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BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Brown dwarves are even prettier now :stwoon:

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BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000



:yeshaha:

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

I found one thing I don't like about the new lighting model but it's really minor

Here's a screenshot I took in the old version of a barnacle on Witch Head Sector HW-W C1-7 C 3 that I found by flying to a coordinate found on the internet:



The star the planet orbits is a brown dwarf, which is a companion star of a yellow star. In the old lighting model, the closer brown dwarf was too dim to be the main light source of the planet, so the side facing the brown dwarf was the "night" side of the planet while the "day" side was the one facing the yellow planet. the "night" side had an eerie glow to it like it was lit by a full moon, except the light was from a brown dwarf.



It still looks drat cool, as things in this game do, but I liked the idea that brown dwarves couldn't light a surface properly no matter how prominent they are in the sky.

On the other hand, I found more barnacle sites and got first mapping on the planet :toot:

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Speaking of trucks I hope they add a few more SRV models and a few configurations per SRV model like what fighters have so there's more variety to surface stuff and more of a point to carry huge SRV bays than just replacements of your one model of SRV.

Like there are group recommended surface combat missions but with such a limited number of player types and enemy types there are more interesting things to spend your time on if you're in a group.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

timn posted:

Is there any easy way to tell ships to supply a station you don't own? The closest I've found is to use the import wares to sector command and filter down the wares list to only what the specific station needs (e.g. engine parts which the Paranid wharf seems chronically short on). Paring down the wares list manually like this is an assload of clicking for every single ship you want to do this for.

what

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

You need to buy the surface scanner if you want to map planets though, but if you care about space stuff only you don't need any gear.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

I just found a planet that is in such a fast orbit that I could see it moving against the stars behind it as I tried to map it. i whipped out my calculator and it's moving at a speed of 94.6 km per second. Just as a check if I move at the minimum supercruise speed the time to arrival keeps going up :eyepop:

edit: The first planet in the system is moving at 105 km/sec but I somehow didn't notice that when I mapped it

edit 2: I am going to go see if the planet can crash into me if I sit in its orbit

BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Dec 13, 2018

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Lame, when it got within 8.84 million meters of me my ship started moving at 0 m/s relative to it rather than the sun.

edit: no poo poo if I could have gotten a planet to crash into me at 105 km/s I would have gladly eaten the ship rebuy fee (though it's a Diamondback Explorer so not really breaking the bank there)

BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Dec 13, 2018

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Cyberpunkey Monkey posted:

look up Mitterand Hollow

876 km/sec but it's wasted if I can't have it demolish me at that speed

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

So now that they've changed how discovery works, what does honking the scanner do?

It looks like my solar system map is already complete when I enter the system and honking the scanner doesn't seem to do anything.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

GHOST_BUTT posted:

Same thing it did before, assuming you aren't in a populated system? If you're in the black it populates the FSS with signals to lock on to.

No this isn't the case at all. I'm a bunch outside of the bubble looking for Thargoid poo poo near the Witchhead Nebula and every system I jump into that I've never seen before has everything already revealed and I don't need to honk the scanner to see everything and scan everything.

It doesn't seem to do anything other than honk and pop up a message saying how many bodies are in the system.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Helianthus Annuus posted:

my dude, you have got to check this out

I've been using this and I don't need to honk the scanner to use it.

edit: I wandered over to the Pleiades Nebula and oh jeez there are a lot of thargoid encounters in these systems

BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Dec 13, 2018

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Oh I found out what my mistake was; I was honking, noting that it didn't seem to do anything and wondering wtf was the point, and then using FSS mode and because of this I never realized you have to honk before using it since I was doing it anyway.

Since there's a shortcut to honk in FSS mode I guess I don't need to have it assigned to a weapon group.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Is the wiki correct when it says that engineer only does a bunch of level 1 mods, and fairly lame ones at that?

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

FallenGod posted:

Figured out how to fly around and land relatively quickly due to experience with orbital docking in Kerbal Space Program. I figured it would fly like a flight sim / old Wing Commander game and it doesn't at all, but the mouse controls seem functional enough so far.

Next I did a tutorial mission to find a black box next and hoo boy it took me a while to figure out what to do (didn't try this new FSS mode, maybe it helps?). After reaching the Nav Beacon I didn't receive any real information and only found the mission while super-cruising past a random planet. Even then I doubted I was on the right track due to the flight to the mission marker taking in excess of five minutes even at max speed. Luckily grabbing the box was straightforward after that, despite the cargo scoop UI never being explained prior to this.

How much can I upgrade this starter Sidewinder (if at all) before it stops being a freebie and I actually have to carry respawn money? Outside of one spare slot that I might slap a fuel scoop on, every other part is marked (loaned) and wants me to buy it out before swapping it for something else.

It used to be that scanning the nav beacon told you which planet the target was near, and then you would supercruise near that planet until you found the signal source for your mission. Using the exploration scanner also used to substitute for scanning the nav beacon so you didn't have to leave supercruise to find out which planet to go to.

Now I assume you can point your FSS in the direction of the target planet and find it much more easily.

However it leaves me with a question: does honking the current discovery scanner give you the planet hint as it did before or can you only get that by scanning the nav beacon now?

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

I have a theory that they made Sol unmappable so no one would be able to say they had the honour of being the first to probe Uranus

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

GHOST_BUTT posted:

No, that tutorial is just really, really bad. Someone said once that it used to be pretty doable but then after Engineers the enemies got radically more difficult because they suddenly had dirty drives and oversized weapons and all kinds of poo poo, and you are in a stock Sidewinder.

Or something to that effect.

If that's true then I don't feel so bad about taking 4 attempts to do the basic combat tutorial. In my first attempt the tutorial lady was saying "you have him on the ropes! Put full power to weapons!" when he was behind me and I was almost dead.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

I visited Skvortsov and used this as an opportunity to upgrade to a Type-7. Is there any indication of how close the station is to recovery or is it just a rumour that flying in supplies and flying out refugees makes it recover faster?

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Dick Trauma posted:

Wait, so the Thargoids attack stations? And you can rescue people like it's the fall of Saigon? :stonklol:

Yes and the stations look pretty cool on the outside and are burning and hot on the inside.

I heard something like places are going to start turning into proper warzones and players can help fight the Thargoids off, too. I don't know whne that's going to start.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

The rescue ship near the station sells passenger compartments; all refugees are economy class. Any ship that has 2-size slots can carry a couple of passengers but you'll want like 30 slots if you want to take larger missions.

The Dolphin is explicitly a passenger ship and comes with a size 5 compartment, but for a lower base price the Type-6 transporter can carry more passengers once equipped. The Type 6 can carry 48 economy class passengers if you fit the 2x size 5 and 2x size 4 slots with cabins. You'll want size-3 shields since there are more things to accidentally crash into in the burning station, plus the explosions that knock you around may harm you. You'll also want heatsink launchers in your auxiliary slots so you can keep yourself cool inside the station where it is very hot.

You should be able to buy the Type-6 and equipment for about 2 million credits.

Heat doesn't damage you while you're docked even though your COVAS will keep telling you about heat damage, but you don't cool down and it looks like you gain heat during the docking and undocking procedures so even if you're ice-cold when you hit the pad, you'll be hot again when you take off. So be sure to launch a heatsink as soon as you take off.

edit: Refugee runs don't really have variety to them since you're docking at the same hosed station and taking them to the same rescue ship 5 million meters away, but the whole thing is handled well enough as far as graphics and sound go that it's worth doing a few runs just for the experience. If they get crazier and more dangerous when the proper Thargoid incursions happen it could be really cool.

BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Dec 14, 2018

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

I didn't know high gravity landable planets were a thing. The first time I tried to land at a base for a courier mission I slammed right into the ground and thought I had hosed up. But every other time I have tried landing I'm not actually sure how it could possibly have happened. So maybe that first planet was a high gravity one?

a mysterious cloak posted:

I basically did your post to the word and holy crap is that station ever jacked up. :stonklol:

Glad to help. Hopefully you didn't get too banged up on your first try!

Also, it's funny how many of the refugee contracts bitch at me for taking too long before I'm even out of the burning station's interior.



Guys the rescue ship is 5 seconds of supercruise away what more do you want from me.

I've nearly made back the cost of buying and outfitting this Type-7 just from refugee ferrying and I haven't sold my old Type-6 yet so that's nice.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Dick Trauma posted:

I decided to try some planet scanning and one of the first said that optimal scanning would use up 22 probes! That place was gigantic and eventually I gave up and moved on to smaller ones.

When people are talking about finding and farming planetary resources what does that mean?

Raw materials like iron, cadmium, etc. that can only be gathered by landing on a planet, deploying an SRV, shooting nodes that you find, and scooping them up.

Landing at the geological point of interests you can find fully mapping a planet are far more effective than the pre-patch method of landing somewhere and using the scanner to find resources. One POI with a high number will give you far more resources per minute than driving around watching the scanner.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

I've had screwups with white dwarves and neutron stars but I've never felt like I was in danger even after multiple consecutive run-ins with the exclusion zone while trying to supercharge my FSD. Did they make them les dangerous in a patch at some point?

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Helianthus Annuus posted:

lets clear up the story on FSD malfunctions. I did some research, this nerd on the frontier forums had this to say

This lines up with my experience of making in the neighbourhood of 50 jumps with 90%-ish FSD without incident due to a fuel scoop accident back when I was getting started with exploration.

Fuel scooping is a lot easier now that I've learned that only proximity to the planet matters so you can dial down to minimum supercruise speed once you get close enough to the planet to get near-100% fuel scooping rate. You don't have to orbit the star at superlight speeds like in The Voyage Home.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Plus when you ditch your Sidewinder the fines go with it.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000





On the topic of solar masses versus number of stars versus number of star systems, there are places like this:



edit: those are young baby stars not brown dwarves so they're heavy enough to be proper stars one day

I wish black holes looked as ominous in person as they do on the map

BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Dec 16, 2018

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Tippis posted:

What was the warp-in like… :frontear:

I find that it depends a lot on what's in the skybox. If it's just your standard milky way, then yeah, you get that standard brown smear, but ever so often you get some other background — a good set of stars or an already ominously looking nebula — and they can look pretty foreboding.

That said, I still find white dwarves the most disconcerting. There's just something about how you arrive and see the exclusion zone flash by at the periphery, and it just sits there — seemingly far away due to its size, the jets flickering about, and it all just looks so… wrong.

I didn't slam into any of the stars but I was in between them and nearly did trying to pull up from the main star. I'm sure there are crazier systems but I haven't seen any with so many stars so close.



That shot was taken right up against the exclusion zone of a black hole with the Milky way right behind it. It looks cool but I was hoping for black spheres with lensing around them and maybe the glow from matter falling into them.

In one of the other S171 systems I found a black hole so close to the main O-class star of the system that when I positioned myself with the black hole between me and the star and the star still took up about half of my screen. It turns out that the lensing effect only affects the skybox and not objects like stars, so the black hole was completely invisible. What a ripoff!

quote:

The suns are often weird, and sometimes there are too many of them.

I like this description of brown dwarves and T Tauris

BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Dec 16, 2018

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000


Trade in price on my equipped DBX and Vulture are both far far higher than the purchase price though.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

chaosapiant posted:

Did you upgrade your ship? If so that supports my statement that selling price is 90% of the actual value of the ship, including upgrades/parts.

Yes, all core and shields are A or D in addition to other stuff and the dealer will give in excess of 20 million for the vulture and 10 million for the DBX. I'm not interested in selling them but I took note of this when I carefully choose to swap into a ship rather than sell it at the shipyard.

It definitely counts equipment price.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

I've seen things that look like swirly galaxies in the skybox but I wasn't certain if they were galaxies or I was imagining they were.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

ten percent fuel is still a ton in my Diamondback Explorer :smug:

edit: several tons

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

I explore in a DBX and I don't understand why heat is supposed to be such an issue since I've never overheated even supercharging off of neutron stars.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

The only times I've ever been caught by an NPC interdiction is when I've wanted to be caught because I wanted to kill the guy. I don't know if players are harder to escape from or what.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

I noticed it's the Asp Explorer pilots who complain about heat while us Diamondback Explorer pilots are cool literally and figuratively

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Dongattack posted:

DBE pilots are stinky, every time i fly near one i deploy my stink detector and it goes "ppeeeuu smells like poor here" and i boost the gently caress away

G R O S S

sorry about my dirty drive tuning

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Dick Trauma posted:

I made my first visit to one of those nice stations that has all parks and greenery on the inside, and there was a simple courier job available for Colonia, 22k ly away... :stare:

Was it LP 131-66? I like to hang out there because the one station in the system is close to the jump-in point and has every service minus material and tech traders.

Though the missions out to Colonia that i saw there were more lucrative than that

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

I only play solo but NPCs tend to trash talk you when they interdict you, and when you escape they disappear instead of trying again. So I guess if it keeps happening it's a human doing it.

If you want to submit, just throttle down to 0.

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

It's probably for the better but I was a little sad that you're not really in any danger from black holes and neutron stars

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

So trying to win the minigame would be the best choice for escaping from players.

I had thought NPCs despawn if you evade them, but you can't see contacts in normal space when you're supercruising right? So if they just drop to normal space it's a good idea to not stick around.

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BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Kitfox88 posted:

How exactly do ammo weapons work if you have no cargo space? Do you just have the one magazine and then you're out?

You can craft more using materials, which don't take up cargo space and have their own inventory that follows you around

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