3541

I swapped out the pulse lasers from my asp for beam lasers. They suck fucking donkey balls. They miss a lot and bleed the capacitor dry in no time at all. and that’s an A grade power distro mind you! So fuck those. Perhaps i should put two fixed large beams on and four small gimballed autocannons. The thing is, the large points on the asp are on the top part, so gimbals can point up. This is important for projectile weapons that need to get a bit of lead on their target. The four small points are on the belly, so they will have limits in how far they can point up. This suits them better for hitscan weapons such as pewpew lazors.

Perhaps I should just downgrade the bastards to fixed pulses and pewpew forever.

3542

Dang, those Asp insurance costs seem rough. Right now that is something I am concerned about in the future as things really ramp up in costs while the bounty hunting I am doing does not seem to have much in future things to work toward to improve my income and payouts. I know there are the Anaconda elimination missions, but those don’t always show up either and can still be tricky to complete. They need more specific target missions for Cobras, Asps, Pythons and such.

I am up to maybe 4 million in assets now myself and about 95% of that made bounty hunting with 2.5 mil into my Viper and 1.5 mil in cash. My insurance is reasonable at around 88k so I don’t mind going into warzones in Open and risking dying a lot at this point. I am not sure I would go in with a 600k insurance fit Asp, though.

I decided to pop into the High Intensity warzone in Kappa Fornacis last night in Open play and was greeted by about a 2 to 1 ratio of enemy NPC ships to friendly and 4-5 other CMDR players on the other side and just me on the Fed side. One of the players opened up comms to me and said, “Why you trying to keep us down.” It made me laugh. At least someone was trying to act like they were really in the game :). I am getting really used to my Viper, though, and flew around on the outskirts for a bit to see what the others would do. One veered off to engage and I was going to try to fight him for a bit just to test my skills, but soon after his buddies joined in and I had to burn a shield cell and boost/jump out. I was surprised how natural the ship is starting to feel and am starting to get into a little bit of a zone flying and fighting now.

3543

I’m with you on the pulse lasers. I have 2 gimballed on my Cobra along with 2 missile launchers, and I can easily take out Anacondas. Dropships are a little tougher, but do-able. I’m considering replacing the lasers with particle accelerators, but not sure if that’s a real improvement. The nice thing about the pulse lasers is you don’t run out of ammo, and if you put full power to weapons (with judicious use of shield cells for tougher enemies) you can take enemies down right quick. I usually reserve the missiles for larger ships or for enemies that are powering up to jump.

3544

On Tuesday, I was finally going to take the plunge and get an Adder, and sell my Sidewinder and its components. It was much harder to find an adder in the section of space I’m in than I expected it to be. When I finally found a system selling an Adder, I decided to log off for the night.

Sadly, last night I got home late and didn’t get a chance to play. Argh! Now I’m heading to work. That Adder will be mine tonight! Those limited side windows better not be horrible!

3545

When you do sell of your sidey, take the couple extra minutes to sell off/downgrade its individual upgrades first. This might net you a few extra CR, but more importantly, if you’re at a station that doesn’t have a good selection of components, it will let you buy back some of the gear you sold off, should they fit the new ship–you might just be able to, in effect, move over an upgrade or two.

3546

Update from Frontier of coming patches, including:

The first planned significant update will be 1.1 and will enter beta in the first week of February. We’ll be talking next week about how 1.1 will introduce a new way to collaborate with other players in the galaxy in preparation for 1.2’s major Wings update. We have some some good news for planners of long journeys - V1.1 will also have a significant increase in the maximum distance for the route planner. We’re currently looking at extending this to 1,000 light years!

Looking further ahead there will be a 1.2 update which is planned to enter beta testing in the first week of March. The focus for this update will be Wings and other multiplayer goodness. I

3547

Kitted my Asp out a few different ways. I finally settled on: 2 Medium fixed beams, 4 gimballed cannon (not multi-cannon, but cannon 100rnds).

The beams have nice range and can evaporate eagles, haulers, and sidewinders. Adders and cobras take longer. I usually don’t need the cannons and can save ammo. But when up against anything bigger including Anacondas I drop the shields with the beams and slam their power supply with the auto-aiming cannon. Probably 50% of the time I kill before their hull is 0%.

I think to fully replenish all ammo from 0 is about 10k.

3548

Although not as glamorous as a fighter pilot a miner can be fun way to make money in Elite. Here is what I have found out so far.

  1. Find a metallic ring (not belt) with pristine reserves.
  2. A 5 hopper refinery works best. One hopper for the big 4, silver, gold, palladium and platinum. The 5th hopper for whatever mineral that is attached to the good stuff.
  3. A rock has to give me $10,000 before I will mine it. 20%+ for silver, 10%+ for gold etc.
  4. Even though I could carry more I have 26 cargo bays on my cobra. Once I fill those up I need a break and head out to sell
  5. Upgrade your mining laser to get those chunks off quicker
  6. When in a ring it is easy to lose your orientation. Find a landmark and work in one direction.
  7. With a little practice and the correct speed you can approach a rock at a angle, fire your laser, get a chunk off, target it and then move on. All without stopping. It does get a little dangerous as you can slam into a rock which I did and I had 4:30 minutes of oxygen and a 17% hull after a bad maneuver :)
  8. Always have your scoop up when not collecting chunks
  9. Try to align yourself to the rock so the chucks fly off in a predicable way (still working on this)
  10. When a chunk in moving, maneuver your ship so the chunk is moving straight up. Keep the chunk red at the bottom of the cargo scoop window as it will quickly rise as you get closer to it when you have a little speed.
  11. Use your thrusters to turn your ship quicker but be careful as the radar might show the rock is below you but it is closer than you think and you can slam into them with speed and damage your ship (yes, I found this out the hard way)
  12. Put some nice weapons on your ship so when some greedy bastard comes knocking for your stuff you can blow them out of the water.
  13. I am still trying to determine which is better, one chunk at a time or multiple

I am averaging about $200,000 a hour currently which isn’t bad money. Flying a fairly nice Cobra with over $100,000 insurance cost.

3549

What is the total outlay cost (ship, parts, ins) for the config you have roughly?

3550

Probably about 2.7 million. It shows insurance as 96% although I believe it is 96.25% I have read? So just take the quoted insurance cost and divide by 0.0375 and you should be in the ballpark so 2.67 million for 100k.

NOTE: I realize this is based on your level of backing so this is for beta level it appears. It sounds like it can be 5% for normal and 2.5% for alpha level backers.

3551

This seems close but the main parts are the refinery ($150,000, I think) and the mining laser ($35,000, want to find a better one). The cobra is $380,000 so you can get started for a lot less.

3552

I should totally buy a Cobra and do this for when I don’t feel like fighting :).

3553

>1. Find a metallic ring (not belt) with pristine reserves.

Dumb question… where is this ‘pristine’ information located? I’ve done a fair bit of mining and don’t remember seeing any such information in the map screens or the scan displays or anywhere else. What gives?

3554

While they are terrible in a gimbal or turret mount, they are wonderful in a fixed mount.

3555

No, because they’re a constant reminder of how much I suck at aiming. ;)

Seriously though, the AI seems to be using chaff more and more, so I might switch to fixed beams and deal with it.

3556

Yeesh, 1.1 is next month and Wings won’t fully be in until 1.2? I think I need to shelve this puppy for a bit. I don’t want to get my fill of the game before it has a lot of the features I want. :)

3557

Seriously though, the AI seems to be using chaff more and more, so I might switch to fixed beams and deal with it.

I’m currently flying with one fixed beam and one gimballed, which has the bonus feature that both underslung lasers can hit the target at the same time if the target isn’t chaffing.

3558

I’m still rocking my Viper with fixed D beams and a seeking missile launcher. From my experience the only gimbaled weapons I like are multicannons.

3559

This game can be funny at times. I’m leaving Hirayama Installation in Coquim, about to pass through the slot, when the station starts shooting someone inside. A message pops up on the comms: “But all I was doing was mining!”

Inspired by some posts in this thread, I’m gonna try a new weapon loadout for my asp: fixed beam laser paired with a railgun on my medium hardpoints to take out shields, and four gimballed cannon on the small hardpoints to do the rest. I don’t particularly like the idea of running out of ammo after a protracted string of fights (and I suspect the cost to refill my ammo might not be worth it), but I’d like to see if I can pull this off.

EDIT: So my first combat didn’t go so well. A competent viper decided to interrupt my scanning of Kinne, and rather than paying some ludicrous amount to repair a failed interdiction, I throttled down and submitted to it. Before long we were firing at each other, but after five minutes, at best we had each taken each others’ shields down one ring. I had a hard time keeping my laser pointer aimed at him long enough for the railgun to land a hit. But then the local fuzz decided to show up and make a mess of things. Sure they managed to help get his shields down, and I finally got some cannon blasts to connect, but then the viper started to run, and I couldn’t line up a shot what with all the system police flying right in front of me, and the viper got away. End result is a 2500 CR bill to rearm my guns, which were at most 10-20% dry after the fight.

3560

They are. I swapped two of the gimbals for fixed beams. The other two, the chin mounts, I put rail guns as per rock8dudes’ fucking brilliant idea. It rocks. I do need to get good with it but something tells me I will.