I found myself in an Anarchy system. Are they more dangerous than Federal controlled systems? Is it more risk/reward there? As a newbie should I not linger in that kind of system for long? I looked everywhere but couldnt find the danger level for systems anywhere in the galaxy map.
Regarding exploration, is there any easy way to tell a system has been explored or not? Some are pre populated and then i come across stars with no map data.
thanks
I thought systems with a certain population level are automatically explored - you can also buy exploration data from the galactic map. There’s actually 2 types of info you can buy there: when you click on a system you see 5 (I think) boxes: I think the 4th box from the left is the system data, but read the tooltips to be sure!
Emboldened by the discussion about fire groups and discovery scanners, I mapped my scanner to my “2” fire button in my main group, and for fun I even made a second fire group with just the discovery scanner in it. So I’m all scanner-enabled. Then, while making a trip that involved 2 jumps, I decided to stop and explore the middle system I was jumping through. I discovered the sun and systems around it, but while I was supercruising to the outer reaches I was interdicted and some bozo started pounding the crap out of me. Not only could I not fight back, I couldn’t even figure out where the heck he was (obv. he was behind me!). I escaped and decided “screw exploring, I’m completing this mission” and I finally managed to make a jump with my hull at 4% integrity! This was while playing solo, by the way. I wonder if that was a Anarchy system. Whatever it was, it was a painful experience!
Next time some fool tries to interdict your ass, try and fly that escape vector thingie. It’s a bit like wrestling in the UFC xbox game. You need to stay on the marker, and if you are, your blue bar fills. Miss it and the opponents red bar fills up. I rarely get interdicted if I dont want to. If I fly my viper however, I throttle back and whisper ‘come get some’ while the engine winds down.
Basically everyone can kill you in anarchy without fear of repercussions, i would beware of player ships, not so much about npcs.
Yeah Anarchy systems have always been for the seriously hardcore player in Elite. If not a great combat pilot i’d be looking for somewhere where the Law will keep your back a little better!
Its not that big a deal. You can try and fly out of an interdiction. If you fail at that, put three pips to the shields, three to the engine and boost-boost-boost frameshift engaging in 4 … 3 … 2 … 1… adios motherfucker. no reason to be afraid of any space really. really
I just dropped way too much money on Christmas but I am an Xbox 360 controller away from buying this. What I can’t believe is how I didn’t back this on Kickstarter; this was at a time when I was flinging money at stuff but somehow, I didn’t back it. I guess that means no Eagle. :(
Anarchy systems:
If you’re trolling for bounties, you’re better finding a system with an “established” (Fed/Alliance/Etc.) port, for turning in the bounties, along with an anarchy port for turning in stolen goodies. Then just run up and down that system grabbing USS encounters.
Don’t forget when you’re carrying stolen goodies, though, like I did last night. I forgot, entered a USS, oh and look a Fed Anaconda. 24.5K in fines later, fuck you feds, I’m off to Ashterah and the Alliance :)
Gimbaled weapons and turrets both make targeting easier, but at a trade off of power and accuracy. I haven’t used turrets much, but when it comes to, for example, regular lasers vs. lasers on gimbals, your distance accuracy suffers greatly with the gimbals. You need to keep your opponent close.
If you have trouble keeping the enemy in your crosshair, gimbals will help you score hits. However if you want to get better faster, try sticking with regular weapons. Also consider going back and redoing some of the combat training to get combat practice without risking anything.
The key to combat is lateral trust. For example when you are turning and tailing an enemy when you are pitching up to get them in your sights try applying upward thrust in addition to forward. You’ll both close and bring to bear faster. Or conversely, if the enemy is close and about to finish turning on you as you both are pitching hard to bring to bear, thrust down and forward to keep away from their guns and get past them. Use let and right thrust in combination with yawing to fine tune your targeting. Allocating a PoV hat, or better yet a mini stick like on the CH FighterStick, to lateral thrust is a must.
A good combination of weapons is forward firing lasers to take down shields and allow for long range fire, and multi-cannons on gimbals for closing and finishing off opponents. Once an enemy is near death they often try to escape, or another ships steals the kill from you, so you want to get in there get the kill fast. That’s where I take the greater hit percentage that the gimbaled cannon offers over the longer range and damage potential of regular guns. And if they do pull out of range and yo can’t catch up, with regular forward firing lasers you can at least keep getting shots off on them at long range.
I’ve seen the escape vector but I don’t (yet) know how to transfer power around. Probably a good thing to look into, tho.
I’m using mouse+keyboard and am doing ok - I find it surprisingly controllable like that. Is it the best evar control scheme? I’m sure it isn’t. But don’t let the lack of a controller (or a nice Logictech 3D Pro Joystick, $29.99 from Amazon) keep you from taking the plunge.
And the Eagle is just good (as noted above) for selling for cash - so all you did by missing out on it was delay your upgrade to another ship a little… no big loss.
2 Fixed Beams + 2 Gimalled Multicannon is a fine low-end Cobra set.
Some advice for beginner bounty hunters. Now, I’ve only done a little bounty hunting in the release version, but I did lots in the beta and my information should still apply. If anyone has better advice I’d love to hear it.
In any given system one of the best places to try and find bounties is the nav beacon near the star. At the start, before you can interdict, go to the nav beacon itself and just keep cycling through targets and scanning them to see if they are wanted. If you are in a regular system with some authority, your regular scanner will tell you if they are wanted, you don’t need a kill warrant scanner for that. I’ve found hunting at the nav beacon to yield more opportunities than flying around randomly looking for signals.
You will want a kill warrant scanner as soon as you can afford it. In a lawless system, scanning for warrants is the only way to know if someone is wanted. In a lawful system you still want to always scan opponents even if the regular scanner shows them as wanted. Often wanted pilots are wanted by multiple factions and after you scan them you can see and collect all the bounties. This will maximize your bounty revenue.
To use the kill scanner I recommend setting up one firing group with your primary weapons on the main trigger and the scanner on secondary, and a second group of just your primary and secondary weapons. Rather than one group of weapons and one group with only the scanner. Often you’ll have to complete the scan after the target has become hostile so you’ll be keeping that second trigger down while you start shooting. Once the scan is complete then switch to the other fire group so you can start using your secondary weapons. Once scanned you can see the bounty on a pilot when you select them in the contacts list of the left side UI panel.
A good system choice for bounty hunting is one that has stations belonging to multiple factions, and it’s even better if there’s a black market in one of them. Having multiple local factions means that when you take out someone wanted there’s a decent chance that more than one of the local factions will give you a payout. Having a black market nearby means you can also make a little side money selling off the cargo that is occasionally dropped by your prey.
That’s all I got so far. During my brief meanderings in the release version I’ve seen bounties around 5-12k. So if sidewinder trade runs are running ~$6k (I haven’t done any trading in release, I’m basing this on the prior poster’s info), bounty hunting seems like it should be a reasonably viable choice at the start.
Finally one question for people who have had more time in the pilot’s seat. Right at the end of my last play session I saw a mission to hunt a pirate for something crazy like $186k. I took it hoping to get to it tonight (as it had a 31h timer), but I wonder if I’m just going to get slaughtered by some uber ship I have no business taking on in my basic Eagle. Anyone have experience with these missions? I have seen other missions that were unavailable due to my lowly ranking, does that mean the game won’t give me a mission to go find a pirate that is going to completely outclass me?
is it sold anywhere else besides their own site? is there any way to gift a key?
Scroll back a bit and read my story where i take on a 150k pirate lord. They are pimped out anaconda’s rocking beam turrets. not something you will want to fuck with in a freagle.
Basically this, though it really does help in a case like that to get your power coupling upgraded from stock. In fact that’s the first thing I upgrade. That, then the power plant, then the FSD.
Unfortunately when you fail to escape interdiction despite resisting it, your FSD has a temporary cooldown before you can use it again. Here, vertical and lateral thrusters are your friends as well as afterburner.
I can’t tell if this is a bug or not - if I camp out at a nav sensor looking to do some bounty hunting, i can select targets to scan as normal. If I destroy a target or wait long enough, I can’t select any more targets, even if they are on screen or even attacking me. I have to supercruise out and return, then it resets. Has anyone else experienced this?
@tolwyn: never seen that bug, but I have avoided most combat so I’m the wrong person to ask!
So peoples, help me out here on my character progression. My thought was that I’d do some hauling to get cash, then try mining to see what I thought, and eventually work on my combat skills.
I was thinking I would want to have different ships for different tasks, and so initially I planned to get a second ship and outfit it for mining. But then I started thinking about the Anaconda. Seems like all you need to mine is a mining laser and a refinery, and it appears number of slots in the refinery is the limiting factor. Those two items could easily fit on the Anaconda whereas the cargo hold on the Anaconda limits your hauling mission choices.
So then I started thinking: maybe it’d be better to use the Anaconda to mine, and get a larger ship for hauling stuff. That leads to the question: does it make sense to go mining in the Anaconda as a way to make the big spacebucks, or is there some other limitation of that ship I’m missing?
And while we’re on mining questions, this huge asteroid refused to give out any more rocks after a certain point, didn’t matter how long or where I zapped it. Is this normal?
Deanco, yep, it seems that asteroids “deplete” pretty quickly.
Krok, I strongly suspect the answer to your question is “no, there’s no way to find out which stations sell which gear short of actually flying there and checking yourself”. That pretty much fits with Elite’s other user-hostile design choices. :( Although I wonder if that info might be part of the system data you can purchase? Or if perhaps there’s some sort of threshold of economy/population for a system that would guarantee you’ll find anything you need?
-Tom
Large population high-tech and industrial economies. set your map to filter those. you will find what you need.
Viper costs about a million credits to kit out nicely.