@krayzkrok: Hold off on that Cobra. In fact, hold off on that Cobra until you have at least 1 mil free.
Right now, I’m flying a pretty tricked out Viper, all C or above. It cost me over a million to get there. When you start going up in ships, the costs for decent equipment grow exorbitantly. Real Man Equipment (A & B) is stupid expensive. For instance, if I want an A level power distributor, it’s going to set me back over 500K. Not to mention weapons above E. Each of my D-beams cost 300K apiece. Kitting out a C-level Cobra will probably take about two million.
And there’s fuel to consider. You drain a Sidey tank and refill it for what – like 100Cr or something? I drain my Viper’s tank and it’s closer to 2K Cr. Travel costs suddenly become significant and you begin to scan planets and USS sites more closely just to pay for gas.
Unless you can grind bank in your Sidey, I would recommend going Eagle next if you’re going the combat route.
So, if your ship blows up… thats it? You only have access to the starter ship unless you got money in bank to buy another?
Bit like EVE, except no subscription fee then?
You can even get a loan of 200k if you can’t afford insurance.
There is such a grind between the Cobra/Lakon 6 and the rest of the bigger ships, right now the most profitable thing i can do is trade with my lakon which will probably net me like 150k-200k every 20 minutes but thats boring.
Combat is fun but also really slow until i can kill anacondas solo (which i cant)
Next upgrade is an ASP and people are saying you need like 30m to equip it properly for combat. (costs 6m to buy)
@tylertoo re: the HOTAS X: I dedicated the rightmost thumb button on the joystick as my shift button, thus allowing for two functions for all of the others. Even so, I still need to use the keyboard for some things. I have heard of some setups that assign another button as a shift button as well. I think the setup I have now plus maybe some voice attack commands would free me of having to use the keyboard at all.
Oh, and I do have TrackIR.
I don’t have the game yet but I’m playing with my new X52 Pro. I’m used to ratty old Microsoft FFB2s and cheap Saitek gear so it feels great to me. No idea why anyone thought a pinky button was a good idea though. I’m going to try to remove that or take off the entire handle brace.
I asked this earlier but don’t think anyone saw it. :) Is there a way to use the HOTAS to escape out of the Map screens without mousing over to “Exit”? I’m using an X52 Pro.
There is also a control labelled “UI Back” you can bind to a key or button. This will back you out of all menus, including the galaxy map. I have it bound to the shaft thumb button on my X55.
I did a mission last night where I traveled a gazillion light years (well, it FELT like it anyway!) to purchase some non-lethal weapons (5000cr), and when I came back to complete the mission, I delivered the cargo as promised, and I didn’t get any credits. I assume this nets me more rep than the standard delivery mission and will someday pay off. I hope !?
BTW the parts for the ED Tracker have shipped (from the UK), I’ll let you guys know how that goes.
For me, the biggest challenge of the HOTAS is reverse thrust, especially when landing. I have the Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS X v.2. If I use the game’s default setting, in which the center-point of the throttle is “zero” thrust, I seem to inadvertently put it in reverse way too often, and too fast. If I change the throttle so that the “zero” thrust point is throttle at the extreme low end of its range, then I have to bind a “toggle into reverse” key, and the game doesn’t seem to give me any feedback about when I’m in reverse. I find it easier to go into reverse using the keyboard. How do you guys handle this?
For me, the detent in the center of the throttle’s range (which I love and makes sense to me in this context) is enough to keep me from going into reverse too fast. I guess you could try to assign a button to “kill throttle” and then just maneuver with the keyboard or something.
Every time I play, I seem to dig myself into a financial hole. Well, yesterday and today, I made no mistakes, and I dug myself out. With the 60k I finally accumulated, I decided to try out mining.
54k for a 2 Bay Refinery, and 6k for a mining laser. 1k refund for my basic discovery scanner. So with 1500 Credits in my pocket, I went to a saturn-like gas giant and started mining its metallic inner rings. Mining is a very slow, laborious process. It feels like a real job! I like that. After about 1.5 hours of mining, I had 4 different elements in my cargo hold. I went back to the station nearby, and sold them all. Silver was nice a lucrative. About 4500 Cr, but the other three weren’t metals, they were minerals, and sold for only between 1000 and 1400 Cr each. So overall, not a very profitable evening. If I want mining to pay off, I’m going to have to find some Platinum or Palladium. Or at the very least Gold and Silver.
One way to help with this may be to add more deadzone to the throttle axis so you have more leeway between forward and reverse thrust, when using the full axis for both.
The game does also provide you visual feedback as to whether you are in forward or reverse thrust mode - the throttle position indicator on the HUD (to the right of the radar) will come up from the bottom when in forward throttle, and down from the top when in reverse throttle.
You could also set the reverse mode to ‘hold’ instead of ‘toggle’. That way you know you are only ever in reverse if you are holding down the required button.
Had a pretty good day. Started with 122k cr and a sidey. Bought a hauler with class c power, distro, shield, and fsd, 16T of cargo space, and put the sidey in storage. Ended the day with 339k and the fsd on the hauler upgraded to class b. Had the people of Bunch City in Gilgamesh gift me 90k when they gave me a contract for 10T of gold for 185k, when gold was being sold 200ls away in Moffit City for 9.3k. Only had to deal with 2 interdiction attempts the whole time.
I was mining tonight and found platinum, and actually found an asteroid that had both silver and palladium. Don’t just go for the rings of planets, also check out the “belts” around the stars. If they’re described as metallic, and especially as “major reserves” go for it. Also, with the minerals, learn which ones are more valuable (bertrandite, indite, etc.) so you don’t waste time hoovering up bauxite.
Tried to take on a bounty who was piloting an Anaconda with an Elite rating and I figured I could just stick to his butt so that his turrets couldn’t aim at me. Good idea in theory but in practice I almost got slaughtered. Even a big ship as the 'conda is rather fast and maneuverable in the right hands plus even if I could straddle him from behind (huh huh huh) my pew pew’s would probably not have enough oomph to take down his shields. I should have known a ~100K bounty would be way out of my league in my Schamer’s recommended Sidewinder upgrade.
I didn’t hold off on the Cobra. Loving it. LOVING. Upgrading it bit by bit and bounty hunting is just getting BETTER. To each their own though I suppose. ;)
I know this isn’t much compared to what some of you guys are pulling in, but I just stole a kill from some Federation security ships and snagged myself a 10,000 Cr bounty.
