faetal on 29/3/2015 at 17:05
Right then - best way to make money early game? I'm doing lots of courier missions and now have just shy of €20k - could start buying better weapons and go shoot stuff, could buy better engines to give me better jump range. Could keep going and just wait for enough money to buy a better ship.
Tips?
[EDIT] Ok, I'm hooked. Bought myself one of (
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thrustmaster-T-Flight-Hotas-Joystick-PS3/dp/B001CXYMFS) these, despite being playable with gamepad, because I want to feel like a pilot. I'm also strongly tempted by (
http://edtracker.org.uk/) this, to complete my ghetto setup.
Malf on 29/3/2015 at 22:58
Well if you've already got a webcam, give (
http://facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/home/default.htm) FaceTrackNoIR a shot. A couple of guys on another forum I visit use it and say it works really well.
I reckon you'll enjoy the game a LOT more one you've got the joystick. Just adds something that a pad simply can't. Besides which, while "Presence" is a buzzword normally associated with VR, it's still pretty damn cool when you move your view down in the cockpit and your guy has his hands on the HOTAS setup, just like you :)
Regarding starter cash flow, well the Sidewinder's strongest point is that it's cheap to replace, so try taking it out to some Resource Extraction Sites. These are combat / mining areas in planetary rings heavily populated by NPCs.
Make sure one of your utility mounts is a Kill Warrant Scanner before heading out. After a while, you'll get a feel for which NPCs are pirates and therefore valid targets. They usually com you at the same time as scanning you saying "What are you hauling?".
Point your nose at them and your basic scanner should reveal a nice wanted sign. Scan them with the Kill Warrant Scanner at the same time, and once that scan's complete, fire away (as long as you think you can handle them).
Scanning with the Kill Warrant Scanner can reveal additional bounties in other areas of the galaxy, so you can double or even triple the reward you get for killing them.
Whatever you do, don't open fire on ANYONE until you see that red Wanted pop up in your hud. Doing so will just result in you getting a bounty on your head, at which point you'll have to disengage, fly to the nearest station and clear your name.
To make sure you're killing stuff as quickly as possible in your Sidewinder, invest in the best Power Plant and Power Distributor that you can afford. For guns, I would recommend gimballed pulse lasers. The energy drain isn't massive, so they can fire longer than burst or beam lasers, and gimballed means you'll miss less, so what you lose in raw firepower compared to the mounted ones, you more than make up in hit consistency.
I can't remember exactly, but I think the Sidewinder has two utility mounts, right?
If so, chuck a chaff launcher on the second one. That'll confuse gimballed weapons and missiles. Even if you're just hunting other Sidewinders, higher rated ones WILL have gimballed weaponry and maybe even a missile rack. In those circumstances, the Chaff Launcher will significantly reduce the amount of damage you take.
henke on 30/3/2015 at 06:24
I tried FaceTrackNoIR with ETS2 a while back but it didn't work very well. Still, if you've got a webcam you might as well give it a shot, faetal, seeing as it's free.
faetal on 30/3/2015 at 08:00
Yep. I've got a nice logitech hi-res one too, which I bought after the landlord of a shared house I was in moved in an obvious drug-dealer and generally dodgy guy, so I had one of those "send photos to offline storage on motion detection every time I'm not in my room containing £10k worth of music equipment" set-ups.
But yeah, if that works, it'll save me €50 :)
Malf - as it happens, I already have 2 gimbal pulse lasers - just need to save up €40k for the warrant scanner. Will do a bit more trading, get that and then use my first influx of credits to get the upgraded power bits and the chaff launcher, so I can make like discreet wheat.
Malf on 30/3/2015 at 11:37
Jolly good!
By my estimates, you should be able to make between 2,000 to 9,000 credits per kill targeting Sidewinders and Eagles at Resource Extraction Sites.
Progression wise, you get almost a 1:1 price for ships and modules when selling them back or trading them in, so I'd suggest trying as many ships as you can. They're all very unique beasts, and you can only find out if you like them by flying them.
Sure, you can look at the stats, but that doesn't reveal things like engine sounds or hardpoint placement. While the first can be seen as purely atmospheric, the second is very important.
For example, when flying the Cobra, you have to be aware that your two medium hardpoints are on the top of the ship and close together, while the two small ones are on the bottom and quite wide apart. This means that the mediums will have problems targeting stuff the smalls can hit and vice versa, as well as the small ones having a wider convergence point making them more difficult to keep on target. This has a noticeable affect on how you pilot a Cobra, with you adjusting to make allowances for your hardpoints.
Conversely, being purely a fighter, the Vulture's two large hardpoints are mounted very close together on the ship and very far forward, meaning gimballed weapons have a massive degree of freedom and tracking. Combined with the ship's superior manoeuvrability, this allows you to zip around less nimble ships while maintaining a lock.
And don't discount the importance of canopy visibility either. Some ships have all manner of crap obscuring your view, while others have canopies that offer glorious, panoramic vistas.
Edit: BTW, stick to low-end Kill Warrant Scanners.
Sure, the scan range isn't as great, but higher rated ones cost a lot more and require more power to operate, which takes away from power better used elsewhere.
Power balancing's a whole other kettle of fish to be aware of, but generally, stick things like your Frame Shift Drive on low priority while your guns, shields and thrusters should always be on high priority.
There's nothing like targeting a rogue Anaconda, deploying your guns and all of a sudden having your thrusters and shields shut down.
Been there, done that, barely got the ship to show for it.
faetal on 30/3/2015 at 11:45
I'm super excited. Nearing the end of my third Assassin's Creed game in a row and need something drastically different for a while before I play ACIV.
Also, played the original Elite for a large chunk of my early teens, and I have to say that this has preserved a lot of the feel of that. I never got into Frontier, which seemed to reward buying a Panther Clipper and then just flying into smaller ships using autopilot instead of fighting them.
[EDIT] What's the Open Play mode like? I'm dicking about in solo while I get a feel, but if the former is any good, I'd graduate to there after time. Also, are there is any social play option? Could there be scope for a TTLG & friends type thing?
Malf on 30/3/2015 at 12:20
I briefly tried Open before scurrying on back to Solo.
My experience was that I flew out to my usual, out-of-the-way Resource Extraction Site to start farming bounties, only to have someone arrive after 20 minutes who decided I had invaded "Their" territory and was "Stealing" "Their" bounties.
We fought three times, and I killed him twice before he took us both out by ramming me (note, it takes a while to get back to the fight as it dumps you back in your last station visited). I died once going back to repair too, as I clipped a System Security Vessel and for the first time ever, got killed while trying to dock with a Wanted status.
While the experience was fun and exhilarating (we even got chatting to each-other on the official forums, and it was all good fun), the whole thing was incredibly expensive.
The other multiplayer option is Group mode. Groups can actually be massive in size, so can be like Open but with their own social rules. One of the most popular groups is Moebius, which operates a no-PVP policy.
Wings are ways to fly with your buddies and remain in the same instance, and can be used in both Open and Group play.
If there are enough people playing, there could be a TTLG group, but due to the size of the game (it is an entire galaxy after all), it might be better to join one of the larger groups if you don't fancy getting killed without warning.
Malf on 3/4/2015 at 08:04
There is no controversy here.
While I would like my game to natively run through Steam, I'm not missing out on anything by simply adding it as a third-party game.
There are no achievements for the Steam version; adding it as a third-party game gives access to the overlay and Steam screenshot functionality.
Tell me Eva, what benefit is there to me if Frontier give me a Steam key?
Or are you just being caught up in the wave of angry internet man fervour?
Shadowcat on 4/4/2015 at 00:04
Surely getting a free key for your favourite online game distributor would be a very pleasant surprise, not an expectation? Certainly when I buy a game directly from a developer, I don't expect a subsequent GOG key unless they had stated at the time I bought it that this would happen.
If a developer does do this, it just means they're being particularly nice; not that the other developers are being dicks.
Also note that "Valve charges nothing" is not the same as "it costs Frontier nothing", so I don't think that the "no excuse" argument holds water. Firstly, I imagine they are considering that people could then give those keys to other people, unless they are tied to the owner's account automatically, in which case they either need to coordinate this with Valve, and probably get permission from everyone wanting a key to communicate email addresses between the companies; or else write/integrate some software to automatically tie the accounts together. But however they might do it, there would be processes to manage, and support to be provided, and probably some amount of involvement from a bunch of people. Time is money, and it does cost them.
I'll happily tear strips out of Frontier for some of their other actions, but I don't really see a reason to criticise them for this one.
