Elite: Dangerous

[Tamas]

There are nice Youtube videos for the game I am sure somebody has covered this as well, I'd try to take a look.

[Pedrito]

The amount of content that's been added since the last time I played is staggering: mining, landings, completely revamped exploration, 

I'm flying in a Viper Mk IV that I found in my inventory (probably gifted by the developers) that I pimped up a bit, and I'm trying to accumulate some monies to buy and properly fit at least a Diamondback Explorer for, duh, exploration, or a hauler of some kind for trading.

Have you ever tried PowerPlay?

Oh, and my name is CMDR AB Normal, if you want to chat some time.

L.

[Tamas]

I haven't really tried Powerplay yet.

Make sure you are concentrating on missions, and try to "settle down" in a system for a while. As your reputation with a particular faction in there increases you'll get much, much better payouts, as you'll be able to get missions above your rank. Often (at least the non-combat ones) aren't really dangerous, they just pay heck of a lot more. Don't make my mistake: usually when they want you to carry something somewhere you need to pick the cargo up via the mission interface after accepting.

The Viper is a combat ship but I've found combat missions to be a bad payout unless you really enjoy combat (which I only moderately do). Try getting a trade ship if you don't, and work on delivery missions. The Hauler is nice.

The way I do it, I always look for missions and don't try to trade without them BUT often the delivery missions (whether you are asked to take something or to bring back) reveal nice trade routes. So if I am jumping somewhere to deliver a mission cargo I load up with bought stuff as well to sell there. Before you do sell it though, check the local mission board, somebody might be looking for it.

Speaking of jumping around a lot: not sure if you know, but "D" designation equipment are the lightest. If you want to fight you can't really afford to have such brittle stuff but otherwise jumping as far as possible will make your life much easier.

[Pedrito]

Don't make my mistake: usually when they want you to carry something somewhere you need to pick the cargo up via the mission interface after accepting.

Sometimes I still do the same mistake 

I must say that the game has become way more fun than when it was released. At the time, it felt like it was half-baked, and almost completely devoid of content; now, after the Horizons and Beyond DLCs, there are a lot of things to do (although still very open-ended and loose), and it's become easier to make money to get the bigger ships.

In three or four days of trade missions, I've upgraded from the lowly Viper to a Type-6 trasporter, that opened up rather lucrative trade routes and missions (even if sometimes I forget to account the commodites' weight and have to take a longer route, but with shorter jumps)(and, THE main gripe about the game: how's it impossible to have a interplanetary market info in-game, but one has to go on external sites to know which trade route has financial sense).

I tried the "evacuate station under Thargoid attack" missions, and they are really fun and give a rather real sense of danger, plus are good money - about 10K credits per evacuated person, consider a properly fitted Type-6 can load up to 100 persons per trip -, and your major power reputation gets up pretty fast.
In some more days of trading (blessed are the imperial slaves: a cargo of 63 units netted me more than 3 millions Cr  )i've made enough money to buy an ASP Explorer; i've fitted it for core mining, and in the next days I'll be out following the void opal craze: there's a pristine icy ring just two systems away...

L.

[Tamas]

I've found mining a bit annoying but I can certainly see the appeal for others. Loitering and seeking in those rings can be quite atmospheric.

I haven't tried the evacuation missions yet, will do so once I return to the game.

[Pedrito]

There's a weekly thread on reddit with info on recent thargoid attacks, and what to do to help.
Various roles are needed: evacuation ships, stocked with economy-class passenger cabins; traders to bring in materials for the reconstruction, and obv. Fighters for combat.
Given the recent resurgence in thargoid attacks, I'm sure that this kind of missions will be available for several weeks more.

I'm trying opal mining because it seems that everyone except me is becoming filthy rich in hours, and who am I to not try to become virtually filthy rich?

L.

[Tamas]

What the hell have we not discussed Elite in 6 years?!

Anyways, if you want to help me colonise a system, bring a lot of steel to system "SQOILZ QQ-Z C2-6" and then check out what else is needed.

[Tamas]

So anyways, was it a couple of years ago or so that I kitted out a ship for exploration, managing a 64 light years jump range which is quite good. Could have done better but wanted to carry a surface vehicle.

Spent a lot of time doing exploration runs deep into unsettled space, ding deep scans of non-trivial planets and scanning life forms / anomalies on planets which had them. Made an absolute killing selling all that data. When I stopped playing had a type 9 heavy with 750ish cargo space, an Anaconda and a few smaller ships which I was trying to kit for combat but I wasn't too interested in that at the end, and still had 160 million credits left in the bank.

So I have decided to claim a system for my own. At 25 million it wasn't a big deal. Now I have 3 weeks to ferry resources for the first outpost to be built to lock everything in. You sell the materials to the colonisers shop so I suspect I will have made most of the 25 million back by the time I am done. Too bad my Type 9 has only a 17 LY range when laden, so it is going to take a while, I suspect.


I was originally hoping to colonise a system I explored for the first time but they are way too far, you have to be 15 light years from the nearest settled system to stake a claim

[Tamas]

What a bummer.

The system I chose to colonise has a good number of planets but all of them are ice ones with two exceptions, a gas giant with ammonia-based life and a planet close to the sun made one third of metals. The plan was to build around and on the latter figuring that's gotta give a nice bonus to some extraction bases.

The coloniser ship when it arrived parked around one moon of a twin-moon formation orbiting one of the gas giants. I thought whatever I will just build up the metal planet afterwards.

I grind out this first outpost, just to realise when trying to select a second site that the metal planet is too unstable for construction.

Goddamit.

Kicked off a planetary industrial port construction on the moon orbited by the outpost, but FFS it needs even more materials than the outpost, plus of course it needs to be hauled to the surface. Yeah, I prpbamly won't bother.

What I should do instead is save up 5 billion credits for a fleet carrier so I can load that up with the build materials and then at least I would only need to haul from orbit.

With the time I have available to play I recon I can buy that thing in a few years. :p

[Josquius]

I tried this game again last year (this year?) I remember.
Still doesn't click.
A true worthy sequel to Frontier is never to be.

[Tamas]

I tried this game again last year (this year?) I remember.
Still doesn't click.
A true worthy sequel to Frontier is never to be.

I disagree. The biggest issue that's not going away is that unlike Frontier this has a persistent world shared by all players. That has its pluses and minuses.

But there are so many things here. Remember how in Frontier each planet would already have their system of government, security rating, population, imports and exports etc? Well same here except all these interact in a giant automatic simulation, with multiple factions potentially spanning multiple solar systems. Missions you do for them affect their strength and power which may trigger them to increase influence and go into conflict with another faction. Or heck just carry enough resources and switch a system's prosperity status. Plus there's a whole Powerplay layer above that representing the major players within each big alliance (Federation, Empire, Alliance of independents) vying for power.

Plus exploration, including planetary one as a viable income source.

Mining can has its moments but it's a bit of a grind for me.

Combat, of course.

And now you can build up your own solar systems, although doing it on your own and not with a squad if you have kids or any other commitments is just... crazy. Building my planetary port would take around 30k-ish units of various resources, so with the biggest available trading ship that's 30-ish round trips and that may very easily mean mor than two jumps per trip. So yeah that's a group activity, realistically.

But still this is an amazing game for what it is, excellent ambience. People will struggle to create a more immersive "I am a freelancer in a space opera universe" sim.