Kelan
3601
I went to an Anarchy zone to do some bounty hunting, but forgot I had to trade in my kill warrant scanner to have power for my shield cells. Ugh!
I still haven’t managed to get a kill warrant scanner to be powered while taking my weapons offline automatically and back again when I switch firing groups. I can get it to turn off things like the cargo hatch, but never could figure out how to have it switch off/on automatically the items in my various firing groups when I need them to free up power.
JMR
3604
It’s too bad at this stage of the game we don’t have guild-like tools where we could store and share hardware components in our privately owned QT3 space station in our carved out section of the galaxy.
Yeah, Viper’s are notorious for never having enough power.
Gah, I hope they never add this, it all but ruined Jumpgate.
Put a decent power plant in your Viper and you’ll be much happier. Mine’s a C 3, the best one I could afford. Everything powers up nicely now.
JMR
3607
Wow, how did that ruin Jumpgate? I’m not entirely familiar with Jumpgate’s history but when I tried Eve one of the newbie friendly corps had a warehouse full of stuff for new pilots and I was thinking that would be nice to have here in ED.
Hoarding with no consequences. Hiding out after griefing with no consequences. Rather than helping the game economy, folks would make needs equipment then take it to and sell it at their stations at outrageous markups. It was great for griefers and hoarders, terrible for everyone else.
Sorry, it still makes me kinda angry.
Kelan
3609
Yeah, I am starting to realize that I can’t quite do everything I want all the time without making some sacrifices, which is fine.
I believe I am at the highest class for each slot and A rating for all but weapons, sensors, life support, fuel scoop and armor. Part of my problem is I am trying to use an A3 shield cell bank and an upgraded kill warrant scanner which seem to take an enormous amount of power (like 13% I believe it showed for the one I was trying to fit).
I was hoping I could set my main power equipment, thrusters and life support to a 1 priority, stuff like the fuel scoop and cargo hatch to 3/4, and then set my kill warrant scanner and weapons to 2 priority. The power situation is such that I need to power down my kill warrant scanner to power my weapons, and vise versa. I was hoping that just switching between a fire group that had just the kill warrant scanner would automatically power down the weapons to power it, and I believe it did, but when I went to switch to my weapons group, they were still powered down. Is there a way to make this work somehow just by changing out firing groups? I don’t want to go into the right panel and manual turn modules on and off while pirate hunting.
My other solution is to make some compromises like down grading my fuel cells (the A3 ones have 5 charges it seems) and switching back to my 2 km range kill warrant scanner (which is a pain, but I used them for a long time) and perhaps downgrading my frame shift drive while hanging around a specific area pirate hunting to gain some power back. I should fire up that ship fitting program and do some testing today at work.
How does the Cobra compare? I know it will be more expensive to fit and I really like my Viper, but perhaps I should try one out for a bit. I have 1.6 million sitting in reserve so have enough to fit it well, I believe, especially if I turn my Viper in. I really need to start keeping track of the stations where I can switch ships/fittings at will where they have all the best equipment available. These are mostly in high tech systems, right?
schurem
3610
It’s good to have learned how to aim though. Hitscan beams and railguns are so much easier than squirting 50cal from a mustangs wing at a fleeting messerschmitt. Stil plenty hard. Having the beams for ranging shots and the rail guns for punch is sheer lunatic genius. So much fun. Pop goes the weasel. Going conda huntin’ tonight. Should be quite a blast(sic).
Kelan
3611
Doing a little research this morning, it sounds like I should remove my point defense? There appears to be some griefing tactic people are using in open play that can get you killed in stations if you have point defense? No idea if that is true, though.
Other than that, I found someone that set their Frame Shift Drive to a lower priority so that could be an option so I can use my scanner and weapons back and forth and just put them away as you do anyway before using the FSD (assuming they power down automatically as you don’t want to be scrambling to manually turn off stuff when you really need to FSD away). I will also probably try a lower class (size) shield cell bank, but wonder if that changes the amount of shield restored per charge or just changes the number of charges. I wonder :).
I think I already have a low D2 life support, which I am fine with. If I am that close to death, just popping and paying the 88k fine is okay with me if that is the difference between having a KWS or not.
I really want to try that railgun setup now too!
Thrag
3612
IMHO the higher class kill warrant scanners are just not worth the price or power draw. 2km is fine since you’ll be wanting to keep within that distance anyway in combat. What I do is have a weapons group with my lasers and the scanner so that I can scan while burning down the shields. Once the scan is complete I switch to my regular weapons group with the lasers and multicannons. I don’t even need to let off the trigger of my beam lasers when I switch from the scanner to the guns. Switching groups doesn’t interrupt fire if the group you’re switching to has the same weapons on the trigger you are holding.
Of course in an anarchy system you have to complete the scan before you can tell if you should be shooting at them in the first place so it is not as convenient. But I find that an easy way to get pirates to reveal themselves in anarchy systems is to just carry around one high priced good. I currently haul around one gold in my viper. That seems to be enough to temp pirates into revealing themselves.
Last night I completed my first rare run. Prior to starting I had about 100K cr and put about half of that into a vastly upgraded frameshift drive for my hauler, moving up to class A. It made a big difference for all the jumps I had to make. Finally sold off 8 rare something-or-others at a system not far from Lave for about 100K.
I can see why some people think these runs are boring. I’ll probably get bored with it after a while. But for now, I’m having a blast.
Eeesh I hope thats not true. I was thinking last night though when I ran into another player.
In this MMO others players are purely a negative. They mess up your trade runs and are just another potential pirate.
Solo mode is superior if you want to make money. Am I missing anything positive players bring to the table?
I haven’t had any negative experiences with other players yet. If I look over and see someone listed as CMND So and So, I briefly chat or something. Then we go on our way. I haven’t really interacted with other players in a physical sense yet. I’d like to think if I got into trouble against a dangerous wanted AI player, and there was a fellow Commander in the system, I could message and ask for help maybe.
So lastnight I started a little exploring. Downgraded to an Adder and did a couple of trips out, around 100 and then 250 ly away from anything. Ok this is kinda fun. You go and scan each object in the system for maximum cash (the biggest system return I got was $16k). In no way can it compete with trading for money but it really is fun. I was particularly happy when the HMS Trotter discovered a water world out there in the big black.
I am thinking when I get enough for an advanced scanner I may try a grand expedition for a few nights. Oh and the downside is so far I was STILL getting random NPC’s even that far away from civilization. Which is pretty scary for an Adder.
How did you find the edges of civilization Rod? Just chose a direction and kept going in that direction until you ran out of Blue, Green, Orange and Red Dots?
Yup exactly. And the population slider. Then I picked the quickest route away from my “home” system with the intention of just putting lots of distance between me and it. Then once around 50ly away from I started surface scanning the stars I was scooping from. Then just ambled my way deeper into the arm until I felt it was time to turn back.
Kelan
3619
[/QUOTE]Nice!
I really want to do some exploration soon once I can kit out a Cobra decently with some nice scanners and good jump range.
I am going to stick with the point defense as I haven’t had trouble myself yet with it. I normally play in group play anyway unless krayzkrok and I go conflict zone hunting so should be safe with it and at times it really seems to help me.
I am looking at trying the following for my Viper now, as exported from the edshipyard tool:
[QUOTE][Viper]
M: 2F/G Multi-cannon
M: 2F/G Multi-cannon
S: 1E/F Beam Laser
S: 1E/F Beam Laser
U: 0I Point Defence
U: 0E Kill Warrant Scanner
BH: 1I Military Grade Composite
RB: 3A Power Plant
TM: 3A Thrusters
FH: 3A Frame Shift Drive
EC: 2D Life Support
PC: 3A Power Distributor
SS: 3C Sensors
FS: 2C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 4)
3: 1A Shield Cell Bank
3: 3A Shield Generator
2: 2A Fuel Scoop
1: 1E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 2)
This will run me at a total of 2.97 million which is about 600k higher than I am currently using and will bump my insurance up to 111.5k. I could switch the cargo rack with the shield cell bank now that I plan to use a smaller one, but 2 is enough room for what I am doing now.
This will get me to 118.1 Tons of weight while full vs my optimum of 120 Tons with the thrusters I have. The power comes in at 12.31, which is 103%, but with just the fuel scoop off it will get down to 11.92 and below my 12.00 requirement.
I also ran a quick config on a miner/combat Cobra that I could try out sometime:
[Cobra Mk III]
M: 2F/G Multi-cannon
M: 2F/G Multi-cannon
S: 1E/F Beam Laser
S: 1E/F Beam Laser
U: 0E Kill Warrant Scanner
U: 0I Point Defence
BH: 1I Military Grade Composite
RB: 4C Power Plant
TM: 4C Thrusters
FH: 4C Frame Shift Drive
EC: 3D Life Support
PC: 3A Power Distributor
SS: 3D Sensors
FS: 4C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 16)
4: 4E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 16)
4: 4E Cargo Rack (Capacity: 16)
4: 4C Shield Generator
2: 2B Refinery
2: 2C Fuel Scoop
2: 1E Basic Discovery Scanner
This is still a little pricey at 2.145 million, but should be comparable in fighting and has a decent refinery and a 32 cargo hold. All I would need is to upgrade the frame shift drive and throw some nice scanners on it and take it exploring too.
I finally bought my Cobra and then promptly got beat up in a fight where I escaped with a cracked cockpit and only about 60% hull integrity. I guess I shouldn’t have picked a head to head fight with a wanted Lakon Type-9 Heavy that had a bunch of beam lasers.
I also hadn’t played in about a week and I was feeling rusty. :/
