender of the downtrodden, a murderous psychopath, a calculating and amoral criminal or whatever you set out to achieve. It may not happen overnight, but if you stick with it and pay attention to the details you just may end up living the galactic space opera of your dreams.
Here is the controversial launch trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6peGu2yG6o
Yes, it's rather combat heavy and hyperbolic. I can say that while it may not be entirely accurate I have had many moments that felt like the moments shown in the trailer. As far as hyperbolic CGI trailers for video games go it's pretty much standard fare. And there is an absolute wealth of real gameplay footage and information. Like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8umAuCmqdo4
And this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeIeZdvMS9Y
Ok yeah that ended up being a lot of combat too. I guess you do fight a lot in Elite so maybe that launch trailer isn't so out there?
Even so there are other activities you can pursue, like the Buckyball Racing League.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg8pO25DtUM
Or the Fuel Rats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZj3mbZVnNI
Horizons and Beyond
Now, almost a year after launch we have a new expansion pack coming, called Horizons. The big feature here is going to be planetary landings, including zipping around in rad buggies with guns. Screenshots have already shown wrecks to explore and drones to fight. Who knows what other new surprises will be waiting for us down there? But wait I hear you say, 2015 isn't over yet! That's right. The base game is getting a few more updates before the new season launches. CQC Championship will launch practically any day now, bringing quick, round based arena combat to Elite with balanced teams. Test your skill in a level playing field where you don't have to put your savings on the line. Afterwards will come update 1.5 aka The Ships update. We'll be getting quite a few new vessels to fly around in. And the base game will continue to receive updates as well, but for the really big features like planetary landings you'll need to buy the seasonal expansions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4sAe16UTDg
NEW SHIT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rSC0lNuNyw
That's all the new shit I've got for now. I may update this OP. Nah, who am I kidding. No one reads these fucking things anyway.
Private Group:
@timfiji with his E:D name: CMDR Archpriest so friend request them in the game if you'd like.
Axen wrote: »
I've had a few people ask me how I changed my HUD colors. So I figure I'll just post what you need here.
For reference mine looks like this;
Spoilershow
First you'll need Dr. Kaii's ED Profiler and here is the thread on it. Technically you can do all this by hand, but the profiler makes it super easy.
Next I recommend checking out NO2O! The Definitive List of color presets complete with screenshots. You can certainly expirement with your own values, but that thread has numerous tried and true setups and chances are one of em will catch your fancy.
edit- Oh yeah, the ED Profiler actually comes with all the NO2O! presets.
Some other random things.
Sidewinder Radio is a good "in-universe" radio station. They mostly play electronica, dubstep, British pop, etc. My favorite part is the awesomely done commercials and the Galnet News updates. Kinda handy to keep you in the loop.
Lave Radio is a great podcast in which they discuss all sorts of ED related topics. From general mechanics, upcoming patches, lore and other fun nonsense. They also have their own streaming radio station with commercials and updates.
I usually listen to Sidewinder Radio and will switch to Lave Radio podcast as they come out.
Elite: Dangerous Database is an insanely useful website. With it you can find the most likely locations for anything nearest to you. I say "most likely" because things do update and change from time to time so the info may not be up-to-date. Still, it has proved to be incredibly useful to me for locating ships, commodities, anything really.
Switch: SW-2322-2047-3148 Steam: Archpriest -- Selling Board Games for Medical Bills- Ask if interested!
Posts
It'll be worth it when I get it all set up, but it's gonna take a while. I'm hoping I can drop into ice rings and not get terrible frames now, at least.
I've customized quite a bit where I'm afraid to unplug my USBs for my HOTAS for ruining that! It's probably no where near your customization and I even know I have more buttons I need to map.
Have they announced a confirmed date for 2.4 to drop?
I lost mine once. Now I religiously back them up to cloud storage.
I survived somehow, with 6% hull integrity and a smashed canopy.
Oh my stars. That is the best.
Last night though I got cocky. I saw laser blasts well outside my sensor range and boosted into the conflict. I guess I wasn't careful enough with my targeting -- I was momentarily confused to see I had been fined 200 credits. Probably five seconds later I was so much space dust.
That hurt. I had probably $1.5 million in unclaimed bounties.
It's another one of elites lessons I've learned the hard way.
Your best bet is to find a system with several federation aligned factions, run a few missions with them to improve your standing with them, and then start board hopping (login to multiplayer, check the board, log out, login to solo, check the board, etc). Keep board hopping until you find a promotion mission.
Once you get your Sol permit, I recommend that you do all of the above at Sol for future promotion missions. Sol has a lot of subfactions present and 100% of them are aligned with the Federation. This gives you a lot of dicerolls for finding a promotion mission.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I don't know how landing works in NMS, but I usually do my planetary landing missions in my Imperial Courier. It's extremely low mass and extremely strong shields basically let me just fly into the planet like a lawn dart.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
It's a lesson I keep having to relearn.
Whelp the planetary scanning mission have dried up at whatever the heck system where they're all on the one planet. It's civil war time, so instead of tasty scanning gigs there are shooty missions and not many of those either. Mission selection has been pretty weak overall for a few days, not many missions on offer period and lots of times they're cargo import gigs. I wonder if someone mucked with the mission mix on the server side.
The galactic powers, online and how busy the system/state all seem to factor in sometimes.
I'm farming rep in Niu Hsing for Fed and it is still working. Take the missions I can, roll between Online/Group/Solo and grab as much as I can. Sometimes I get a bundle and sometimes four maybe five data deliveries.
One thing I will say is always make sure you empty your cargo rewards as that can effect the spawning of missions as you will have no room for rewards.
Super psyched to solidly be in line to collect some millions today either way.
This isn't true. Civil War is one of the best possible states for planetary scan missions, and Quince is incredibly profitable right now because of its current civil war.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I am pretty sure my Cutter is bent upward in the middle from these types of landings.
EDIT: Wait, maybe not since supposedly PP kills don't give you the bounties.
Right now I'm toying with the idea of creating a Haz-rez miner. Something that can simultaneously hunt down painite/platinum in haz rez site while shrugging off all assailants by its lonesome and then lugging the loot over to a station with high sell prices.
I'm looking at the big three, and currently have an Imperial Cutter that hasn't been fully optimized by engineers. I've been playing around with the limpet controller distribution, and depending on how I last left her she can fire off a spread of 6-8 prospector limpets to rapidly check multiple asteroids for painite/platinum/palladium. She's currently armed with a fighter bay and turreted weapons for fending off small fry while I focus on harvesting the painite loot. The huge hardpoint is a beam laser to be brought to bear against larger foes.
She works fairly well, but she struggles when she finds herself outnumbered six to one against wings composed of Condas, FDL's, FAS, and clippers. She struggles to keep her big gun on target, and the usual trick of "just fly backwards" isn't available since I don't want to abandon and lose track of my high value rock. Also, since most of her internals are full of mining equipment, she can't boat the infinite supply of shield cells that that most cutters run. The turrets might be overkill against the small fry. I may try replacing them with forward firing guns to better deal with the big stuff and just letting the fighter deal with the small fry by itself. Alternatively I also eventually plan on experimenting with my Conda and eventually a Corvette.
The conda should have better large turret coverage and superior jump range, but she has weaker shields, smaller cargo capacity, and if memory serves her medium hardpoints are in an awkward location at the rear of the ship that makes it tricky to close with 250m for mining some asteroids.
The corvette would have the worst turret coverage, but again the turrets may be a waste and her twin huge hardpoints and superior mobility should make her better at destroying the large threats that my cutter is having trouble with when trying to defend its rock. That jump range though...
I've also looked at the mining lance as a potential part of the ship's kit. The significantly longer mining range looks desirable, but literally everything else about the mining lance looks garbage (only size 1's available, HUGE heat and power drain, abysmal mining rate and damage rate). I haven't bothered with powerplay at all, but I doubt it's worth the time to work with her for a month to stockpile a set of lances on the off chance that they ever buff the things some day.
edit:
For those who are running Quince, I recommend using the Imperial Courier rather than the sidewinder that everyone seems to suggest. The rebuy cost from the suicide trip back to the station is higher, but the courier is capable of MUCH faster transits to the surface. It's MUCH faster is realspace flight as you chase around the reticle in search of the buildings (especially if engineered), the shields are strong enough that you can be extremely rough with your landings, and in my experience approaching the planet in supercruise with the search site eclipsed by the central ring on the canopy tends to result in a 50-60 degree dive directly down towards the surface. Looks like I was getting lucky with the approaches.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Armchair, the mediums on the conda are towards the front and sides of the ship, the hardpoints in the back are the small ones. Quick input on your hazres-miner: I think I'd keep the turrets, and replace the huge beam with a plasma or cannon. The turrets should strip the shields of any npc fairly quickly, and then you'd just have to finish bigger ships of with the heavy hitter.
I wish that there were large multicannon turrets. I'd like the Battlestar Galactica feel of multicannon turrets, but at most I can put medium ones on my ship
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Yeah, I'm not sure if it was just the RNG, but once I sold off all the cargo rewards I started rolling in some lucrative scan missions. And it wasn't as if I was short of cargo space, I had about 150 tons free. Could be coincidence or maybe there's something wonky there.
Got bored after a while and headed into Imperial space with 185M in the bank. Next step is seeing how many excess Imperial rank points the game keeps track of. I'm pegged at 100% with None as my rank, so this should be interesting.
Then it's off to quince to get maybe another couple hundreds of mill and get some spare cash after purchasing the corvette.
Three things to do on my list is join the group here, explore alien sites and slowly build a ship (corvette perhaps) in 2.4 to explore and deal with the alien menace.
Also that krait looks sweet. Nice to see one of the old ships resurface.
I've been thinking of this as well, and I'm looking at the Anaconda for it. I have the choice between that and a Corvette. Personally, I just want to keep the Corvette as a warship, but even if I didn't, the Anaconda has an advantage here- it has a faster pitch. That's important when you're not flying at fighting speed often. Why would you, when you're trying to defend your asteroid?
The mediums are awkward because they're at either side of a very large ship. That's fine with me, because those are going to be my mining lasers. I don't care if they have shit convergence.
Right now, the galaxy is quiet. They have not yet returned in force. They lurk on dead worlds that should hold no life...their forces gather in shadow.
Once they return, nothing will be the same. (We hope, cuz otherwise this update is gonna be laaame!)
If I remember right in the old games they had the ability to pull you out of witch space and just leave your ass in the middle of no where.
I'm pumped for it and have faith that frontier are going to do a good job.
Perhaps I was just getting unlucky, but Niu Hsing was giving me crumbs as far as courier missions are concerned.
edit:
right now I'm flying around checking outbreak worlds in search of a system with multiple federal factions in outbreak status so that I can throw money at them.
edit:
One potential candidate is Bowen Dock at HR 8061. It's an agricultural colony with about 4 federation factions. Two of them are in an outbreak state, and combined they account for about 50% of the system influence. Unforunately it's 7k ls from the jump-in point, so that's a bit of a drag. They put out a lot of donation missions where they ask for credits, advanced medicine, agri-medicine, basic medicine, progenitor cells, performance enhancers, and combat stabilisers. The combat stabilisers are contraband.
The medicines can be purchased from Meyrink Orbital in LHS 3666, which is 37 LY away, and 8 ls from the jump-in point. Basic medicines purchased at Meyrink Orbital and sold at Bowen dock net a 2500 credit per ton profit.
The donations quickly boosted me from 65% warrant officer to Ensign. Tomorrow I'll probably do some more surveying to try to find a system with 3+ fed factions in outbreak, or a 2 faction outbreak station that isn't 7k ls from the jump-in point. The quickest way to do this checking is to just search for known Federation aligned outbreak systems with large landing pads on EDDB, sorted by distance from Sol and operating under the assumption that systems closer to Sol will tend to have multiple federation aligned factions present. Upon jumping into the system, check the right hand panel to see precisely which sub-factions are present and what states they are experiencing.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
If you want to kill things for rank, fed systems at war will give reliable assassination missions. They borked massacre missions in CZs a while ago, but they still sometimes show up. *shrug* If you want to hunt pirates, find a fed planetary base with a military economy. They have a great chance at spawning military missions (as you would expect!)
I started the trip home from Colonia. I want to be at or near the Bubble when 2.4 kicks off and hopefully we get some hostile Thargoids. I didn't feel good about the sidewinder reset option. In my heart, I'll always be a bit of a roleplayer it seems. I'm slowly getting my setup back online anyway, so it gives me time. Facetracking is back, and I found some settings to make it more responsive than it once was, so that's a bonus. I still need to train Windows Voice Controls to understand me (again), and then Voice Attack will be back online.
Getting there! Except I've not been flying in regular space for so long I'm sure I'll be trash in combat for a while, but that's the game. Haha.
Yeah. It takes a while. The thing is, you are really building piloting skill as you go and that takes time. The very beginning of the game has a minimum requirement - you have to be able to dock. When I first started I couldn't do it right. In fact my first death in the game was getting angry at the station for not letting me dock, and proceeding to shoot the flight tower. I got vaporized by the station.
Then I learned that you have to be facing away from the mailslot to dock. Oopsie. But I do wish I had recorded it! Now I'm a pretty good pilot in ED, but yeah, it takes time. For the tutorials, just learn how to dock. That's all you need to get started. Please don't try to do the advanced combat tutorial and hold that as a gatekeeper for the main game. It isn't. At all. It's meant to be very difficult.
It's going to take a while for me to get back to regular space. But when I do, if you ever want to wing up @Lord_Asmodeus just let me know. I can also kit a ship out for multicrew if you would like to try that instead. My CFN is Enexemander.
Planetary scan missions at Quince will be the fastest and most profitable if you have horizons.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Tomorrow I go shopping for the last of the big three.
Even if they add more ships for higher ranks I'll take a pass for grinding more rep for a while.