Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter Launched

My evening of mining started very poorly. I jumped right in close to the planet this time, instead of the middle of the ring layer. First few floating rocks: Indite, Berzaniniatizing, blah blah blah. Oh my god. Where’s the metal?

I was about to give up on this location when I finally found some Silver. Finally! It took me 15 minutes to finally get 1 ton of Silver.

Then the next ton of Silver. And the next ton of Silver.

I was looking for my final ton of Silver for my Cargo bay to fill up, when I found… Palladium! Woohoo! I concentrated on that rock, dumped a couple of the Silvers that took me sooooo long to get, and came home with 3 Palladium and 1 Silver again, just like yesterday.

Now all I need to really live this miner’s life to the fullest is some kind of imagined psychological drama my character is going through as he works away at these rocks.

Niiiiiiiiiice!

In my evening, I made about 200k in an hour killing Cobra after Cobra after Cobra. No Anacondas, sadly, but I’ll take it.

OK, this map thing is really puzzling me. I choose a system 4 jumps away, the map gives me a path (orange lines), I get to the third system in the route, get interdicted, evade the interdiction, but now when I point to the next system, my ship tells me I don’t have enough jump fuel or whatever left.

OK, fair enough I think, I wasn’t looking at my fuel gauge, maybe the interdiction avoidance took a chunk out of my fuel and now I don’t have enough to get to the final system, I’ll go back a step to a system that does seem to be available (I can select a route to it, so I must have enough fuel) 1 jump away that I’ve been to before and know has a station where I can refuel. I go there, refuel. The final system I wanted to get to is now still unreachable (red route button, can’t set a route) and there are no lines to it, even though the number of jumps from the initial system was 4, and the system I’m refuelling in was previously just on a line off the route I’d initially chosen.

Is there something like “cosmic winds” or something that changes the “difficulty” of getting from one system to another? I can’t explain it otherwise (other than borked map I guess). I mean, previously the system was reachable, now it’s not reachable and the map won’t give a me a route to it at all (not even blue lines).

scratches head

Still having bags of fun though :)

Yes!!! Finally I understand! I think I planned the route then took on some cargo, that will be it.

Coincidentally, while nosing around I just noticed the mass slider on the galaxy map, now I get it - thanks!

My current “big plan” is to gradually work my way over to Alliance territory, trading and profiting as I go. This gives me a goal to work towards, as I seem to be at the arse end of nowhere where I am at the moment (somewhere near Eravate). Plus, I don’t fancy either the Feds or the Empire very much :)

However, I’ve KDW’d wanted NPC’s and it has not turned them hostile towards me most of the time.

They don’t turn hostile immediately, in my experience, but they do deploy hardpoints “just in case”.

I’ve been fiddling about with my m/k controls a bit more, as I was having difficulty with that Crimson Bastard sidewinder training mission (Sidewinder Face-off- the previous two were easy).

My feeling that Roll should be on the A/D keys and Yaw on the mouse x-axis is right, I think.

The key thing about Roll on A/D is that since Roll is the fastest of all the movement types out of the box, it doesn’t really require much in the way of analogue control from the mouse (i.e. doesn’t get any special benefit from it), since you only need to tap the keys as much as you need to roll. And having the full analogue movement from the mouse on Pitch (joystick emulation style) is better anyway (and set on on Absolute rather than Relative). Yaw on x-axis (no roll) remains great for “fine tuning” aim, and still takes advantage of all those years of muscle memory (as opposed to having the weird Roll on the x-axis). Also, for some reason, Roll on A/D is just really, really smooth and easy, the two hands easily work together for it.

But I realized that while W/S for pitch was fun and intuitive enough (as an old Descent thing), and got me over the hump of getting into the control system, it’s actually a waste of keys, since my mouse could be doing all the pitching I need, plus the mouse analogue control is better for that anyway (since Pitch can be either full-on or part of the “fine tuning” on combination with Yaw).

So I tried what I’ve seen mentioned a few times: W and S for Thrust up/down (with Q/E for Thrust L/R). THIS IS THE GAME CHANGER. I thought I was being quite cute to have LCTRL for down thrust and SPACE for up thrust, as it takes advantage of the muscle memory for crouch and jump. But the problem is, with a turn system based on Roll->Pitch, the equivalent of A/D for ground avatar circle strafing IS the up/down thrust, and for that you need the keys instantly accessible, and having the thrust down in particular (the most used, if things go over your head) tied to S, and right next to the Roll keys, is absolutely golden.

It basically allows you to do really easily what amounts to the same as the FAOFF trick you see so often, except you don’t need to have FAOFF (although of course you can, for added goodness, and I’ll be practicing that for sure, but it requires more finesse to lower thrust quickly to counteract some of the acceleration). Basically you just hit down (S) enough to give you the strafing effect, so you have the bottom of the enemy under your guns as soon as you release it and he gets into your sights as you pitch up. It makes that basic maneouvre easy peasy, and makes it much easier to maneouvre to stay behind the enemy in general too.

Thrust forward/back is now CTRL and SPACE, which have a visceral feel of jamming your pinky to “pull back” and banging the spacebar with your thumb to “pump forward” - meaning, again, more ease, because you don’t really need to monitor the throttle all that much. You just need it set to 50% and it defaults to that sweet spot no matter what you do.

Result: Sidewinder face-off beaten really easily, whereas before I was finding it really hard.

There is a weird bug with searching the galaxy map for Frey. As you mentioned, when you search, you get Freyr, which is way the hell away from Frey. However, if you hit search again, though, it goes to the Frey you want.

The search returns things in an alphabetical order. So when I was searching for a system that started with 37, it first showed me a system 37 A…, then pressing it again and again, I got to the system I was looking for, which had 37 G…something something. So when I searched for Frey and got Freyr, I automatically hit the button again to get Frey. The search algorithm just considers r to come before a space or carriage return or null or whatever they have in the database for Frey after the letter y.

Following those tips I easily found Frey and began my trip…and then ran out of gas about halfway. So I’m in an unexplored system with less than one bubble of fuel. I was aware of the fuel issue…just figured I’d be able to fill up on the way I guess --lesson learned.

I’m sure I’m done for and will have to start over…is there any way to ‘hit a reset button’ or do I have to literally run the ship out of fuel and wait to croak?

There’s not even any other ships around to sacrifice myself to.

Hit 4 to bring up the panel to your right, in the last section there should be a way to self-destruct your ship.

Here’s my problem: I suck in combat. “Suck” is defined as: can’t even beat the ship in the first combat tutorial.

I am using a (new) T.Flight Hotas, just getting used to it. Suffice it to say that I wasn’t even close to handling dogfighting in my few weeks with mouse and keyboard.

I’m fine if I never get good at it. But I’d love to be able to do some easy bounty missions at some point. I’m not going to try in-game combat, though, until I can complete the tutorials. When I’m interdicted in-game, I run for the hills (and I usually do escape).

When I play the tutorial, I have my ship moving at about half maximum speed. Finding the opponent is not a problem – I’ve OK with making use of the scanner to orient my ship properly. The real problem is simply targeting as the bad guy zips by. He’s just too fast and my reflexes are too slow.

Any suggestions?

Make sure you are at the optimal speed for maneuverability. Active speed management I’ve found is key.

I started with K+M and got really good with it. I picked up a gamepad and can’t decide what I like better. I think I might actually be erring back to the keys.

More coffee? or other stimulant? Or in more serious tone, how many of those great play guides/tutorial video’s have you followed? I know in the older Elite games it took a while for combat to click (and that was full Newtonian combat) but there was a specific technique to it and as they say practice makes perfect, it’s just that some people have to practice more than others.

Those guides i mention are on the main elite forums, i think now in the ‘New comers’ section?

Combat takes some getting used to, to be sure. I wasn’t great at combat in the beginning either, with with practice I’ve been getting better.

Now is the problem initially targeting him, or is it keeping him lined up so you can hit him?

Thanks for the tip. I’ll pay more attention to being in the blue zone.

Thanks, I’ll try to find some guides. And, I guess I just need lots of practice.

Do you folks usually keep Flight Assist on during combat? Or does that hinder maneuverability?

Brian I’m not sure I understand the difference between those two.

Keep flight assist ON unless you really feel like trying to go pro. I use it, but just in limited bursts when trying to make a quick maneuver (I still suck at it). I couldn’t imagine using it off the majority of the time.

Not really applicable to the first combat tutorial (possibly the second?), but for the game, buy and equip gimballed guns. They’ll generally track things more or less in the center of the screen so you don’t have to have the super-fine motor control of your youth.

On your right panel, you’ll find a self destruct button under your systems (landing gear, ship lights, etc. Should be near the bottom.

I never tried M+K but I’m doing pretty good with the 360 controller. I went with the “Gamepad with yaw” config. I plan to try the advanced gamepad setting soon, but I’m generally terrible at games where too many combos are on the controller, so I’m hesitant.

I’m going to order the Thrustmaster T-Flight when they become available again. I hate that I missed all the BF/Holiday sales, but who knew I was going to get hooked on a space sim? :)