2701

I now have enough money for a Cobra Mk III without the need to sell the Sidewinder just yet. She’s served me well, I’ve replaced the windscreen glass several times, but I’ll sell her just as soon as I’ve upgraded the Cobra enough to make it my main ride. I had a great time tonight bounty hunting around a nav point, now quite happy to take on Cobras and Vipers in my Sidey, as long as they’re not above Competent, unless I have Fed backup. Even taken on a couple of Federal Dropships, but those guys always cut and run when their hull gets down below 50%.

I haven’t had much luck targeting sub-systems; I generally get them down to around 90% before the hull gives up, perhaps I need more precise weaponry (or a more precise pilot!). Tried to destroy the FSD on a Federal Dropship, got a few runs sitting directly behind it and poured laser fire into it, but it barely made a dent.

2702

Huzzaaahhhhh, welcome to the family.

2703

Speaking of that, are we all playing on Mobius or Veloxi? Or do we need a QT3 group?

Also, I’ve started a Twitch channel of my own (name is Ponicus) inspired by Brian Rubin’s adventures. I’ll be running it almost nightly (as I play almost nightly) and for now it’s almost exclusively Elite. Thought it’s a great way to have some company on a sometimes lonely adventure.

Edit: THANKS for being my first follower, Brian. :)

2704

Ah, ok. It makes sense that I’m more likely to be scanned when entering a large space station vs a small platform/outpost.

2705

Oh yeah, outposts never have cops, so if you have bounties on yourself to clear or illegal cargo to sell, find an outpost with a black market, they’ll be your new best friends.

Totally following your Twitch channel BTW, Ponicus. I’ll definitely watch if I’m not playing my own self. ;)

2706

Best I’ve found is pretty much the same as you, Palladium or Beryllium, one jump (it’s 12.9 LY, but I can make it in one hop). Negative factor is that there’s no good return haul other than like 200 per ton, which is pretty poor. 1050 per ton might not be great but it’s good enough that I don’t want to go looking around for anything better (plus one end of the run is in a system where I can mine, so if I get tired of hauling I can blast rocks for fun).

Definitely thinking about getting a Cobra though, as I’m doing all this in a Hauler right now. And that’s only 10 slots.

2707

Cobra can be upgraded, I have 20 in mine. Great for multipurpose trips. ;)

2708

Hmm. The game doesn’t recognize my Logitech F310. Looks like I have to manually map the controls or something.

2709

My route right now is Beryllium one way and Marine Equipment back to another station in the starting system, then coffee between that station and the 1st. It is 2 jumps between the star systems. I think I am netting about 1.4k per beryllium with around 23k for that trip, about 11k for the marine equipment, and maybe 6k for the coffee. I upgraded my hauler to have 16 tons of cargo space. It looks like I could switch out the discovery scanner for another 2T, but I haven’t done that yet.

2710

I’ve been poking around this thread but don’t see the info: is there a Qt3 group and if so, how do I join? My in game name is Camley

2711

You’re more than welcome to join the Veloxi group, which has members from here and my other favorite places on the web. :)

2712

I did manage to find a control scheme for my T.Flight Hotas X that I really like, and that I can use without touching the keyboard. Found it, complete with chart and dowloadable binding file hereon the Frontier forum. Takes a bit of getting used to, but I played for two hours tonight and found it starting to become second nature.

I’m now getting the hang of landing much better. I still have trouble landing inside a space station when the assigned pad is fairly close to the enter/exit bay. Some of my landings are ugly but get the job done. Loving this joystick setup, so much more relaxing.

Still dirt poor, still with my upgraded sidewinder, and only about 7K cr to my name. But I’m trying to stay out of trouble and trying to focus on some reasonably profitable trading and hauling missions.

Yes, this is the bees knees, this game. Greatest thing since sliced bread, in fact.

2713

You can still find your landing pad by following the blue dot on the hud radar once inside the station even if the hud number isn’t showing.

edit: I’m playing on Open, but in the Veloxi group.

2714

I started a thread to track the handles and groups that people here are playing under.

Drop your details in there so we can collate a single source for adding other QT3 folk.

2715

Thanks to you and other posters for suggestions on the throttle axis. I’ll try out some of them. It’s nice that we have so many different ways to pilot our ships.

I do know about the throttle position indicator on the HUD. It does help, but I don’t really see it clearly until I start actually adding thrust. I guess I wish there were a big green REVERSE light or something. But I’m getting used to it.

2716

Well, after a few hiccups and a restart I’m now thoroughly hooked, and all I did was try to move 3 “pieces” of aluminium from one system to another, and as I discovered when I finally got to my destination station, I would have made a little bit of profit as I had planned to, except that I was interdicted by some sort of NPC pirate or psychopath in an Eagle (at least I think it was an NPC, unless there’s some player out there who’s given to saying corny pirate things in chat :) ), who shot my bloody cargo out from under me. I managed to avoid being killed by dint of hudging around, boosting and pumping shields now and then (I had no chance of hitting her, she was manouvering very fast), then I think what happened is that some police went after her (at least there were some white squares appeared on the radar, and then I stopped being attacked. I didn’t know my cargo had disappeared until I arrived at my destination station, and wept for the lost profit :) If I’d known I’d lost my cargo, I imagine what I could have done was hang around - presumably the police killed her and I could have scooped up something, but I was so shaken I just tried to get to my destination station as quickly as possible.

This is one of the rare times in a game where I’ve ever felt an adrenaline jag in a PvE setting :) I think it’s all the detailed context around it that makes it so immersive. I mean, I see complaints about the “tedium” of docking, and all the relatively un-automated amount of detail you have to fiddle about with, but that’s precisely what makes things like what happened to me have some bite - because you’re “slowed down” as it were, everything is magnified, and you do sort of live through it, it feels real.

I’m quite pleased though that I’ve gotten all the basics of jumping around, both in-system (at least wrt stations) and between systems, and docking, fairly smooth now, definitely feeling sort of “in the saddle” a bit.

Really, really great game, even just from a few hours settled play. Looking forward to more emergent stuff happening down the line. I plan to do some safe couriering for a bit to build up some funds, then my next challenge will be to try and see what’s up with the “unknown signatures”. I’ve tried to get into those spaces but I always seem to overshoot them and lose them.

This is going to be the killer app for the Oculus Rift though, that’s for sure. My RMB trick for looking around is great (and I think for combat it’s actually essential to be able to quickly look around and track the direction an enemy is going as they go past you), but it would be even better to have TrackIR, and probably sublime to have the Rift and Voice Attack (which I got, with a neat voice pack that’s floating around, quite fun).

2717

Does the game give anyone else a lonely vibe while playing online? My only encounters with human players occurred in my starting system but ever since I ventured out on my own it’s been nothing but NPCs during online play. Maybe if they implemented some sort of sector or quadrant open chat that would alleviate the feel of flying solo whilst playing in the online mode which I forget what they call it. I’m sure the devs have planned social features to be implemented at a later date but I was wondering if anyo0nje else feels isolated from other human players while online.

2718

Here is another page that has CH HOTAS suggestions and files (I have not tried the setup yet as I am waiting my CH HOTAS pieces to arrive). I suppose it can not hurt to look at what people have done - there is a Youtube video showing how it works too. I find it interesting to see what people do or come up with for all the various aspects of the game.

CH HOTAS Site

2719

Well, white dots on the radar are things like FSD wakes, nav points and cargo containers. If a whole bunch of white squares appeared and you lost your cargo, it could have been your cargo! You can eject your cargo if you hit the right (or wrong) button, so that’s possible. You can also target the cargo hatch subsystem during combat, so it’s possible the pirate blasted your hold right open. Dropping cargo can be enough to stop a pirate from attacking you as they scoop up the spoils.

I have seen human players but it’s rare, so it’s a small thrilll when I see that open square (and a shiver when I see an open triangle). Yes, I would definitely like to see better communication… or even something that works, because apart from an initial chat with jpinard I’d not once had a text go through successfully either in the main menu or in game. Having a system-wide (or even limited range) broadcast, or targeted broadcast, would be great. Plus the ability to switch it off if you’d like to remain contact-free of course.

2720

the galaxy is big, most players are concentrated in just a few areas (sol and conflict zones) still, I play in Open and see a handful of guys including some from here.