2781

Yeah, since I’ve made that comment I did some research and read the same thing, and have to admit it makes a weird amount of sense. Ah well, I’ll adapt. ;)

2782

You know what would be great? A way to tag asteroids that you’d already depleted in a belt cluster. It’s kind of hard to tell one from the other. BTW is it worth going for any but “Metallic” rings or belts, or are “metal rich” ones worth mining in?

2783

I just tried this and it works for me; after typing the inquiry clicking repeatedly on the ‘go to’ arrow next to the search box cycles through matches. Frey was the second result when I did this.

2784

My experience is that metallic belts are more likely to have expensive metals like gold, palladium and platinum.

2785

I have a viper now with two lasers and two cannons. I have sunk about $60k each into a power plant and distributor but the lasers don’t fire properly. They never overheat so I am not sure what is causing the problem. Could just be cheap lasers. Any ideas anyone?

2786

Positioning on the ship. Where are the lasers?

2787

Out of range?

2788

In range. Could be positioning. They are on the wings though. Didn’t have this problem with a sidewinder.

2789

Is it the bottom guns on the viper? You have to be straight center to shoot with both of them.

2790

Straight center? You mean I can’t be pitching to either side? That makes sense. Do you have the same problems with the cobra?

2791

Yes, on the viper the problem are the medium slots, on the cobra its on the small slots because they are on the wings.

2792

Nerdatron is now complete. I’ve added the CH flight pedals to my Fighterstick + Pro Throttle HOTAS setup. God help me (and my wallet).

If Oculus announces something at the CES next week I am fucked.

2793

I figured out why class E beam lasers are 37k in one system and 74k in another. The 37k one is fixed, the more expensive one is gimballed.

2794

My evening of mining started very poorly. I jumped right in close to the planet this time, instead of the middle of the ring layer. First few floating rocks: Indite, Berzaniniatizing, blah blah blah. Oh my god. Where’s the metal?

I was about to give up on this location when I finally found some Silver. Finally! It took me 15 minutes to finally get 1 ton of Silver.

Then the next ton of Silver. And the next ton of Silver.

I was looking for my final ton of Silver for my Cargo bay to fill up, when I found… Palladium! Woohoo! I concentrated on that rock, dumped a couple of the Silvers that took me sooooo long to get, and came home with 3 Palladium and 1 Silver again, just like yesterday.

Now all I need to really live this miner’s life to the fullest is some kind of imagined psychological drama my character is going through as he works away at these rocks.

2795

Niiiiiiiiiice!

In my evening, I made about 200k in an hour killing Cobra after Cobra after Cobra. No Anacondas, sadly, but I’ll take it.

2796

OK, this map thing is really puzzling me. I choose a system 4 jumps away, the map gives me a path (orange lines), I get to the third system in the route, get interdicted, evade the interdiction, but now when I point to the next system, my ship tells me I don’t have enough jump fuel or whatever left.

OK, fair enough I think, I wasn’t looking at my fuel gauge, maybe the interdiction avoidance took a chunk out of my fuel and now I don’t have enough to get to the final system, I’ll go back a step to a system that does seem to be available (I can select a route to it, so I must have enough fuel) 1 jump away that I’ve been to before and know has a station where I can refuel. I go there, refuel. The final system I wanted to get to is now still unreachable (red route button, can’t set a route) and there are no lines to it, even though the number of jumps from the initial system was 4, and the system I’m refuelling in was previously just on a line off the route I’d initially chosen.

Is there something like “cosmic winds” or something that changes the “difficulty” of getting from one system to another? I can’t explain it otherwise (other than borked map I guess). I mean, previously the system was reachable, now it’s not reachable and the map won’t give a me a route to it at all (not even blue lines).

scratches head

Still having bags of fun though :)

2797

Jump distance is influenced by weight, which is why you’ll sometimes see “Excess mass” in your navigation list (ie. its within operational range, but your ship weight is affecting max jump distance). Did you pick anything up, any cargo? Having a full load of fuel should hypothetically also influence jump distance (ie. as your fuel is used up and you get lighter, individual jump distance should actually increase), not sure if the game does this though.

2798

Yes!!! Finally I understand! I think I planned the route then took on some cargo, that will be it.

Coincidentally, while nosing around I just noticed the mass slider on the galaxy map, now I get it - thanks!

My current “big plan” is to gradually work my way over to Alliance territory, trading and profiting as I go. This gives me a goal to work towards, as I seem to be at the arse end of nowhere where I am at the moment (somewhere near Eravate). Plus, I don’t fancy either the Feds or the Empire very much :)

2799

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

They don’t turn hostile immediately, in my experience, but they do deploy hardpoints “just in case”.

2800

I’ve been fiddling about with my m/k controls a bit more, as I was having difficulty with that Crimson Bastard sidewinder training mission (Sidewinder Face-off- the previous two were easy).

My feeling that Roll should be on the A/D keys and Yaw on the mouse x-axis is right, I think.

The key thing about Roll on A/D is that since Roll is the fastest of all the movement types out of the box, it doesn’t really require much in the way of analogue control from the mouse (i.e. doesn’t get any special benefit from it), since you only need to tap the keys as much as you need to roll. And having the full analogue movement from the mouse on Pitch (joystick emulation style) is better anyway (and set on on Absolute rather than Relative). Yaw on x-axis (no roll) remains great for “fine tuning” aim, and still takes advantage of all those years of muscle memory (as opposed to having the weird Roll on the x-axis). Also, for some reason, Roll on A/D is just really, really smooth and easy, the two hands easily work together for it.

But I realized that while W/S for pitch was fun and intuitive enough (as an old Descent thing), and got me over the hump of getting into the control system, it’s actually a waste of keys, since my mouse could be doing all the pitching I need, plus the mouse analogue control is better for that anyway (since Pitch can be either full-on or part of the “fine tuning” on combination with Yaw).

So I tried what I’ve seen mentioned a few times: W and S for Thrust up/down (with Q/E for Thrust L/R). THIS IS THE GAME CHANGER. I thought I was being quite cute to have LCTRL for down thrust and SPACE for up thrust, as it takes advantage of the muscle memory for crouch and jump. But the problem is, with a turn system based on Roll->Pitch, the equivalent of A/D for ground avatar circle strafing IS the up/down thrust, and for that you need the keys instantly accessible, and having the thrust down in particular (the most used, if things go over your head) tied to S, and right next to the Roll keys, is absolutely golden.

It basically allows you to do really easily what amounts to the same as the FAOFF trick you see so often, except you don’t need to have FAOFF (although of course you can, for added goodness, and I’ll be practicing that for sure, but it requires more finesse to lower thrust quickly to counteract some of the acceleration). Basically you just hit down (S) enough to give you the strafing effect, so you have the bottom of the enemy under your guns as soon as you release it and he gets into your sights as you pitch up. It makes that basic maneouvre easy peasy, and makes it much easier to maneouvre to stay behind the enemy in general too.

Thrust forward/back is now CTRL and SPACE, which have a visceral feel of jamming your pinky to “pull back” and banging the spacebar with your thumb to “pump forward” - meaning, again, more ease, because you don’t really need to monitor the throttle all that much. You just need it set to 50% and it defaults to that sweet spot no matter what you do.

Result: Sidewinder face-off beaten really easily, whereas before I was finding it really hard.