Elite: Dangerous

Chuffola

I've bought an entirely new desktop system - had been thinking about a new laptop for a while, but this game made me reevaluate.

So, Intel I7 3.5Ghz Quad Core, 16gb Ram, 23" monitor, Radeon R9 2Gb - everything now running at Ultra.

I can see the guitar taking a back seat for a while...

imalone

Chuffola said:

I've bought an entirely new desktop system - had been thinking about a new laptop for a while, but this game made me reevaluate.

So, Intel I7 3.5Ghz Quad Core, 16gb Ram, 23" monitor, Radeon R9 2Gb - everything now running at Ultra.

I can see the guitar taking a back seat for a while...

Can I borrow this as a dev box when you're not using it?

digitalscream

OK...if anyone gets to Lave and comes across CMDR Battleship Kickass, don't even think about engaging unless you're really confident in combat and you're tooled up to the max. I got wiped out by him once while carrying a whole load of rare cargo, then went away and maxed out my ship as much as I could for about 3 million credits (enhanced shield generator, extra shield cells, upgraded powerplant and distributor and the biggest fucking guns I could get my hands on) then went back for round 2. 30 seconds in, the git had wiped out all my shields (including 4 recharges from the shield cells) and I'd barely made a dent. Fortunately, the upgraded power systems gave me the chance to keep boosting my way out of there until the frame shift drive had charged up.

Seriously, some people in that game are utter assholes. He's been camping out there all day (it's part of my most lucrative trade route) picking people off.

Axe_meister

I'd love to get to Leave bit finding the right route is proving a challenge. Would be nice I'd there were certain stations that provide a pickup and drop to different sectors (for a fee of course)

digitalscream

It's not that difficult, but you'd do well to upgrade your FSD - that opens up the options immensely.

However...I wouldn't recommend marching into the special systems (Sol, Lave and the one with Founders World in it) without some decent armament.

digitalscream

How are you guys getting on?

I've been bouncing around combat zones for a while, but since they announced the Fer-De-Lance for the next update I decided to get into some serious trading. I've put a fair amount of credits into my Cobra, though, so huge volume trading wasn't really on the cards; besides, I'd rather trade in a ship that can make a good account of itself in a fight, so I found a PDF on the ED forum with a great rare commodity trading route (ie max profit for minimal cargo space, with low risk in terms of credits if I get busted by an Anaconda or similar) here:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=101211&highlight=71+stop

When I started it at 39 Tauri, I had about 4 million credits. I've got to the bottom of page 1, and I'm at about 7.5 million. I had to change my ship loadout a bit - I've got 2 x 16t cargo holds and 2 x 8t cargo holds, so I've only got one A2 shield cell bank. All the other internals are maximum class, A or B rated (including a B-rated FSD - essential for getting places quickly). Currently making around about 1.3 million credits per hour.

Hopefully a fully tricked-out Fer-De-Lance won't be much more than 20 million, so I can make it all the way round the loop a couple of times and end up at Shinrarta Dezhra when the new ships come out (for the 10% discount). If it is more than that, I may go for the Vulture instead.

Chuffola

Must admit, I got a bit bored so I've just jumped back in this weekend for a quick blast. 

I'm in a well tricked out Cobra but I can't really be bothered with trading again so think I'll just fly around and shoot stuff.

digitalscream

Chuffola said:

Must admit, I got a bit bored so I've just jumped back in this weekend for a quick blast. 

I'm in a well tricked out Cobra but I can't really be bothered with trading again so think I'll just fly around and shoot stuff.

Best plan for that is to find a system with a civil war going on - pick up some missions in the Conflict Zones, and you'll make about 100k per run (more, if you choose bigger targets like Pythons and Asps, instead of minnows like Eagles and Sidewinders).

Axe_meister

I seem to spend half my time building spreadsheets with trade data, calculating what would be the most profitable cargo to take, depending on cash, number of cargo slots, fuel costs, etc.

Finally managed to get myself a cobra which is slowly being upgraded. Have recently started mining as well.

Need a new GFX card though. My GT 640 does struggle at times and I have had to back the resolution off.

So now looking at either a 750 Ti or AMD R9 270.

Chuffola

I have an R9 and it runs everything I throw at it at Ultra settings.

But, I'm completely out of the loop with regards to PC hardware so I couldn't tell you what's good and what's not.

digitalscream

Axe_meister said:

I seem to spend half my time building spreadsheets with trade data, calculating what would be the most profitable cargo to take, depending on cash, number of cargo slots, fuel costs, etc.

Finally managed to get myself a cobra which is slowly being upgraded. Have recently started mining as well.

Need a new GFX card though. My GT 640 does struggle at times and I have had to back the resolution off.

So now looking at either a 750 Ti or AMD R9 270.

Seriously, try the rare loop in that thread I linked to - takes all the hassle out of it, and you make so much on each leg that fuel costs are basically irrelevant. It's perfect for a Cobra, because unless you wait for rare items to respawn at a station there are only a couple of points where there's more on offer than you have room for (assuming you have the 40t cargo loadout I mentioned above).

Some regard it as cheating to use someone else's route, but to my mind that only counts if you're treating it as a trading game. I'm treating it as a combat game, so this is just a means to an end (ie getting a more combat-ready ship in the next iteration). At least, that's how I justify it to myself

I use a 650Ti 1GB - it does chug a bit when you get near detailed planets or large suns on account of the big textures which need to be swapped in, so I've turned the detail down for that (the lag when you jump into a system with a big sun can mean the difference between life and and a sudden burning death). The latest Nvidia drivers definitely helped, but my next card will be a 2GB one, probably a 750.

Myranda

I keep thinking I should try Elite Dangerous... but £40 to try it seems a bit much, especially as the ships are less cool looking than some of the Star Citizen ships.

But it's still space and splosions

digitalscream

Myranda said:

I keep thinking I should try Elite Dangerous... but £40 to try it seems a bit much, especially as the ships are less cool looking than some of the Star Citizen ships.

But it's still space and splosions

Not sure what Star Citizen's like (yeah, I know...I've never played it, I'm a bad person), but ED does look like it's going to change quite a bit as it's developed. Like the 1.1 update a couple of weeks back - they nerfed the shield cells and put everything closer to the redline in terms of heat management, so suddenly everybody who was running a combat-ready loadout was waaaaaay over their power limits and lost all their thrusters etc as soon as they deployed their weapons. Not so much a problem if you're expecting it, but it's a total loss situation if you weren't. Hell, I was on the 1-week beta for 1.1, but because they wouldn't let you use your current ship there was no real way to find out because you couldn't build up that kind of setup from nothing in a week unless you obsessively did that and nothing else.

Their communication skills do seem to leave something to be desired.

digitalscream

Anybody still playing since 1.2 came out and the prices dropped on the new ships?

I've spent the last week tooling around warzones and resource extraction sites in my newly kitted-out Vulture...damn, this game's fun again now that there's no necessity to grind trading - it's perfectly possible to make a million credits from an hour of combat without much stress. I was also struggling a bit to knock Anacondas out in my Cobra, but now it's (relatively) easy work - especially since their power plants are basically made of paper.

I'm currently trying to start a war single-handedly in the Beten system. The faction system is a bit of a black box, but with enough consistent effort you can get a good run on it while making plenty of credits at the same time.

Not tried wings yet - one of my friends from the beta gave me a heads up about some CMDR pirate with 13 million on his head in Lave last night and invited me along to collect, but I was about to log off (it was pretty late). Hoping to get in on some of that action soon, though, because my first few forays in the Vulture were...slightly disastrous to say the least; I lost my ship 3 times getting in way over my head in combat (top tip: when you get suckered by one of the strong signal sources full of gold and get ambushed by a pair of Anacondas and a few Vultures, just run like hell because there's no way you're surviving that one on your own), and once boosting out of a station but forgetting that the Vulture's a different shape to the Cobra.

On the bright side, it's quite cool in a macabre way to respawn in the station and find bits of your old ship still floating around.

Axe_meister

Currently still doing the 71 hob rare items run. Took a long time to get started as I had a crap FSD but have been slowly able to increase my range. Now on a B4 FSD, just trying to find a station that sells A4 FSDs.

Once I get back to Lave with a few million in my pocket I plan to buy a new combat ship and kit it out. 

One thing I have noticed is that if you have shield cells, the computer AI ships tend to ram you rather

than shooting you.

My cobra now has gimbled blast lasers as primary, with turreted blast lasers as secondary and turreted anti missile guns on my third hard point

Not met many real players yet but when I do I usually end up having to flee. Can pretty much kill any computer controlled ships though

Had a go at mining, got pretty boring after a while, especially as a lot of asteroids don't have enough material to fill an entire slot and you find the next one on has a completely different set of raw materials

Some tasty looking Space stations in the Emperial sector as well

CabbageCat

Free Lugh!

CabbageCat

digitalscream said:

I'm currently trying to start a war single-handedly in the Beten system. The faction system is a bit of a black box, but with enough consistent effort you can get a good run on it while making plenty of credits at the same time.

If you check out the Lugh saga on the FD forums you'll see that the background generator (that deals with all the influence balance) isn't very healthy. Credit to FD, though, when they saw that things had gone wrong they turned it into a bit of story and kicked off a bunch of community goal events. Unfortunately, the huge number of people who have come along supporting the Federation has kinda wrecked the whole Lugh experiment and ruined months of "work" from a handful of very committed players.

The Vulture is a monster. 5m for one of those is far too cheap - but I can't complain - I love mine.

If you swing by Lugh and join the Spear of Truth event at Balandin station you only need to earn about 250k in combat bonds to be in the 70% bracket which is worth 5m at the moment. Or you could sign up with the Feds and be a horrid, mean man.

Edit: If you hang out at Balandin sobbing about being lonely you will quickly be invited to a wing.

digitalscream

Axe_meister said:

Once I get back to Lave with a few million in my pocket I plan to buy a new combat ship and kit it out. 

One thing I have noticed is that if you have shield cells, the computer AI ships tend to ram you rather

than shooting you.

My cobra now has gimbled blast lasers as primary, with turreted blast lasers as secondary and turreted anti missile guns on my third hard point

Do you have a permit for Shinrarta Dezhra? You should have, if you were one of the beta backers (the only other way to get it is to reach Elite status). If so, you get a 10% discount on all ships and outfitting there; I got my Vulture for 4.2 million. 

I have, however, spent another 9 million on outfitting - C3 gimballed beam laser and an E3 pulse laser, with an A-rated power plant and distributor. You don't need A-rated shields or thrusters (B and C work fine there - it's the law of diminishing returns once the optimal mass for either is much more than the mass of your ship).

Just make sure you don't spend all your money. Based on my experience, you'd want to hold back at least two million for insurance claims (400k - 500k per death). I'd say you want about 12 million of assets before considering a Vulture.

As for your Cobra...try setting it up with two D2 gimballed beam lasers as your primary and two of the missile launchers (70k) on the small hardpoints as your secondary.

You can also switch modules on and off, so what I do on my Vulture is have two shield boosters on by default, but if my shield is looking like failing then I boost away, switch off the boosters and enable the shield cell, recharge my shield with that and then switch it off and the shield boosters back on. Admittedly that won't work quite so well with a Cobra, because the Vulture has similar hull strength to an Anaconda so it can take quite the pounding - I had 4 Elite NPC Vipers hammering at my shieldless hull for a good two minutes while my shield recharged, and didn't even lose 10% hull integrity.

Myranda

So...

E:D went down in price this weekend, so I thought I'd pick it up. Normally don't do tutorials but thought I would to see if it was fun.

Now, I bought this on Steam so refunds are an option, but only if I don't play too much, so I thought I'd ask. "Does dogfighting get better?!"

The tutorial has you in a doorstop shaped ship... which does not turn quickly... I would in fact compare dogfighting to putting a paintball gun on the front of a supertanker, and trying to dogfight a similarly equipped supertanker. Even fixing the throttle exactly in the center of the blue zone to get better turning, it took what felt like days constantly turning to catch a ship that was itself constantly turning. It made combat seem like the most tedious boring piece of crap ever... so. Does it improve? Or Should I get the refund now and not be disappointed later? 

thumpingrug

@Myranda  You do need a Hands on Throttle and Stick arrangement to make the most of it and with time and a bit of luck you can make money and upgrade the ship to something much better equipped and much more manoeuvrable.   Have to say its a bit of a slog though and you need to be willing to invest a bit of time in it.    Some people seem to get very quickly to  a stage where they are making loads of cash each trip they make, but Im certainly not there yet and as a consequence keep being distracted by xbox games.  Ill come back to it though.