Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarted Sandbox Space Flight Sim)

Tip of the day: Press 'X' when the frame shift countdown starts and you'll be at minimum velocity at the other end.

Running Dog_sl said:

The best that can be done right now is to park one ship, buy a Sidewinder and fly it to the second ship, then sell the Sidewinder.

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That's how I fixed it in the end. Sucks that the Sidewinder can only hold so little fuel and so low jump range...

Anyone else having an issue with KWS bounties from clean targets in anarchy systems not working?

Eranin I think is one, pretty tame though.

Well, I didn't want to space trade and I haven't. However, If you go space exploring it seems that there is literally no stations or if they are its random luck beyond a certain distance. I made it to Betelgeuse, largely because it was just 200 light years more when I was starting to consider turning around due to having at least a few hundred thousand exploration credits sitting stored in my ship with no station to sell it to. Of course I didn't want to space spoiler myself so I did not google anything about it, and I never managed a random station. The size and scale is quite awesome, but I was disappointed that there wasn't even a station or a tourist destination or even some random anything.

I think I'm gonna take a little time off before I decide to just fly back into known space, largely because there is almost no one to fight and these systems are so remote that even if you found some crazy neat item to trade it would have to be worth millions to justify the hours of jumps with no choice to do anything but jump more. I was only randomly interdicted twice by single ships in systems with scoopable stars, but chose to not fight due to the value stored in my ship computer. I had to constantly make sure I would end up at scoopable stars as there were multiple sections just filled with sequences of startypes that you cannot refuel on. I have a jump range of just short of 12 LY. I was perfectly happy when I could just change between exploring, interdicting, hunting in resource rings. But be warned those parts of the game disappear beyond "occupied" space - there is no npc activity to speak of basically. When I was clicking down towards Witch Head Nebula (it has a restricted system that takes a permit) I thought that implied there would be stations, perhaps a faction. Who knows, but not at least so far as on the way to Betelguese.

My biggest tip if you want to go galaxy sight seeing is don't go until you have the planetary scanner to get more money, and the full system scanning device. You'd probably make millions of credits on round trips to some of the neat stars - but right now that's all the trip will be if the location is all that remote. My networth is probably nearing 1 million credits, if I manage to sell my exploration data. And I'll switch to the cobra mk III when I get back to friendly space assuming I don't die before I can cash out my explorer monies.



That's still 2,500 LS from the star. That's like sitting at Saturn and looking at the Sun (I think). It's absolutely massive. I wish there was other npcs or anything in the system to really put the size into context. You can fly something like 400,000 LS away and it is still huge relative to everything else.



Fuel Scoop Activation Range



50,000 LS



100,000 LS

Intrinsic_sl said:

I'd be interested to know what you end up cashing out at. After almost 4 hours of exploring and selling well over 50 systems worth of data (some including the planet specifics, some not) I averaged like 2k -maybe- per system info. That was for systems shooting out to the far end of nowhere. It just seems to be stupid random what they're worth. My jump distance is like 12.6k so right now I'm just using it as a glorified Google Space and not really counting on any of the data to be worth shit.

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After all was said and done, I earned 220,000 credits from exploration. Keep in mind a few things. If you have the 1.5 million credit scanner you never waste time flying towards anything. Additionally, the planet survey device really increases the profit for finding metal rich/earth worlds. I also only scanned stars for like 85% of the systems I jumped through - Betelgeuse was 325 light years to the first station I returned to. The most valuable system I sold was 25k, that was early in the trip when I thought I'd hit a station. I probably scanned the first 10 systems the best I could with my limited sensors and no planet scanner. I definitely am not going sight seeing until I can fit both of those systems.

Mist_sl said:

I'm really understanding how to find systems with large amounts of pirate activity in Resource sites.

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How's that work? My attempts have been rather sad so far.

Dandain_sl said:

After all was said and done, I earned 220,000 credits from exploration. Keep in mind a few things. If you have the 1.5 million credit scanner you never waste time flying towards anything. Additionally, the planet survey device really increases the profit for finding metal rich/earth worlds. I also only scanned stars for like 85% of the systems I jumped through - Betelgeuse was 325 light years to the first station I returned to. The most valuable system I sold was 25k, that was early in the trip when I thought I'd hit a station. I probably scanned the first 10 systems the best I could with my limited sensors and no planet scanner. I definitely am not going sight seeing until I can fit both of those systems.

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A nice and short thread on long-distance exploring:

Rough day at the office. A brief loss of concentration cost me 16% hull, andi've hit a brick wall of nothingness 8,700ly south of Sol, nothing to plot to...gets better around the 11,000ly mark, but will have to "go around" to get there.

And that would be several thousand ly worth of travel.

For now i have to backtrack several hundred ly to reach a higher system density area again.

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...it's probably a bit of an "acquired taste" thing. First of all it's very time consuming and at times monotonous, of course finding something "special", or just something beautiful to take a picture of, will inject temporary rewards into the "grind".

If you're able to set a goal for yourself, reach it and then can draw a sense of achievement from that, exploration is absolutely worth it. (of course, there's the money if you make it back, but you barely think about that at all when you're out there). But it's not like many other games, where level dings, achievement pop-ups or steam collectors cards give you a tap on the shoulder. This is no skinner box stuff.

If you want to have a go at it, my suggestion would be to start out "small". Plan a short (500-1000ly) trip near inhabited space, run it and see how it goes.

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Happy new year from the Jellyfish nebula (an exploration update)

how much of theeliteuniverse started as still completely unexplored? 99%?

Quineloe_sl said:

how much of theeliteuniverse started as still completely unexplored? 99%?

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400 billion systems and say a minute in each one just to ping it and jump out again = 760 man-years roughly. Obviously that doesn't count all the extra time it would take to fly close to all the stars and planets in a system to get a detailed scan. 99% would be a low estimate of how much is unexplored

Human space extends about 400 to 500 LY from Sol. Some places are cordoned off by Frontier, presumably some of these are Thargoid space, and maybe rogue AI space. A requested feature is a "heat map" of explored space, although Frontier might want to keep that unknown so as not to discourage people from scanning systems.

Some interesting systems to visit (no spoilers about what they have):

HIP 38716
5 Chi Lupi
Mintaka B (be careful)
HD 217086 (be very careful)

Yeah, after my trip to Betelgeuse + watching the systems become uninhabited, into not having the best exploration or planet scanners - being in my viper but having the cash to get into the cobra (sans scanners of course). I definitely am interested in going exploring - however - I'm going to keep my exploration within close proximity of inhabited space merely to be able to upgrade my ships systems. After I kit out my Cobra with a few million more in upgrades (at least) I'm definitely on my way back out, as long as your early exploration is constrained within "occupied" space which is still a huge cross section plus all the edges to get exploration money. My wealth is more or less 50/50 from bounties/exploration. Overall - as long as they keep adding shit from the game side - the systems/exploration is awesome certainly.

Gromit_sl said:

How's that work? My attempts have been rather sad so far.

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Find a system with rings. Hopefully it has a station and likely in occupied space it will as you want active npc mining activity to take place. This just means there is a police force inside the system as well as some trigger to send npc miners into the belt. Once you hit the ring it will probably spawn you some large distance out - fly to the resource point as marked on the map - look for lasers flashing in the distance. You will see ships in the field mining but you may not have good enough sensors or line of sight to target them directly. Once you are near the spawn point loiter around and watch for contacts - Eventually the region should fill up with mining craft and some security forces. The wanted npcs will spawn in over time and they either get in fights with the security force, or they will scan your hold for loot, or fight other npcs. Then its just a matter of fighting what you can tangle with. When I went ring hunting in an largely unoccupied region, I got a slow spawn of agro npcs - but no friendly miners. It also seems reasonably random what can spawn into the systems. Once, the third ship that spawned in a ring with only me was an Imperial clipper - when I was just in a viper - so that spelled me leaving. I try to mix up going into rings for some bounties into a bit more exploring into ring fighting at the next one I find. But the biggest advice is that you should fly down to the resource point and just spend a few minutes seeing if you'll get NPC spawn in to occur.

By rings, do you mean rings around the planets or space rocks like the stuff in Sol between Mars and Jupiter?

Also have you tried this in Anarchy systems, so no police is around?

I switched back to open play now, and I'm getting attacked by harmless players all the time. They so dumb, an Eagle thought he can go chicken head on with my Asp, so his shields melted when he was at 500m, and at 74% left he rammed my D6 shield with full energy in it - probably blinded from being hit by 4 multicannons in the face. Straight drop to 0, I'm still at half shields.

How can you tell what a strong pirate faction is?

Intrinsic_sl said:

Is there any trick to the Pirate Hunting bounties? As in, I fly to the system and just have to go around aimlessly searching out USS, dropping out, scanning, etc...

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just sit at the Nav beacon with 1 ton of biowaste in your hold, they'll attack you for it.