Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarted Sandbox Space Flight Sim)

Friday_sl said:

I got my buddies into this game and we're running around in a private group doing bounties.

I need to start focusing more on the game instead of just casually playing. I'd like to get ranks so I can start working towards these ships. Is this ranking thing pretty daunting (federation) because I've been doing bounties for a while now and its been going slow.

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The fastest ( and more entertaining) way is probably Noob's method that Quineloe posted. I did nothing but donations and it worked, but was boring as hell. Ranks 1-7 probably took 6 hours total, but after that it got progressively longer. Rank 11+ took 4+ hours each of doing nothing but spamming donations between open and solo play.

Some screenshots from the first moon fall that I made after release

These were some nice ice canyons to fly over, but I had to jump back into orbit to make it to the target on time

Sadly the mission base was on the dim side and my space to ground skills need work, I ended up some distance off target. I'm not sure if you can plough nose-first into the ground and survive in release and I didn't want to find out.

Aerial shot of the base

... and from the ground. I tried to snap the flying sentry drones with their fancy green targeting lasers but they moved too fast when I got close.

Some niggles and tips:
- remember to raise your landing gear after you've taken off and before you engage the FSD to avoid a repair bill - it's just like leaving a planet before, complete with a blue circle escape vector to point at.
- set your own driving controls for the buggy. Frontier seem incapable of choosing default controls that a human being finds usable.
- to rejoin the ship in port you need to communicate with the port and request docking, then drive to the right bay.
- I've had the buggy drift backwards even on seemingly level ground (remember gravity can be high as well as low depending on where you are), the only way to stop it was to slam the throttle forwards then quickly reset to zero.
- after rejoining the ship some ship UI controls were not working. It required a log off to main menu then start to get them back.

Some "aerial" combat from earlier today. The only real problem was worrying about where the limits of the no-fire zone was above the military base down below; not sure I'd fancy flying something less manoeuvrable about in a scrap down here though.

I'm completely pissed at this shit job of an expansion. There is fuck all to do. No Air to Air combat, no Air to Ground combat. I fully agree that planetary landing needs to be a thing, but it is literally the only thing in the entire expansion for space ships. Everything else you need that fucking stupid buggy. And for what exactly? Missions. Ugh. more of that shit, no fucking thanks.

I took a Corvette to destroy something and I could not because Fdev decided you have to buggy that type of mission.

Quineloe_sl said:

I'm completely pissed at this shit job of an expansion. There is fuck all to do. No Air to Air combat, no Air to Ground combat. I fully agree that planetary landing needs to be a thing, but it is literally the only thing in the entire expansion for space ships. Everything else you need that fucking stupid buggy. And for what exactly? Missions. Ugh. more of that shit, no fucking thanks.

I took a Corvette to destroy something and I could not because Fdev decided you have to buggy that type of mission.

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I still don't get why people are so keen on being able to walk / drive around in games that are about flying - I mean why walk when you can fly, that's why we made planes - but people are keen so there you have it. Just wait till you can walk around stations; you'll end up with a sort of GTA-lite without the cars or guns and every place looking much like every other from the inside.

The consequence of allowing surface play is that if they allowed you to pound ground bases from your ship flying overhead into dust it would trivialize most surface missions, so they simple disallow it. If it was "reality" sensible people would build installations deep underground but then there'd be nothing to see to sell the game.

There is air to air combat though, see my post above. Frontier said there wasn't, but there it is and it's not an isolated incident. I'm quite prepared to believe it's an accidental feature. PvP air to air combat is also possible although I can't think why anyone would stay close to the ground and limit their manoeuvrability.

What would it matter if it trivialized it? My Corvette trivializes any assassination mission as well. That's kinda the thing of an end game ship.

And yes, that's a pure chance encounter you had there. I am not letting that count.

Started this up, got a mission for rank up to Recruit.. took mission, go find target.. it's an Anaconda... wtf? That didn't end well for me.

3 hours to do this mission, head back out, find the Anaconda again... it warps out, so I head to the nearest USS and find my mission target... and this time it's an Asp Explorer...

I'm confused, and happy.

Also end up a criminal for ending the guy... now to find out how to pay off this bounty.

Using a Cobra MkIII at the moment with 2x Burst Lasers and 2x Multicannons (both gimbled). Can't seem to find any guns better than G and F class though.

What ship should I upgrade too next while hunting the RES?

Planetary Landings are awesome.

Sabbat_sl said:

Using a Cobra MkIII at the moment with 2x Burst Lasers and 2x Multicannons (both gimbled). Can't seem to find any guns better than G and F class though.

What ship should I upgrade too next while hunting the RES?

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There are no better weapons of a certain type.

I'd say the three ships that are clear upgrades over the Cobra are the Asp Scout (More shields, better distributor), the Vulture and the Imperial Courier. Even the Viper 4 is probably better

Bought a Vulture, got some tech in it. Too tired to fly it right now, I'll update my blog tomorrow after some shut eye.

Man, this ship is a huge upgrade from the Cobra, less of an all-rounder, but it's combat abilities are far and away better. I didn't think that 2 medium pulses could do that much damage.

Sabbat_sl said:

Planetary Landings are awesome.

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With a lot of practice and an agile ship, there's fun to be had down there.* Don't try this until you can afford the many, many crashes that will follow.


* you'll notice there's a lot of scene cuts in the video. Mucking about on the surface isn't the best use of your time if you are just after cash. Having a cargo capacity of just two in the SRV is another one of those head-scratching design decisions.

Yeah, I watched that a few days ago, was incredible to watch that guy skimming shit and ripping up defence turrets. There's no way I could do that with KB/M though.

Trying to pick up some pods in 0.1g on an icy planet plus shooting at drones in the SRV was hilarious, wish I'd been streaming that.

Sabbat_sl said:

Bought a Vulture, got some tech in it. Too tired to fly it right now, I'll update my blog tomorrow after some shut eye.

Man, this ship is a huge upgrade from the Cobra, less of an all-rounder, but it's combat abilities are far and away better. I didn't think that 2 medium pulses could do that much damage.

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You put medium pulses on the large hardpoints?

Well, looks like I fucked up, I put 2x E3 Pulses, I thought that was Medium, but I guess that's Large. My bad. Either way, I was wrecking shit, so I moved from a LowRES to a HighRES and got blown up by a wing of 3 Master Cobras. Back to Low for awhile til I can afford some more upgrades.

Try one beam, one frag cannon. Space shotguns are much better now they've tripled the ammo reserve.

E: The Santa run community event is paying ~400K per trip plus final reward and can be done in an Adder if anyone's looking for easy cash btw.