Victory! I managed to successfully navigate to another station in the system and dock, without banging up my ship too much or getting shot at. And, I’ve got just enough credits left over after repairs to by just one of the commodity I came there to purchase.
Defeat! I just had the pleasure of my first death in this game. We were ganging up on an Anaconda in a Resource Extraction Site and I thought to myself, “how is that ship moving laterally toward me at an alarming rate?” Ramming speed!
I laughed. Good stuff, but the Viper isn’t even as fun as the Sidewinder in terms of pure dogfighting. Lower visibility, and it feels like it can’t turn as tightly, though that might be my imagination. The NPC AI is too weak to make PvE interdictions very compelling. I guess I could throw some interesting new weapons on there. Cannons and beam lasers aren’t doing it for me.
It’s really challenging to decide whether I want to keep playing this game. The dogfighting is decent but farming extraction sites ends up pissing me off and I can’t shake the feeling of the progress quest. Trading was a nice distraction but now I’m back where I was a few days ago.
I’m not afraid to come back to the game later if they plan on adding new content. I’d love to spend some time on meaningful quests, for example.
I’ll keep at this a little longer, but so far it’s largely just been frustrating. I don’t mind complex games, but so far this just seems hostile and obtuse. It’d probably be better if I felt I had at least a little direction going into it, but for right now, I’m just not having any fun or feeling like I have much motivation to dig deeper.
You are not missing anything. For mining you fly through a belt. Shoot off a single bit of each rock and see whats in it. A decent rock has say 25%+ of one or more good things You then ping as many bits off it before it runs dry. Repeat this always ignoring low % or quality element rocks until your hold is full. I have never run into a rock that didnt have the standard amount of bits in it (5 or 6 if memory serves).
But in short mining does not pay anywhere near trading does. Its a chill pretty much completely safe thing to do when you get tired of another activity.
The start can be tough. My only advice is that looking back my starting ship was better than I thought. You can do a lot with it. Investigating unidentified signals and doing missions should be done with zero fear. You just get to respawn if things go badly and a couple of those will boost your credit balance very quickly. Even loot some cargo pods and zoom to a platform and trade them on the black market (anything you don’t have to fly INTO but just ON is usually unguarded by police).
I wasted a good few hours and the start trying to trade my way to upgrades. Thats non optimal and a bit tedious in the starting ship. Its a fun risk free dogfighter /runabout and should be treated as such.
Hope that helps.
deanco
3746
Find an independent system with a station that has a black market. Get a kill warrant scanner too. Leave station, frameshift, set throttle to 0. Wait for USSs to show up. Do them, and pick up valuable stuff for free. Or maybe there’s a ship, KWS him, if he’s wanted, take him out. Take your stuff back to the station to sell it. By far the most relaxing and danger free way to make easy money.
When I became proficient with my Sidewinder, upgrading to a Cobra felt like an immediate downgrade. The weaponry wasn’t as good, the view wasn’t as good, the maneuverability wasn’t as good, and everything was a lot more expensive! I almost considered going back for a brief while. But each ship is different and needs time to adjust to, until you realise its strengths. Now I’d never go back to a Sidewinder, my Cobra feels great in battle, plus it’s pretty good at everything else too and there’s a distant but achievable goal to reach of kitting it out as best as i can. The most dispiriting part of the game is losing your ship, bounties, exploration data and, consequently, time. But there’s reward in risk. Besides, I never get tired of just flying the thing around and seeing the sights. Back on my home PC, with everything turned to Ultra, man it looks beautiful. Now I just want to fit myself out with the best FSD, scanners and fuel scoop, and go exploring into the vast unknown. First, though, I have shit to kill.
KevinC
3748
When viewing the System map, look for Metallic planetary rings, not asteroid belts and not “Metal Rich” rings. Supercruise over and start shooting some rocks. If it’s one of the *ites, ignore it for the most part. You’re mostly looking for the good stuff like Gold, Platinum, Palladium, etc. If you blast a hunk off an asteroid and it’s only 8% quality fragment, move on to the next asteroid. There’s a limitless supply of rocks, it’s the time it takes to scoop up the fragments that holds you back. So peck at some rocks until you find the motherlode and load up. Also, a lot of fragments contain two resources. Make sure to pay attention to the percentages of both when targeting a fragment.
If you want to get into exploring, I hear Pristine belts are really nice but I haven’t gone to the trouble of finding them myself (plus I’m not into looking up info online).
I do OK at mining and describe what I do at post 3535
This likely has no impact on this game, but Frontier just cut 15 “redundant” positions at their UK office and the Halifax, Nova Scotia office is being shut down.
http://www.frontier.co.uk/investor_relations/reports/news/?artid=477&pageNum=0&blk=275
With its business emphasis now on two major self-published franchises, Elite: Dangerous and Coaster Park Tycoon, Frontier is re-focusing its development activities in Cambridge where the expertise in these franchises lies. Development roles are being moved from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Cambridge, and the overall staffing mix will be changed to match the needs of these two projects. 15 content creation roles have been made redundant in Cambridge (from 281 total headcount), while Frontier continues to recruit in areas such as game and technology programming, server and web front end development.
After spending some time fiddling around with my key bindings, I had a lot of fun just doing courier missions. My one experience with combat was a disaster so I don’t know if I want to go that route, but I’m not sure what I want to pursue next.
Practice the combat tutorials until you get a feel for it. Once you’re comfortable with really handling your ship, combat will get a lot easier. Earning cash through bounties is rewarding and satisfying.
Kelan
3753
I believe when I first got into my Viper, I loaded it up a bit too much and didn’t have my thrusters upgraded well enough to raise their optimum weight high enough to cover what my full loadout weighed. It may be worth a check on that as that probably affects your turn speed and acceleration, but it still may feel a bit slower on turning than the Sidewinder.
I understand that power to Engines affects the power to thrusters, so that may also affect turning ability. It’s important to keep power off the weapons when you’re flying, and apply power to weapons only when you’re squeezing the trigger or need to recharge the weapons capacitors.
Well, I am invested now - just ordered a Thrustmaster T-16000m stick, which will arrive Thursday, and I’ll have enough on Friday to pick up the game itself. Should be a fun weekend!
The latest GalNet news entry mentions something about a Silver Comet being spotted, and the disappearance of a commander who was looking for it. Oh look, sez me, that’s right next door to where I am! So I pootle on over and start looking for said comet. Along with about a dozen other CMDRs! I suspect we’re supposed to be looking for the original commander, but he was last spotted in Alioth which requires a permit that I don’t have. If these random news items start doing a lot more of this kind of thing, I’ll be happy. No sign of the comet yet, but I did find quite a few criminals who have felt the wrong end of my upgraded beam lasers. I like my new beam lasers, they sizzle satisfyingly.
Then I found a nearby system which is supposed to be famous for its seal transport ship. Say what? Ok, I have to go check that out…
So I’ve got the stock ship without upgrades, and about 10k in the bank. What should I be looking at to buy, and how much will I need to save up, if I want to give mining a shot?
You just need a mining laser (only one type) and a refinery (start with the cheapest). You might need a bit more than 10k to buy them both, I can’t remember, but not much. Do another courier mission or two and you’ll be quids in.
Then’s it’s just a matter of finding some valuable asteroids!
You can use the E:D Shipyard to spec out a ship configuration and see what it will cost for a particular rig. At minimum, you’ll need a small mining laser (6800 cr), a refinery (the cheapest is a 1E at 6000 cr) and a cargo rack.
