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Elite: Dangerous
- Thread starter Raapys
- Start date
Mortmal
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2009
- Messages
- 9,502
Look in system map, theres a small ship icon, next to the station name, its where its stored. Had to read the official forum to find out .I thought the one "ship location" was for my sidewinder. I tried moving between the tabs but nothing seemed to work.
Edit:
For fuck's sake. My Eagle is in LTT 15449, but that system has multiple star ports and the shipyard screen doesn't tell me which starport it's in. It also tells me it's 292LS away but there's no port 292LS away from the one I'm docked in.
Anybody put off by my complaining should bear in mind that I'm a crotchety oldfag who's done this all before and wants to get back into the action. Doing milk runs in the early game is important for new players to learn piloting, navigation, docking, and interdiction evasion while you still have a ship you can replace for free.
Ok. I sent a friend reguest to you, Bradylama and bonescraper , I hope you guys got it. Anyone else playing regularly?
Stereotypical Villain
Arcane
Aw yis, finally found a station containing sweet-sweet thruster, frame shift drive, power coupling and reactor upgrades. Now to find something nice and fat to turn into a fireball so my bank account won't feel too empty.
PS. I'd also like some opinions on burst lasers vs pulse lasers since I'm too much of a newbie at this to know if it's worth sinking money into three of them or not.
PS. I'd also like some opinions on burst lasers vs pulse lasers since I'm too much of a newbie at this to know if it's worth sinking money into three of them or not.
Last edited:
Mortmal
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2009
- Messages
- 9,502
For now real men compete a lot to get a free parking lot...
SmartCheetah
Arcane
- Joined
- May 7, 2013
- Messages
- 1,102
Cmdr SmartCheetah. Altough, I won't be playing a lot because of my shitty internet connection in the UK. Going back to Poland after my contract ends, on 26 dec.
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Added.
Cmdr SmartCheetah.
Stereotypical Villain
Arcane
Care to go deeper on that line of thought? I do believe you, but I like hearing the reasoning behind it since it helps to improve zhe mind!
Mortmal
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2009
- Messages
- 9,502
On the starting system and near its hard to dock on small outposts, it even happen to get bumped, but then a few sectors away and you encounter no one anymore already.I upgraded the freeagle for some bounty hunting, but i dont see myself getting any real player anytime soon.
Burst lasers do more damage in a single shot than Pulse Lasers but also take up more power and heat. It'd be better in an intense dogfight, but for low-skill pilots or big targets it's better to constantly paint them with a pulse laser. I'm pretty good at keeping on-target, so I prefer a setup where I can keep firing a beam laser indefinitely, then open up with the autocannon(s) once the shields are down.
The best setup depends on your ship and its ability to manage power. If you can shoot pulse lasers like there's no tomorrow then go with that.
The best setup depends on your ship and its ability to manage power. If you can shoot pulse lasers like there's no tomorrow then go with that.
Multicannons (all kinetic weapons) are worse vs shields and better vs hull than lasers. when enemy is at 0 shields and low hull, that's when fucktard AIs try to killsteal or they try to flee. So that's when you want the damage.
Also, cannons are very low thermal emission, so you can get away with 2-3 pips in weapons and have more power for engines.
Just don't mix cannons and lasers (unless you're gimballed). One requires leading the target, the other doesn't.
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Stereotypical Villain
Arcane
Yeah, it's usually a given to avoid mixing leading weapons with insta-hit gunk... as for the power... yuuuup, can't agree more on that assessment.
Cannons it is... for now.
Cannons it is... for now.
Stereotypical Villain
Arcane
I'm still curious what the difference between burst, pulse and beam lasers are. I'm guessing...
Burst: High damage, low refire
Pulse: Medium damage, medium refire
Beam: Low damage, high refire
Am I correct in my guesswork or do I need some more edjumification?
Burst: High damage, low refire
Pulse: Medium damage, medium refire
Beam: Low damage, high refire
Am I correct in my guesswork or do I need some more edjumification?
bonescraper
Guest
Well, i can't help you. I always used default lasers. Killed something around 180-190 ships with 'em before gamma. The stats got wiped so i don't know what's my total count atm, but definitely close to 300. And when i bought a Viper or a Cobra i just added 2 more, simply because they're cheapest. I'm currently flying a Cobra with 4 fixed lazors. They do their job. I'll probably switch to multicannons at some point, but weapons are not my priority.
Ulminati experimented with weapons more, he should have have some idea about the differences i guess.
Ulminati experimented with weapons more, he should have have some idea about the differences i guess.
So, I'm guessing the release version still isn't gonna let two people sit in the same ship.
Stereotypical Villain
Arcane
Yeah, fair enough. No need to go crazy with cannons early on either way 'cause of the relative cost and ones desire to stockpile money for a better ship... eventually. I love the Eagle though so parting with it is going to be a sad moment... buuuut... Cobra. Mmmm...
SmartCheetah
Arcane
- Joined
- May 7, 2013
- Messages
- 1,102
Don't mind the dude voice and accent. IKR :D
It was from Beta2, but I'm pasting it anyway because some weapons haven't changed and overall balance is pretty similiar.
Got my Cobra with Rating B power plant, Rating A power distributor, Rating B thrusters, Rating C Life Support, Rating B shields, Rating E FSD (Finding size-4 modules is tricksy where I'm at), big cargo racks and 4 gimballed multicannons. Total worth ~2 million. The jump from rating B to Rating A modules in most gategories barring power distributor is a bit nuts. Rating A FSD/Thruster/Shields are 1.5 million each. Feels good though.
Some thoughts on upgrades follow:
Getting upgrades
I probably won't need to tell you guys, but just in case you didn't know:
Upgrades for ships are mainly produced in systems with High Tech or Industrial economies. Bigger systems have larger inventories. Go to galaxy map->color by economy-> uncheck everything but industrial and high tech->filter by population->move min population slider to ~50-75%. That'll show you where to go to look for upgrades. Be aware that different stations in the same system can have different inventory. (System map->check stations->go for high population+check economy in the case of things like industry/extraction systems->make sure station has "Outfitting" listed as service).
New in Gamma 1.0 (we didn't have this in 3.0x), the outfitting menu shows you which categories the station has. If there isn't a blue triangle with a + in the upper-right corner of a category, the system doesn't stock it. No more checking every category in every place you visit. A category will only list modules equal to or smaller than the size you're looking to fill. so if you have a Size 4 internal and a size 2 internal, check the size 4 slot first to see the entire stock.
Weapons
For lasers, I'd go with fixed mount. They're more accurate at range. For multicannons, you usually want to be up close, since that gives your target less time to dodge and offsets the light scatter of projectiles on your guns. That makes gimbals an attractive option. The damage you lose from going down a size category of weapons is usually offset by being able to shoot in longer bursts while your weapons track.
As for burst/pulse/beam lasers, you got it right. Burst lasers do more damage per burst, but have a longer period between shots. Pulse laser is the middle of the road. Beam laser does more damage over time, but you need to be able to continuously hit your target or your dps will drop. Unless you're fighting a big, lumbering ship, burst lasers are usually the best option. They do generate a lot of heat though, so you'd definitely want a low-heat version.
When I'm not rocking multicannons, I usually go with burst or pulse lasers, depending on what's available at the station and how many credits I can afford to splurge.
Missiles are hit & miss (hurr durr). They're easy to evade. But if they do hit, they do monstrous amounts of damage. I saw a guy in an asp take out an Anaconda in 10-15 seconds using massed missiles. They're useful for when you're right up in someones butt or they're a slow and lumbering hulk (anaconda, clipper, orca, lakon-6, lakon-9). If you're a bad enough dude, you can pair missiles with lasers and target the engines or powerplant to cripple a ship before taking it out with rokkits.
Scatterguns (I forget the exact name) are arse. Projectile speed is way too low and you need to be too close fo rthem to be efficint. Unless you're hunting anacondas and lakons. They also have too little ammo. Avoid.
Cannons are interesting. They're like multicannons, except with a way lower rate of fire and more damage per shot. I'd probably use them on a fixed mount if I ran them and pair them with a pair of gimballed lasers in a separate fire group. Then I could use the lasers to whittle down shields and cannons to deliver the finishing blow. (Gimballed lasers because then I could keep firing them while leading the target with the fixed cannon). I haven't actually tried it in practice though.
Railguns are a bit meh. They do good damage, but there's a charge time before every shot. Combine this with needing to lead the target (and the risk of missing if they turn while you're leading) and they're simply too unreliable. Again, if you're fighting a big, lumbering target they have their place. But in a dogfight I'd rather go with multicannons where I can spray&pray.
I haven't actually used plasma accelerators or mine layers yet, so I've no opinion on those.
Another thing to be aware of when using any kind of non-lasers is ammo capacity/clip size. For everything except multi-cannons you run a very real risk of running out of ammo in extended combat. You'll (nearly) always want to supplement railguns/cannons/missiles with lasers. Which means either one or the other needs to be gimballed as they'll be firing in different directions to compensate for tracking. You *may* be able to get away with running multi-cannons+railguns, but I'm not 100% certain as I haven't tried. I'm not sure if the projectile speed is different between the two. If it is, you're back to having to gimbal one or the other. And frankly, then you're better off using lasers with their superior shield damage and using the railgun/cannon afterwards to shred the hull.
Upgrades
The most important upgrade you can get for your ship when preparing for combat is the power distributor. (Assuming your power plant is good enough to handle the draw of all your modules). A better power distributor allows you to recharge your shields faster and gives you a bigger energy reserve (and hence more cooling) for your weapons, allowing you to shoot more. After that comes the thrusters (again, ssuming your power plant can handle the draw), primarily to give you additional lateral/vertical thrust with your directional input and a tighter turning rate.
The heat sink launcher is a very good investment and dirt cheap to boot. It has 4 main uses.
- 1) In combat, when your guns are overheating, you can purge heat to speed up the cooldown process slightly. It won't reset them immadiately, but they'll cool faster. This is especially useful with lasers.
- 2) If you're fighting an enemy with gimballed weapons, purging coolant will reduce your heat signiature. This will make gimballed weapons (and heat-seeking missiles) lose lock on you for a few moments until you heat up again.
- 3) If you're in silent running, purging heat sinks will allow you to stay in silent running longer. This is useful both for smuggling or if you're fighting and your shields are popped. (Go into silent running, be harder to target. Your shields won't recharge, but if you're confident you can stay on the other guys tail, you won't need them to).
- 4) You're trying to frameshift near a star or in combat and you're overheating. Purge coolant -> Don't take damage. Especailly useful if you're trying to escape in a hauler or lakon and are mass-locked.
If you're ready to become a dedicated combatant, you may want to invest in hull plating. Be warned: Hull Plating is fucking heavy and will wreck your max. jump distance. You shouldn't even think about it unless you're sporting a Rating C or better Frame Shift Drive. The hull platings come in 4 different versions:
- Reinforced : Minor damage reduction from kinetic/heat weapons. (Ramming/collisions counts as kinetic afaik).
- Mirrored : Major damage resistance vs lasers, none vs kinetic
- Ablative : Major resistance vs kinetic, none vs lasers
- Military grade composite : Moderate resistance vs everyting, heavier and more expensive.
Most enemies seem to be sporting lasers, but kinetic weapons hurt more. Assuming jump range and cash flow isn't an issue, I'd go with Composite > Reinforced > Mirrored > Ablative.
Shield battery cells are a nice upgrade as well. You're sacrificing some internal space to fit them (less cargo), but they'll let you take more of a beating before your shields go down. Be advised that they don't do anything while your shields are down. So if you're running batteries and you lose shields, it's usually worth shunting more power to systems at the expense of weapons to get them back up faster.
In beta 2, it was quite viable to go the Das Boot route. I haven't tried it in Beta 3 or Gamma. Das Boot means running in silent mode. You'll need a power plant with high heat efficiency. You'll also want an upgraded hull, since you won't have any shields. Multiple heat sinks are a must. Finally, you'll want to run multi-cannons, since they're the most heat-efficient weapon.
As long as you keep purging coolant once your heat hits 70-80%, the enemy should have a hard time targetting you while you're in silent running. Gimballed/turret weapons will be next to useless. It gets more expensive than regular fighting, since all shots that do hit you add to your repair bill. And it's no good for sustained fights since you'll run out of heat sinks eventually. But for short hit&run attacks, it works well.
Non-combat upgrades
The most important upgrades outside of combat are your Frameshift Drive and Cargo Rack(s). They'll allow you to go further, take more missions and earn bigger profits when you stumble across a station selling gold at 1k credits below galactic average. (I know of at least 3 stations that do that in gamma). Of the two, FSD is the big winner, especially C/B/A depending on size category. At least 1 or 2 of these will allow you to use more fuel per jump, which will vastly increase your jump range. This in turn lets you stuff your shield full of more gear without suddenly finding yourself confined to 3-4 neighbouring systems.
If you want to go exploring, be prepared to sink ~500k creds (or is it 750? I forget...) into a detailed surface scanner + intermediate discovery scanner combo. If you can afford the advanced discovery scanner, that's even better.
The basic D-scanner only has a range of ~500Ls, which isn't nearly enough to spot all the planets orbiting many stars without a lot of flying around in concentric circles and spamming. For systems with multiple stars, you need the advanced discovery scanner, or you'll be spending ages playing where's Wally while looking for th eone dot in the night sky that parallaxes slightly as you move around.
The basic/intermediate/advanced scanners have a range of 500/1500/1500000000000000... Ls respectively, with the advanced scanner finding all objects around all stars in the current system. So if you're a dedicated explorer, it's worth sinking the 1.5 million (eugh...) credits into that.
The detailed surface scanner is a must. (lv2/3 scanner should also be a priority). You can only scan a new planet once. And having the surface scanner makes your scan data more valuable. Especially for metal rich/earthlike planets, where the value goes up by a factor 2 to 10. You can't go back to previously scanned planets once you buy a surface scanner, so you may as well do it right the first time.
Moneymaking for new players
Since there's a decent chance we'll have another wipe soon™, or at least before live, here's how I go about grinding money for a kitted out cobra. You may want to wait until dec. 16th before trying this. It can get fairly tedious and there's a very high chance we'll have naother wipe just before release. Until then, it's probably more fun to mess around in your Freeagle.
1: Sell freeagle for a nice bunch of starting cash.
2: Sell discovery scanner, shields, lasers in sidewinder, fit as many cargo raxx as possible. Find courier/transport goods missions in bulletin board. Fill remainder of cargo space with goods. Note down commodities in your current station with high demand and things tha tsell for below galactic average.
3: System economy generally determine what kind of goods you want. Use this table as a reference: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Goods
4: Do bulletin board missions/trade runs in sidewinder until you have about 60-70k. Buy hauler. Consider keeping sidewinder and outfitting it for combat so you don't die of boredom in the next couple of steps).
5: For hauler, do the same as sidewinder. Strip of weapons/shields, upgrade cargo racks (capacity 22 is nice) and frameshift drive ASAP. By now, you should've found a good cargo route. (Agri economy food -> extraction economy minerals -> refinery economy metals -> high tech economy medicines/non-lethal weapons/dom appliances -> Agri economy is usually a nice loop.) Milk that fucker.
5b: I went to the empire. Nahua (high tech economy, has shipyard + many upgrades. (Not cargo racks though, bleh)) has a high demand for gold/silver/lithium and sells reactive armor dirt cheap. There's a system (HIP 116460 iirc) 6ly away that has a high demand for reactive armor and sells gold/silver/lithium at 500-1000cr below galactic average. Just befor eI upgraded to cobra, my 22t cargo hauler made 500cr/unit on reactive armor going one way and 1400cr/unit on gold going back.
6: Keep upgrading your hauler. Once you have ~400k + ~150-200k trade--in value of your hauler, sell it and buy a cobra. If you're not too far away from your Sidewinder, sell that too. Use the money to upgrade your cobra. Keep ~100k in the bank so you can still trade + afford insurance. Be on the lookout for 16-slot cargo racks and upgrades to fsd/power distributor/thrusters.
Some thoughts on upgrades follow:
Getting upgrades
I probably won't need to tell you guys, but just in case you didn't know:
Upgrades for ships are mainly produced in systems with High Tech or Industrial economies. Bigger systems have larger inventories. Go to galaxy map->color by economy-> uncheck everything but industrial and high tech->filter by population->move min population slider to ~50-75%. That'll show you where to go to look for upgrades. Be aware that different stations in the same system can have different inventory. (System map->check stations->go for high population+check economy in the case of things like industry/extraction systems->make sure station has "Outfitting" listed as service).
New in Gamma 1.0 (we didn't have this in 3.0x), the outfitting menu shows you which categories the station has. If there isn't a blue triangle with a + in the upper-right corner of a category, the system doesn't stock it. No more checking every category in every place you visit. A category will only list modules equal to or smaller than the size you're looking to fill. so if you have a Size 4 internal and a size 2 internal, check the size 4 slot first to see the entire stock.
Weapons
For lasers, I'd go with fixed mount. They're more accurate at range. For multicannons, you usually want to be up close, since that gives your target less time to dodge and offsets the light scatter of projectiles on your guns. That makes gimbals an attractive option. The damage you lose from going down a size category of weapons is usually offset by being able to shoot in longer bursts while your weapons track.
As for burst/pulse/beam lasers, you got it right. Burst lasers do more damage per burst, but have a longer period between shots. Pulse laser is the middle of the road. Beam laser does more damage over time, but you need to be able to continuously hit your target or your dps will drop. Unless you're fighting a big, lumbering ship, burst lasers are usually the best option. They do generate a lot of heat though, so you'd definitely want a low-heat version.
When I'm not rocking multicannons, I usually go with burst or pulse lasers, depending on what's available at the station and how many credits I can afford to splurge.
Missiles are hit & miss (hurr durr). They're easy to evade. But if they do hit, they do monstrous amounts of damage. I saw a guy in an asp take out an Anaconda in 10-15 seconds using massed missiles. They're useful for when you're right up in someones butt or they're a slow and lumbering hulk (anaconda, clipper, orca, lakon-6, lakon-9). If you're a bad enough dude, you can pair missiles with lasers and target the engines or powerplant to cripple a ship before taking it out with rokkits.
Scatterguns (I forget the exact name) are arse. Projectile speed is way too low and you need to be too close fo rthem to be efficint. Unless you're hunting anacondas and lakons. They also have too little ammo. Avoid.
Cannons are interesting. They're like multicannons, except with a way lower rate of fire and more damage per shot. I'd probably use them on a fixed mount if I ran them and pair them with a pair of gimballed lasers in a separate fire group. Then I could use the lasers to whittle down shields and cannons to deliver the finishing blow. (Gimballed lasers because then I could keep firing them while leading the target with the fixed cannon). I haven't actually tried it in practice though.
Railguns are a bit meh. They do good damage, but there's a charge time before every shot. Combine this with needing to lead the target (and the risk of missing if they turn while you're leading) and they're simply too unreliable. Again, if you're fighting a big, lumbering target they have their place. But in a dogfight I'd rather go with multicannons where I can spray&pray.
I haven't actually used plasma accelerators or mine layers yet, so I've no opinion on those.
Another thing to be aware of when using any kind of non-lasers is ammo capacity/clip size. For everything except multi-cannons you run a very real risk of running out of ammo in extended combat. You'll (nearly) always want to supplement railguns/cannons/missiles with lasers. Which means either one or the other needs to be gimballed as they'll be firing in different directions to compensate for tracking. You *may* be able to get away with running multi-cannons+railguns, but I'm not 100% certain as I haven't tried. I'm not sure if the projectile speed is different between the two. If it is, you're back to having to gimbal one or the other. And frankly, then you're better off using lasers with their superior shield damage and using the railgun/cannon afterwards to shred the hull.
Upgrades
The most important upgrade you can get for your ship when preparing for combat is the power distributor. (Assuming your power plant is good enough to handle the draw of all your modules). A better power distributor allows you to recharge your shields faster and gives you a bigger energy reserve (and hence more cooling) for your weapons, allowing you to shoot more. After that comes the thrusters (again, ssuming your power plant can handle the draw), primarily to give you additional lateral/vertical thrust with your directional input and a tighter turning rate.
The heat sink launcher is a very good investment and dirt cheap to boot. It has 4 main uses.
- 1) In combat, when your guns are overheating, you can purge heat to speed up the cooldown process slightly. It won't reset them immadiately, but they'll cool faster. This is especially useful with lasers.
- 2) If you're fighting an enemy with gimballed weapons, purging coolant will reduce your heat signiature. This will make gimballed weapons (and heat-seeking missiles) lose lock on you for a few moments until you heat up again.
- 3) If you're in silent running, purging heat sinks will allow you to stay in silent running longer. This is useful both for smuggling or if you're fighting and your shields are popped. (Go into silent running, be harder to target. Your shields won't recharge, but if you're confident you can stay on the other guys tail, you won't need them to).
- 4) You're trying to frameshift near a star or in combat and you're overheating. Purge coolant -> Don't take damage. Especailly useful if you're trying to escape in a hauler or lakon and are mass-locked.
If you're ready to become a dedicated combatant, you may want to invest in hull plating. Be warned: Hull Plating is fucking heavy and will wreck your max. jump distance. You shouldn't even think about it unless you're sporting a Rating C or better Frame Shift Drive. The hull platings come in 4 different versions:
- Reinforced : Minor damage reduction from kinetic/heat weapons. (Ramming/collisions counts as kinetic afaik).
- Mirrored : Major damage resistance vs lasers, none vs kinetic
- Ablative : Major resistance vs kinetic, none vs lasers
- Military grade composite : Moderate resistance vs everyting, heavier and more expensive.
Most enemies seem to be sporting lasers, but kinetic weapons hurt more. Assuming jump range and cash flow isn't an issue, I'd go with Composite > Reinforced > Mirrored > Ablative.
Shield battery cells are a nice upgrade as well. You're sacrificing some internal space to fit them (less cargo), but they'll let you take more of a beating before your shields go down. Be advised that they don't do anything while your shields are down. So if you're running batteries and you lose shields, it's usually worth shunting more power to systems at the expense of weapons to get them back up faster.
In beta 2, it was quite viable to go the Das Boot route. I haven't tried it in Beta 3 or Gamma. Das Boot means running in silent mode. You'll need a power plant with high heat efficiency. You'll also want an upgraded hull, since you won't have any shields. Multiple heat sinks are a must. Finally, you'll want to run multi-cannons, since they're the most heat-efficient weapon.
As long as you keep purging coolant once your heat hits 70-80%, the enemy should have a hard time targetting you while you're in silent running. Gimballed/turret weapons will be next to useless. It gets more expensive than regular fighting, since all shots that do hit you add to your repair bill. And it's no good for sustained fights since you'll run out of heat sinks eventually. But for short hit&run attacks, it works well.
Non-combat upgrades
The most important upgrades outside of combat are your Frameshift Drive and Cargo Rack(s). They'll allow you to go further, take more missions and earn bigger profits when you stumble across a station selling gold at 1k credits below galactic average. (I know of at least 3 stations that do that in gamma). Of the two, FSD is the big winner, especially C/B/A depending on size category. At least 1 or 2 of these will allow you to use more fuel per jump, which will vastly increase your jump range. This in turn lets you stuff your shield full of more gear without suddenly finding yourself confined to 3-4 neighbouring systems.
If you want to go exploring, be prepared to sink ~500k creds (or is it 750? I forget...) into a detailed surface scanner + intermediate discovery scanner combo. If you can afford the advanced discovery scanner, that's even better.
The basic D-scanner only has a range of ~500Ls, which isn't nearly enough to spot all the planets orbiting many stars without a lot of flying around in concentric circles and spamming. For systems with multiple stars, you need the advanced discovery scanner, or you'll be spending ages playing where's Wally while looking for th eone dot in the night sky that parallaxes slightly as you move around.
The basic/intermediate/advanced scanners have a range of 500/1500/1500000000000000... Ls respectively, with the advanced scanner finding all objects around all stars in the current system. So if you're a dedicated explorer, it's worth sinking the 1.5 million (eugh...) credits into that.
The detailed surface scanner is a must. (lv2/3 scanner should also be a priority). You can only scan a new planet once. And having the surface scanner makes your scan data more valuable. Especially for metal rich/earthlike planets, where the value goes up by a factor 2 to 10. You can't go back to previously scanned planets once you buy a surface scanner, so you may as well do it right the first time.
Moneymaking for new players
Since there's a decent chance we'll have another wipe soon™, or at least before live, here's how I go about grinding money for a kitted out cobra. You may want to wait until dec. 16th before trying this. It can get fairly tedious and there's a very high chance we'll have naother wipe just before release. Until then, it's probably more fun to mess around in your Freeagle.
1: Sell freeagle for a nice bunch of starting cash.
2: Sell discovery scanner, shields, lasers in sidewinder, fit as many cargo raxx as possible. Find courier/transport goods missions in bulletin board. Fill remainder of cargo space with goods. Note down commodities in your current station with high demand and things tha tsell for below galactic average.
3: System economy generally determine what kind of goods you want. Use this table as a reference: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Goods
4: Do bulletin board missions/trade runs in sidewinder until you have about 60-70k. Buy hauler. Consider keeping sidewinder and outfitting it for combat so you don't die of boredom in the next couple of steps).
5: For hauler, do the same as sidewinder. Strip of weapons/shields, upgrade cargo racks (capacity 22 is nice) and frameshift drive ASAP. By now, you should've found a good cargo route. (Agri economy food -> extraction economy minerals -> refinery economy metals -> high tech economy medicines/non-lethal weapons/dom appliances -> Agri economy is usually a nice loop.) Milk that fucker.
5b: I went to the empire. Nahua (high tech economy, has shipyard + many upgrades. (Not cargo racks though, bleh)) has a high demand for gold/silver/lithium and sells reactive armor dirt cheap. There's a system (HIP 116460 iirc) 6ly away that has a high demand for reactive armor and sells gold/silver/lithium at 500-1000cr below galactic average. Just befor eI upgraded to cobra, my 22t cargo hauler made 500cr/unit on reactive armor going one way and 1400cr/unit on gold going back.
6: Keep upgrading your hauler. Once you have ~400k + ~150-200k trade--in value of your hauler, sell it and buy a cobra. If you're not too far away from your Sidewinder, sell that too. Use the money to upgrade your cobra. Keep ~100k in the bank so you can still trade + afford insurance. Be on the lookout for 16-slot cargo racks and upgrades to fsd/power distributor/thrusters.
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Railguns are probably the most dangerous weapon in the game. Not only can your shit get wrecked by an NPC Sidewinder that just so happens to be equipped with 1 or 2 railguns, but if the weapon ever malfunctions or gets damaged it will tear your ship apart, breach your canopy, and leave your ass wide open.
All discussion of effectiveness aside, multicannons are by far the most fun to play with.
Edit: Just made my pilgrimage to Sol. Would've expected the Earth stations to have all the internal upgrades I needed. ;/
M. Gorbachev is pretty ritzy.
All discussion of effectiveness aside, multicannons are by far the most fun to play with.
Edit: Just made my pilgrimage to Sol. Would've expected the Earth stations to have all the internal upgrades I needed. ;/
M. Gorbachev is pretty ritzy.
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Also worth noting: Subsystem targetting is your friend. For smaller ships, target FSD so they don't warp away at 10% hull. For pirating, target the cargo hatch to make them drop cargo. For big ships, target the power plant. (I've had anacondas blow up at ~30% hull because I managed to wreck the power plant). Default key to cycle through subsystems is "Y".
You probably know this, but in case you didn't: Your ships turning rate is governed by two things. Your speed and what direction you're turning. For optimal turning speed, you want your velocity to be in the middle of the blue area. If you're thrusting vertically/laterally, you need throttle to be below the blue area, since the thrusters add to your velocity.
For direction: Roll > Pitch up > Pitch down >>> Yaw left/right.
That means you generally want to keep rolling so that your target is above you while pitching up to orient towards them. You'll turn a lot tighter if you do. Use thrust up/down at the same time to move behind your enemy.
What this means: Tightest turn if you're in a turning match would be to set throttle a bit below the blue area; rotate until enemy is "above" you and pitch up while simultaneously using vertical thrus tot thrust upwards.
If you have way better shields/guns than your target, it may be profitable to "joust". That is, instead of turning to meet your target, fly past them, flip 180 degrees and boost towards them while firing all guns. Switch flight assist off for faster turning and point towards your target. Be sure to use thrust up/down/left/right while flying towards your target to avoid killing yourself by smacking into them like an idiot. If you're extremely confident in your guns and shields, you can do the Battlestar Galactica Flip. That is: Fly past your opponent, flight assist off, flip 180 degrees, reverse thrust. The AI will usually chase you, so this maximizes the time you can fire on them without having to move to aim. If they chicken out (or you need to chicken out), hit boost, set throttle to forward and remember to use vertical thrusters to avoid smacking into them as you zoom past/after them.
You probably know this, but in case you didn't: Your ships turning rate is governed by two things. Your speed and what direction you're turning. For optimal turning speed, you want your velocity to be in the middle of the blue area. If you're thrusting vertically/laterally, you need throttle to be below the blue area, since the thrusters add to your velocity.
For direction: Roll > Pitch up > Pitch down >>> Yaw left/right.
That means you generally want to keep rolling so that your target is above you while pitching up to orient towards them. You'll turn a lot tighter if you do. Use thrust up/down at the same time to move behind your enemy.
What this means: Tightest turn if you're in a turning match would be to set throttle a bit below the blue area; rotate until enemy is "above" you and pitch up while simultaneously using vertical thrus tot thrust upwards.
If you have way better shields/guns than your target, it may be profitable to "joust". That is, instead of turning to meet your target, fly past them, flip 180 degrees and boost towards them while firing all guns. Switch flight assist off for faster turning and point towards your target. Be sure to use thrust up/down/left/right while flying towards your target to avoid killing yourself by smacking into them like an idiot. If you're extremely confident in your guns and shields, you can do the Battlestar Galactica Flip. That is: Fly past your opponent, flight assist off, flip 180 degrees, reverse thrust. The AI will usually chase you, so this maximizes the time you can fire on them without having to move to aim. If they chicken out (or you need to chicken out), hit boost, set throttle to forward and remember to use vertical thrusters to avoid smacking into them as you zoom past/after them.
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