Elite: Dangerous. I broke down.

[undercovergeek]

Wow! Did you hear Faulcon DeLacy has slashed the price of the Cobra MK III by 50%! That comes to around 86,000 credits and they are offering full trade-in value for any ship! This is a great deal. I may have to part with my Viper.

How long in real-world game time are we talking to earn 86000 credits?

Are you tradin' or fightin'?

[Toonces]

Right now I'm just figuring out what the G key does.

Maybe how long does it take trading vs. fighting vs. a blended approach.

[Jarhead0331]

On the average combat run in the federal distress signal I haul in about 16,000 credits. On a good sortie, I can bag over 20,000. So, theoretically, I could get the credits needed for the discounted cobra in 4 to 6 sorties.

The frustration comes from deadly head on collisions. Federation fighters have a nasty habit of colliding with you at high speed causing instant death. When this happens, you lose all your combat vouchers. So if you have been flying for an hour and have destroyed 40 fighters, you can lose all that in the blink of an eye. That's why I usually head back to dock after I've shot down between 25 and 30 ships. It's just too risky to stay out there any longer. Check back a few pages...there is a lot of discussion about the collision issue.

In short, I think it's pretty well established that trade is the most lucrative approach to wealth in the game. But I don't really hAve the head for trade. I'm a combat pilot through and through and although it may take a little longer there is still steady income to be made living life dangerously.

[JudgeDredd]

The problem with the trade approach is, if you aren't a master at it (like myself) then you can screw up your jump distances. I don't know HOW MANY TIMES I've went to a system to load up only to find I can get a certain way back to where I was heading but can't...it's impossible to make a jump...therefore you have to drop or sell cheap. This makes trade a lengthy process.

Add to that only 4 tonne limit for the Sidewinder

And in if the fact you'll occasionally be an idiot and do something stooped and ruin everything (like crashing into the wall of a space station and not having enough insurance to cover your loss!)

Combat, as JH suggested, is lucrative but whenever I go there I am constantly worried of getting that head on collision - which can happen ANYTIME. The longer I stay there, the more my stress level increases and then BAM...and the inevitable "I wish I had left after that last kill" thought creeps in.

But - as UCG's story attests....regardless of how infuriating things are (can't jump, selling cheap, head on collisions, losing everything) the game just keeps dragging me back again and again and again!

[JudgeDredd]

Earnt my first Elite chest hair yesterday - smuggling - last newsletter says Aulin and Wyrd are giving away liquor, and so they are at 95 credits a tonne, bought some and went to the nearest Federation system with a black market, pulled out of supercruise 19km from the space station, switched off everything but sensors and engines - that got the heat signature to 0 and the windows iced up, then approached the station, which to my horror opened fire with everything, but it wasnt at me, it was to the sneaky bastard pirate who had dropped in behind me to steal my stuff, with no heat signature you cant be targetted automatically you need to be at point blank and manual so youre almost invisible, but this guy saw me and clearly ignored the 'stow weapons' command from the security forces and got blasted as he prepped to get me - snuck past the security Vipers, docked and sold the whisky on the black market for 500 credits a ton profit - biggest ever gaming smile

and its not even finished yet

Superb!  O0

I went into silent running the other day to evade some fed fighters (apparently I seem to have a "WANTED" marker??) and snuck into a space station.

[TacticalWargames]

Will there be a reset when it gets an official release?

[undercovergeek]

Will there be a reset when it gets an official release?

2 wipes AFAIK - either at Beta 2 in a week OR one at Gamma, and then prob release

Earnt my first Elite chest hair yesterday - smuggling - last newsletter says Aulin and Wyrd are giving away liquor, and so they are at 95 credits a tonne, bought some and went to the nearest Federation system with a black market, pulled out of supercruise 19km from the space station, switched off everything but sensors and engines - that got the heat signature to 0 and the windows iced up, then approached the station, which to my horror opened fire with everything, but it wasnt at me, it was to the sneaky bastard pirate who had dropped in behind me to steal my stuff, with no heat signature you cant be targetted automatically you need to be at point blank and manual so youre almost invisible, but this guy saw me and clearly ignored the 'stow weapons' command from the security forces and got blasted as he prepped to get me - snuck past the security Vipers, docked and sold the whisky on the black market for 500 credits a ton profit - biggest ever gaming smile

and its not even finished yet

Superb!  O0

I went into silent running the other day to evade some fed fighters (apparently I seem to have a "WANTED" marker??) and snuck into a space station.

im not sure i understand the difference between silent running and 0 heat temperature, one guy tried to explain silent running was for combat and heat was for sneaking, i know if you generate heat you can be seen by sensors and thats why you run at 0 i dont know what silent running hides

and as far as i know the ramming thing is over, those that have mentioned it on the elite forums have all come back and said its either gone or very rare

[JudgeDredd]

I didn't know there was a distinction because when you go into Silent Running, your heat signature drops whilst the heat within your craft gets to critical levels if you run for too long.

In essence, I thought silent running was the tool  that reduced your heat signature. But I admit I haven't looked it up or read the manual - it was purely an assumption

[undercovergeek]

I didn't know there was a distinction because when you go into Silent Running, your heat signature drops whilst the heat within your craft gets to critical levels if you run for too long.

In essence, I thought silent running was the tool  that reduced your heat signature. But I admit I haven't looked it up or read the manual - it was purely an assumption

ok, got it - with silent running you basically close the external heat vents, this allows you to still have all your modules on but heat builds up inside and you need to dump that with heat sinks

whereas switching things off obviously switches the modules off and you cant use them

[JudgeDredd]

I did go through switching a load of things off that time I ran out of fuel in the vain hope that might help me get somewhere...clutching at straws. That's when I noticed the cool ice effect. Also - try switching off life support and listen to the wee fella  ;D

The game is pretty spectacular given it's still in BETA. I've been more than VERY impressed...and like I said, I keep coming back to it time and again, regardless of me being an idiot!

I'm glad about knowing about the "wiping". That will save me bothering to go after any upgrades. I mean, I will when I can, but I think I'll use this time to investigate the universe, get to understand the map, the ship systems etc.

[JudgeDredd]

I remember you saying you play online. I noticed online takes alot longer to connect. It also seemed to be less stable in the few tries I gave it last week...just constantly loading or taking ages when you dropped out of supercruise and I even had a couple of drop outs. I went back to solo (mainly because of the load times and drop out of supercruise times).

Did you notice any of that? Not so much the game dropping out, but when you come out of supercruise your ship shakes about for seemingly ages before you are back in control or the very lengthy load time, certainly compared to solo play.

This might be the time for me to try online again...just whilst I'm not fussed about getting wiped out.

[undercovergeek]

ive never really wanted to say it out loud lest it jinxes the whole thing but ive not had any major problems whatsoever - for the first few weeks i had a problem with the game locking up everytime i put a space station in the middle of the screen to dock, graphics driver update solved that, since then ive had one server disconnect which was last night, but i think that was me sat in game and swapping to desktop to check an excel spreadsheet over and over again

ive had maybe 2 or 3 instances of requesting to launch and the landing pad still holding me for about 30 seconds - i just assume the call got stuck in the network but it happens eventually

but the biggest complaints i see are from the fighters, theres quite a bit of 'rubber banding' and network syncronicity problems - a guy posted a split screen vid the other day of what he saw and what his opponent saw and they werent the same at all - people get quite upset about it, but its BETA, still getting worked on

as for a trader, right now i think Frontier are testing what they can and cant adjust on the fly without crashing the universe, prices that were good today are bad tomorrow, stations that desperately needed tea are now selling tea, consumer tech has crashed but in reality this is the demonstration of a fluid market - as long as the galaxy map resource view reflects these changes but sometimes it doesnt and there is another public outcry

The big fight at the minute is one main 'trading tool' that is pulling prices straight from the elite database as soon as anyone visits, while the tool in itself is a cool piece of work, it leads (in my opinion) to every trader in a Lakon 9 all arriving at once with thousands of tonnes of stock flooding the market, so at 11pm coffee was 1578 and by midnight the system is now selling coffee at 1052 whilst youre still tooling along in the your hauler with 16 tonnes of coffee

[Toonces]

Ok, I'll be the slow guy in the room.

Where is the federal distress beacon located?

I've been learning the ropes hauling hydrocarbons or some such between Azeban and Dahran Gateway.  Not much profit in that but I'm figuring out the way the game plays.  I found some loot floating around and grabbed that but it must have been black market.  I couldn't figure out how to sell it and when I left D. G. I got blasted so I suppose I did something wrong.  It was all good, though, because I was almost out of fuel with only 6 cr to my name...so I was on the way out anyway.

I need to figure out how to take a bounty and make it work.  I haven't seen this distress beacon you're referring to yet.

[JudgeDredd]

I think it's in the Eranin system - the Federal Distress Signal is there. You will see several circle icons showing you things like systems, unidentified signals etc one of them with be the FDS.

Remember when you get to the FDS you need to select your faction (go to the right hand console and in one of the pages there's Choose Faction...select that and then select Eranin (I think)). Also remember after dicing in the FDS go back to a space port and trade in your kill vouchers. For obvious reasons, I don't think you can do that at a Federal Spaceport - though I could be wrong. JH is probably the man for more info on the FDS and kill vouchers or bounty vouchers or whatever they're called. Remember, the longer you stay in the FDS, the more you stand to lose if you die. When I hit the FDS, I always set a waypoint out of there as my destination...that way when I'm getting clobbered (which happens alot when the Feds all jump you at the same time) I can jump out...and there's a couple of times I've literally made it out by the skin of my teeth. I'm sure I recall one time where I made it out with 1% hull integrity left.

As for black market stuff, best go low (silent running, low signature) to get passed da cops. I've not done much of that at all - UCG is your man. As for selling, when you go to a station and select Starport Services, one of the options will be CONTACTS - under there you will find missions and Black Market to trade on.

[undercovergeek]

toonces, anything you pick up floating around is classed as stolen, as soon as youre scanned at an authority system youll get blown up - 2 choices, sell it at an anarchy system who dont care where you got it, or smuggle your way in

Federal distress shenannigans is for JD and JH as fighters but theres going to be a whole lot more in a week as the back story explodes, currently iBootis which was a popular trading destination is at war and has dropped into anarchy - very risky place to go and a lot of unidentifiable signals are federal forces and free forces massing for the big war, and the star system hasnt even expanded enough to take the empire into account, thats next week, and then the list of empire ships will be released, and i think you might be able to reach Lave i dont know

im leaving and breathing this game right now  :-[