Heading for Tamar, gonna give it a shot.
Ok. Flew to Tamar and indeed there were a bunch of charity headings on the bulletin board. So I wasted some money on em. Now I’m allied to the local factions and friendly+ with the Empire. Good. No navy missions though…
If you’re just trying to get to Master rapidly by spending cash, you can (relatively) quickly speed things up by switching between solo and open play after you run out of charity missions. When you do, you refresh the bulletin board, so more opportunities to donate. I think at low levels, it takes around 25 completed missions to get a naval mission, and scales up a bit as you go up in rank. (On a lark, it took me a couple hours and 2.5M for me to go from Post Commander to Post Captain yesterday.)
Squee
4523
Bought a vulture and fitted it as I could. The stock power distributor is letting the team down by being awful, but I have yet to find a class 5 power distributor anywhere. Probably will need to go on another high tech economy system shopping spree.
Anyway, the vulture ended up costing a pretty penny. 7-8ish million once all was said and done. Fortunately it’s an unstoppable killing machine and I’ve more than made that money back already. Takes out a python in under 60 seconds without being hit once, and clippers can lightly paw at it before dying since they seem to have either better gimballed weapon range or run turreted weapons more, but the heavy shields on the vulture shrug it off. Even engagements that would’ve meant certain disaster in the cobra are manageable in the vulture, a python in a wing with two vipers was handled with 0 support. Should be even crazier when I get it fitted a little better. Especially that damn power distributor.
I do kinda miss the speed of the cobra, but it doesn’t matter all that much once I start fighting and the agility of the vulture takes over.
Edit update: Bought power distributor, as I believed it’s the unsung hero of space murder, was able to kill a clipper without letting off LMB and before it could get a fix on me. Made six and a half million in an hour of murdering. Ship’s about as killy (Sustained killy at least. Could go faster if I wanted to deal with ammo but then I’d have to go rearm. Would probably go that route if I was killing people) as I can make it, any further upgrades would be quality of life (FSD range) and survivability (Bigger shields, bigger generator, shield boosters, etc).
Yup. The vulture shure kills shit good.
All this talk of the Vulture death machine makes me really want to get back into Elite, as I love the combat so much, but a combination of my backlog and wanting to wait for Oculus is holding me back.
The vulture will be just as monstrous a murderdeath machine in 2016 as it is now.
Oh, I’m sure. It’s just another participant in the mental tug-of-war.
So if I’m the guy who enjoyed mining in Eve would this game scratch that itch for me? Is there real competition for ore and an economy to make that aspect of the game fun?
Mining is much more fun than in Eve since you actually have to “Play” the game, i have no idea how profitable it is tho.
FUCK the obtuse clusterfuck that is reputation and navy ranks. I have been banging away at the empire. The did give me one rank, but the next one keeps fucking eluding me. Are certain missions actually putting me away from the goal or something? or are the Random Number Gods just fucking with me?
KevinC
4531
Unless something has changed since 1.3, you need to move around and work for different minor factions within the empire to continue making progress. This, of course, is all completely hidden by the UI and not explained anywhere.
Basically, go to a system and work for Empire minor factions until they are Allied. Do NOT take any missions from non-Empire aligned factions. Do not take a mission unless you know you can complete it, as failing them will penalize you. Once a minor faction is allied, its contribution towards your Empire faction standing kind of caps out. You need to move to a different Empire minor faction and get them up to allied, then keep repeating that over and over and over until you get the Empire rank you want. To make it even better, there’s also a RNG factor in terms of when your naval advancement mission will show up.
Yeah, getting to Baron for my clipper was so much fun.
So you liked reading books and watching TV while “playing” the game? ;)
Seriously, I loved the fuck out of mining in Jumpgate, and thought it was a nice distraction in EVE while I did other things.
I hate mining in Elite. So. Boring. Good thing so many other things are far more fun.
There’s currently a community goal in Abres to deliver osmium, one of the top 3 rarest things to mine. Not sure I’d recommend the community goal, as it’s kinda broken in that unless Frontier rejiggers the numbers a bit, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of folks meeting even the first tier, especially given osmium’s rarity. But, it did give me a reason to refit my python for mining and finally try it out. And by the numbers, mining is probably a smidge more profitable than exploring, but not better than bounty hunting or bulk trading. That said, it’s not bad with collector drones scooping up chunks, once you figure out how to manage them without losing your sanity.
So in the past three days of trying this out, I’ve made maybe 20M credits, mostly by bringing 160 tonnes of rare metals at a time to a high tech system not too terribly far from the pristine metallic ring system I’ve been working in. The station there frequently has missions on the bulletin board offering around 200k credits for 3 platinum or painite, or 100k credits for 1 osmium. The gold and palladium also can be sold at above market value.
You’re actually not wrong there about me and Mining. My Eve foray was when daughter #1 was ~6 months old. I was coming off of a WoW binge and needed something that I could just walk away from if need be. I also mined while lifting weights. :)
When I wasn’t preoccupied with other tasks. I did enjoy it as an efficiency exercise. I liked figuring out exactly how to make the most out of my paltry low sec mining runs, eventually working my way up to the very large secured containers and getting a hauler. I also liked how I could set my ship to mining and browse the stations with the in-game interface to see where I was going to sell my ore for the most isk.
Even with drones I think mining is still super active in this game.
Squee
4536
Stardate: Somethingsomethingsomething point something. After getting relatively space rich via space murder, I bought and fitted myself a hauler for exploration, since hilariously enough the hauler makes a pretty rock solid exploration vessel when you equip it right. Got around 28ly per hop range, and 170ly range on a full tank of gas. Haven’t found anything terribly exciting yet but have seen a pretty thing or two.
Edit: Exploration is pretty neat. Found a neutron star, got caught in a briar patch, and now I’m heading toward a black hole I found (Which I probably won’t be the first to discover it since it’s maybe 2,500ly from Sol but I’m happy I found it) though I’m taking a break. I sorta wish they added a bit more sci-fi woo woo exploration zest with more weird things off in space, but even just normal spacey things are kinda neat. I was pumped finding my first undiscovered Earth-like.
It’s strange how I found trading pretty tedious but exploration (Which is mainly just lining up and pressing J like trading) is fairly enjoyable. I guess because the sights change in exploration, whereas in trading you’re repeating the same route over and over as your credits get bigger.
And since I’m spamming crap, BAM. Flew right up on this neutron star and scared it. Silly neutron star.
And my first undiscovered Earth-like 'cause why not.
Congratulations on the blue planet bro!
Bought power distributor, as I believed it’s the unsung hero of space murder
PD is the first thing I Class A on any new ship.
And all of you Empire running dogs sicken me.
Fuck, it sickens Me even. but fuck it. I made it. Look at her. Totally worth it dude.
She’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve fought a lot of Imp Couriers in my DB Scout over the last few weeks. They have monstrous shields and hulls of chocolate.
