Elite: Dangerous

Nomad

Doing the training now. Docking was no problem, but getting it on the landing pad was a bit eventful - I think I need to reduce the mouse and throttle sensitivity.

I had a look at the friend and group stuff. Couldn't see a way to name a group that I create - it just used my character name. Am I missing something?

Speaking of names, what is everyone called? I'm Roganski.

digitalscream

No idea on the friends/group stuff. Haven't really tried that - I'm playing more with the game mechanics and the way the galaxy works in terms of trade/politics/etc.

One thing I'm not sure on is what to do with contraband...I've just randomly come across a load of technical blueprints, got stung with a 26k fine on docking and nowhere to sell the damn things. Can't seem to find a station with a black market...

Anyway, I'm Digitalscream on there (imaginatively enough), and I'm usually found bouncing around a couple of trade routes I've found between Gliese 550, Vela City and Thomas Hub.

Nomad

I'm still trying to land the thing in one piece (got trashed on attempt 2).

I've added you (or it has sent a request, I think). I'll have a look in the forums to see if a custom name can be used for a group.

Axe_meister

I'm Axe Meister on there as well although at moment am just playing solo to get used to the game

Nomad

Request sent, Axe Meister.

I'm doing the training stuff at the moment. Once I get the hang of the controls and systems, I'll be jumping straight in to the multiplayer version. I played Elite back in the day, so should have a reasonable idea about how to proceed. As mentioned above, a good strategy is to be a goody-two-shoes trader at first, make money, and then get into improving the ship for the more risky stuff. Once you have a handful of safe trade routes worked out, it's fine to sell everything on the ship that isn't needed for trading (weapons, etc) to add some capital to start the cash build-up.

3rd attempt at docking was much better. Tweaked mouse sensitivity again, and also reduced shadows to Low, and switched off anti-aliasing. The frame rate inside the station was pretty bad a first, but is now much more usable. Target practice next...

Axe_meister

Apparently trade routes will only be good for a few runs as supply and demand will kick in with more and more people using those routes therefore reducing profit

Nomad

Something to stay on top of, then.

Nomad

Now in-game. I'm at Trevithick Dock, wherever that is.

holnrew

Axe_meister said:

holnrew;457297" said:

Is there a safe version?

Safe version?

As opposed to dangerous...

An HILARIOUS joke

digitalscream

OK, a word to the wise - don't try to run before you can walk. I just picked up one of the combat missions for 170k credits - turned out the target was a fully tooled-up Anaconda. About 3 seconds into the fight my shields had gone, I was down to 30% hull integrity and I was dodging for dear life. Only just managed to supercruise out of there with about 10% left.

In other news, don't bother with the Eagle. It's more agile than most ships, but the power plant is ridiculously weak and trying to deploy 3 weapons at once (burst laser, pulse laser and multi-cannon) sent it into shutdown mode. Just get a Cobra.

digitalscream

Top tip #3 - don't ever go toe-to-toe with anybody while you've got a full cargo hold. Just run like hell, as fast as you can.

Just got tempted into a fight and lost when his mates showed up and I was too far in to run away. 200k of gold just went up in smoke.

Axe_meister

Well bounty hunting seems to be where the cash is compared to trading. Identify unknown signals. Often you will find federation hunting down somebody wanted. Join in the fight and make sure you get the last shot. Just don't target the police.

wave100

wave100 said:

I'm playing it on an old Core 2 quad Q6600 with a crappy Radeon HD 4600 graphics card and 4 Gigs of RAM -32 bit only - it runs ok at low detail settings but it does occasionally glitch out - not good when you're trying to dock! One of my plans is to upgrade the PC after Mythmass, maybe get some good sale deals? Anyway it looks great even on my obsolete system, so I can't wait to try it at higher resolution and detail settings. I think a lot of the high end GPUs are aimed at those wishing to run high resolutions on multiple monitors - I'll be satisfied with 1080 on a single monitor.

Just received a fanless GTX 750 which has doubled my frame rate and allowed me to play at high detail. So far no glitches - I'm a happy bunny.

Currently in STKM 1-626 which is near where I spawned I think - certainly where my freegle is.

Axe_meister

Just obtained mostly harmless status took a while, seem to be holding well against a lot more advanced players

Myranda

digitalscream said:

CabbageCat said:

I'm looking at getting a new desktop, almost exclusively for gaming. For my budget I think I can get one of a good (i7 4790) CPU or a good gfx card (GTX 970) but not both.

As the resident tech head which would you go for? Or should I be more focussed on lots (16gb) of ram or silly SSD disks?

Is it gaming or general system performance you're after? I don't know what CPU you've currently got, but GPU would probably be the best bet for gaming performance.

Personally, I always say stay away from the latest generation of anything; that's where you find the worst bang-for-the-buck. Step a generation back and get a GTX770 instead - you'll save yourself over £100 and only lose a negligible amount of performance (the gap between successive generations of GPUs isn't what it once was).

You can then put that £100 towards a new CPU, although it's reasonably likely that if you've got an i7 of any kind you'll be pretty safe; mine's an ancient i7 920 from the first generation of i7s, and it runs Elite: Dangerous at 1920x1200 fine without any overclocking (which I must get round to at some point...).

As for RAM and SSDs...you'll always get a boost from SSDs, but it'll never affect your frame rate. Unless, of course, you're struggling for RAM; 8GB these days is easily enough for gaming.

Psst. GTX970 costs around £250-£270 GTX770 costs around £250-£270 I'm not sure you're going to be saving what you think you'll be saving.

On topic, I'm really wanting to see what Elite Dangerous is like love space games...

digitalscream

Myranda said:

Psst. GTX970 costs around £250-£270 GTX770 costs around £250-£270 I'm not sure you're going to be saving what you think you'll be saving.

On topic, I'm really wanting to see what Elite Dangerous is like love space games...

Yep, you're right - typo on my part. I meant the GTX760.

digitalscream

Just a quick update...if you've got a ship with decent cargo capacity (eg the Cobra, with 18t), it's worth trying to get to Lave. Lavian Brandy is one of the rare items, and sells for 3,500 credits there (although you can usually only get 3 or 4 tonnes of it); get about 100 light years away, and it sells for upwards of 20k. Trade your way there, and you'll make a tidy 50k profit on top of everything else you do on the way.

EDIT: Rare items behave differently to other commodities - the further you get from the source, the more they're worth.

Also, if you can find a high-tech economy (Ngandins and Santjalan are a couple that I came across), progenitor cells are a great way to make a decent profit. They tend to sell for about 6.1k at high-tech stations, but over 7.5k everywhere else.

I'm currently on my way to Sol...just for the hell of it. Got about another 150Ly to go.

EDIT: Another bit of useful info if you didn't already know...long jumps take a lot more fuel than lots of small jumps. 5Ly in a Cobra uses about 20% of the fuel compared with 10Ly.

digitalscream

....and another word of warning. Don't fly into the Sol system with valuable cargo or a weak ship, because you're going to get trashed. I had 8 interdictions on the way in, 5 of which I couldn't get out of. The last one just finished me off...all of them were human players rather than NPCs.

Axe_meister

My sidewinder is slowly getting armed to the teeth have bested a couple of dangerous commanders! The current system I'm in seems to be at war so loads of combat missions to be had so you can kill federation ships without becoming wanted also get to pick up loads of stolen cargo.

digitalscream

I decided to start again - and I'm going to start exploiting the bug/feature whereby you still own the ship you had last when you cleared the save (and it stays where you left it), I think.

Starting from scratch in a Cobra again, I lucked out and picked up a whole load of rare cargo for about 30k on my travels -

Lavian Brandy (Lave)

Altairian Skin (Altair)

Leathery Eggs (Zaonce)

Evil Juice and Azure Milk (Leesti)

...then blasted off 150Ly downwards (relative to the map) and sold the lot for about 300k. I'm firmly of the opinion that this is the best way to trade, if you can find the right cargo - it takes all the guesswork and hassle out of mucking about with trade routes. It doesn't really matter where you take it all; they all max-out price-wise around the 140Ly-150Ly mark.

Now I've just got to get back to Sol to pick up my Viper, trick it out with better thrusters/powerplant/etc and go kill some people. Starting with the mofo who wiped me out in Sol in the first place.