Elite: Dangerous

fretmeister

thumpingrug said:

Ive been playing on a MacBook without a mouse and navigation in the star map is basically impossible.  I dont know if this is just a Mac issue or because a mouse is essential for this part of the game, but without the ability to plan journeys it became a very frustrating game and I haven't logged in for ages.  Shame as I had such high hopes and this is the one area that has stopped me moving forward.

Spend £20 on a mouse.

More to the point - how on earth are you flying the ship?

Bork

TimmyO said:

I've now worked up to a Diamondback Explorer. For, you know, exploring. 

I have totally skinted myself getting it, I can afford 2 rebuys max lol. 

Jump range is about 36LY.

Along the way I decided to kit out a Viper and take a combat mission. I hadn't read up on them so probably was doing something wrong but FML it was dull. I had to find 2 particular pirates is a system. This took soooooo long. There were no resource sites or conflict sites so it was just pootling about until they happened by. One took about 15 mins to turn up, the other must have been another half n hour. Sheesh. I went back to other things pretty swiftly. 

Use the galaxy map to select system economy and then jump to a system with extraction because they'll have resource sites. Or select system state and visit systems in Civil War for conflict zones.  Or select government to find anarchy systems.  Equip your viper with a FSD interdictor and go hunting for anyone in the system that comes up with a WANTED tag after you scan them.  Drop them out of hyperspace and pew pew them.  You don't need a mission to go bounty hunting.  I interdict wanted ships for extra creds while I'm in a mission system.

Bork

Is anyone here part of the EDC group on Facebook?

Bork

It's easier than it was - you get three of any material for every lump you pick up now. It used to be just one, and you used to have to get mission-only commodities (which take up cargo space) for blueprints too, which were severely RNG-limited and meant that it was impossible to fully upgrade small combat-only ships.

Still a PITA to look for Cracked Industrial Firmware.  The drops are bugged.

digitalscream

Bork said:

Use the galaxy map to select system economy and then jump to a system with extraction because they'll have resource sites. 

Actually, almost every system with a ringed planet has resource extraction sites - even Saturn's rings have a couple, even though Sol is a Service economy.

TimmyO

Bork said:

TimmyO said:

I've now worked up to a Diamondback Explorer. For, you know, exploring. 

I have totally skinted myself getting it, I can afford 2 rebuys max lol. 

Jump range is about 36LY.

Along the way I decided to kit out a Viper and take a combat mission. I hadn't read up on them so probably was doing something wrong but FML it was dull. I had to find 2 particular pirates is a system. This took soooooo long. There were no resource sites or conflict sites so it was just pootling about until they happened by. One took about 15 mins to turn up, the other must have been another half n hour. Sheesh. I went back to other things pretty swiftly. 

Use the galaxy map to select system economy and then jump to a system with extraction because they'll have resource sites. Or select system state and visit systems in Civil War for conflict zones.  Or select government to find anarchy systems.  Equip your viper with a FSD interdictor and go hunting for anyone in the system that comes up with a WANTED tag after you scan them.  Drop them out of hyperspace and pew pew them.  You don't need a mission to go bounty hunting.  I interdict wanted ships for extra creds while I'm in a mission system.

ta.

noted, but the mission Iwas on at the time was in a specific system with specific targets - seemed to take me ages to find them.

and tbh once I was fighting it wasn't the most fun, I think I'll find my interest in other things in the game

fretmeister

Bork said:

Is anyone here part of the EDC group on Facebook?

Yup.

d8m

Ive managed to do a few good upgrades to my sidewinder and save up nearly 700K in credits doing just salvage and delivery missions.

Think its time for me to buy a new ship. Not sure whether to go for something combat spec'd or more of a hauler, at the moment I haven't done and trading or shot a single thing down!

digitalscream

d8m said:

Ive managed to do a few good upgrades to my sidewinder and save up nearly 700K in credits doing just salvage and delivery missions.

Think its time for me to buy a new ship. Not sure whether to go for something combat spec'd or more of a hauler, at the moment I haven't done and trading or shot a single thing down!

To give you an idea, this is the sort of thing you'd want as an upgrade to go for more combat-based missions:

https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/viper?code=A1p6t6F5l9dasdf21b1b2424040mB42vm50169.Iw19kA==.CwBhCYzBGXpeBmM4g===..EweloBhAWEoUwIYHMA28QgIwV0A=

It's nowhere near the best, but it'll get you well on your way to bagging the 100k+ bounties you see when you're in a RES. As you can tell, it's a bit beyond your price range at the moment - I wouldn't even consider spending that 1.8m until you've got 2.5m in the bank for rebuys. Even a combat-spec A-rated Eagle is 1.9m.

Once you're there, though, everything gets easier and the money starts flowing in. When I restarted my save, I was playing for about 5 hours before I got to the Viper. From there, it was only another 7 or 8 hours before I had the money for a fully combat-spec Vulture (roughly 22m + 6m for rebuys), and that's where you start to make serious money from combat - I can rake in about 4m per hour in my Vulture without even trying too hard in a Haz RES.

If you can latch on to a combat CG, you'll make even more. The trick is to pick up massacre missions at the same time as a bounty-hunting CG - that way, you get paid at least three times for every kill you make (once for the bounty, once for each of the massacre mission(s) and again with the bonus at the end of the CG). If I can ever be bothered to join the CGs - I've got more money than I need right now - I usually get into the top 10% and end up with well over an extra 45m in the bank from where I started.

thumpingrug

fretmeister said:

thumpingrug said:

Ive been playing on a MacBook without a mouse and navigation in the star map is basically impossible.  I dont know if this is just a Mac issue or because a mouse is essential for this part of the game, but without the ability to plan journeys it became a very frustrating game and I haven't logged in for ages.  Shame as I had such high hopes and this is the one area that has stopped me moving forward.

Spend £20 on a mouse.

More to the point - how on earth are you flying the ship?

I have a HOTAS, it doesn't however deal with the galaxy map.   

digitalscream

Having thought about it a bit, @d8m - here's a mid-range combat-Viper build which you only need to do a bit more work for. The total for that one is about 850k - as long as you don't go for any massive targets, it should do you just fine and then you can upgrade as you go.

Take note of the power priorities, though - they're really important, because if you leave everything as default then all your systems will shut down as soon as you deploy hardpoints. Also, if your power plant gets shot out, it drops to 50% output - I've set the priorities such that the thrusters and shields will still operate, so you can get the hell out of there. When you're safely away from danger, disable your shields and your life support will come back on so you can hit Reboot and Repair to get your power plant back online.

TimmyO

Why the fuel.scoop on a small fighter? Just to save the money on fuel.or?

digitalscream

TimmyO said:

Why the fuel.scoop on a small fighter? Just to save the money on fuel.or?

Because it's not just acting as a small fighter - when you're working your way up, you'll likely only have one ship at a time, so it's a multi-role ship skewed towards combat. That build can run small cargo missions too, for example.

Anyway, with that in mind, there's nothing more frustrating than trying to get somewhere (a combat CG, for example) and only having a range of 30-odd Ly before you have to dock and refuel. Having a fuel scoop with cut the journey time at least by half.

TimmyO

digitalscream said:

TimmyO said:

Why the fuel.scoop on a small fighter? Just to save the money on fuel.or?

Because it's not just acting as a small fighter - when you're working your way up, you'll likely only have one ship at a time, so it's a multi-role ship skewed towards combat. That build can run small cargo missions too, for example.

Anyway, with that in mind, there's nothing more frustrating than trying to get somewhere (a combat CG, for example) and only having a range of 30-odd Ly before you have to dock and refuel. Having a fuel scoop with cut the journey time at least by half.

ah hadn't realised it was a general fit soz.

I'm 5 days in and can get 30LY per jump :-) 

Bork

digitalscream said:

Bork said:

Use the galaxy map to select system economy and then jump to a system with extraction because they'll have resource sites. 

Actually, almost every system with a ringed planet has resource extraction sites - even Saturn's rings have a couple, even though Sol is a Service economy.

This is true but I thought it would be a lot easier to search for an economy than select a system at random in the hope there are ringed planets.

TimmyO

I've been watching some of the vids/reading the summaries of the Thargoid/Unknown activity to date.
I decided to go and get me some Meta Alloy from Merope.

Took me quite a while to get the hang of the coordinate system on planet (well actually my issue was managing staying in orbital flight not dropping too low) and when I finally navigated my way to a Barnacle (you're not spotting this stuff accidentally from altitude!) it had gone dormant. Doh! (apparently they cycle like this over periods of time) 

So I'll need to go find some MA (can't face coordinate navigation again) 

TimmyO

I got the capture working on the PS4 but not the uploading anywhere - keeps failing so doing it manually.

My ship, my first visit to a Barnacle, and some pretty rings

Bork

I've never visited a barnacle site - I tried but gave up.  

At the moment I'm collecting engineer materials but may do a spot of tourism afterwards, before I grind rank for the feds. I've been taking my highly engineered python out on missions from Diaguandri this week.  It can punch above it's weight quite nicely and I had some pretty good scraps today.  The longest fight was with a deadly ranked FDL mission pirate - at least 15 mins that used all my heatsinks and I boosted away twice to let my shields recharge after I ran out of Shield Cell Banks.  That particular fight netted 413,000cr with a 70,000cr bonus.  Damage was 163,000 though lol.  

I met my match with a wing of two Anacondas and a vulture though.  They decimated my shields in a minute and I was low on thermal cascade missiles so I boosted out of there at 440 m/s with 39% hull - the hull armour did a good job of buying enough time to escape.  If I had been in my Cutter with two fighter crew, it would have been a very different story.  The only situations which have stopped that set up so far has been a wing of four Anacondas (which I escaped from) and a skirmish of 15+ pirates in a threat 4 USS (which was a 26 million rebuy).  I let a crew member fly the helm while I was in a fighter and they not only didn't use pip management but reset the pips I left them with so of course they found themselves in trouble. 

The last fight I had was with a Python and a couple of Vipers.  I was really pleased with how that turned out because I'd managed to time the SCB recharges and heat sinks perfectly and had no module damage at all.

digitalscream

Bork said:

I met my match with a wing of two Anacondas and a vulture though.  They decimated my shields in a minute and I was low on thermal cascade missiles so I boosted out of there at 440 m/s with 39% hull - the hull armour did a good job of buying enough time to escape.  If I had been in my Cutter with two fighter crew, it would have been a very different story.  The only situations which have stopped that set up so far has been a wing of four Anacondas (which I escaped from) and a skirmish of 15+ pirates in a threat 4 USS (which was a 26 million rebuy) I let a crew member fly the helm for, while I was in a fighter and they not only didn't use pip management but reset the pips I left them with.

Yeah, Vultures are deceptively powerful, even in the hands of NPCs. I usually find that they take longer to kill than Anacondas/Cutters/Corvettes, and the only NPC fight I've ever run away from (in my current incarnation, at least) was a wing of 4 Vultures.

My Vulture is my main ship...it certainly helps that it's got a 525m/s boost, though

TimmyO

I found the surface navigation really hard for finding the Barnacle site (at least these days we can look up the coordinates though - unlike those who discovered them) but got the hang after a while. 

There are online tools where you can put in your current coords and the destination and it gives you an exact heading but I preferred to actually judge heading and keep tweaking based on rate of change of lat and long. I'm pretty sure I'd be much quicker next time.

Doing it mostly 'properly' like that means that towards the end you've quite low and quite slow so when you finally get down in to the relevant basin or whatever it's a cool moment when it comes in to view in the distance - a sense of achievement.