Elite: Dangerous

Dude, go bounty hunting for some quick cash. In the last two evenings I made 50mln by stacking a bunch of missions against the same pirate faction. Diamondback Scout is a pretty damn good and cheap combat oriented ship and you can grind for an A-Grade Vulture in a few days. Now, with a Vulture, you can go high/hazardous RES hunting, earning about 1-3mln per hour. Still stacking up pirate hunting missions pays better, but gets boring fast. Nevertheless I'm flying an A-Grade combat oriented Python, that still has 128t cargo space. Grinding materials for the engineers now. I'm at 4th tier F-Drive upgrade, which gives me about 20ly jump distance. Pretty decent, considering that I use a military hull and 2x hull reinforcements, and it's still not the final upgrade on the drive. Now, if I unlock the hull engineer, I should be able to switch back to light alloys and upgrade that one instead, should give me a huge range boost. Then shields , thrusters and in the end weapons (already has quite a punch). Python is finally the ship I'm going to stick to, but the thing was expensive. ~50mln for the ship, another 150mln for upgrades, and now almost 10mln insurance. I wanted to have a combat explorer and Python allows to do just that (though you need to learn how to fly it properly when fighting). For pure combat I may get a Fer-De-Lance at some point, but it has a pathetic jump range and no cargo space left once fully armed.

 

But thats what we meant. If you can afford a Python you must have played so many hundreds of hours, and you dont need cash. A relative beginner in a Viper or Cobra will have a much harder time, with puny 3B shields or whatever he can afford. No, right now the most risk free way of making cash for me is to go to a high security system with pristine metallic rings and mine the shit out of them. I have been able to ramp up the cargo in the Asp to 96 tons, and I am looking at 2-4 million per trip.

I would agree that the Diamondback Scout is a good choice, and I even had it before the Cobra. But it has relatively weak shields too. It is arguably the best option for anyone looking for a combat ship that doesnt cost a fortune.

 

I switched to DBS from Cobra and never regretted. Basically that's when I started earning good cash, and thanks to that ship I'm now in a Python. At this moment I have 152hrs counted on Steam, not really that much.

Hmm, maybe once I'm done with uprgaring the drive, I'll sacrifice 64 cargo space for passenger cabins. Could be fun.

 

A Python costs 60 million. How do you make that much money in 150 hrs I may ask?? I earned about 15 millions since I took up mining (on monday, so within 4 days and about 8 mining expeditions), and that was with a highly optimized route where I get 200% for Painite anddoing a lot of missions too. I had made about 8 million in the 75hrs or so before, doing smuggling of slaves and drugs.

The DBS is really one of my favorite ships too, I had it for some time when I was msuggling but it limited my trading too much (I had only 20 tons or so cargo space). And tbh I could not afford 2 ships at the time, not to mention the transport was not in thje game and you had to fly back manually in a Sidewinder and fetch it.

I think I will now be able to own a DBS, Asp and Cobra at the same time. The Asp is fantastic for mining, the DBS the best fighting ship and the Cobra is amazing for its price. I also thought about a Viper Mk III

 

Last time I played you basically made money with community goals.

 

Are you guys playing with Horizons?

Is there a point to visiting more distant systems? I've never seen more than a handful of people outside of the most populated systems clustered around the starting one.

 

Went as far as Jaques Station and visited most of ther part around the bubble, i think i've clocked 40000+LY doing exploration.
Unless you want to larp, it's probably the most boring thing i've ever done in a vidya.

 

Does the whole metagame of taking over systems for different factions matter at all then?

 

You can get not too bad cash from exploration, especially now with space tourism.

As for Horizons - yeah. It definitely adds to the atmosphere, also when driving the rover around on the surface I was able to obtain some very rare materials required by engineers. No idea if you can get them in any other way, maybe as rewards in missions or sometimes mining?

Nevertheless the point of flying far away and surface exploration are things like this:

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/10/elite-dangerous-player-uncovers-biggest-alien-secret-yet/

 

I got the Python with 15% discount somewhere in Li Yong Rui space. And the components are discounted as well, just fly around the high-tech systems over there.

As for getting money - as I said, stacking pirate hunting missions against a single pirate faction. I found a system where most factions totally hate the pirate bunch in a neighbouring system. First I increased my ranking with these factions by delivering local bounties from RES hunting, then started doing the missions. Once you're allied, you can stack up a couple of missions reaching up to 7+ mln in rewards, against a single pirate group. Basically you get paid multiple times by the same job. Let's say you pick a mission for 2mln to kill 16 pirates of a specific group, then another mission against the same pirates for 3mln (kill 24 of them), one for 5mln (kill 32) and one for 7mln (kill 40). In total you still need to kill 40 pirates to complete all of them, and you earn 20mln in 3 hours.
It's still a bit tricky though - let's say you killed 32 pirates out of 40, so you only have the highest paid mission left to finish. Now... the higher the paygrade, the tougher the mission is, so you can be fighting Pythons, Fer-De-Lances and maybe even Anacondas. Also their spawning rate really drops. So instead of waiting for a ship that will probably obliterate you, if you're in a DBS or even a Vulture, you head back to the station. Cash in rewards for completed missions, then find a couple of cheaper ones against these pirates, like killing 8-12 for up to 1-1.5mln in rewards. This will increase the spawn a lot, and will give you easier targets as well.
Note that sometimes you need to log off/on, switching between open and single play, to get new missions generated while you're at the base.

Oh, and the system I'm talking about is LHS 378 - Tuan Survey settlement. It's like Sothis for bounty hunting.

 

Interesting, now that I have 25 millions I could even afford a fully upgraded Vulture .. The Asp by the way is not my favorite ship, it's a total money making mining machine but otherwise it doesnt excite me at all.

 

By the way, I had to try some ice mining, and it was as profitable.

I think the key here is to get the really, really good contracts by calculating the price per ton. Some paid out ca 70-80,000 per ton of Bromelite, which means you can get as much for a rather ordinary material as if it were 1 ton of Painite, or even 2 tons of painite if you sold it anywhere. Payout was ca 2 million which is not bad, I even found 6 tons of low temperature diamonds though at these prices per ton they are less profitable than the Bromelite.

The system was only major reserves (pristine ice rings are harder to find than metallic) though I dont recommend that because you may have to grind out the tons (at 5% per asteroid and maybe every 5th asteroid containing the material, you'd only get ca 1 ton per 5 asteroids, or even just 15 asteroids if you dont use prospectors). This grind can become quite tedious as I was spending an hour or so looking for 12 tons.

 

Just look at this, 2 tons of Methanol Monohydrate Crystals for 236,000 thats 118,000 credits per ton.

This should show how unbalanced and illogical this whole mission system is. A lot of missions just pay out 2000 credits for carrying scrap or manure to some other port and then you have these premium tasks where you get 100 times the normal price per ton (the market price for MMC is 1,300 per ton)

 

Yeah, but you are allied with the faction, and the allied status provides the best paying missions.

 

What mining actually taught me is exactly what Dangerous Catch captains talk about the whole time. Everything they say about fishing is also true for asteroid mining. For example, you need to be able to assess the content of an asteroid in 1 minute. Basically every increase in time efficency is cash, and sometimes you must grind out a few toins to fullfill your quota. Once you have one that contains a lot of Painite / Platinum / Palladium or one of your quotas you need to work like a factory, with 3 limpet drones and see that the fragments move in a straight line towards you. That way you can sometimes make several hundred thousands in 2 minutes.

I'm allied with them because I traded ca 30,000,000 with them within 5 days. After my status went allied the prices have gone up a bit that's true. But the prices for Osmium have risen a bit too much to be reasonable even if I'm their ally. In the last run they gave me 3 million for 40 tons in 3 individual contracts. Thats 72,500 per ton, if I'm not mistaken the same price you get for Painite in the best selling stations. This is fucking Osmium which is normally worth 8,000. The price was so good that I vented out several tons of Palladium to make more room.

Recently my profits per mining trip have gone from 3.1M to 3.6M to 4.7M million. I think this will have been the last one though and my career as a miner is over for now. I will head to Diaguandri because that is supposed to be a upgrade paradise, and build myself a combat ship, probably a Vulture.

 

Yeah baby, paytime

 

I would also like dat Federal Assault ship, but I must be Chief Petty Officer in the Federal Navy ... what do I even have to do to enlist?

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Federal_Assault_Ship

 

nothing. go to a fed-aligned station and do fed-aligned missions/drop exploration data/bounties (basically anything that generates rep. i think missions are the most efficient) until you fill the Fed rep bar to 100% so that the random "haul 5t of coffee so we can promote you in the military" mission spawns. repeat until rank is achieved

and do take into consideration the Imperial Clipper as well. it has excellent speed (one of the top 3), pitch and roll, although the lateral thrusters suck (it's a pretty big ship), solid jump range, 2L+2M hardpoints (but gimbals are a must because of the positioning) and very very good internal space for the price (the best you can get until you can afford a Python. even though they buffed the T7 recently, i still think the Clipper is better)

bet course of action to get money+rep quickly for one of the 2 would probably be to find a nice station that gives lots of "skimmer massacre" missions, stack those and grind away in a sidewinder or eagle. just my 0,02€

 

Can you be a bit specific about "haul 5t of coffee so we can promote you in the military"?

Because my fed rank has been sitting at 100% forever and I seriously wondered what's the point.

 

when it reaches 100%, the RNG will sooner or later spawn a "military ascension opportunity" mission (i'm not 100% sure about the specifics but i think it's enough to refresh the mission board at any fed controlled station), which is usually something as idiotic as "haul 5t of coffee to that station over there so we can promote you to admiral". plus, the 2 military ranks in fed/imp aren't mutually exclusive so you can be king and admiral at the same time, lol

 

OK, I re-evaluated the fighting ships and for practical reasons the favorite option is really the Diamondback Scout. It has a long list of advantages (speed, maneuvrability, armament, cockpit view and small target size) and while the shield is not the best and it cannot compete with a Vulture the much lower insurance cost is also an important factor to me. The internals are only not even a factor for a pure combat build, and I could even go with a 2T fuel tank and maybe even 2D frameshift drive.

What about the shields? Is it best to go with 3A, Prismatic or Biweave?

And what's the take on hull reinforcement packages? I can get up to almost 1000 hull by stacking them, good idea or bad?

I also tried my hand at a highly uprated Sidewinder and it could be fun, I still like the view from the cockpit most and the insurance cost is laughable low.

 

current meta is to use RNGineers mods, as they offer insane increases on resistances that can up the strength of your shields virtually well over 300% normal for "little" sacrifices ("little" as in compared to stock shields/boosters. but a lot of sacrificed time to grind all the materials)

more hull is always good. as long as you keep your total mass around 50% (or less) of your thruster's optimum mass for max manoeuvrability, stack as many as you want. for shields go with what suits you best. they have their pros/cons so decide what suits your playstyle best (i personally prefer biweave, but plenty others swear by prismatics). but if you want to go the rngineer mod route, it matters a bit less

DBS used to be an awesome ship before they nerfed silent running (FDev are literally crazy retarded when it comes to ship/weapon balance), because it has a pretty strong hull for the size, excellent manoeuvrability, and subpar shields so sacrificing those for HRP made sense. plus, iirc it has the lowest (or near enough) default thermal signature of all the ships so it runs pretty cold by default. CMDR Na'Qan has some nice clips on youtube and is one of the better (if not the best) silent running DBS pilots i've seen. unfortunately, SR is not what it used to be and it was always crap in PvE as AI pretty much ignores it 90% of the time .

the DBS is still very good, but the Vulture is significantly better (seriously. it's like flying an Eagle that dishes out more consistent damage than a clipper and has almost the survivability of a python. you'll be killing non-modded ships with ease even with a basic setup of 2 large pulse lasers. the only thing it lacks is versatility [only 2 hardpoints] and raw unboosted speed)

 

"I still ask myself why I played as much as I did" is a question I have been asking myself, with 200 hours. I also think that I now understand why so many people go through playing hundreds and hundreds of hours and then realize they hate it. It is because there is no point! You spend all this time playing the game and it looks like a game that is full of infinite possibilities but at some point it will hit you that everything you ever do is increase your credits, and you have to do this because the prices of better ships grow exponentially. There is nothing else that you do, you dont build new space stations or spaceships or influence the number of pirates or anything, when you are gone the universe will be the same as when you entered, it's just a fucking number on on some server.

My advice to new players would be just to ignore the credits as much as they can and just take the game for sightseeing and some combat. But that's easier said than done, because you certainly dont want to stick with s Sidewinder but get a Cobra or Diamondback and then you are already knee deep in grinding.

Mining was fun though as long as I needed cash it was rewarding to maximize the profit per hour. Now I have liquidated everything and left with ca 35 million that I can spend the rest just testing features

 

So can you just get infinite credits and fool around or are you stuck on MMO server rules or something?

 

The second one.