2021

Sounds like a plan!

Yeah, I plan to hang out around here until I learn the game a bit more at least. There is still a ton of things I have no idea about including when/how to upgrade and how much it will cost me. I should have just reset after my first failed landing as I racked up 2 sets of fines that the game made me take out a loan for that is still there, heh. At least my last mission gave me enough to pay that off although I need to figure out how that works.

On the mining, I am just guessing here, but for some of us that don’t have the combat skills or sufficient ship/gear to overcome that deficiency, then mining may still be a good way to acquire some cash without fighting to still upgrade. If you have the combat skills, some of the pirate hunting will probably always be better profit. As soon as I can afford a mining laser and refinery, I will try it out, but am afraid it may take me a bit of time :). Hopefully it also depends a lot on whether you find that undiscovered, lucrative mining field. It would be cool if someone finds one and send a call out to the group to come out on a mining op!

2022

As much as I typically LOVE mining in games like this, it’s currently not as much fun as smuggling or even straight up space trucking.

2023

Its not that mining isnt profitable. I reckon if you manage to bring in truly valuable stuff you actually make more than blasting fools. It just seems tedious and like work to me.

2024

I don’t want my wife thinking the PC could be a gaming device. The joystick on the desk next to the mouse makes that really hard.

2025

I love gaming too much to be with someone who didn’t fully understand that. Shouldn’t have to hide something you have a passion for imo. I’ve always cleared gaming habits with GF’s pretty early in the relationship and thankfully my fiancee is a gamer herself.

2026

I have to hide my new joystick and headset from my cat. He likes to chew on my new computer devices all the time and I can’t leave a USB stick plugged in and leave the room without him going after it. Once he gets used to it being around, he mostly ignores stuff, but if it is new, you can count on him checking it out as soon as possible.

2027

rock8man, come on down right now and do these dishes, laundry, diaper changes!

naw honey, i gotta take care of these bills, work emails and errr stuff!

<pewpew neeeeaaaaarrrroooowww whoosh pew pew>

yea i get you brah ;-)

2028

So is there a trick for turning faster? How do the physics work in this game? I’ve noticed that turning is really slow, slower than the dreadnaught in Iwar. The initial ship you start with must have really poor rotational thrusters. When I fire afterburners, can I then shut off all engines and just use rotational thrusters to turn around as I continue to travel along that vector?

How sweet are this graphics? When you guys were having your argument earlier in the thread about 1:1 scale, I was picturing the planets from I-war, since that had a similar system in place where planets were actual objects and switching to the FTL drive, you could fly around the solar system and take in the planets and their moons. But the one planet I’ve seen in ED is so much better looking than the plain planets of Iwar.

2029

Hahahahah, that’s happened a few times, almost word for word.

2030

Low yaw authority is not exclusive to the sidewinder and you get that with all ships. You mostly use roll and pitch for manoeuvring and yaw for fine tuning your aim. Another thing to keep in mind is your ship is at its most manoeuvrable when the throttle indicator to the right of the scanner is within the blue highlighted range. The afterburner thing was in for a bit but was removed as it was deemed a bit unbalancing, especially making escape from interdictions too easy. You can still do a boost and keep flying that way in Flight Assist off mode, but speed will decay back to your non afterburner top speed.

The planets are indeed looking great, and I hope the planned planetary landing expansion becomes a reality in the not too distant future.

2031

OK, that explains a lot. Including why the default control scheme had roll on the x-axis of the joystick, and yaw on turning the joystick side to side, which is the opposite of every other space Sim I’ve ever played. I switched the two immediately when I saw that, but after your beautiful information nuggets I might have to give the default scheme a try. And I’ll have to find the button to turn flight assist off and assign it to a very reachable button near Tab. Maybe Caps Lock.

2032

Tom, you can make an absolute killing via mining, but you get out of it what you put into it. People who just fly up to random space rocks, hold down a trigger, and expect to get rich quick leave very disappointed. It’s not as simple as that, but I can understand why most expect it to be, as that’s pretty much how every other game I’ve played handles it.

The trick with mining in Elite is you need to think of yourself as an old-timey gold prospector, only this time you have a goddern spaceship. Seriously, one of the biggest parts of mining is the exploration aspect of it. You need to explore systems (or buy the data) and find rich metallic rings/fields, “pristine” are apparently quite valuable. You’re hunting for rocks that provide the valuable stuff like gold, silver, etc. You can make a killing once you’ve got a find, it’s the latter part where the effort is and where the wimps looking for a quick buck get separated from the manly-man miner spacemen.

I’m by no means a miner pro, but I did do a little of it in my Adder the other day. I started out making crap, but once I realized that I needed to put in the work on finding good rocks to mine, my income started improving dramatically.

2033

I have flight assist on/off set to the pinky button on my HOTAS. I havent really taught myself how to make the most of it, but i read that in the viper it is the key to getting some really fancy flying done.

Your mind is gonna get fucking blown tomorrow rock8dude :D mark my words.

2034

Right, and that’s exactly why I want to try mining. And now I’m back to my initial question: Is there a primer for this somewhere? How am I supposed to figure this stuff out? Trial and error? Because there’s nothing in the game telling me these things.

-Tom
2035

Not in game that I know of, unfortunately. I did it mostly via some experimentation of my own, but that’s because I really enjoy figuring game mechanics out (I blame renting KOEI strategy games as a child, like Bandit Kings, Genghis Khan, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and having to figure them all out without the benefit of an instruction manual of any sort!).

Here’s a youtube tutorial, if you’re interested (I haven’t watched it myself). The wiki entry covers everything you need to get started, mechanically (i.e. what equipment you need, how it works, that sort of thing). Hope either of those help.

2036

And can you make notes on the galaxy map to detail your findings, so you can find them again later?

2037

I don’t know. I don’t think so, but if not (and if it’s not already) that needs to be a suggestion on the Frontier forums ASAP.

2038

The ability to build a “favourites” list of systems/starports of interest, with a freetext field to record what makes them interesting, is probably my number 1 request. It would really help me feel I am building up my own knowledge of a bit of the galaxy, knowing where the good mining rings are, where the warzones are, where the freeports with black markets are, where the rare goods are, where the good shipyards/outfitters are, where the good bounty hunting spots are etc.

If I try and keep notes outside the game I ill lose them, and also I would really like to be able to scroll through my favourties, pick the one I want, and automatically plot a route.

2039

Unless they have a highly secret trump card to play in the next 24 hours (as in a huge content update/patch thing), i think we just need to accept it being a ‘bare-bones’ release with more to come down the line, not just expansion packs, but smaller updates and fixes/balance issues as well. Reading the forum it seems many recent changes are one step forward two back kinda of thing, so it is going to need ‘more time’ to reach it’s full potential, it seems. There is a FAQ new player guide thing in the main forum that might help get a better grasp of the game?

2040

Yea, there’s going to be no miracle patch. There will maybe be a new ship or two and the kickoff of the storyline, but that’s probably about it. The lack of any sort of grouping mechanics in an online game is kinda indicative to me that, while the foundations of this game are solid and very enjoyable, there’s still a lot of work to be done.