Elite Dangerous

[duncs500]

I am finding it strangely addictive, even if it is I suppose quite boring at times I find myself thinking about playing it and looking forward to it. I get addicted to anything with a goal I can push towards.

[RobYob]

I am finding it strangely addictive, even if it is I suppose quite boring at times I find myself thinking about playing it and looking forward to it. I get addicted to anything with a goal I can push towards.

Yep it's boring and I haven't even done the legendary Hutton orbital yet! I always have a laptop or tablet to distract me from the boring bits of supercruise, I can even hang out a load of washing with the controller nearby to do long jump sequences.

Still a thrill to get a PVP interdiction though and hazrez/Combat zones get ugly quickly. The scoop of stuff to to is just insane.

Oh and players are hollow square/triangles on the radar NPC are solid, triangles beings weapons deployed ships.

[RobYob]

Well, for "fun" and profit I've tried Smeaton Orbital runs this week. I was making a lot of credits but it's a desperately depressing way of "playing" the game.

Think I'll get out of the bubble this weekend and try to unlock Professor Palin.

[ilmostro]

Top tip, at 7s time to target throttle to 75% and you'll never do the loop of shame again. I have 75% throttle hot keyed just for this.

This.

Never get below 7 Secs. Also the mail slot on the station always faces the planet, so if you can manoeuvre your ship to drop out of SC between the planet and station, you should be well aligned to dock quickly.

[RobYob]

Not mine, saw it on reddit. A stunning massed jump to hyperspace in preparation for the Small Worlds Expedition.
One day I'll join one of these expeditions.

[RobYob]

just finishing up a big trip out to the Lagoon Nebula and wandering around. Discovered a lot of systems. No Earthlike worlds unfortunately.
My favourite discovery.

Ringed moon orbiting a Ringed gas giant with Andromeda tucked off down on the left and the Milky way (-1000LY under the galactic plane) on the right.

[duncs500]

I was delighted when I finally managed to get some passenger cabins and a sufficient level to do some passengering. Those big payments have been teasing me for a long time, so I hastily accepted one. I then realised that they wanted taking half way across the galaxy!

How the hell are you supposed to navigate that?! It was something like 115,000 Ly. I aborted it.

How do you navigate big distances like that in a sensible amount of time?

[duncs500]

I also found a place where you can buy a Federal Corvette. Beast.

[RobYob]

How the hell are you supposed to navigate that?! It was something like 115,000 Ly. I aborted it.

How do you navigate big distances like that in a sensible amount of time?

Neutron star boosting gives you something like 300% more jump range but is risky.

Basically ferrying passengers long distance isn't that profitable in terms of time invested.

Stacked passengers to the same sightseeing spots or stations a long way in supercruise are.

[duncs500]

How do you even do it? The navigation computer can't calculate a route hardly anywhere.

[RobYob]

How do you even do it? The navigation computer can't calculate a route hardly anywhere.

How far are you trying to go? Nav computer should be able to set a 10,000LY route IIRC. I did notice though that out in the sticks where I've been with low star density it does get sometimes confused and claim there's no possible route.

Are all your star filters on?

There's heap to check out less than 1000LY from Sol.

[duncs500]

It was struggling with 700-odd ly on mine. What filter do I need to apply?

[RobYob]

It was struggling with 700-odd ly on mine. What filter do I need to apply?

Working from memory sorry.
In the galaxy nav panel (third tab) you can turn on or off certain startypes, this can be useful at times. In the beginning just have them all left on.

What's your jump range?

[duncs500]

About 20Ly IIRC.

[RobYob]

About 20Ly IIRC.

Should be plenty for most places you want to go.
Have you tired navigating to one of the popular systems around a 500LY hop away like Maia or Sothis?

One trick is that if you click on a star in the galaxy map after plotting a route the game will try and jump straight there rather than using the multiple jump plotted route.

Or is it failing at the route planner stage?

[duncs500]

Failing at the route planner stage.

How do you get to places out of range of what the map can calculate? Just work your way back on the map to somewhere in the general direction that it can calculate to?

[RobYob]

Yeah, work your way toward your destination by hand in the galactic map recalculating the route until it falls over I guess. But it's unusual for it to fail if you allow it to use any star type to jump to and you've got 20LY range. I have noticed at odd times the route finder will fall over and you have to work your way towards somewhere with a more direct route that the finder can cope with. The only times that has happened to me though was when I was way out from the galactic plane and pretty much every system I jumped into was undiscovered.

There's online tools like this that you can use to generate waypoints every 1000LY or so.

Can you tell me where you are and trying to get to?

[duncs500]

Oh nowhere in particular, I had somewhere a long way away when I tried that passenger mission but I just couldn't get it to calculate a route.

That route planner doesn't seem much good either, I put in Sol from my local system Eravate with various max jumps from 20 down and it just said 76Ly or something and only the two waypoints Eravate and Sol.

[RobYob]

That route planner doesn't seem much good either, I put in Sol from my local system Eravate with various max jumps from 20 down and it just said 76Ly or something and only the two waypoints Eravate and Sol.

It' was mainly for older versions of the game I believe where the in-game route planner wouldn't do more than 1000LY reliably. That website breaks up a trip to Sag A or Colonia into more manageable kilolight chunks.

If you were to use a DBX, AspX or Anaconda with 60+LY jump range it would probably have you crossing galactic arms at places impossible for a shorter range ship to do.

Back to your problem, have a look at the star type filters in the galaxy map, see if any are turned off or you're somehow filtering your route.

Nicked shamelessly from reddit.

Next week is going to be good for engineering and trading Bonus week

Now, do I stretch the budget for a 'Conda or keep on Pythoning?

[ilmostro]

I'd stick with the Python, as I think I ended up spending about 600 Million kitting my Anaconda out. I only started getting the big ships when my balance was over 2 mill. (edit 2 Billion I meant)

EDIT:

Of the Big Ships:

Anaconda is a good all rounder, trade, combat, exploring, plus not rank locked.

Cutter is good for trade, as you don't need to have a lot of defence / weapons due to it's inherent straight line speed. It's also hopeless at turning, so it's best to not get into a fight.

Corvette is unbelievably manoeuvrable for a ship its size, so if you want to go fighting, that's the bad boy.

I guess the other big ships (T9, Beluga, etc) have their uses in trade and passenger missions, but I only do those when I'm saving or there's another cash cow cropping up.