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Thundarr
Dec 24, 2002


Ships in conflict zones have heavily buffed hp. It's almost never worth it to fly a CZ with a small ship, even an engineered one.

For early game combat, a resource extraction zone is a better bet. You'll only face a few ships at a time, and they won't have huge defense buffs. You can find these in planetary rings in inhabited systems. If it's the same system as the one where you got the massacre mission, you'll probably even find some that count towards the mission.

If you want to run missions instead, look for assassination missions rather than massacre missions. You'll only have one target at a time but at least they won't be a giant bag of hp.

Thundarr fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Sep 13, 2020

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Tommy the Newt
Mar 25, 2017

The king of the sand castle

DARPA posted:

seemed good for a new player.

Adding to what Thundarr said... Something that draws strangely little attention in Elite is the extent to which missions are hosed. Many mission types are not worth your time either because they straight up don't work, or have incredibly low rewards for high annoyance. Civilian massacre missions are an example of the latter, you have to constantly re-roll mission instances to try and kill enough boring, weirdly tanky passenger ships before they leave, then rinse and repeat. Just don't do them ever. Even in top-end engineered ships it's a pain in the rear end. Same goes for piracy missions, the game doesn't have the mechanics to make this not an annoying slog currently. Fdev sometimes address the fact that their missions are broken... by removing them from the game, in the case of search and rescue, or skimmer kill missions etc... so just pretend they've done that with 60% of all mission boards.

Generally data, trade, sabotage/scan and assassination missions are fairly safe bets and do what you'd expect them to do. War massacre missions are viable and can be really lucrative but with a caveat: you should always take wing massacre missions (with the little circular symbol next to them) because they pay more for fewer kills, and you can stack them with friends to fulful yours and theirs at the same time and get more cash. The 'solo' massacre missions have fairly abysmal rewards.

You should also just wait until you're in an engineered ship, or can tag along with an experienced wing before doing Combat Zones. Apart from missions, combat overall is incredibly unbalanced, with ships in combat zones being up to 2000% tankier than their counterpart scrub pirates. The problem isn't that you're in any particular danger, it's just that it's potentially a real slog.

All of the above sounds negative, and it is, Elite is honestly a huge pile of poo poo and fundamentally doesn't work a lot of the time... but if you accept that and just focus on the cool bits that you enjoy, you can still have a good time. The flight model is excellent, certain things like exploration just work as advertised most of the time. Think of it as a boney fish you need to pick your way around.

(TL;DR: sorry I just had a breakdown or something, apparently)

Tommy the Newt fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Sep 13, 2020

Cup Runneth Over
Aug 8, 2009

She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate


Doing missions loving sucks rear end, they're tedious as hell when they aren't broken as poo poo, and even with all the buffs they still don't pay nearly enough. Buy a mining ship or road to riches exploration ship and make your money that way.

DARPA
Apr 24, 2005
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Thanks for the replies. I did a few systems from the road to riches and earned 5m credits. I feel like they get people to choose keybindings without every having played the game, or any game.

I previously rebound "UI Back" to ~ which brought some sanity to navigating menus to me. My hand is on the moues and WASD. Why would someone use backspace to go back? What's wrong with ESC just backing out of everything all the way back to the main menu?

Then I try to get into FSS and turns out it ignores the "UI back" binding and uses it's own. Why? gently caress me that's why.

Then the discovery survey scanner didn't even have the mouse bound by default! And as an extra gently caress you exiting the DSS is bound to backspace.

Or how the first item under '2' Communication is filter, and not an actual message?

It's like they purposely made every single detail frustrating on purpose.

Appreciate the help but this game is probably just not for me.

Grashnak
Apr 30, 2006

Oven Wrangler

DARPA posted:

I feel like they get people to choose keybindings without every having played the game, or any game.

I'm pretty sure none of the devs actually play the game so this is pretty much correct tbh.

There's definitely a lot of stuff in the game which is incredibly poorly explained or even just straight up broken which as you can see makes it incredibly hard to get into the game. Plus there's an awful of balance stuff which means that half the time even the stuff that isn't broken is just a huge waste of time to actually do.

Thundarr
Dec 24, 2002


Speaking of lack of thought into the UI, after playing again I'm reminded of how goddamn annoying it is when I'm banking up and the camera automatically tilts upwards a little, which has the effect of cutting off half of the radar below the bottom of the screen. Maybe this only affects people who play on ultra wide monitors, but still. What the gently caress, fdev?

Cup Runneth Over
Aug 8, 2009

She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate


Thundarr posted:

Speaking of lack of thought into the UI, after playing again I'm reminded of how goddamn annoying it is when I'm banking up and the camera automatically tilts upwards a little, which has the effect of cutting off half of the radar below the bottom of the screen. Maybe this only affects people who play on ultra wide monitors, but still. What the gently caress, fdev?

hold shift

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

DARPA posted:

Thanks for the replies. I did a few systems from the road to riches and earned 5m credits. I feel like they get people to choose keybindings without every having played the game, or any game.

I previously rebound "UI Back" to ~ which brought some sanity to navigating menus to me. My hand is on the moues and WASD. Why would someone use backspace to go back? What's wrong with ESC just backing out of everything all the way back to the main menu?

Then I try to get into FSS and turns out it ignores the "UI back" binding and uses it's own. Why? gently caress me that's why.

Then the discovery survey scanner didn't even have the mouse bound by default! And as an extra gently caress you exiting the DSS is bound to backspace.

Or how the first item under '2' Communication is filter, and not an actual message?

It's like they purposely made every single detail frustrating on purpose.

Appreciate the help but this game is probably just not for me.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Elite Dangerous: It's like they purposely made every single detail frustrating on purpose.

Thundarr
Dec 24, 2002



Yeah UI Focus works but it's awkward since you can't make it a toggle.

Also camera movement shouldn't hide an important part of the UI :v:

Wifi Toilet
Oct 1, 2004

Toilet Rascal

Thundarr posted:

Yeah UI Focus works but it's awkward since you can't make it a toggle.

Also camera movement shouldn't hide an important part of the UI :v:

I really miss my 16:10 monitor sometimes. :smith:

Drint Blasters
Jul 1, 2007

So how important is engineering? Cause good lord it looks like gathering all the various materials is a colossal pain in the arse
Apparently I am supposed to go to some crash site just drive in a circle for a few hours? Or park out front of a station and scan ships for however long? Yikes

Thundarr
Dec 24, 2002


Drint Blasters posted:

So how important is engineering? Cause good lord it looks like gathering all the various materials is a colossal pain in the arse
Apparently I am supposed to go to some crash site just drive in a circle for a few hours? Or park out front of a station and scan ships for however long? Yikes

At a minimum, engineering your warp drive makes a gigantic difference in your jump range which benefits every play style. If you like shooting people, you're gonna be engineering a whole lot more poo poo if you don't want to be limited to fighting random pirates forever.

Cup Runneth Over
Aug 8, 2009

She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate


Drint Blasters posted:

So how important is engineering? Cause good lord it looks like gathering all the various materials is a colossal pain in the arse
Apparently I am supposed to go to some crash site just drive in a circle for a few hours? Or park out front of a station and scan ships for however long? Yikes

Yeah, welcome to E:D. Engineering is basically mandatory for taking the game seriously. Hope you enjoy mindlessly repeating the same mind-numbing SRV tasks for literally hours.

Einbauschrank
Nov 5, 2009

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Yeah, welcome to E:D. Engineering is basically mandatory for taking the game seriously. Hope you enjoy mindlessly repeating the same mind-numbing SRV tasks for literally hours.

But an engineered ship allows you to mindlessly repeat the other same mind-numbing activities E:D has to offer slightly more efficiently!

Polo-Rican
Jul 4, 2004

emptyquote my posts or die
I didn't hate engineering my frame shift drive. The grind itself sucked for sure... but Felicity Farseer's base is one of my favorite locations in the game because it's filled to the gills with players of all skill levels, in different types of ships. Also had some tense encounters with gankers who camped out by the planet. It's one of the only times in the game I actually interacted with other players!!!

Polo-Rican fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Sep 14, 2020

Toxic Fart Syndrome
Jul 2, 2006

*hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.




...the meter only goes to 3.6...

Pork Pro

Polo-Rican posted:

I didn't hate engineering my frame shift drive. The grind itself sucked for sure... but Felicity Farseer's base is one of my favorite locations in the game because it's filled to the gills with players of all skill levels, in different types of ships. Also had some tense encounters with gankers who camped out by the planet. It's one of the only times in the game I actually interacted with other players!!!

Yeah, it's one of the few places you can be sure to always be instanced with another human.

DARPA
Apr 24, 2005
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
So I'm a glutton for punishment.

I sat down for a session while watching tonight's giants game. Picked up 25 million credits and generally didn't hate myself the entire time now that I have the control bindings fixed.

I wouldn't quite call exploration a "game", but at least I now have the credits to try other options. I turned in the exploration at a random station which spiked my standing with the controlling faction to "ally" from neutral, which I wish I knew before hand. Then trying something new I almost immediately hosed myself by trying to pick up a supplier mission that required an item "Biotech Conductors" that isn't a commodity? and seems that it'd be a huge pain to source. At least I had the sense to google first.

Thanks again for the pointers.

edit: And I discovered "Fastest Routes" under the galaxy map when plotting jumps. I'm guessing "economical routes" choice was there as the default in alpha/beta stage and they just never bothered to remove it despite it being loving worse than pointless while using fuel scoops.

DARPA fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Sep 15, 2020

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

Drint Blasters posted:

So how important is engineering? Cause good lord it looks like gathering all the various materials is a colossal pain in the arse
Apparently I am supposed to go to some crash site just drive in a circle for a few hours? Or park out front of a station and scan ships for however long? Yikes

It's like they purposely made every single detail frustrating on purpose.

Thundarr
Dec 24, 2002


hakimashou posted:

It's like they purposely made every single detail frustrating on purpose.

This can describe nearly every system in E:D, to be honest.

Woden
May 6, 2006

Drint Blasters posted:

So how important is engineering? Cause good lord it looks like gathering all the various materials is a colossal pain in the arse
Apparently I am supposed to go to some crash site just drive in a circle for a few hours? Or park out front of a station and scan ships for however long? Yikes

You can get a lot of the materials as rewards from missions, which is what I'm doing. It's probably way slower but at least I'm not doing something I hate.

Disconnecticus
Oct 21, 2012

Wait, like, actual money?
Really it took me a couple of weeks on and off in the evenings to get the Guardian FSD Booster plus a fully engineered FSD. I'd been avoiding engineering because it seemed like a huge pain in the rear end, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. In the end though it's pretty joyful to see a 250 ly trip turn into a mere four jumps. But I'm still switching modules in my Anaconda to try to eek out those final few percent to a 75 ly range. My advice is don't ignore Materials Traders. They can save you a lot of pointless busywork trying to find five of some random thing.

Toxic Fart Syndrome
Jul 2, 2006

*hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.




...the meter only goes to 3.6...

Pork Pro

hakimashou posted:

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Elite Dangerous - It's like they purposely made every single detail frustrating on purpose

resting bort face
Jun 2, 2000

by Fluffdaddy
Is there a way to use one of the third-party map sites to locate the nearest station to my location?

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

resting bort face posted:

Is there a way to use one of the third-party map sites to locate the nearest station to my location?

If your location is known in their system database, then yes.

For EDDB, you just input your location as the “Reference system” and everything will be listed and sorted relative to it.

Similarly, at Inara, you can just go to “Search”, input your system, and it will tell you its nearest known inhabited systems (granted, not all inhabited systems have stations you can use, but it's a first step). For a more precise search, you can use Galaxy > Systems and Stations > Nearest.

Red Alert 2 Yuris Revenge
May 8, 2006

"My brain is amazing! It's full of wrinkles, and... Uh... Wait... What am I trying to say?"

this is apparently too long - I can still do it if you want the comedy sentence cut off option

Pilchenstein
May 17, 2012

So your plan is for half of us to die?

Hot Rope Guy

Relax Or DIE posted:

this is apparently too long - I can still do it if you want the comedy sentence cut off option
What's the maximum length? It's slightly less comical but still works without the "purposely"

Seams
Feb 3, 2005

ROCK HARD
I’m looking forward to Odyssey. Exploration is my favourite part of this game. I dont like how No Man’s Sky turned into minecraft in space and I have no idea if Star Citizen is even a playable game at this point so I’m glad Elite is scratching that particular itch.

Red Alert 2 Yuris Revenge
May 8, 2006

"My brain is amazing! It's full of wrinkles, and... Uh... Wait... What am I trying to say?"

Pilchenstein posted:

What's the maximum length? It's slightly less comical but still works without the "purposely"

Elite Dangerous - It's like they purposely made every single detail frustrating on pu

so 6 characters short although it's kind of funny this way imo

Toxic Fart Syndrome
Jul 2, 2006

*hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.




...the meter only goes to 3.6...

Pork Pro

Relax Or DIE posted:

Elite Dangerous - It's like they purposely made every single detail frustrating on pu

so 6 characters short although it's kind of funny this way imo

:frontear:

resting bort face
Jun 2, 2000

by Fluffdaddy

Tippis posted:

If your location is known in their system database, then yes.

For EDDB, you just input your location as the “Reference system” and everything will be listed and sorted relative to it.

Similarly, at Inara, you can just go to “Search”, input your system, and it will tell you its nearest known inhabited systems (granted, not all inhabited systems have stations you can use, but it's a first step). For a more precise search, you can use Galaxy > Systems and Stations > Nearest.

Thank you, this is very helpful.

And it turns out I'm only 66 jumps away from a station rather than over 700, so, that's good news!

Shine
Feb 26, 2007

No Muscles For The Majority

Inspector Hound
Jul 14, 2003

resting bort face posted:

Thank you, this is very helpful.

And it turns out I'm only 66 jumps away from a station rather than over 700, so, that's good news!

Inara, I think, will also help you find mining spots and trade routes

I said come in!
Jun 22, 2004

VR question, if I am interested in the VIVE Cosmos Elite Headset, but none of the other accessories that can go with it, would that still be enough to play Elite Dangerous in VR? I want to provide the controller, I have a joystick, and so am not really seeing why I would need anything else, but wanted to make sure.

Drint Blasters
Jul 1, 2007

Started the grind for engineering, spent about 2 hours outside a distribution centre scanning wakes, think tonight will be a trip to Dav's Hope for those components or whatever they are.
Had a thought though, will i need to do this for every ship? Like if I engineer my AspE a bit then buy a Python will i have to go through this rigmarole again to engineer a new ship?

Erulisse
Feb 12, 2019

A bad poster trying to get better.

Relax Or DIE posted:

Elite Dangerous - It's like they made every single detail frustrating on purpose


swapped purpose with purpose!

Tommy the Newt
Mar 25, 2017

The king of the sand castle

Drint Blasters posted:

Started the grind for engineering, spent about 2 hours outside a distribution centre scanning wakes, think tonight will be a trip to Dav's Hope for those components or whatever they are.
Had a thought though, will i need to do this for every ship? Like if I engineer my AspE a bit then buy a Python will i have to go through this rigmarole again to engineer a new ship?

You've chosen not only to grind, but to grind using outdated methods! If you want to do it fast data is Jameson's Cobra and manufactured materials are best found from High Grade Emissions then trading.

I understand when people say they don't want to do the exploity methods and prefer to just do it slowly through missions etc, but if you are going to go to the effort of relogging somewhere, make sure it's the right place...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W5VFUlf6ZJOMUQJELxDBU60O7mICfRwrZ_nZNgvLl5M/edit?usp=drivesdk

This guide is a bit of a mess but if you stick to the bold/highlighted methods you'll get it done a lot faster than wake scanning and Dav's Hope. You can get 100 grade 5 materials in ~15 minutes which is more valuable than what you'd get out of Dav's in several hours.

Also yes, you have to do this for every ship - unless you can share parts between ships; size 6 drives are used by lots of good ones, so if you engineer a Krait or Python many of the modules will be interchangeable. Also the material costs are reduced once you're ranked highly with the engineer. I also reckon you should have a glance at the module lists in the ships guide (linked in the previous one) before deciding what to modify - you don't have to read all the overbearing nerdscribbling I've done, but there are lots of trap modifications in Elite that are a waste of time, so make sure you're spending your hard-earned materials on something actually decent.

Tommy the Newt fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Sep 16, 2020

Lando Kardashian
Jul 11, 2007

pissidential

started my fed corvette grind . half way there but wow its bloody boring. i just want to pew pew at other space dudes. Next will be engineer grind. if there are any ps4 goons on here send me a pm and we can bash our heads against our canopies from boredom together!

I said come in!
Jun 22, 2004

Thread title is still true, but there have been a lot of quality of life improvements since release. For the most casual playerbase, you can now automate travel, and docking. Docking is the big one as that was by far the hardest thing in the game.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

Lando Kardashian posted:

started my fed corvette grind . half way there but wow its bloody boring. i just want to pew pew at other space dudes. Next will be engineer grind. if there are any ps4 goons on here send me a pm and we can bash our heads against our canopies from boredom together!

It's fine, once you have finished all the grinds you can stop playing the game, same as me

Nowadays I just occasionally reinstall the game and replay the tutorial combat situations

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Thundarr
Dec 24, 2002


Drint Blasters posted:

Started the grind for engineering, spent about 2 hours outside a distribution centre scanning wakes, think tonight will be a trip to Dav's Hope for those components or whatever they are.
Had a thought though, will i need to do this for every ship? Like if I engineer my AspE a bit then buy a Python will i have to go through this rigmarole again to engineer a new ship?

You're gonna need materials for every module you use. There are some cases where you can realistically share modules between multiple ships, but for the most part expect to engineer up each ship separately. Luckily material traders exist, so if you get a good stock of G5 materials you can trade them down to cover most of your engineering needs for a good long while.

The part that you (mostly) don't need to repeat is ranks with the actual engineers. There's a lot of them, though you don't need to get all of them up to rank 5 in order to get the recipes you need. The main annoyance with them is having to fly back to an engineer every time you want to apply an experimental mod or if you need a recipe that you didn't pin (because you pinned one that you use slightly more often).

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