5561

When mining, I find that towards the end, I always have more limpets than I need. So firing them off as prospector drones instead of just dumping them (and then having my collectors try to stuff them back into my cargo hold) isn’t a total waste. Also, a rock with a prospector drone attached will drop more chunks, so if your mining lasers alone would normally get you 10 chunks, with a prospector you might instead get 16. Finally, firing off prospectors while your collectors are busy picking stuff up is not a bad way to plan which rock to mine next.

It’s kind of like having 2 mining lasers instead of just 1. Either way the job will still get done, but with 2 it’s a little faster/better.

5562

Gotcha, thanks!

5563

They give double amount of minerals, so normally you get around 15 chunks from a roid, with the prospector you get 30.

So never mine without prospectors they double your profitz.

Also only mine the 3Ps (platinum, painite and palladium) and maybe gold. You can grab some osmium if you want to for missions (missions are mostly painite and osmium)

5564

Uh oh. You better get back to Tombaugh Station, CMDR Veloxi, as I see your influence in the system has dropped to 53%! I think it was at least in the high 60s before.

It is a bit disappointing the current selection of missions. I used to always be able to pick up some mission for the faction that was combat related, but now the selection really is limited, as others have mentioned previously. I will have to hit the Haz Res for a bit instead :).

5565

I’m working on an article about my ideas for fixing this game so it feels a bit more alive.

One immediate thing they could do is simply add NPC names to the missions on the stations.

Example:
Zach Smith has a problem that needs solving. Zach works for Welland Yutani and needs a shipment of eggs delivered. He said I need to take them to Paul Reiser over at HIP 20277. When I get there I look for Paul and let him know I have his cargo. Now Paul and I know each other and he offers me missions too. Sometimes Zach and Paul even send me email to let me know I should come see them or tell me to pick them up some commodity while I’m out and about. The more friendly Zach and I get, the more interesting missions he gives me.

Oh, turns out Paul knows some shady characters. I didn’t know there was a black market here but now that he trusts me, he said he can fence certain types of goods. Not just anything, but primarily consumer tech and performance enhancers.

Dear diary, I’m concerned. I’ve been moving some stolen vcrs for Paul and he said he has a buddy who wanted to talk to me. Guido. Guido said if I want to make some fast money I have a choice… I could haul some highly illegal drugs for the mob, or if I like messy work, I could knock over some rival syndicate’s coffee shipments. He gave me a waypoint and said to wait there and they’d give me specific ship IDs that needed dealt with.

I found out today that Weyland is actually a player faction. Paul is an NPC they made, and wrote the dialogue for. So is Guido. Those missions I’ve been doing for him are a branching line of events they made, and the missions themselves were made in an easy little mission script editor that Frontier put in the last patch. How cool. So I’m really doing missions for their player faction all along. I wondered why the missions didn’t feel generic anymore and NPCs were talking about them much more meaningfully. I heard you can make a mission in like 10 minutes once you know the tool. Just upload it to your NPC and it goes in the game. When I really like a mission I can upvote it, and there’s even a leader board for factions with the most interesting missions. The coolest NPCs are featured in the monthly issue of “Who’s who in the Galaxy” so I know right where to find them .

Now wouldn’t that fix the game?

5566

nope, it would turn it into a horrible cesspit of gay strongbad penises and other goonish internet bullshit.

i like what you try to do here but alas people are people (ie. assholes)

5567

including Frontier themselves! ;) Sadly we need an obi-wan, but he doesn’t exist.

5568

Hey, is anyone able to connect to the Frontier Developments site right now? Seems to be down.

5569

I just checked the forums and the launcher and both seem to be working fine from here.

5570

Weird. It must be a DNS thing. I’m in Oregon and use Comcast. Sometimes these things clear up with a system reboot, but I can’t figure out why that would work.

EDIT: Well, that didn’t fix it. I’m going to try rebooting the cable modem next.

Well, crap. Neither rebooting the cable modem nor the router fixed it. What DNS servers do you all use, because Comcast’s just aren’t cutting it right now.

5571

Hmm, not sure I guess. Can you just use the Google DNS? 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4?

5572

I ended up putting OpenDNS’s addresses in the Network Control panel properties and it’s working now.

5573

I got this in the sale too. I’m DrJonez if anyone wants to add me :)

5574

Welcome drjonez fire away if you have questions and look up the elite names thread to populate your friends list. Fly dangerous bro, that sidewinder is free for a reason!

5575

So the New Years fireworks community goal completed last evening when all 200k tons of fireworks were delivered (200 kiloton firework, anyone?). I gather the final payout was similar to most CGs with the top 5% getting 20M.

I ultimately delivered two runs of goods for ~60t total, but with the source station at 625k LS from its star, I didn’t want to spend the time it would take to get any higher. Even still, being in the top 60% netted me 5M.

I’m sitting at 130M right now after having fully outfitted a Viper IV for combat. I’m thinking that my next step is a trading/mining Python.

Edit:

My current stable looks like this:
Sidewinder
Viper III (cheaply outfitted)
Asp Explorer (outfitted for trading)
Viper IV (fully outfitted)

5576

Well done. I am nearing 70 million in total assets now and at least feel like things are moving faster making money. I should probably try to hit up some of the big trading payouts so I can get into a FAS or Python quicker, but I still have my newer Vulture and Asp to play around with first for a while.

I have been trying out an armor tank build that Tankero at BF put up with multiple Hull Reinforcements, a Bi-Weave Shield Generator and running a Plasma Generator coupled with a Fragment Cannon. It can be a bit harder to tangle with smaller ships as the plasma cannon is fixed, but man they sure can tear through a Python or Fer de Lance quickly. I am still not sure if I like it better, but with the mirrored bulkheads, decent shield that recharges faster, and plenty of armor, it is a different beast for sure. If you can fly it right, you can probably make quite a bit more per hour at a Haz Res compared to standard beam/SCB/booster layouts. One other thing I really like is removing the SCBs and Shield Boosters free up lots of power so I can now upgrade from D to A class Thrusters. Man, this baby sure snaps around fast with those and makes me wonder why I didn’t try this much sooner. I have been using the manual thrusters to assist in turning and I can really notice the difference with the upgrade. It is a bit pricey at around 31.7 million, but it sure is fun for a change of pace.

Here is my slightly modified change to his build (upgraded the Life Support and KWS by one and adjusted some power priorities):

http://coriolis.io/outfit/vulture/34A5A4A3D5A4C3C1u2b0001020mB22b272566.Iw19kA==.EwBhEYy6fI==?bn=Tankero-Lolture-Kelan

5577

I have a friend using a very similar build, except he uses a beam in place of plasma. I’m curious about your thoughts on a fragment cannon over subsystem targeting with a cannon.

Also, I put together a rough build for a python that’s within my budget. Thoughts?

5578

Something that confuses me about the flight model… When flight assist is on, the ship tries it’s best to keep my direction of travel on the same vector as the nose. When you turn flight assist off, it decouples that and I drift on the original vector and can point the nose elsewhere.

What I don’t get here is why having my throttle at 50% while the assist is off has anything at all to do with how many degrees per second of deflection I can get from the ship since its just using the body mounted thrusters ports to rotate the ship.

Secondly why does 50% provide maximum turn rates when assist is enabled? If flight assist is limiting the nose pointing so at corresponds to the flight path of the ship, having lowest velocity would be the least inhibiting rates because you don’t have any velocity vector to alter.

So by my reasoning the fastest turning ship should be a motionless one, and assist off would give you maximum rate as well. Why isn’t that so?

I’m also trying to understand what happens to the ship velocity when assist is off and I change throttle settings. Is the game treating the ship like the Asteroids type Newtonian model, where more throttle equals harder burn and the thrust vector is summed with the current travel vector and the result is where I’m going now? Or is it still hand waving BS?

If the ships in Elite handled like the ones in Evochron, where you have a “true vector” indicator on the hud and you had to thrust opposite your motion to stop, it would be so much more satisfying. For people who don’t dig that they have assist mode. I just wish I could watch replays of flights in a mission recorder so I could tell WTF the ship is actually doing when I’m wiggling the sticks, ya know? I suppose I could use an asteroid for reference or get a buddy to film me on OBS.

5579

I think a lot of it is deliberately fake and arbitrary for gameplay/balance reasons.

5580

Yeah… If you’re going to pick on the flight model, you might as well pick on the game-balanced maximum speeds.

Myself, I just treat it as a game and enjoy it for what it is. I consciously try to avoid digging into it too much lest the ‘magic’ be eroded.