JMR
2861
That’s the charm of Elite right there. Even with advanced space faring technology that grants us FTL travel it still boils down to stick and rudder skills and the old Mark I eyeball. And that is why I love this game and could never get into Eve despite trying it 3 times.
Speaking of TFL travel, does anyone else experience a perpetual hyperspace warp sequence that doesn’t end? I’ve had two of those tonight and each time I had to alt-tab and terminate the game. A network hiccup perhaps?
I experienced this last night as well, first time since they fixed the bugged travel tutorial.
Papageno
2863
Wow, I haven’t experienced “endless witchspace” since probably the end of the betas. But did a few times before that. I do gather it’s a network/server connection issue.
Regarding mining, has anyone actually ascertained that NPC ships do in fact cause chunks to fly off asteroids when they fire at them with their mining lasers? I ask because I figured I’d try to pull a fast one and steal a chunk from one of the NPC miners just to see what he would do. Turns out, at least in that case, that the NPC ship was either vainly firing at a depleted asteroid, or their lasers are purposely nerfed.
JMR
2864
Spotted via the ED reddit page.
lordkosc
2865
I can dock and take off fine now, but for the life of me I am either overshooting my jump target or popping out of warp too soon.
Still learning the interface and my joystick setup. Such a beautiful looking game.
Oh yes, they definitely mine effectively, producing chunks and then scooping them up. The Adder near me last night was doing just that, and I thought he was nicking my stuff at first, but he was definitely sticking with his own. I wonder if there are resource-stealing npcs too? That would be instant cause for combat, though!
If you keep the speed within the blue zone, your speed will compensate as you draw close and you’ll end up with a safe exit speed once you approach within 1 Mm. You’ll know it’s about right because speed to destination, once you get close, will stop at around 6-7 s. If it drops to 5, slow down a bit (or a lot!). When you’re a long way from the destination, you can crank speed to maximum. The trick is knowing when to start slowing down and putting it back into the blue zone. It varies depending on your speed at the time.
Papageno
2867
Assuming that you mean intrasystem frameshift or supercruise, I still overshoot occasionally and I’ve been playing since the 1st of August and Standard Beta 1, so don’t feel too bad. There’s no problem with doing the “loop of shame” and re-acquiring the navigation target. The trick to not overshooting most of the time is to make sure your estimated arrival time indicated drops to no less than about 6 seconds. In most cases the natural deceleration as you approach a planet or moon’s gravity well will slow you down enough so that when you’re within 1 Mm (1000 km) you’re going well under the maximum safe “drop out of SC” speed of 1000 km/s. You’ll notice that the needle of the speed indicator will light up when you’re near the most efficient supercruise speed to reach your goal ASAP but not overshoot (which usually corresponds to 6 or 7 seconds estimated time remaining till arrival).
EDIT: Aaand ninja’d by krayzkrok.
I saw this thread recommended for new players a few times, and having a quick scan over it it seems a good place to start if you feel completely lost with the game:
Not sure if it’s been linked in the thread before, but as a handy starter guide it can’t hurt if so :)
tgb123
2869
I’m sure this has been asked and answered, but I’m not going through 95 pages to find it.
I’m about to hop off the fence, but how well does the game play with a mouse and keyboard? Is an XBox controller better?
You can play it with mouse and keyboard, although it is not perfectly setup with default controls (see the thread i just linked for getting a better mouse+keyboard setup). Sir David Braben (Knight of the Realm (or whatever)) likes to play with a controller (because he has fallen to the dark side of mainstream consolitus that plagues PC game dev!), so that has always worked ok if you are used to using a controller on your (spit) console system.
Nearly everyman and his dog swears by HOTAS though.
I’ll be more encouraging than Zak! Yes, K&M works perfectly well, and in fact I prefer it to using a controller. If you go back to page 90 or so, there’s been a discussion of suitable key bindings to use. I use a setup that’s similar to default: WA - vertical thrust, AD - yaw, QE - lateral thrust (others prefer AD to be lateral thrust), X - kill thrust, then mouse x-axis - yaw, y-axis - pitch. Setting yaw into roll helps to learn the setup but now I simply use roll. Another option is to use x-axis yaw, then control roll with AD.
Make sure the mouse sensitivity is also calibrated to your preferences. I tried a different mouse yesterday and it was a nightmare, rolling at the slightest waft of air, so setting sensitivity way down brought things back under control.
Controller also works fine and others swear by that, and of course HOTAS is ideal; the Thrustmaster HOTAS X seems to be the budget setup of choice. It’s really down to your preference, but remember there’s a learning curve to any controller so don’t give up if you haven’t mastered it in 5 minutes.
Check this thread out. Somebody’s got Sweet FX working with Elite.
Krayzkrok, you don’t need a wake scanner if they just jump to supercruise. If it’s a low energy wake, just go into supercruise and interdict them. you’ll obviously need an interdictor though. I guess ideally you would have a wake scanner, kill scanner, interdictor plus combat stuff to bounty hunt properly and let nothing get away.
Whenever I try to go into supercruise targeting a wake, I get the error “Cloud not scanned”.
Holy crap, soooo trying that. Thanks!
Kelan
2876
I had a bit of a wake-up call last night.
I was feeling pretty confident in my mostly B-fitted Viper taking out random wanted folks near beacons when I accidentally hit someone with a stray shot. Someone immediately started firing on me from behind, most likely the feds, but my shields are pretty strong so I pressed on to my target to finish them off ignoring the fire on my tail. Well, I am not sure what ship was behind me, but they sure tore through my shields quickly and I actually exploded without really realizing I was in trouble. I guess I better start being a little more careful as I lost probably 200k in total bounties there, ugh. At least only about 90k were local with the others being built up all week for Alliance and Empire that I wasn’t likely to claim anyway in the near future.
I can’t wait for a day off tomorrow to get some quality play time in to get back on track!
Upgraded to the Adder and pumped up the FSD, Engine and couplers to roughly C class gear. Also added a mining laser on a bottom hardpoint mount and gimballed multi-cannon on the medium hardpoint. Added a refinery and am going to have a crack at some mining tonight I think. Leaves me with shields, discovery scanner and 6 cargo slots. Better find some decent deposits!
Missing the visibility through the top canopy the Sidey offered, though. Hopefully I just get used to it!
I will also enthusiastically support the K+M. It works great for me. My combat rating just got bumped up to “Novice” yesterday!
I (and gurugeorge, I think) have Roll on the A and D keys, with Yaw attached the X-axis, but the controls are all customizable and there are plenty of offline practice missions available for you to get a feel for how to fly your ship.
Don’t forget that you can fill the hoppers in the refinery also…so in effect you have 8 or 9 cargo spaces (depending on number of hoppers).
conVurt
2880
Because it may not be obvious, you can upgrade your Cobra’s 8-ton bays to 16, for around 35k CR each. You can also upgrade the 2-ton bay to 4, as well as add another in the factory stock open slot if you like. At one point I was truckin’ around in my Cobra with 40 tons of cargo space, before coming to the conclusion that a fuel scoop is something of a necessity for me.
