Elite: Dangerous

Also bought this, but I yet have to assemble it. Did you already solder it together?

 

J_C Your quoting sucks.

No I didn't, I only bought the arduino board and the gyroscope board. I still need to get the button, PCB(or breadboard) and the enclosure, hoping to pick all of this up from edtracker guys.

 

Send me a PM if you're tired of looking for a good trade route. I've found the perfect place to learn the basics of trade and influence building.

 

Yeah, I hafta wait till 16th

 

is it normal that preflight checks pop up no matter whether i have them on or off?

 

They must have turned it on by default for new players. If you look at your systems panel, and go to the Functions section you can turn off pre-flight checks.

 

The check list only turned up for the first time for me, and never again. I didn't even have to switch it off. Of course I did everything on the list for the first time.

 

The list is on for new players to make sure they know the most basic controls (but not hyperspace or retracting landing gear ) before take-off. It's toggled off afterwards, but you can switch it back on in the functions menu (right side of ship) if you want to for some reason. As far as basic tutorials go, it's not bad. It doesn't break immersion, it doesn't take more than a minute and it makes sure the player knows where the major controls are located.


Also, if you're looking to make a buck, the best mining spot I've found is Omicron Gruis. The clusters around the sun have rocks with palladium in them. Laz0r them until a single chunk falls off, check if it's palladium or gold. If it is, mine the fucker out. Then either jump out and back in to reset the rock or log out to main menu and back in.

I made ~300k/hour in a cobra with a mining laser and a refinery with 4 bins. I've been scooting around looking for someplace with better mining. But for some reason, the pristine/metallic areas I've found have worse mining than omicron gruis. (More %mineral in the chunks, but less palladium/gold rocks).

Omicron gruis also had a rating B FSD (instead of the 4A 1.6 mill dumbfuckery) for my cobra.

 

They aren't kidding when they say that the cobra is multi-role. It's a huge difference in gameplay compared to the Eagle and Sidewinder. Back in the day Cobras only had 16 cargo space, and now class 4 internal compartments can fit a single 16-cargo rack. It's unreal how much more cargo space you can get in this iteration.

I'll have to make a field trip to Omicron Gruis and check out the mining there. I have a high grade fuel scoop too, so I don't even have to make pit stops.

If you're still looking for a good spot to work towards a cobra, then Shinrarta Dezhra is as good as any. It's a High Tech/Industrial economy, headquarters of the Pilot's Federation, and has several neighbors with very profitable trade routes for a low income player. All you have to do is load up with Reactive Armor and take it to an approppriate neighboring system while learning how to develop your own trade routes. According to the flavor text you can only reach Shinrarta Dezhra if you're Elite in rank, but backers are supposed to have a permit just like how everyone gets a permit for Sol. I don't know if Beta backers or Premium Beta backers like myself will still have access after launch.

I have yet to read The Dark Wheel and don't see any synopsis for it on the net, but The Dark Wheel is a faction in Shinrarta Dezhra. Any Elite oldfags mind spoilering what that means for me?

 

Generally the fast way to get to cobra is:
1) Sell Freeagle
2) Do bulletin board cargo haul missions in sidey until ~60-65k (4-5 should be enough on top of Freeagle money).
3) Sell sidey, get hauler
-- Approximately 0.5-1 hours

4) Strip hauler of EVERYTHING except cargo raxx
5) Do bulletin board missions or trade runs until you can afford mining laser + refinery with at least 3 (preferably 4+) bins
-- Approximately 1-2 hours --

6) Mine a metallic/pristine or metallic/major ring for gold/palladium/platinum until ~400k
7) Sell hauler, buy cobra
-- Approximately 3-4 hours --

You can substitute steap 4-7 with doing 20t hauler hauling. Either do a really profitable trade route (reactive armor from hi tech <-> metal from refinery tends to work well), or do bulletin board missions and full remaining cargo space with whatever's cheap. It'll take a bit longer than the mining route, but you aren't reliant on knowing where to find a pristine/metallic mining location.


And yeah. Cobra is way, way too good compared to everything below an Asp. I'd probably restrict it to 1 class 4 internal slot and class 3/class 2 for the rest. Maybe allow it to use class 3 shields as a trade-off. (Or maybe not. Let them have to go shieldless if they want a size-16 rack).

It'd actually be really nice if we got another 2 ships in the ~500-700kcr range. Something a little more specialized (but better at its specialization than the cobra) to give people an upgrade option before the several million for a Lakon-6 or Asp. I know we'll get it eventually (Braben-senpai promised us 30+ flyable ships), but I'd love to have it for release.


Not that I won't be beelining straight for Sidey->Hauler->Cobra->(Asp, maybe)->Python.

 

The cobra is fine for what it is, a jack of all trades master of none type vessel. What makes it OP is the ridiculous top speed and your ability to constantly spam the afterburner with 4 engine blips and a good enough power distributor.

I really hope they make a change to the outfitting interface, because right now it's a disorganized mess. At least list the components alphabetically for christ's sake.

 

all of which is already covered by the flight school tutorials and the preflight check you get there, which any sane person who would benefit from a preflight checklist is bound to do first anyway, and it triggers despite being disabled in the functions, which makes zero sense... hey, we know you know enough about the game to disable prelaunch stuff in a tab on a panel that needs special binding, but we still thought you might not know how to fucking steer your ship, so fuck you for disabling that option and tell us again what the button for upwards thrust and deploying hardpoints is.
at least make it a three state option with on, off, once, and set it to once by default, allowing people to really turn it off, instead of having it to off by default and triggering it anyways.

fastest way to get to cobra:
options -> clear save -> confirm
input name -> ok
select pirate for cobra with 2 class 2 multicannons and cargo scanner (selkl freagle to pay the 7.5k bounty) or explorer for cobra with upgraded fs drive, wake scanner and intermediate discovery scanner.


gamma 1.04 is also crashing a lot for me.. like once every two hours or so, usually when i land and go to station services.

 

from what i read of the ship stats and saw of videos, the Cobra is just way waaay too good for what it is. for being a multirole ship it's better than a hauler for trading/mining (and the next upgrade is the 1mil lakon6) and it's just as good if not better than a Viper for combat (more armour/less shields, slightly lower top speed, same hardpoints, same manoeuvrability). overall, the balance of the ships doesn't really seem good (only the first 3-4 and last 3 [price-wise] seem to be decently balanced, the inbetween is just "get Cobra ASAP, then maybe Asp" whatever your plans are... i'm probably overlooking something like i remember something about some kind of passenger ferry missions that won't make Orca pointless etc). but they're all sexy as hell. fuck the haters

anyway, played a bit of the combat demos... this is easily by far the best space dogfight flight model. ever. bar none. such a pleasure to fly even that basic sidewinder. and flying with FA off is fucking hard (anybody has some tips? that Isinona dude is insane). goddamn this will take a lot of time to master. it's like 2 games in one. the spasim "lovers" who dismissed this because of FA and the speed limit should be ashamed of themselves. this is pretty much THE perfect balance between realism and fun. hopefully they won't screw up with the missions, universe, and shit to do while flying (hopefully none of the X3 owning of bases and whole fleets shenanigans... it's cool, but it's better if they leave that to the X series)

just my 0.02€. see you all on the 16th (it's gonna be 2 loooong weeks )

 

The Cobra is also 6x the expense of a hauler, and you have to spend some serious credits on the appropriate upgrades before you can make real money with it. Backers like me may get a freagle on launch, but most people won't. They'll have no starting capital whatsoever. For them, getting into a cobra is a lot of work that should have a high payoff. Actually flying the Cobra is also expensive. If you don't want to scoop fuel, refueling at a station is pretty expensive, and so are repair costs. The costs are all scaling up with ship size in the Gamma, so there's a lot more risk to flying a souped up Cobra than a souped up Hauler.

As for the Viper, what really holds it back isn't its combat abilities. The placement of the Class 1 hardpoints is even better for engaging small targets, since the spread is too wide on the Cobra. What really prevents the Viper from being a tempting purchase is its short jump range, which is so far the worst in the game. So if you buy a Viper you're going to need an expensive FSD upgrade just to be able to travel around.

 

If you can get a rating B or A FSD fairly quick (immediately would be best) it's a solid choice. You can kit it out in cat A upgrades, hull and weapons for the cost of a cat A FSD and Powerplant for the cobra. and a fully upgraded viper can take on most ships in combat and win. What kills it for most is the abysmal jump range on Cat E-C FSDs.

They're listed by price atm. :3
Not saying it's a good choice, but at least there's some kind of sanity behind th emadness. the little plus symbols for categories a station stocks is already a huge leap forward from beta.

 

I'm not saying there isn't an improvement, but I'm not thinking about unit prices when I'm looking to upgrade or swap out a particular module. If they were listed alphabetically and by price that would be ideal in terms of simplicity.

 

Copypasta for post-launch use

 

welp tried dogfighting training. got my shit pushed in four times. Good thing I have two weeks to unsuck

 

Much as I would like to profit from this, I hope they have all new unique goods in different locations after launch just to fuck with these cheaters.

 

Is it cheating to discuss where you found cool stuff in a game now? :3

 

hm, selling the equipment from exploration cobra gives you around 1.1m creds and a mostly unequipped cobra with a fixed 0c sell value. prolly much more if you take the freagle and the future free ship into account (at least if that one is also done the same way as the freagle, and not just a one time thing)... that's a huge advantage over new players.
the kickstarter specials also seem like they might make norfleet's cheating strategy with creating new characters actually viable, since you get to start with a bounty and loads of cash to buy some expensive cargo.

 

The cobras will get tweaked for release. There was a hilarious exploit where KS backers could swap their backer cobra for a cobra at a shipyard and get module refund in trade-in while still keeping the modules in their new cobra. That's how we had Orcas and Asps flying around in Sol on day 1 of Gamma :3

 

Not sure how I feel about everyone having their own cache of rare goods at a station. I guess it'll stop a small group of lakon-9s from mining out a trade route completely. But it still feels a little meh.

The fixes to ship purchasing and module availability are gud though.

 

IMHO its a pretty stupid Change.
The big universe alone should be enough to prevent Players from monopolizing on certain good while the possible scarcity of some would encourage further Exploration.
With the new System, they basically kill a good amount of player-driven economy.

 

Is there a way to set up a travel route in Elite? I mean when I want to travel to a distant system, and I set it up as a destination on the galaxy map, it shows the route I have to take on the map, but when I'm in the cockpit, I only see the final destination as a target. Which is obviously too distant to travel there. So after every jump, I have to go into the galaxy map, find the next system on my way, and set it up as target. EVE Online did this very nicely. In that game if you set up a nav route, the game switched to the next system on your way after every jump, until you reached the final destination.