Man, multicrew is so great. I hopped on with two friends today and we spent a few hours shooting up moops in a Has Rez. They made pretty good money, I got two extra pips and didn't have to worry about small ships as much.
Right now I have two PAs and the rest as multis, but the L multi rarely seems to shoot so I may switch it for another PA instead.
I went out to try boosting my combat rank at the war in Ho Hsi. I signed up with the federation and headed there with my Federal Corvette after making a few modifications to refit it for combat rather than haz rez mining. Mostly I just stripped out the limpet controllers, put in a class 7 fuel scoop, and replaced the mining lasers with medium efficient beam laser turrets.
This placed my armament as 2x huge efficient fixed beam lasers, 1x large overcharged corrosive gimballed multicannon, 2x efficient medium beam laser turrets, and 2x efficient small beam laser turrets. My class 6 fighter hangar has one bay setup with a fixed multicannon condor, and the other with a fixed beam imperial fighter.
Ok. THIS is where turrets are powerful. Not in their killing power, but in their ability to tag things for kill credit. Set the turrets to "fire at will", instruct your NPC crew to go chase a cobra or something, and then just start furballing yourself. At least if you're in solo and not competing against other players, those laser turrets are tagging credit for most kills within ~2 km of you. The mass of friendlies nearby usually ensures that things die before the increased aggro is a problem for an engineered corvette. Swap the turrets over to "my target only" if they start wearing your shield down.
I ended up disengaging after my multicannon ran dry. I had mats to synthesis more ammo, but it seemed like a logical breakpoint. I'd lost 10 of my 16 ship launched fighters (9 to enemy fire, 1 to me not being arsed to recall it before low-waking).
Final tally was about ~10% progress from Master to Dangerous combat rank, ~6 million in combat bonds, and placement in the to 10% bracket for the community goal.
edit:
Tube, about your L multi rarely shooting, The problem with the large multicannon is it seems to be the only class of multicannon with a short spin-up delay before firing. You need to hold down the trigger for a second or so before they actually shoot. It's weird because I'm 90% certain that the small, medium, and huge multi's all start shooting instantly or after a VERY short delay.
Yeah, the L has a larger delay and its placement at the bottom of the ship means that it's also the last hardpoint to get on target. I swapped it out for the PA, and now that I'm better at placing those shots it's made a pretty huge difference. I can absolutely dominate big ships now, and small ships are manageable with help from an SLF or crewmember. The biggest problems are the tough hull ships like gun and assault ships. They don't kill me, they just take more time and ammo than they're worth. Clippers are free, Anacondas pretty much melt.
The composition of the forces that I saw in the war zone were predominately small or medium ships, so a PA focused build might have trouble keeping guns on target. The majority of NPCs were Vipers, Cobras, or Asps. There were a few Eagles in the mix as well as the occasional Python, Anaconda, and Type 9's...
I don't know where there were type 9's amongst the combatants. I guess they just went there to die.
Yeah Type 9s show up. It's the only place you can fight NPC Cutters and Corvettes too.
This build wouldn't work in a CZ because the fighter would get splattered and CZs benefit from being able to adapt quickly. I don't like CZs much because the prevalence of armour means that everything takes an age to die. They're intense and can be fun, but I like the measured approach of a RES
Sent over a friend request to @Axen to hop into their private group if that's the unofficial PA group.
It'd be nice to fly around with some of you and make pew pew credits in Ho Hsi together.
(Also I never get tired of in-game voice comms man it sounds so good)
Edit: Well, that was a rage-inducing high intensity combat zone.
Hung around for a while, earning a few hundred thousand in combat bonds. Eventually bite off more than I can chew with an enemy python so I decide discretion is the better part of valour and go to friendship drive out of there.
Just when I thought I had gotten clean away and my FSD was 90% charged, BAM! Thrusters offline, FSD offline, start tumbling around, manage to get the Vulture rebooted and engines working again and notice some little imperial navy fighter is running circles around me and chipping away the last 30% of hull integrity I have.
I changed out my pulse lasers for fixed variants since nearly everything seemed to have been using chaff to throw off my gimbals so I can't hit this little fucker for the life of me, and there's no chance I can outrun it. The couple of times I managed to engage FSD again it just malfunctioned.
Kissed that half a million goodbye, and another half in replacing my destroyed ship.
I feel ya. It was snub-fighters and their uncanny ability to stay just out of fixed-weapon crosshairs that drove me to try gimbals for the first time.
Vulture is still my preferred CZ ship, just because there's less at risk if it's lost. One efficient gimballed beam, and one long-range plasma accelerator.
Super glad I swapped out my ECS for point defense, saved my ass in the last engagement I had where half the enemy force decided it was time to send missiles my way the moment my shields dropped while I was busy with a Python.
Is it my imagination, or are the chase camera options kind of terrible?
I remember when I started playing before the expansion, I wanted to set up a chase camera, but that was basically a fool's errand. Now there's both the ship suite and free camera (and the camera suite, separate thing)...and both of them seem completely unsuited to create a chaser camera (especially since going back into first person
Is there literally no way just to rotate a camera around the ship with a joystick hat (like using the in-cockpit control stick) like in literally every flight simulator, and most space sims? Google searching it brings up long thread about people being fairly miserable trying to map a few dozen camera controls to their HOTAS setups. Instead I just end up panning my camera left and right rather uselessly unless my goal was to ensure my ship wasn't in the view of the camera.
It feels almost like if they were missing the hat-stick in-cockpit camera view. Hell, you could even do this back in X-Wing and TIE Fighter--not being able to move smoothly was still better than this.
EDIT: Okay, I think I found the best advice possible on this subject on the Frontier forums--
"First of all forget the free camera is a camera and think of it as flying another ship or drone with your own ship as its target!"
You can absolutely rotate the camera round your ship. You can do pretty much anything with the free camera, the controls are powerful and accordingly complex though.
The game is deliberately basically unplayable in third person though. If that's what you want, you're out of luck. I do wish you could set presets with the free camera too.
I know you can rotate around your ship--like you were rotating around a slow-moving object in your ship using maneuvering thrusters or manually flight control.
Not what you'd want in a camera control system, to put it mildly. You're right about the game being unplayable in third person--even if there was a full HUD, it's basically the worst camera control system from a flight simulator imaginable. I guess that's fitting for a space simulations. Kerbal Space Program has a better third person camera.
I know you can rotate around your ship--like you were rotating around a slow-moving object in your ship using maneuvering thrusters or manually flight control.
Not what you'd want in a camera control system, to put it mildly. You're right about the game being unplayable in third person--even if there was a full HUD, it's basically the worst camera control system from a flight simulator imaginable. I guess that's fitting for a space simulations. Kerbal Space Program has a better third person camera.
You can put the camera wherever you want it and lock it. But yeah, it is deliberately made to not be good in combat. Multi crew gunner role has a nice 3rd person ish view to work with, so it's not that they couldn't do it: they chose not to.
The most fun I've had out of it is to fly through an asteroid field in different views. Some people are making crazy videos and I have no idea how they're setting it up.
I know you can rotate around your ship--like you were rotating around a slow-moving object in your ship using maneuvering thrusters or manually flight control.
Not what you'd want in a camera control system, to put it mildly. You're right about the game being unplayable in third person--even if there was a full HUD, it's basically the worst camera control system from a flight simulator imaginable. I guess that's fitting for a space simulations. Kerbal Space Program has a better third person camera.
I don't really understand what you're trying to do and why it isn't working. You can put the camera essentially anywhere, as far as I can tell. You can't play the game like that, because there's no HUD, but it's good enough for most standard flying. Not being able to play in third person is a deliberate design choice.
Yeah Type 9s show up. It's the only place you can fight NPC Cutters and Corvettes too.
This build wouldn't work in a CZ because the fighter would get splattered and CZs benefit from being able to adapt quickly. I don't like CZs much because the prevalence of armour means that everything takes an age to die. They're intense and can be fun, but I like the measured approach of a RES
I know you can rotate around your ship--like you were rotating around a slow-moving object in your ship using maneuvering thrusters or manually flight control.
Not what you'd want in a camera control system, to put it mildly. You're right about the game being unplayable in third person--even if there was a full HUD, it's basically the worst camera control system from a flight simulator imaginable. I guess that's fitting for a space simulations. Kerbal Space Program has a better third person camera.
I don't really understand what you're trying to do and why it isn't working. You can put the camera essentially anywhere, as far as I can tell. You can't play the game like that, because there's no HUD, but it's good enough for most standard flying. Not being able to play in third person is a deliberate design choice.
There is a difference between camera mode and FREE camera mode.
I think they could build it out more in the future, and hopefully they will. Most of their systems seem built to be pretty modular, my hope is that this coming run of refinements will add a lot of those "missed potential" things.
Huh. I think I may have solved my FDL woes just now. The problem I have with the ship is the handling. Outside of the blue zone, it turns like shit. Boost, and you're going well over 500 m/s so you're likely to overshoot your target if you're using boost for course correction. Solution- Hit boost, and then instantly deploy cargo scoop. The directional thrusters still benefit from the boost effect, but your speed won't go to crazy town.
I was playing with it. It seems like the boost lasts a set time, and you can deploy the cargo scoop immediately, but then release it while you're still in boost mode to have a decent measure of control over your speed. If you're just course correcting, you can use the boost and scoop and keep it until the boost ends, and you'll be pretty close to the blue zone.
Pretty solid. I think this will make boost usable on my Eagle MKII in combat as well. That thing boosts well over 600 m/s in my combat fit, so I just never use it against NPCs. Now I think it has a nice use case.
On a lighter note, I think I also made the worst build ever tonight (at least for me). Federal Dropship (redubbed Driftship, 'cause damn son). I put a fixed beam on the large hardpoint and dumbfire missiles on the other 4 medium hardpoints. I had engineered dirties and a bi weave sitting around, everything else was stock. Still, a tough little bird. Certainly has character.
Aside from increasing ammo capacity, I don't really see what you can do with dumbfires that makes them worthwhile. Ghetto Grom Bomb for wing pvp, I guess? I hear bad things about the hull penetration effect. I think regular canons are always going to be better for module sniping. Nothing else really stands out as a winner. Seeker missiles at least have drag munitions, which is quite good.
I run two dumbires on the clipper that I use to murder NPC tradeships for chemical manipulators and such. I haven't engineered them since they serve they have less to gain than most weapons, but if I were to drag that ship over the the missile engineer then I'd probably upgrade their rate of fire and get the FTL disruptor trait.
As an aside, I wish that retracting hardpoints reloaded your weapons.
I run two dumbires on the clipper that I use to murder NPC tradeships for chemical manipulators and such. I haven't engineered them since they serve they have less to gain than most weapons, but if I were to drag that ship over the the missile engineer then I'd probably upgrade their rate of fire and get the FTL disruptor trait.
As an aside, I wish that retracting hardpoints reloaded your weapons.
One interface problem that they really need to fix is the inability to reload weapons. I don't even care if it waste the rest of the magazine (I'd prefer it in fact) but not being able to reload at all blows.
Huh. I think I may have solved my FDL woes just now. The problem I have with the ship is the handling. Outside of the blue zone, it turns like shit. Boost, and you're going well over 500 m/s so you're likely to overshoot your target if you're using boost for course correction. Solution- Hit boost, and then instantly deploy cargo scoop. The directional thrusters still benefit from the boost effect, but your speed won't go to crazy town.
I was playing with it. It seems like the boost lasts a set time, and you can deploy the cargo scoop immediately, but then release it while you're still in boost mode to have a decent measure of control over your speed. If you're just course correcting, you can use the boost and scoop and keep it until the boost ends, and you'll be pretty close to the blue zone.
Pretty solid. I think this will make boost usable on my Eagle MKII in combat as well. That thing boosts well over 600 m/s in my combat fit, so I just never use it against NPCs. Now I think it has a nice use case.
On a lighter note, I think I also made the worst build ever tonight (at least for me). Federal Dropship (redubbed Driftship, 'cause damn son). I put a fixed beam on the large hardpoint and dumbfire missiles on the other 4 medium hardpoints. I had engineered dirties and a bi weave sitting around, everything else was stock. Still, a tough little bird. Certainly has character.
Aside from increasing ammo capacity, I don't really see what you can do with dumbfires that makes them worthwhile. Ghetto Grom Bomb for wing pvp, I guess? I hear bad things about the hull penetration effect. I think regular canons are always going to be better for module sniping. Nothing else really stands out as a winner. Seeker missiles at least have drag munitions, which is quite good.
Missiles are outstanding for stripping external modules - if you can hit them with dumbfires I dunno . I use packhounds with drag for blowing up weapons/heat sinks.
You could use them for blowing up shit around bases (and hopefully that becomes a thing at some point - ground attack).
In terms of things they should add (that I think could be relatively easy), more contexts for combat would be good. How about a planetary equivalent to a res? That would be a fucking game changer for the meta, and aside from AI tweaks (and I suspect a background limit that stops them spawning on high G worlds) it wouldn't need a lot of new assets. Combat instances that have a specific goal would be good too, rather than necessarily just "keep going until you get tired". Those can be tied into missions, have CQC assets dropped into them, all kinds of stuff.
Not trivial stuff by any means, but I think they'd provide a lot of bang for the dev time buck.
Yeah! Combat gets more interesting when there are more things to worry about and things to avoid. Maybe they don't want to include actual stations because those are part of the BGS, but you can have a "research base" or something that only exists in that player's instance, and have it be the subject of "research base under attack!" missions. Functionally it's a combat zone, with all the chaos that ensues, but there are no reinforcements and when one side wins or loses, the mission is a success or failure.
I suspect that the current AI would struggle with structures as complex as the current CQC arenas (which is why there are no bots for those), but their AI person seems to be a phenom so I'm sure she could fix that.
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ShogunHair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get alongRegistered Userregular
I feel like SRV combat situations are something that need to be considered. We've got these cool buggies but beyond farming engineering mats we can't do a lot with them. I think that is a mistake.
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Hey, guys. I want to give Elite another go, and a friend of mine who used to play space sims with me was asking if there's anything good out now in that genre.
Is there any advice or recommendations you can give for two players starting out? Is it really easy to just play as a pair?
I'm getting the itch again, but I'm going to wait until late November I think. I've budgeted a PC upgrade and am waiting for the Cyber Monday deals to hit and then I'm upgrading to be VR ready :hydra:
Hey, guys. I want to give Elite another go, and a friend of mine who used to play space sims with me was asking if there's anything good out now in that genre.
Is there any advice or recommendations you can give for two players starting out? Is it really easy to just play as a pair?
Unless you want to run missions together, it's not bad. Wing mechanics are a little glitchy sometimes but rolling with friends into a RES site or Warzone is really, really fun. Trade dividends for wingmates for trading and mining also exist, which is nice.
I feel like SRV combat situations are something that need to be considered. We've got these cool buggies but beyond farming engineering mats we can't do a lot with them. I think that is a mistake.
I suspect that combined arms are on the horizon somewhere. A lot of the things added in this season are clearly foundational, and I imagine the idea was that the turnaround would be much, much faster and they would be iterating on them by now. I also suspect (and maybe I'll be made a fool of in a few days when it's released) that the real title for 2.4 should be "Raid Content". The real banner feature is going to be enemies that take multiple players to take down.
Posts
Right now I have two PAs and the rest as multis, but the L multi rarely seems to shoot so I may switch it for another PA instead.
This placed my armament as 2x huge efficient fixed beam lasers, 1x large overcharged corrosive gimballed multicannon, 2x efficient medium beam laser turrets, and 2x efficient small beam laser turrets. My class 6 fighter hangar has one bay setup with a fixed multicannon condor, and the other with a fixed beam imperial fighter.
Ok. THIS is where turrets are powerful. Not in their killing power, but in their ability to tag things for kill credit. Set the turrets to "fire at will", instruct your NPC crew to go chase a cobra or something, and then just start furballing yourself. At least if you're in solo and not competing against other players, those laser turrets are tagging credit for most kills within ~2 km of you. The mass of friendlies nearby usually ensures that things die before the increased aggro is a problem for an engineered corvette. Swap the turrets over to "my target only" if they start wearing your shield down.
I ended up disengaging after my multicannon ran dry. I had mats to synthesis more ammo, but it seemed like a logical breakpoint. I'd lost 10 of my 16 ship launched fighters (9 to enemy fire, 1 to me not being arsed to recall it before low-waking).
Final tally was about ~10% progress from Master to Dangerous combat rank, ~6 million in combat bonds, and placement in the to 10% bracket for the community goal.
edit:
Tube, about your L multi rarely shooting, The problem with the large multicannon is it seems to be the only class of multicannon with a short spin-up delay before firing. You need to hold down the trigger for a second or so before they actually shoot. It's weird because I'm 90% certain that the small, medium, and huge multi's all start shooting instantly or after a VERY short delay.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
The composition of the forces that I saw in the war zone were predominately small or medium ships, so a PA focused build might have trouble keeping guns on target. The majority of NPCs were Vipers, Cobras, or Asps. There were a few Eagles in the mix as well as the occasional Python, Anaconda, and Type 9's...
I don't know where there were type 9's amongst the combatants. I guess they just went there to die.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
This build wouldn't work in a CZ because the fighter would get splattered and CZs benefit from being able to adapt quickly. I don't like CZs much because the prevalence of armour means that everything takes an age to die. They're intense and can be fun, but I like the measured approach of a RES
It'd be nice to fly around with some of you and make pew pew credits in Ho Hsi together.
(Also I never get tired of in-game voice comms man it sounds so good)
Edit: Well, that was a rage-inducing high intensity combat zone.
Hung around for a while, earning a few hundred thousand in combat bonds. Eventually bite off more than I can chew with an enemy python so I decide discretion is the better part of valour and go to friendship drive out of there.
Just when I thought I had gotten clean away and my FSD was 90% charged, BAM! Thrusters offline, FSD offline, start tumbling around, manage to get the Vulture rebooted and engines working again and notice some little imperial navy fighter is running circles around me and chipping away the last 30% of hull integrity I have.
I changed out my pulse lasers for fixed variants since nearly everything seemed to have been using chaff to throw off my gimbals so I can't hit this little fucker for the life of me, and there's no chance I can outrun it. The couple of times I managed to engage FSD again it just malfunctioned.
Kissed that half a million goodbye, and another half in replacing my destroyed ship.
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
Vulture is still my preferred CZ ship, just because there's less at risk if it's lost. One efficient gimballed beam, and one long-range plasma accelerator.
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
I remember when I started playing before the expansion, I wanted to set up a chase camera, but that was basically a fool's errand. Now there's both the ship suite and free camera (and the camera suite, separate thing)...and both of them seem completely unsuited to create a chaser camera (especially since going back into first person
Is there literally no way just to rotate a camera around the ship with a joystick hat (like using the in-cockpit control stick) like in literally every flight simulator, and most space sims? Google searching it brings up long thread about people being fairly miserable trying to map a few dozen camera controls to their HOTAS setups. Instead I just end up panning my camera left and right rather uselessly unless my goal was to ensure my ship wasn't in the view of the camera.
It feels almost like if they were missing the hat-stick in-cockpit camera view. Hell, you could even do this back in X-Wing and TIE Fighter--not being able to move smoothly was still better than this.
EDIT: Okay, I think I found the best advice possible on this subject on the Frontier forums--
"First of all forget the free camera is a camera and think of it as flying another ship or drone with your own ship as its target!"
....this game.
The game is deliberately basically unplayable in third person though. If that's what you want, you're out of luck. I do wish you could set presets with the free camera too.
Not what you'd want in a camera control system, to put it mildly. You're right about the game being unplayable in third person--even if there was a full HUD, it's basically the worst camera control system from a flight simulator imaginable. I guess that's fitting for a space simulations. Kerbal Space Program has a better third person camera.
You can put the camera wherever you want it and lock it. But yeah, it is deliberately made to not be good in combat. Multi crew gunner role has a nice 3rd person ish view to work with, so it's not that they couldn't do it: they chose not to.
The most fun I've had out of it is to fly through an asteroid field in different views. Some people are making crazy videos and I have no idea how they're setting it up.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Damn those diplomats! What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
I don't really understand what you're trying to do and why it isn't working. You can put the camera essentially anywhere, as far as I can tell. You can't play the game like that, because there's no HUD, but it's good enough for most standard flying. Not being able to play in third person is a deliberate design choice.
War's still going on my end, want to group up?
Edit: So is the Horizons season pass worth it, or am I paying 20 quid for a custom avatar and driving buggies around on empty barren worlds?
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
https://amp.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/6zeiov/srv_to_station_operation_daedalus/
EDIT: Never mind, can't read
There is a difference between camera mode and FREE camera mode.
Soooo much missed potential.
Oh there is fun to be had, but it could be so much more.
Plus adding orbital mechs.
I was playing with it. It seems like the boost lasts a set time, and you can deploy the cargo scoop immediately, but then release it while you're still in boost mode to have a decent measure of control over your speed. If you're just course correcting, you can use the boost and scoop and keep it until the boost ends, and you'll be pretty close to the blue zone.
Pretty solid. I think this will make boost usable on my Eagle MKII in combat as well. That thing boosts well over 600 m/s in my combat fit, so I just never use it against NPCs. Now I think it has a nice use case.
On a lighter note, I think I also made the worst build ever tonight (at least for me). Federal Dropship (redubbed Driftship, 'cause damn son). I put a fixed beam on the large hardpoint and dumbfire missiles on the other 4 medium hardpoints. I had engineered dirties and a bi weave sitting around, everything else was stock. Still, a tough little bird. Certainly has character.
Aside from increasing ammo capacity, I don't really see what you can do with dumbfires that makes them worthwhile. Ghetto Grom Bomb for wing pvp, I guess? I hear bad things about the hull penetration effect. I think regular canons are always going to be better for module sniping. Nothing else really stands out as a winner. Seeker missiles at least have drag munitions, which is quite good.
As an aside, I wish that retracting hardpoints reloaded your weapons.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Steam profile - Twitch - YouTube
Switch: SM-6352-8553-6516
One interface problem that they really need to fix is the inability to reload weapons. I don't even care if it waste the rest of the magazine (I'd prefer it in fact) but not being able to reload at all blows.
Missiles are outstanding for stripping external modules - if you can hit them with dumbfires I dunno
You could use them for blowing up shit around bases (and hopefully that becomes a thing at some point - ground attack).
Not trivial stuff by any means, but I think they'd provide a lot of bang for the dev time buck.
I suspect that the current AI would struggle with structures as complex as the current CQC arenas (which is why there are no bots for those), but their AI person seems to be a phenom so I'm sure she could fix that.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Is there any advice or recommendations you can give for two players starting out? Is it really easy to just play as a pair?
By then my Elite itch will be good and itchy.
Unless you want to run missions together, it's not bad. Wing mechanics are a little glitchy sometimes but rolling with friends into a RES site or Warzone is really, really fun. Trade dividends for wingmates for trading and mining also exist, which is nice.
I suspect that combined arms are on the horizon somewhere. A lot of the things added in this season are clearly foundational, and I imagine the idea was that the turnaround would be much, much faster and they would be iterating on them by now. I also suspect (and maybe I'll be made a fool of in a few days when it's released) that the real title for 2.4 should be "Raid Content". The real banner feature is going to be enemies that take multiple players to take down.
hhnnnnrrrrrrrggggg