Last night I was attacked by Federation ships after we blew up a Wanted ship. It happened so fast, I was ejected from my Viper within half a second. I literally had no time to react. I was being VERY careful not to friendly-fire. I wish these ships had some sort of Black Box on them (ie a log of detailed combat events), so I could find out what the heck happened.
Also, on my very first USS last night I encountered a wedding party. The ships escorting the main wedding ship were flying erratically, like the pilots had too much wine. I thought that was pretty funny. Then on my very next USS, this time there was a funeral ship! And again the escorts were flying crazy (too much drinking to drown their sorrows?). I had never seen a wedding or a funeral in this game, so to come across it back-to-back like that was kinda surreal.
I’m thinking about flying my Sidewinder from the LHS 3447 area to Lave to try the Lave-Fujin rare trade goods route in a Hauler. It’s 150-200 light years away. I’m debating whether to buy the Hauler now and leave my Sidewinder here or wait until I get to Lave. Is it ridiculously sentimental to worry about this? I suppose I’ll sell the Sidewinder once I buy a Cobra, but I want to keep it handy in case I want to shoot things.
[EDIT] Nevermind, bought a new FSD and fuel scoop and I’m on my way!
Pop into a system and do a system scan. Then surface scan the interesting planets or stars (never bother with belts) . Things like water worlds can give you 10kcr or more for a surface scan. I am off on another expedition myself in my Cobra. Getting very bored of grinding out cash by trading.
Hey guys, if any of y’all are EDTracker 9150 users, there’s new firmware out that makes the device even BETTER.
http://edtracker.org.uk/index.php/11-news/48-mpu-9150-mag-firmware-release-v4
I completed two runs of this rare goods loop with a little help from this online route planner to get me some intermediate destinations to plug into the game’s very limited route planner. (So much for cloud computing.)
The first run was very tense with a hauler. All that docking, running away from interdiction, and almost running into a white dwarf star. But it gave me enough to buy a Cobra and eventually I found some better frame shift drives to reduce the number of jumps. Of course I’m already bored now.
I have 1.2M credits in the bank. I might do one more run, then buy some decent gear, try out some new weapons, and go kill an Anaconda. Or maybe try the Viper instead if I want to switch to combat.
Trading is certainly eventful – too eventful.
I started my third rare goods trading run and got interdicted by a human player in the Leesti system near the George Lucas station. Normally it’s easy to submit and then boost away from NPCs to escape, but not this guy. I completely forgot I switched out my shield generator for a x16 cargo rack so my hull was down to 50% before I realized I wasn’t going to make it. At around 20% health my life support went down and I thought I was a goner. But he stopped shooting at me. He said “stop” over chat but he was far enough away and my frame shift drive was powered up enough that I decided to make a run for it. He took a couple more shots at me but no significant damage, and my life support came back online as well.
I started watching the radar more closely for human players. In the next system I noticed another guy flying around but he had a clean record so I didn’t think much of it. Next thing I know I get interdicted again. He approached from a weird angle so I was able to boost out and charge up the frame shift drive pretty quickly before he got behind me. At that point I wimped out and swapped for a shield generator. It worked out fine. Since I suspect I lost a few units of goods against the first guy, I still had room for shields even after exhausting the supply of rare goods in the Lave region. Of course on the journey to Fujin I only got interdicted once by an NPC, so it wouldn’t have mattered either way.
My last story is both funny and terrifying. I was about to leave the Solo Orbiter in Altair to start the return leg to Lave. I felt like I had a pretty good handle on docking with the Cobra at this point, so I pushed the throttle forward and decided to zip out of the station. Somehow those docking ports are deceptive because I ended up slamming right into a wall! My hull was all the way down to 29%. A little faster and I might have destroyed myself. I guess it’s hard to judge speed when using lateral thrusters at the same time. Lesson learned.
Now I have my Viper but I’ll need to look around for a little better gear, namely a power plant. (Is 98.5% usage with hardpoints deployed too close for comfort?) I think I’ll go hunting for human pirates to see if I can get some revenge, though I suspect they’re a lot better at PvP than I am. At least the insurance costs are reasonable!
FWIW, I left my Cobra at Lave if I ever need to make some money, and I saved my Sidewinder in Leesti for sentimental reasons. Neither ship is worth more than a couple hundred thousand credits.
Relating to power, if you switch your cargo hatch and FSD to priority 2, you should be able to squeeze your maximum deployed power past your maximum power availability. This is because the hatch and FSD will shut down (and hence stop drawing power) once deploy your guns. This trick is more critical for the Viper as the A class powerplant doesn’t really provide enough juice on the mainline for a fully tricked out Viper (not mine anyway).
Nice trick. Who needs the cargo hatch during combat anyway?
However, there have been plenty of times when I’ve decided I need the Frame Shift Drive if combat isn’t going so well. Like when you find Julie Stiener and discover she’s a God. In those situations, I don’t think there’s time to mess with power settings.
jostly
3729
You don’t have to. Once you retract your hardpoints, the FSD will power up, and since you need to retract the hardpoints in order to start the FSD sequence, there’s no difference.
How do people manage their chaff and shield cell banks? Right now I have:
Group 1
- Beam lasers
- Chaff + shield cell bank
Group 2
- Cannons
- Chaff + shield cell bank
So I have to switch groups to change weapons when enemy shields go down, but I always have emergency supplies on hand if I’m under attack. I also have to burn a chaff and shield cell every time I want to use one or the other, since there are only two weapon buttons. I suppose I could group my weapons and defensive items together and switch depending on whether I’m attacking or defending. The only risk there is if I get into a jousting match and need to shoot and use defensive measures at the same time. I haven’t tried any of this stuff yet so I’ll experiment a little.
Aceris
3731
You don’t have to use chaff and shield cells through the fire groups. There are separate commands you cna configure to use chaff and shield cells.
Ah, thanks for the heads up. I just wish I had more pushbuttons on this X52 Pro.
Nah, I’ve been up there trying to get the Alioth permit (which I now have!) so I can start trying to spread the influence of the Alliance. :)
What am I missing about mining? It seems like a shit ton of work for little payoff.
Use a shift button. You can set shift-fire1 to chaff and shift-fire2 to shield cell for example.
KevinC
3736
You need a decent refinery for starters. The big thing after that is understanding it’s all about quality, not quantity. Be picky about what you mine, both in terms of metals as well as the how rich the vein is (the % chunk of the ore).
So, is this game playable with a controller alone? I’m tempted to pick it up and give it a shot, but I don’t have a joystick and my keyboard is totally blank, so hotkey-heavy games can result in a lot of awkward fumbling around.
Yeah it is, controller support is solid. There are simple and advanced pre-set controller configs - you will need to make use of the advanced-style config and use shift-buttons if you want to map everything.
Back home now, back on my own PC. Suddenly the “fastest route” option on the galaxy map has started working as intended. It definitely, certifiably wasn’t working for me before, so I basically plotted the economic route and then manually skipped systems en route (unless I was trying to save fuel). Now it works just fine, weird. Still haven’t been interdicted by a human player on my Open game daring trade run, although as I’m investing profit back into better weaponry perhaps this isn’t surprising. My home PC mouse has a different sensitivity to the one I was using earlier, I’m having to relearn how to fly this thing! Nearly slammed into the station wall already. On the upside, better headphones and a much better PC have transformed the feel of the game. Time to get back into combat with my upgraded beam lasers!
Thanks. But when say be picky, do you mean mine any asteroid but be picky about what you keep, or only bother to mine asteroids that would have the more valuable minerals? If the latter, is there a way to be certain? How do you tell how rich the vein is for a particular mineral unless you’re already mining?
In short, how do you find the quality without spending hours and hours searching? Maybe I’m missing something.
