The Elite: Dangerous thread

[gmpd2000]

I made a (bad) Elite: Dangerous video:

Also: 300th reply!

[gmpd2000]

Any opinions?

[Shiny]

You guys hear about that wings update coming up? I don't know much about it, but if it's like groups and stuff, we should make a KSP fighting force

I'm currently flying around Kappa Fornacis if anyone wants to fight in conflict zones together. hit me up!

[gmpd2000]

You guys hear about that wings update coming up? I don't know much about it, but if it's like groups and stuff, we should make a KSP fighting force

I'm currently flying around Kappa Fornacis if anyone wants to fight in conflict zones together. hit me up!

What if we make a KSP group?

This will be our anthem:

Post your commander's name here!

​I'm CMDR Gmod.

[impwarhamer]

Sounds like an idea, although I don't know what we would do...

I'm CMDR Jebediah Kerman

[Kinglet]

CMDR Quail here.

[Shiny]

Cmdr ShinySnack here. You guys around Kappa Fornacis?

[gmpd2000]

Cmdr ShinySnack here. You guys around Kappa Fornacis?

We must choose a location for the meeting, all 4 people (including me) will be invited to that system and create the group.

What will be the founding system?

Edited January 15, 2015 by gmpd2000

[impwarhamer]

Well I'm currently 110 light years from kappa fornacis, hell I'm closer to sol than that.

Plus I have 2 ships and I'd rather not have a considerable distance between them, aswell as a nearby friend who i sometimes play with.

I'm currently in the Kremainn system, or Kremlin as I've come to call it.

[Helix935]

hmm i want to buy this game but god it costs so much and i want to wait for it to be on steam....

[gmpd2000]

hmm i want to buy this game but god it costs so much and i want to wait for it to be on steam....

Then you will be dead when you play, this game is NOT going to steam, never.

[Guest]

I was fighting in a capital ship war-zone yesterday. Lasers galore!

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Also, just finished a rare goods trade route and got about 1 million credits. Unfortunately, it did take me like 3 hours (forgot to set the routes to "fastest" instead of "economical" and ended up taking a bunch of detours). Almost died a few times due to crashing my T6 (too used to going full speed in and out stations in my viper).

Picked up rare goods at these stations- 39 Tauri and Fujin

Traveled 160 ly to this group of stations- Lave, Diso, Orerre, Leesti, Uszaa, and Zaonce

Sold the Tauri Chimes/Futen Tea, bought rare goods from each of the stations above

Traveled back to 39 Tauri, sold off all the goods. Cha-ching.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Monopropellant

[Awaras]

I was fighting in a capital ship war-zone yesterday. Lasers galore!

http://imgur.com/a/3yyOs

Also, just finished a rare goods trade route and got about 1 million credits. Unfortunately, it did take me like 3 hours (forgot to set the routes to "fastest" instead of "economical" and ended up taking a bunch of detours). Almost died a few times due to crashing my T6 (too used to going full speed in and out stations in my viper).

Picked up rare goods at these stations- 39 Tauri and Fujin

Traveled 160 ly to this group of stations- Lave, Diso, Orerre, Leesti, Uszaa, and Zaonce

Sold the Tauri Chimes/Futen Tea, bought rare goods from each of the stations above

Traveled back to 39 Tauri, sold off all the goods. Cha-ching.

You can improve on that if you have room for more cargo.

There is a loose 'cluster' of rares around 39 tauri and fujin too, all within a few jumps of each other. You can stop by there and fill up on some more rares to sell at the Lave cluster:

Momus reach - Tartarus point

Hecate - RJH1972

39 Tauri - Porta

Fujin - Futen Starport

Wolf 1301 - Saunders dive

Witchhaul - Hornby Terminal

Zeessze - nicollier hanger

George Pantazis - zakam platform

Altair - solo orbiter

Edited January 20, 2015 by Awaras

[gmpd2000]

I'm doing the Epsilon Indi-Lave rare route, it isn't the best, but it works.

[MartGonzo]

been checking out the 1.1 update and the list of fixes and improved route planner is nice but the new gas giants still look dreadful to me, how a full team of people falls so far short of what one guy achieved in spaceengine still boggles my mind.

for me the game is still defined by what's lacking (com chatter, outside views etc.) and I can't help thinking that in a year it will be worth playing but for now...

Edited February 11, 2015 by MartGonzo

[mordin86]

been checking out the 1.1 update and the list of fixes and improved route planner is nice but the new gas giants still look dreadful to me, how a full team of people falls so far short of what one guy achieved in spaceengine still boggles my mind.

for me the game is still defined by what's lacking (com chatter, outside views etc.) and I can't help thinking that in a year it will be worth playing but for now...

I feel pretty much the same, the game lacks a lot - content, social mechanics and such. Still, can looks amazing:

[hotmailcompany52]

Just brought the game. Spent about an hour or two going through the tutorials. I did okay in them. I then faffed about for a couple of hours and made about 3500 credits or what ever currency it is. Any tips for newbies?

[MartGonzo]

Just brought the game. Spent about an hour or two going through the tutorials. I did okay in them. I then faffed about for a couple of hours and made about 3500 credits or what ever currency it is. Any tips for newbies?

You can expand your cargo bay by replacing not so useful stuff.

when I first started I sold the discovery scanner and shield to buy extra cargo bays, being in safe core systems anyway the shield wasn't really needed (and you can always run if you get into a fight)

Then look on the commodities board for valuable products in high supply, you can make a good chunk of cash especially if you trade in both directions, I made quite a bit trading mineral extractors from Eravate to LHS 3447 (I think) and metals on the return run

as soon as you have enough cash start trading the really valuable stuff like platinum.

soon after bought an adder chock full of cargo bays and carried on the same trading run until I had enough for a Cobra Mk3 and equipment.

[RogueMason]

Just brought the game. Spent about an hour or two going through the tutorials. I did okay in them. I then faffed about for a couple of hours and made about 3500 credits or what ever currency it is. Any tips for newbies?

You have a few options open to you. As you've not said how you've made those 3500cr, I'm just going to give you the best options, but first thing's first, the Bulletin Board. I managed to get some momentum going at first by accepting missions from here. You want missions that are within your capacity to complete with your Sidewinder and reward anywhere between 10,000 to 30,000 credits (just not the Mercenary tasks). Take on a couple of less rewarding contracts to keep you going, too, it all helps. I recommend the courier missions, or those that ask you to go and recover something like a black box or rebel transmissions from a nearby system. Just be careful not to get caught by any police ship scanners or you'll likely get fined if you're caught carrying illegal/stolen cargo. Once you've got enough money behind you, say... 150,000cr, you should look at buying a new ship that's more suited to what you want to do. The Hauler and the Eagle will be prime candidates here as they're almost dirt cheap. The Adder may also be a good choice, though I've never owned one. Buy either the Eagle or the Hauler and you should still have some money left over to kit them out a bit.

Now come the career paths.

Bounty Hunting: My profession in the game. Master combat rank. I'm a multi-millionaire with a fully kitted-out Cobra MkIII because of what I do (~10,500,000cr in assets with ~2,700,000 in the bank). The Eagle is the ship you want to start with here, preferably armed with pulse or burst lasers (fixed are generally more powerful than gimballed but do require a good aim); multi-cannons, while pretty powerful, will start racking up a bit of a cost in ammunition and limit the time you can spend out and about taking down criminal scum. Your primary hunting sites will be Resource Extraction Sites (RES's), though Unidentified Signal Sources (USS's) and Nav Beacons will also produce wanted targets, just not in as great a quantity as RES's. Typically, bounties will be on Sidewinders and Cobras, and will be 1000-5000cr and 8000-25000cr respectively. Occasionally you'll encounter heftier targets that you'll need a better ship and equipment for before you should even consider opening fire, although that goes without saying.

Keep going at an RES for a while and you can rack up some impressive claims. I can get around 100,000cr in half an hour, plus more in other jurisdictions thanks to the Kill Warrant Scanner (a piece of equipment that you will want to acquire at some point should you opt to join the ranks of the hunter).

A word of warning; most Anacondas have a Plasma Accelerator mounted on their bow, so watch out for incandescent purple-white bolts. They're very dangerous weapons. Pythons (they look a bit like Anaconda-Cobra hybrids) will also often carry the weapons.

Trading: A lot of people swear by this. I've not had much success with this myself but that's only because I haven't found any good trade routes. You'll want the Hauler here, equipped with as much cargo space as possible and stripped down in other places where you don't think you need stuff (this'll save on fuel costs and increase your jump range). You will need to find a good route, so study the pretty multi-coloured trade routes in the Galaxy Map, flicking through the different commodities listed to see which system exports/imports what. Then take a test run to see if it works out and if it does, how profitable it is. If it's good, keep going. If not, keep looking, taking on some Bulletin Board missions just in case you need the money.

There are also trade routes along which you can transport rare items. I can't think of any such systems, though somewhere earlier in this thread, someone posted an example route, so I'd highly recommend looking it up. Rare commodities will fetch you a pretty penny the further from their origin they are sold off, I believe.

I'll also include smuggling here as you will, every now and then, come across some stray, owner-less items just sitting there, usually at USS's (though RES's will often have cargo dumped by fleeing pirate ships). Scoop 'em up and don't get sniffed out by the police, then sell them on the black market. It's pretty easy, actually. Just watch out as not every station has a black market. Always a profit unless you get caught.

Exploration: Whilst technically I've not explored new territory, I'm at the Scout rank in this field simply because I've travelled through quite a few systems that no-one has bothered charting. There is a decent profit to be made here, but you need a ship capable of jumping far and efficiently, plus you will need a fuel scoop for missions of extended duration. The Asp is the quintessential exploration ship of the game, though it's expensive, usually at ~6,600,000cr. I believe the Adder is a starter exploration ship, though I'm not certain of that. Strip your ship down as much as possible except for the Frameshift Drive, which should ideally be top notch. You will want the best Discovery Scanner you can get your hands on (you start with the Basic already), plus the Detailed Surface Scanner. Given that you'll be outside inhabited space for the most part, you may decide to sell your weapons off to further decrease your mass and improve your jump range.

The Cobra is a good choice of ship in this role, actually. My fully kitted-out one can manage a ~19LY jump unladen, and it's built up for combat. Strip down the modules other than the FSD and it'll likely manage much further.

The fuel scoop is where things get risky. You need to get close enough to a star to automatically activate the scooping process, but obviously you have to watch the heat levels carefully. Get the hang of it, though, and you have access to free, unlimited fuel.

It can be time-consuming to explore every facet of a star system, but well worth it in the end.

-----

Obviously you're not tied down to any one profession once you start something, and I've not covered everything there is in the game. You could be a pirate, a miner, or even enlist with the Federation or the Empire. Do something that you know you can get money in, then give something else a try to add some variety. I'm going to get myself an Asp once I've got around 25,000,000cr in the bank and head off to explore somewhere. No doubt there are some

out there just waiting to be discovered Edited February 16, 2015 by RogueMason

[impwarhamer]

jeesus, 150k is alot to save in a sidewinder. Personally, I'd wait till I had about 150% the cost of whatever ship u want to upgrade to (to make sure u have insurance money).

A bit of advice from my end, If you wanna be a pirate, your gonna at least need a viper, preferably a cobra for the cargo space. That meant for me playing as a bounty hunter in an eagle first, which made me more money and allowed me to get better at combat.

[megatiger78]

I think I might buy the game this week.

[MartGonzo]

snip

The fuel scoop is where things get risky. You need to get close enough to a star to automatically activate the scooping process, but obviously you have to watch the heat levels carefully. Get the hang of it, though, and you have access to free, unlimited fuel.

Small tip for scooping, fly upside down with the star above you and look up slightly while gently pulling back on the stick

makes it easy to maintain a set distance from the star.

Ever since I got my Cobra I stopped buying fuel, I've not figured out yet why the fuel costs are so much higher in my Cobra than my Adder

[Awaras]

After jumping into the system, just approach the edge of the 'no fly zone' around the star at full speed. As soon as the fuel scoop activates cut the speed to zero. Then just keep approaching the star in small bursts of speed until the heat reaches over 90%. Cut speed again and hold there until full.

[Pixel of Life]

My friend has been trying to get me to buy this ever since it went public. Last sunday I finally gave in to the temptation. What a great game, especially with TrackIR - can't wait to get my hands on an Oculus Rift.

I've spent the last three days flying around and trading stuff and worked my way up from 1000cr to a bit over 50000cr. The next step is to get a Hauler so that I can double my cargo capacity. I'll be flying that for a while before I can afford a Lakon Type-6, it's over a million credits... Or maybe I'll just swap the Discovery Scanner for another cargo rack to increase the capacity by another 50%.

[gmpd2000]

My friend has been trying to get me to buy this ever since it went public. Last sunday I finally gave in to the temptation. What a great game, especially with TrackIR - can't wait to get my hands on an Oculus Rift.

I've spent the last three days flying around and trading stuff and worked my way up from 1000cr to a bit over 50000cr. The next step is to get a Hauler so that I can double my cargo capacity. I'll be flying that for a while before I can afford a Lakon Type-6, it's over a million credits... Or maybe I'll just swap the Discovery Scanner for another cargo rack to increase the capacity by another 50%.

Welcome aboard, Commander.

Do you require help in something?