4881

Joystick strapped to broken cutting board with big rubber bands. CHECK

Taking 7 minutes to dock because I couldn’t figure out which way to face while people were laughing at me in general chat. CHECK

Reporting for duty.

4882

The larger group that is also strictly PvE is Mobius. Its membership is up to over 12,000 now.

4883

I am assuming I can toggle back and forth between the various settings (currently playing in Solo mode). Character Kiae, feel free to send friend requests.

4884

Was sitting in a station yesterday and a CMDR flies in and lands at the pad next to mine. Well, tried to land anyway. It was about five minutes of sort of very slowly scraping his hull along the landing pad with this super-comical SCREEEEECH. I just sat there looking through the window. It just went on and on.

And then the station shot him and he blew up.

On a related note, after several months of pacifist mucking about, I’ve been getting into some combat, and it’s been good fun. I’ve got a few million in the bank but still kitting out my Viper MK III. I’ve been having a heck of a time finding decent pulse lasers, though. Do such a thing exist? I’ve got beam lasers in the medium hardpoints, but I much prefer the pew-pewness of pulse. I’ve been to a couple of dozen stations and can’t find anything decent.

4885

The best advice I got as a newbie (I think from here) was to remember when you first start out you are actually in a very powerful position to take risks. So DO explore unidentified signals, the rewards can be massive compared to missions, DO get stuck into dogfights with pirates you can take. Do it all and do it with no fear. The death penalty when you start is trivial so take advantage of it.

I am still doing exploration. I get a buzz when I come back to civilization and watch my planet fishing catch total run up. A double buzz when there are now a lot of places first discovered by me :) My favourite type to discover are gas giants with life living in the clouds. They dont pay much I just think its so cool.

4886

How do you join said group? Just search and you can join or is there some application process?

EDIT: For other new players, the two biggest things I learned today:

  1. Hang out at nav beacons and you can shoot at wanted people and make easy money!
  2. small signals are probably lost cargo, or mission cargo. Good to know! =)
4887

I cannot believe that I don’t already own this game. I love space; I love space ships; I love shooting space ships; why am I not already playing this game?

4888

That’s it, turn in your spaceman card right now. You can get it reissued once you’re sitting comfortably in the cockpit of your Cobra.

4889

Search for the name of the group–make sure it’s just “Mobius” (without the quotes) and not “Moebius” or “Mobius.” or whatever, send a request, and you’re pretty much in once you’re approved. Here’s the thread about the group on the Frontier forums: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=38362&page=99&p=2865631#post2865631 , and there’s this forum ( http://elitepve.com/ ) set up by the people who set up the private group. The advantage of the latter forum is that there’s no prohibition on “naming and shaming” there if someone joins up and plays in the private group, then proceeds to be an asshat and PK people.

The neat thing about Elite Dangerous is that you can join a PG like Mobius and play in private group mode according to its rules whenever you like, and then if you want to you can play in Open or in a PvP-oriented private group to your heart’s content whenever you like as well. Just remember what mode you’re playing in.

4890

Is the asshat to non-asshat ratio in Open a lot worse than it was back in December last year? I always loved the thrill of Open, not knowing whether that player blip was a potential pirate or not, running like heck to try and shake them, powering down in asteroids to try and hide etc. I missed that element in the “safe” groups, but I don’t have much patience for the idiot brigade.

I really need to dust off my mouse (joystick, schmoystick!) and get back into this. It’s been a while.

4891

I found the asshat Open ratio to be too high for my tastes. Really as an explorer those other players added nothing to my experience, just an extra problem to be avoided really, so I play “Solo”. The private group of cool people sounds cool though.

4892

Cool!

Some of those dogfights we got into in some of those new (at the time) combat zones was some of the most enjoyable gaming I had this past year. I got it installed yesterday and got my joystick hooked up. Now I just need to find some time to remap everything and take my Viper out for a test run.

I would be playing now, but I am busy moving out of the swamps in ARK :).

4893

I never had problems playing in open, but maybe i didn’t wander around very populated zones.

4894

Wow. I thought I could play with the mouse and keyboard. Hell no. Time to break out the joystick again. And relearn the game.

4895

Yeah, I think I’ve been attacked by another player maybe twice out of dozens of hours. I was in an extraction zone last night and there was a handful of other players, and everyone went about their business taking out Wanted NPCS. I was scanned a few times by CMDR’s, but not attacked. Maybe I need to head to Lave or something to see griefing?

I like open just because it’s fun to occasionally see other commanders.

4896

Ok, so I’m puttering around acceptably (mouse and keyboard at the moment, if I stick with it I’ll get myself a nice HOTAS setup for my birthday), have made a few tens of thousands moving things from hither to yon in my Sidewinder.

What is a good thing to do next? I have enough cash to keep me in fuel for a while, should I just go for a wander? Also, is there a good source for “this is the fictional world, read up on this to understand the backstory”?

4897

Agreed. I think Open is the way to play, unless things get ugly. The only time I’ve dropped down to private is during CGs, when you get a lot of pirates/griefers hanging out near the stations.

4898

Dave, frontier sells a bunch of ebooks in their storefront. Some are quite good.
You might want to try a Community Goal. Those are very easy money because you earn just for taking part. Find out about them on the community site.
If its just pewpew you crave, combat zones are great.

4899

Dave,
I just started out this week as well and the things I’ve found that are great for making money so far are:

  1. Hanging out at nav beacons and killing wanted ships for bounties. Thsi works even better if you have a wanted scanner.

  2. You can pick up a less scrupulous job, like transporting slaves pretty safely if the destination says “[outpost]” in the name =) No police scanners at the door! I did one this morning for 100k and it was a pretty quick job.

Thanks schurem for the advise last night! Appreciate your help. Looking forward to playing in group with some of you guys soon.

4900

I logged in last night with my Vulture, since it’s been a while. I spent about an hour, shot up around $200K worth of bad guys, all at deadly level. They included a viper, a courier, and an eagle, along with others.

None of them shot back.

I ran a $100K run worth of illegal combat modifiers or whatever. Then I took a $100K contract for delivering drugs, jumped, saw that the destination was 200k Ls away, and decided to sell the drugs somewhere else.

Nothing happened based on my illegal and untrustworthy actions.

I docked, cashed in my chips, and logged off. Now I remembered why it was a while since I’d logged on.