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Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarter)

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Something you may want to invest in at the start is the smallest/cheapest possible fuel scoop so you can scoop fuel off of type FOGKBAM stars, which will increase your effective range and saves an incredible amount of time for long-distance missions.

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Help I reinstalled Elite yesterday.

 

I'm asking for the sun and the moon and the stars here - Is there any place that has a list of all the things that were added for Horizons? I don't need in depth descriptions or annotated change logs or patch notes, I'm just looking for "Here is what you can do and exists in Horizons that you can't do in base" and then I can dig into that stuff on my own.

 

A secondary question is, I got a python and reasonably outfitted it and at the time they made that AI change I could not even be in low danger RES sites without getting my ass absolutely HANDED to me. From cursory looks, it seems like people are saying "Get a combat ship to do combat". I am not sure I want to deal with the power juggling of a Vulture, but I have and can get the resources to field a smaller scale fighter for bounty hunting. I'm looking for a recommendation. Should I fit up a Viper again? Should I refit my Asp for combat instead of the now-dead long range smuggling? Should I get *something else*?

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20 hours ago, Badfinger said:

Help I reinstalled Elite yesterday.

 

I'm asking for the sun and the moon and the stars here - Is there any place that has a list of all the things that were added for Horizons? I don't need in depth descriptions or annotated change logs or patch notes, I'm just looking for "Here is what you can do and exists in Horizons that you can't do in base" and then I can dig into that stuff on my own.

 

A secondary question is, I got a python and reasonably outfitted it and at the time they made that AI change I could not even be in low danger RES sites without getting my ass absolutely HANDED to me. From cursory looks, it seems like people are saying "Get a combat ship to do combat". I am not sure I want to deal with the power juggling of a Vulture, but I have and can get the resources to field a smaller scale fighter for bounty hunting. I'm looking for a recommendation. Should I fit up a Viper again? Should I refit my Asp for combat instead of the now-dead long range smuggling? Should I get *something else*?

Everything that is Horizons only huh?

- Planetary landings / SRVs (i.e. buggies)/ Surface missions / Alien ruins and artefacts, some of which have become active in the last week or so, leading to a mission of discovery gained by going to any space station in the Meene system.

- Engineers (for now)... there's nothing to stop Engineers being opened up for the base game later on by having space bases

- Ship-launched fighters and npc combat pilots for hire

- The Beluga Liner

- The Cobra Mk IV (Horizons pre-order only)

- Multi-crew to come in 2.3

- Avatars to come in 2.3 (at least I think that's Horizons only)

- Whatever comes in 2.4

- Special equipment that is only available from certain engineers. E.g. he Class 2 and Class 3 enhanced thrusters are a fabulous addition that make small ships desirable again.

 

I am by no means a combast expert, butI think a Python would be fine for combat, so long as you fitted it out correctly, rather than as a multi-purpose ship. Remember that we have module storage now, as well as module transfer from station to station (for a price). So it is entirely possible to have multiple load outs for one ship (rather than several ships). Module transfers (and ship transfers) take time and money, scaled on distance and value.

 

By the way, anyone can sell off ships from a distance now, and if you go to a low security system, then you can find some sort of insterstellar contact that allows you to pay off fines in other systems, or collect bounties, for a consideration.

 

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yeah no dude, I just lost another 4 million fucking credits because 2 eagles took me down.

 

It's ok to not answer, or just say "i don't know" to questions

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The combat rating of enemies is now more important than the ship they are in; dangerous + eagles are often more of a threat than a competent vulture. Nowadays I like to make my ships *fast*, so I can get the hell out of most situations. Engineers helps a lot.

 

4 million credits does not sound like the insurance co-pay for a combat python, to be honest (unless you have alpha discount); it costs >200 million to combat spec a python, judging by Coriolis.io. In that case, going back to smaller ships sounds like a good idea if you really want to focus on combat; less co-pay for when you die, and they tend to be fast as well.

 

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On 1/16/2017 at 8:17 AM, Dr Wookie said:

The combat rating of enemies is now more important than the ship they are in; dangerous + eagles are often more of a threat than a competent vulture. Nowadays I like to make my ships *fast*, so I can get the hell out of most situations. Engineers helps a lot.

 

4 million credits does not sound like the insurance co-pay for a combat python, to be honest (unless you have alpha discount); it costs >200 million to combat spec a python, judging by Coriolis.io. In that case, going back to smaller ships sounds like a good idea if you really want to focus on combat; less co-pay for when you die, and they tend to be fast as well.

 

 

4 million credit buy backs sounds like a vulture insurance plan; I lost one recently.

 

One thing I've noted is that combat "ease" really depends on getting a few engineer upgrades; the dirty drives that Dr Wookie mentioned for extra speed, an amplified power plant for the vulture to rectify its main drawback (not enough power to feed the two front guns), and then either shield improvements and/or modifying the weapons to be ionic or corrosive for extra shield impact and hull damage, respectively. That extra speed really helps though.

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7 minutes ago, DocRandal said:

million credit buy backs sounds like a vulture insurance plan; I lost one recently.

 

One thing I've noted is that combat "ease" really depends on getting a few engineer upgrades; the dirty drives that Dr Wookie mentioned for extra speed, an amplified power plant for the vulture to rectify its main drawback (not enough power to feed the two front guns), and then either shield improvements and/or modifying the weapons to be ionic or corrosive for extra shield impact and hull damage, respectively. That extra speed really helps though.

 

I don't have Horizons, because for all the explaining in the world the Engineers completely mystify me.

 

A bunch of thumbs have been talking about it/playing though, and having the conversations is really pushing me towards playing more and probably grabbing the expansions.

 

And no, I don't have a fully A-rated Python. I don't have extra armor plating and I'm short on power plant. It's like a 100m credit ship instead of a 230m credit ship, but I don't really know how to make significant progress on making money anymore besides hard grinding RES.

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A lot of the high paying missions are locked behind Horizons at this point as they require planetary landing capabilities (base assault missions, ancient ruin investigations).

 

Wookie, do you know of any currently high-paying missions that don't require Horizons?

 

As for A-rated Python, I took a break after getting my Python about C-rated. "Good enough" for trading but I wouldn't take it into ship to ship combat except to drop mines behind me as I run away.

 

Easiest Engineer summary I can manage: When you get Horizons, you get contacted by the starter engineers which are auto-flagged in your galaxy map. Perform a task for them to gain access to their shop, then bring them materials to make modifications to your ship that give you a certain (randomized) improvement range with a rare chance of getting extra improvements. As you make more modifications, your reputation with the engineer goes up and eventually unlocks better modifications and access to other engineers that offer other ship modification types.

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Find a system in civil war (currently favourite is 17 Draconis) and stack massacre missions with one of the factions - each kill counts to each mission and, stacked, can earn you a lot of money very quickly indeed. 

 

It is really an exploit of how the game work at the moment, and you do have to go to conflict zones and pick a fight, so a very capable combat ship and knowledge of how to fly it are essential. On the other hand, you don't lose the missions if you do die, so it's not quite the end of the world. Assuming you can afford the rebuy costs of course. The knack to it is staying on the outskirts of the combat zone and only engaging against ships you know you can beat, or are too busy shooting at other NPC ships to fire back at you. 

 

The alien ruins mission from Ram Tah is bugged at the moment, so that's not the best option for 'quick' money. Plus it would seem there are more ruins out there to be found, and as yet nobody has figured out how to find them or where they might be. 

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12 hours ago, DocRandal said:

A lot of the high paying missions are locked behind Horizons at this point as they require planetary landing capabilities (base assault missions, ancient ruin investigations).

 

Wookie, do you know of any currently high-paying missions that don't require Horizons?

 

As for A-rated Python, I took a break after getting my Python about C-rated. "Good enough" for trading but I wouldn't take it into ship to ship combat except to drop mines behind me as I run away.

 

Easiest Engineer summary I can manage: When you get Horizons, you get contacted by the starter engineers which are auto-flagged in your galaxy map. Perform a task for them to gain access to their shop, then bring them materials to make modifications to your ship that give you a certain (randomized) improvement range with a rare chance of getting extra improvements. As you make more modifications, your reputation with the engineer goes up and eventually unlocks better modifications and access to other engineers that offer other ship modification types.

I was going to suggest doing missions anyway,  choosing an area  to settle down in, building up rep to get the top tier stuff. Missions had a big overhaul in 1.6 / 2.1 (one of many, I hope). Salvage missions now have set locations; you can find the nearest celestial body by discovery scan or by scanning the local nav beacon (if any). There are some pretty high paying salvage missions with loads of nasty ships coming to get you, but "blockade runner" style ships can leave them all behind. A courier with enhanced 3A thrusters (immediately available from outfitting at the Farseer engineer base, if you get Horizons) can get hit over 600 m/s without further improvement.

 

If you have the patience for long journeys, then tourist style passanger missions can pay big bucks with little risk. If the journey is more than 1000 light years, then the time limit is 3 weeks (maybe 4 weeks after the latest update); however, they don't need anything like that amount of in game time. In a recent run, I had an Orca with two separate passenger missions going a total of maybe 3000 ly in total. I was in no particular rush, and was scanning interesting systems along the way; I made about 10 million from the missions, and 2 million from my scans, great for working towards my pioneer elite. Earlier, I did at maybe 2500 ly round trip in my Asp, banking several million in a couple of hours.

 

Since the NPC overhaul, the big ships seem more of a liability in combat unless you wing up with other players, or spend an absolute fortune on them. If you have Horizons then ship launched fighters will help divide the attention. I sold my Anaconda several months ago, since I was hardly using it, and that was before the update. The Python used to be my go to all-rounder ship, but that's now gone to my Asp because it has fairly decent defensive capabilities and can out run ships it can't out fight. I have a number of specialised ships in stead of a jack of all trades now,  a play style that greatly benefits from the new facilty for ship transfers. I have my luxury tour limo Orca, a blockade running courier, and a fighty vulture that I've been trying out (mostly to fullfil an engineer's requirements). I also have a bunch of ships just for messing around in.

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18 hours ago, DocRandal said:

Easiest Engineer summary I can manage: When you get Horizons, you get contacted by the starter engineers which are auto-flagged in your galaxy map. Perform a task for them to gain access to their shop, then bring them materials to make modifications to your ship that give you a certain (randomized) improvement range with a rare chance of getting extra improvements. As you make more modifications, your reputation with the engineer goes up and eventually unlocks better modifications and access to other engineers that offer other ship modification types.

 

Thank you, that's like the most concise breakdown I've ever seen for the engineers. In typical Elite fashion, there's nowhere on the internet where it says in plain language that at least a few of them contact you right off the bat. I know, because I've been trying to figure out how it works for over a week.

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Some of the actions to unlock the engineers are a little obtuse however. For example, Felicity Farseer asks for 1 unit of meta-alloys. They come from barnacles, so in order to get some you have to know where to look for barnacles, fly to the planet they are in, work out how to find the location on the planet, fly there, land, and hope that it's not already been harvested as they take a couple of weeks to regenerate. Don't forget to take an SRV either. None of the planets are in the bubble (although the Pleiades isn't that far away)

 

Alternately you can fly to Darnelle's Progress in Maia and buy some, the only location in the game I'm aware that you can do so. Cost is about 120,000Cr per tonne. Just as well she only wanted the one. 

 

So so as you can see, the route to unlocking some of the engineers is a little convoluted. Also, most engineers only unlock when you become friendly enough with those you've already unlocked. Before then, you don't even know they exist. 

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I'll add a caveat to my Engineer summary: All engineers have hidden requirements before they contact the player and offer their services for a price. See Sorbicol's comment above. What I consider the "starter" engineers have very low game play requirements so if you've been playing for a reasonable amount of time exploring the game mechanics they should trigger immediately. If you're starting fresh in a Sidewinder at Lave dock they may not trigger immediately (I haven't tested it).

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Not that I think anyone else is interested, but on the official forums Michael Brooks (FDev Executive Producer) has admitted that the Ram Tah mission to scan the obelisks at the Ancient Ruins site is broken. Although in Open/Private group instances, not Solo like everyone thought it was.

 

The upshot of that is that there are definitely other alien ruins out there (admittedly long suspected but now essentially confirmed), and at the moment people are getting far more scans out the ruins we know about than they should be. Leaving aside the fact that messing up something that important in game is really really poor quality control on FDev's part, it'll be interesting to see how else they handle it. Reset the mission? Whatever "clues" there are in game to working out the locations of the other ruins, nobody has hit upon it yet. And people have been analysing the Ruins since they were found. Mostly the canonn thread on the official forums is full of people grasping at straws. So if you do come across anything a little odd in game that talks about Guardians, rogue alien AI's or weird ruins with lots of geometric shapes in them or anything else, please flag it up!!!!

 

Also the latest Alien Hyperdiction happened only 160Ly from Sol. That's inside the human bubble. 

 

War, War is coming........................

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Does anyone know when Season 3 is coming out? 

 

I've been hankering for some Elite but don't want to pick up Horizons yet if Season 3 is around the corner - cursory googling has led me down several paths hah. 

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43 minutes ago, YoThatLimp said:

Does anyone know when Season 3 is coming out? 

 

I've been hankering for some Elite but don't want to pick up Horizons yet if Season 3 is around the corner - cursory googling has led me down several paths hah. 

From what I understand Season 2 is supposed to cover 5 expansions. Since we don't have 2.3 and 2.4 is still unknown (Maybe related to ALIENS?!?!?!?!??!) I think its safe to say the season 3 announcement won't happen until later this year. If Horizions is a guide, announce in August, release in December. But it could take longer.
 

2.0 – Planetary Landings

Available Now

A whole new angle on the galaxy. Journey from the stars to the surfaces of strange worlds, and hit the ground running in the new Scarab Surface Recon Vehicle.

 

 2.1 – The Engineers

Available Now

Introducing an expanded mission system and game-changing loot. Craft exotic weapons and modules for your spacecraft and build a ship unlike any other.

 

 2.2 – Guardians

Available Now

New challenges. New Careers. New Mysteries. Discover new ways to fight, trade, explore and survive in Elite Dangerous: Horizons 2.2 The Guardians

 

 2.3 – The Commanders

Still to come

Team up and stand together. Forge your own identity with the new Commander Creator, then share your bridge with Multi-Crew and fly with friends.

 

 2.4 – TBA

A secret revealed in Elite Dangerous: Horizons’ final expansion.

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Fdev have also mentioned that they're going to do an overhaul of mining and exploration to make them more interesting, but there's no set timetable for that. Obviously 2.4-TBA (Aliens?) may be some of that but I'm glad to see them state that they're planning an iterative pass.

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9 hours ago, DocRandal said:

Fdev have also mentioned that they're going to do an overhaul of mining and exploration to make them more interesting, but there's no set timetable for that. Obviously 2.4-TBA (Aliens?) may be some of that but I'm glad to see them state that they're planning an iterative pass.

 

Improvements to exploration can't come soon enough. The patience of those looking for the outposts in the Formadine Rift, Conflux and Hawking's Gap deserves from real praise. Or a call to the men in white coats...................

 

It takes me 20 minutes to find anything on a planetary surface, and that's even when I know where it is.

 

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20 hours ago, Sorbicol said:

 

Improvements to exploration can't come soon enough. The patience of those looking for the outposts in the Formadine Rift, Conflux and Hawking's Gap deserves from real praise. Or a call to the men in white coats...................

 

It takes me 20 minutes to find anything on a planetary surface, and that's even when I know where it is.

 

 

I actually like listening to podcasts while exploring, but I'm not about to go searching for anything on planets unless I have some way of scanning them from orbit.

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4 hours ago, Apelsin said:

If one wanted to get into Elite Dangerous now, what would I need to buy? Horizons?

 

Apelsin, at this point I would buy Horizons so you can have access to planetary landings and the content there, as well as eventual access to engineers and the ship upgrading mechanic. As stated above, the developers release a new DLC season every year or so, but the next season might not be around until this summer, if then, so you'll likely get around six months of solid "current" play.

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I've been playing quite a bit recently and I've been using my Imperial Courier a bit more than my Eagle lately.  With level 3 dirty drive upgrades or whatever I can get it going pretty damned fast and it actually turns pretty well (almost 60 degrees per second, while my Eagle does a bit over 70 degrees per second if I remember correctly).  I was playing in conflict zones and the Eagle just doesn't hold up very well under fire...its perfect for taking out clippers and pythons in RES bounty hunting areas along with the occasional bigger ship...but in a CZ where you're getting hit by multiple ships the Eagle is hard to keep in one piece.  I think my Eagle looks slightly better, but the ICourier doesn't look bad with the same bright yellow paint job (though it looks more orange in that picture as I was near a red dwarf at the time).

 

vzQdmci.jpg

 

Edit: Oh and here's my Eagle for comparison's sake:

 

HDuCvQw.jpg

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Well, all the talk of VR and friends playing again pulled me back in and, for the first time since right after launch, I've been having a ton of fun. I've been dabbling around in a bunch of different professions in my Imperial Courier and Keelback, saving up to eventually get a Clipper. I finally understand most of the new systems added to the game since 1.0, but there's still one thing I'm confused about, player run factions. My friend and I discovered the group we've been running missions for is actually a player run faction, but we don't understand what that actually means in game terms. Are we just wasting our time, or is there some advantage there? 

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