3881

I sold my Hauler for a Viper and never looked back.

3882

I agree with Gordon - I sold my sidewinder and went straight to Viper. 4 weapons hard points (two medium), lots of speed, shields, AND armor make for a hard to pass up ship when it comes to combat.

Speaking of, my Viper is valued at just shy of 400k - what’s the next “best” vessel in terms of combat? A cobra?

3883

Combat-wise, I think the cobra is pretty much on par with the viper, it just has more general versatility.

3884

Hey, It sounded like he wanted to keep his hauler around. :)
Adder gives you that with better combat than the sidewinder…

That is very arguable at this point. A Viper that’s all aces is hard to beat for pure combat. Right now the Python is king but it will be “fixed” in the next update.

I like the Cobra better than the viper for pure combat thought. It turns very nicely and is fast. The down side is the two small hard points on the bottom. They’re spread out and you need to use gimbaled weapons. Gimbaled versions are less powerful.

Right now I’m in an Asp. Not fast, not nimble, but can hurt anything if I can put a bead on it. Great for rare trading.

3885

What’s the insurance like on a Cobra? That’s the main reason I’m sticking with the Viper… it’s a good combat ship and my insurance is roughly 30k (C Class equipment). I can handle that.

3886

It truly is a great time to be a gamer. I know we’ve all got our complaints about this, that and the other, but compare this to the summers of my early teens when I’d only have a game or two for an entire summer. I feel so spoiled! That devs are now able to fully realize the wonders of space from our childhood imaginations… that’s kinda special I think.

3887

It depends, but mine is about 100k right now. It’s worth it for the added versatility and better power output I think.

3888

It starts off around 60k or so at stock.

3889

The standard insurance cost is 5% of the value of your ship (chassis + equipment); if you had beta access it is 3.75% and alpha access is 2.5%.

A stock Cobra Mk III is worth about 380 kCr, so the insurance would start at about 19 kCr.

3890

Totally agree. I am reminded almost weekly by seeing my son enjoy gaming so much. As for me I don’t think I have had this many releases I have really enjoyed since… well 1985 probably.

3891

The following is something of a rares trade route I worked out, based on the Ethgreze-Yaso Kondi ring posted somewhere upthread. It’s been adapted to make better use of 80-100 tonne cargo holds, since the basic idea of the ring is to try to sell as much as you can at either Ethgreze or Yaso Kondi, which are 250 ly or so apart. If you have a good frame-shift drive and plot your routes for speed, each hop, from docking pad to docking pad, should take about 10min. The entire loop takes me about 3-4 hours, depending on interdictions and such, and nets between 2-3M CR, conservatively. If you have the required permit, start in Vega, otherwise skip it and go to Altair.

[ul]
[li]Vega (permit req’d), Taylor City: buy Vega Slimweed, fill remaining hold space with animal meat; 15 ly to…[/li][li]Altair, Solo Orbiter: sell animal meat, buy Altairian Skin, fill remaining hold space with crop harvesters; 17 ly to…[/li][li]Epsilon Indi, Mansfield Orbiter: sell crop harvesters, buy Indi Bourbon, fill remaining hold space with coffee; 44 ly to…[/li][li]Xihe, Zhen Dock: sell coffee, buy Xihe Biomorphic Companions; 62 ly to…[/li][li]Coquim, Hirayama Installation: buy Coquim Spongiform Victuals, fill remaining hold space with crop harvesters; 86 ly to…[/li][li]Quechua, Crown Ring: sell crop harvesters, buy Albino Quechua Mammoth; 89 ly to…[/li][li]Yaso Kondi, Wheeler Market: sell everything but the Coquim Spongiform Victuals and Albino Quechua Mammoth, buy Yaso Kondi Leaf, and note that it is illegal in many stations (but not stolen!); 68 ly to…[/li][li]Delta Phoenicis, Trading Post: buy Delta Phoenicis Palms; 64 ly to…[/li][li]Utgaroar, Fort Klarix: buy Utgaroar Millennial Eggs; 58 ly to…[/li][li]Chi Eridani, Steve Masters: buy Chi Eridani Marine Paste, fill remaining cargo space with animal meat; 56 ly to…[/li][li]George Pantazis, Zamka Platform: sell animal meat (and the Yaso Kondi Leaf in the station’s black market if you don’t feel like carrying it around any longer than is necessary), buy Pantaa Prayer Sticks; 15 ly to…[/li][li]Zeessze, Nicollier Hanger: buy Zeessze Ant Grub Glue, fill remaining cargo space with tea; 55 ly to…[/li][li]AZ Cancri, Fisher Station: sell tea, buy AZ Cancri Formula 42, fill remaining cargo space with agri-meds; 69 ly to…[/li][li]Ethgreze, Block Station: sell everything but the Pantaa Prayer Sticks, Zeessze Ant Grub Glue and AZ Cancri Formula 42, buy Ethgreze Tea Buds; 72 ly to…[/li][li]Vega; loop repeats…[/li][/ul]

It should be obvious, but if you ever run out of cargo space, sell off just enough of the rare commodity that will make you the most profit to allow you to purchase all of the current station’s rare commodity. Also, the market refreshes every 15min or so, so if the station you’re at only sells a piffling amount and you’re unhappy with that, it might be a good time to take a little break. And finally, for smaller ships that don’t want to do the whole thing, note that Zeessze, George Pantazis, Vega, Altair and Epsilon Indi are all very close to one another. Grabbing the rares from them and selling them in Yaso Kondi might just be your thing instead.

3892

I went for the Viper, thanks gents. It was not too much more expensive than the Adder. And I decided to sell my Hauler to have lots of extra cash for upgrading the Viper. I ended up getting about 250K cr for the Hauler, so now I have 400K cr left after buying the Viper.

So… with 400K to spend, what’s the best to upgrade the Viper for bounties. I want some gimballed weapons as I suck at aiming.

3893

The setup for weapons I’m using is this - medium points are gimballed Multi-cannons (weapon group 2) for targets that have no shields, and gimballed pulse lasers (weapon group 1) for taking said shields down. It’s working pretty well. Your first priority for modules is better thrusters and better power distribution, possibly better sensors to increase the range you can “clear” targets if you are hunting bounties - and make sure you pick up a Warrant Scanner and assign it a weapon group so you can point and paint targets that are allegedly “clean” in Anarchy systems (but in truth likely have bounties with someone).

For bounty hunting, I do recommend you upgrade your hull armor and shields as well, of course, and the power supply and jump drive need love, too, most likely. With 400k you should be able to get some D and C grade equipment for all of those things right off the bat and still have some insurance padding left, and I think you’ll be quite happy with the results…

3894

Thanks much Bleed, that helps a bunch. Time to go shopping.

3895

I should have probably added - I’m by no means an expert, but this has been working pretty darn well for me, and now I’m upgrading those D and C parts with C and B (and grade A power distribution!) stuff. I really, REALLY like you get full value for trade in, makes me want to invest in some different types of weapons, like railguns, to play around with…

3896

Also always scan targets that are already wanted in civilized systems. They may be wanted in other systems too. That’s how I’ve got almost 100k in bounties for the Alliance even though I’ve never been anywhere near one of their systems.

This is especially useful in independent systems where wanted ships will very often be also wanted by one or more of the other main factions. More often, I’ve found, than for example a ship wanted in Fed space being also wanted by the Empire or Alliance. I’d estimate that scanning wanted ships in primary faction space will yield maybe 10-20% extra in other faction bounties. Where in independent systems, especially ones with an active criminal faction, you’ll get another 30-50% extra bounties in neighboring factions. (These numbers were posterioraly produced based on my gut feelings after a lot of bounty hunting, I haven’t actually kept data on this).

3897

Is 1.1 live yet? One thing that caught my eye in the latest Elite newsletter was the story of the Cyborg barkeep who told players in Elite 2 that he would buy out the rest of the spaceport in about 50 years or so and take it into unknown regions of the galaxy. He will be doing that in 1.1

Sounds like a good time to start my exploration career, using his starbase as a mobile base out in the unknown.

3898

No it aint. Jaques station isnt in the game even lol.

With a little luck 1.1 might hit this week. Or it might not. IDK.

3899

Watched 2001 last night and really enjoyed this scene for some reason. :)

vlcsnap-00483.jpg1600×720

3900

Me too :) 2001 was one of the inspirations for the original game off course (blue danube docking music etc). Great film, great games.