2761

I recently moved from K+M to gamepad. I changed the in-flight mapping for A from Change Weapon Set to Cycle Target (G on KB) so I use Y to target in front and A to cycle through targets.

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

I’ve not yet seen a real human player yet. I have seen plenty of NPC’s getting shot up by stations. I’m thinking they’re either wanted smugglers, pirates, or just really botched up the entry.

And it’s finally hit me… Outposts really are the bomb. They are not patrolled. And I suck at smuggling into big stations. So I’ll just sell all my illegal stuff at outposts and not have to worry about getting scanned.

2762

Made it to the Imperial system of Sak Manka, going to hang here for a bit

2763

So last night, I got a mission to take out some pirates in a system. I showed up there, and some guy started barking on comms about how I shouldn’t listen to the people who hired me, and I should instead take out 2 Authority ships. I decided this wasn’t in my best interest and attacked and killed this guy.

Um. Now I’m Wanted. How can I fix this? :)

Also, is there a way to do inter-system travel faster? Let’s say I need to get to a station 200 km away. This either can take 5+ minutes of full speed travel, or I can try to supercruise closer. That usually ends in me overshooting it and not making much progress. Am I doing something wrong?

2764

  1. Fix your bounty by flying to an outpost (the little stations with the external landing bays), go to Contacts, and pay it there.

  2. You need to lock your destination, via the Navigation panel on your left. Keep the ETA to the destination around 6-8 seconds, which will ensure enough deceleration time. Once you get within 999km from the target, you’ll see a “Safe to Disengage” message above your radar. Hit your Supercruise again and you will be placed ~8km from your destination. Again, this requires that you have the destination locked.

2765

Rock8man, I’m kinda with ya. I just wish they’d add a freaking arrow pointing to where my target is when they’re not right in front of me, like Freespace 2 and other games have. That ALONE would help me immensely. I’m waiting for my head tracker to arrive in a few weeks, so that’ll likely also help, but yeah, situational awareness could use some improvements, to be sure.

2766

Outposts are indeed the shit. Find one with a black market and a commodities market and you’re golden.

2767

I disagree about the lack of situational awareness. Once you start to make sense of your scanner - which should not be an issue if you’ve played Elite or Frontier - I don’t think SA is a problem at all. All targets that your scanner can pick up are also nicely displayed as contact, enemy, friendly, neutral and ‘attacking you’, as long as they are in range. And with targeting commands like highest threat and next target, I only use the contacts list to check for bounties or occasionally check what equipment a target has.

It’s probably my broken memory but I also don’t remember Freespace having any list of targets anywhere, except escort lists, and if I’m not mistaken a pointer to targets behind you either. At least I just used the targeting commands in conjuction with the radar in that, just like I do in Elite.

Edit: Yeah, I was mistaken, of course there is a pointer to targets in Freespace.

2768

You don’t just use the scanner? I can put any object in front of me within a few seconds just by reading the scanner. TrackIR sounds like it would really help when the ship accelerates above you though. Shame you can’t lock your view to your current target, at least while it’s visible through one of the viewports.

Had a mixed day today because I got too ambitious, picking up half a dozen delivery and supply missions within a triangle of systems. All good, except I didn’t look carefully and notice one mission in particular had a 30 minute timer on it. I only realised this after I’d docked at a station and found my cargo bay was full of clothes for another mission to another system! Damn. So what followed was a crazy mad dash to sell the clothes, then back to buy the original cargo, and finally to the delivery system. Naturally each station was 1,500 Ls or so from the jump point, plus I was flying my Cobra which I’m not really used to. Well, I learned pretty quickly! The vertical and lateral thrusters on this thing are much more sustained than the Sidewinder, but I got pretty damn good with it by the time I was done. I arrived back to deliver my original cargo (the one with the really high reward!) with 6 minutes left on the clock… only to realise that I’d bought the wrong commodity by mistake in my rush. I made a bit of cash, but only half of what I should have earned.

Then I joined Kelan for some pirate fighting at a nav point, lots of fun! I took the Sidewinder out because the Cobra really wasn’t at combat spec yet. Got a reasonable bounty on a Cobra pirate, but I managed to piss off the local Feds and one Viper wouldn’t leave me alone. I couldn’t jump away fast enough and lost the ship.

That’s when I learned that all the bounties and cartographic data that I thought was safely tied to my Cobra was actually tied to my pilot, so I lost the lot! It probably cost me about 70K. Well that was a hard lesson to learn! I also realised that the Sidewinder has reached the end of its useful life, so I’m going to trade it in and start building up the Cobra. Which I should have done from the start. :)

2769

Had my first run in with a Dangerous opponent. Helped the authorities take out a couple of wanted Sidewinders near an extraction zone. Targeted a 3rd Sidey that scanned as Mostly Harmless. Next thing I know another Dangerous Sidey is on my ass. Had me down to 50% hull before I decided it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. Boy did it take forever for the FSD to spin up!

I have about 160k in the bank, should I upgrade to an Adder? Seems like a good stepping stone on the way to a Cobra that might open up a few more mission options with the greater number of internal compartments. Should have enough in the kitty to upgrade a few key components immediately and keep a buffer on hand. Anyone flying one?

2770

I honestly get annoyed with the scanner because – and this is my own fault – I forget to change the focus of the scanner from wider to narrower while in combat, so when I do that, it’s just a blob of icons and my target gets lost in there. When I remember to zoom the scanner in, it’s way better, so yeah, I’m whining about nothing really. ;)

2771

The Adder is a great stepping stone to the Cobra, at least it was for me. Faster than the Hauler and almost as versatile, but with two more weapon slots. I think my first kill in the released game was in an Adder too. :) Very solid ship, just note the cargo hatch is a bit bugged (at least it was when I last flew one), so picking up cargo isn’t as easy as a Hauler.

2772

Sigh, yeah Krok, sorry to hear about your loss. Every so often you gotta stop what you’re doing and turn those bounties in.

2773

Yeah, that was a bummer, krayzkrok. Sorry about that. At first I thought you got away when your ship disappeared. I almost started shooting the feds to get them off you, but I still had those 140k in bounties to turn in myself and 110k from that one random pirate alone. I was going to help make sure you got in on that big kill, but it blew up at like 50% hull, probably from that other Anaconda random NPC dude targeting the pirate’s core system or something.

We were hoping more than one player could get a share of a bounty, but it appears only one person gets them. Sorry I was a little too bloodthirsty and should soften some up at times to allow others to get the kill shots.

On another note, I am absolutely loving this Viper. I probably made 500k in bounties just in the past day. I can’t wait to get back in, but have other RL stuff that keeps getting in the way. This game went from being one of my possible regrets for an $80 purchase earlier in the year to a very strong game of the year candidate for me once I got the time to dig into it at release.

2774

Yeah re. the SA, if you’re a mouse user and you don’t have any fancy-schmancy TrackIR (or the other thing you can set up to use an ordinary camera with - FaceTrackNoIR), using RMB for Headlook is the next-best thing. It’s extremely intuitive (if you’re used to MMOs) and it really situates you as the avatar in the cockpit (if you’re used to MMOs), and enables you to quickly look around, both in combat (to see where something is going as it passes you) and when in Supercruise (to quickly look around to find your target star or whatever). You can even “invert” headlook if you want.

Only 2 things you have to bear in mind is it “snaps back” to forward facing when you let go of RMB (which is a good thing, means you have a physiological demarcation between “I’m looking around” and “I’m steering the ship/aiming”, if you make the “let go” of the button dramatic, best practice being to look forward again before snapping back to aiming so you don’t get much “travel” on the aiming-steering immediately after) and that you’ll have to find another button for Secondary fire (I use Mouse4, thumb).

This game is so good though, that I’m seriously considering getting some hardware for it, at least TrackIR/FaceTrackNoIR (so my looking around can be independent of my steering/aiming), and maybe even try out a joystick.

2775

Having some trouble figuring out the galaxy map. Is it common knowledge that some systems cannot be looked up via the search?

I saw posts above about guys working out of Frey and I thought I’d head that way but searching for Frey on the galaxy map returns another system (Freyr or something).

Then, I was just tooling around with the filters and and I managed to get Frey to show up on the map and even plot a route to it but I then accidentally reset the plot to another system and now can’t find Frey again.

2776

RedFive. I have not noticed that. I have noticed the search is completely unforgiving though. You have to get the spelling EXACTLY right for it to work. In particular spaces before or after numbers throw me all the time. This is the first game since DCS that I feel the need to keep a small flight pad next to my laptop to jot down notes.

2777

Is there anyway to see on the Galaxy Map which systems you have visited before, etc?

2778

In that big user made manual, they also did a compendium of developer comments, and there is one comment where he talks about exactly that. He said that they put the arrow in at one point, but all anybody looked at was the arrow from then on. No graphics, no nothing, just the arrow. He really wants your attention flicking from the main screen to the dashboard and back again. That’s why the arrow isn’t in.

2779

Hey, no need to feel sorry for me, I screwed up and should have bailed earlier, but I got too cocky. It was a wake-up call that there’s zero comparison to what I thought was a decent Sidewinder and the Viper, I felt like I was firing with a laser pointer compared with your nuclear warheads. The Fed chasing me must have hit something vital too, because my hull was around 35% as the FSD was spooling up, and I was dodging most of his shots fairly well, then suddenly boom.

Anyway, time to concentrate on upgrading my Cobra to combat spec. I wonder whether I’ve jumped the gun and should have gone with a Viper instead, but I’m sticking with my plan! The Cobra is really exactly what I need, something with some versatility while still being very capable.

2780

Not going to happen. As deanco says, this was a very deliberate design choice by the developers to get people using the radar/scanner instead of just following an arrow around the whole time. They wanted situational awareness and keeping track of your target to have a bit more skill to it than following an arrow.