Elite : Dangerous .... Space is big

[Camp Freddie]

The game is looking good.
The feel of the spaceships. graphics and sounds are great.

I'm glad to see the 500 m/s limit. I remember playing Elite:Frontier with full newtonian combat, and it was just space jousting with 3 second engagements followed by a minute or two while you did a 180, decelerated and re-accelerated.
For gameplay reasons, I want dogfighting to be good.

I hope the supercruise times are balanced well. You tend to spend a lot of time flying between stations and docking, whihc is pretty boring. I hate space sims where you spend ages just trying to find the right hole to fly through, then matching speeds, rotations and all that bullshit. It's the sort of thing that's cool once ("Wow, look at this huge space station") but gets incredibly tedious the 500th time ("Motherfucker's dumped me on the wrong side again, why must I spend 5 minutes dicking about just too drop off some cargo?").
I trust they'll balance it well in the beta, since those beta testers will be doing a lot of trading/docking.

Insurance is a also balancing issue. I hope the dev forum isn't full of the e-peen stroking griefers that like high punishments in PvP MMO games.
I usually die often in space sims. Simply because it is fun to take on some above-my-level mission with a slim chance of success.
Since there's no reload button in multiplayer, punishment gets tricky to balance. On the other hand, maybe it'll make trading interesting if there is some risk. Too often, trading is a boring-but-safe grind to earn cash for a better ship.

 

[Camp Freddie]

EDIT: Nevermind, I found this: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6753
Looks like you can, but not in the beta.

Quick question: Will the final game (or the beta) allow you to own multiple ships?

One of the annoyances about Elite II was that swapping ships meant totally refitting them from scratch. It could take hours to find the right crew and equipment for your new ship. And if you didn't like the new ship, you'd reload an old save - which I assume isn't possible E's persistent universe.

I'd really like to have an Anaconda or whatever for trading, but also have a Viper so I can do some dogfighting.
I'm hoping you can just leave an old ship in a hanger and pick it up later.

 

[Camp Freddie]

I hope they keep the storage costs low. I'm sure most people are looking forward to having multiple ships so they can specialise for different mission/gameplay types.

One thing I'm cautious about with both Elite and Star Citizen is that their hardcore beta testing audience tends to skew towards the "let's include real life tedium for the sake of realism" stuff.
I thank god that RPG devs no longer listen to those people who want eating and drinking to be a mandatory part of the game. Unless the game is a survival RPG, no-one actually wants to spend their gaming time worrying about how much food to pack.
I'm not sure there's really any point in having things like insurance and storage costs, since it does nothing but add a tedious extra thing to check before leaving dock - with the inevitable 'flip desk, ragequit' moment when you forget one day and your ship gets destroyed/repo-ed.

 

[Camp Freddie]

So, they've just announced that offline mode has been cut (single player online is okay though)
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-11-17-elite-dangerous-ditches-planned-offline-mode

I expect lots of people throwing a fit about this, since offline mode was a promise in the kickstarter.
They are offering refunds for people upset by this decision, so IMO no harm no foul. It's just one of those things that happens in software development.

 

[Camp Freddie]

xoa[/url]":1ebte0bb]

Camp Freddie[/url]":1ebte0bb]They are offering refunds for people upset by this decision, so IMO no harm no foul. It's just one of those things that happens in software development.

Finally, in this particular instance their excuses are a little frustrating, both technically and in how freaking patronizing they are. Yes, the offline experience might well be worse then online. Yes, there (by definition) won't be the same level of dynamism or interaction. But rather then making the choice for their customers about whether the tradeoffs are worth it or not they should have left it up to them. Assuming they're even being honest of course, rather then just making excuses for "this will make us more money". Even if they purely wanted to code client/server, they could have offered up code for private servers too, which obviously wouldn't receive any more content from them, but I'm sure the community would make do.

I agree that you make some good points. I guess it depends on how you view the kickstarter, but there are things to complain about either way.

If you looked at it like pre-ordering a game, then the big change in scope is pretty shitty. Their store looks much more like a pre-order store than a kickstarter these days.

I looked at it like making an investment, Kickstarter VC-style. I expect changes, but I also expect the dev to make a serious attempt to deliver the original promise. Their main fault here is communication. Thinking a bit more about it, they must've known a long time ago that offline mode was going to cause major problems. They'll have known that the server-side stuff being run on the beta servers would need some local duplication for the offline method.
As an investor, they shouldn't treat you like an outsider that needs to be kept in the dark and handed with PR platitudes about "achieving our vision".

I guess I'll change my opinion from "no harm no foul" to "this could've been communicated better".

I hope the silver lining is that the online evolving galaxy and [curated] events stuff is going to be a big thing. The loneliness and static feel of the galaxy was one of the my biggest turnoffs for the old elite games. Once you've found a great trade run and got a good ship and a big gun, there's not much to actually acheive.
I'm not really interested in the PvP side of things, but I want to feel that the galaxy is actually changing.

 

[Camp Freddie]

Arbelac[/url]":1n8pkapn]

+fuckity+

Sorry Frontier, you done fucked up and sent a beta version to release just to make the Christmas rush.

It was kind of cool for a few hours of gameplay, and it is pretty, but the fact that FD over promised and under delivered isn't great. A lot of people were expecting Elite + 20 years of gameplay improvements, not Elite 1984 with better graphics, easier docking and a shit multiplayer implementation.

The extreme ramp in ship costs, not to mention operational costs, means there's really no way to fight your way up to the medium size ships. Anything past an Asp (and even that is a lot of combat) basically requires space trucking.

The yaw nerf is really grating on me the more and more I play as well. Fine if you want to adjust it down, but it's ridiculously low right now.

Dammit. I really want to buy this game, but the design decisions seem terrible.
The grind and emphasis on the least enjoyable aspect of the game (space-trucking an optimised route) just turn me right off.
The fact that they still haven't fixed the warp points being a million miles away from some stations (a major problem in Elite II, I'm looking at you Alpha Centauri!) is ridiculous. I don't want to have to bring a good book to read when I'm supposed to be playing a game.

The insurance/repair/ship costs look insane, and heavily encourage the most boring and carebear of playstyles.
The fun in a space sim is taking your ship to the limit, taking risks and occasionally limping back from a mission with half your engines destroyed, 10% hull integrity and life support failing. Doing that in this game turns a heroic victory into a bankrupting failure.

And what is with the player griefing? In earlier games, if you fired on a ship near a station, you'd have a fuckton of police vipers on your ass and a seriously expensive fine. It was often worth the fine to kill a mission target, but was generally a bad idea. How can players just sit outside a dock and just blast anything leaving? Especially when the penalty for being caught smuggling is apparently being instagibbed by the station defence.

I do like the idea of pitch/roll being king though. IMO, for gameplay fun, yaw should be roughly equivalent to rudder in flight sims. Essential for fine control but not for major shifts in orientation. They can nerf it too much though.

 

[Camp Freddie]

Wudan Master[/url]":25dspr8c]A procedurally generated planet is the same as a procedurally generated universe, vast and dull.

This.
I think that most people don't want to land on planets or walk around their ships, but the vocal hardcore want to live out their dreams of being Captain Kirk or whatever.
I think they are imagining ship simulation as like being in a Star Trek episode and landing on a planet means worlds as rich as Coruscant and Avatar.

Personally, I want something more like Privateer/Freelancer/I-War, but using the Elite engine. So you have a story to provide some background and immersion, though you mostly ignore it and do your own thing. The Elite Universe seems too bland, too much like a tech demo.
It would be great if Frontier made a more story-focused spin-off game, especially since the whole MMO part seems to have descended into hackers and griefers.

 

[Camp Freddie]

Also, cats eat birds.
and... erm... some people use clippers to trim their cat's claws?

 

[Camp Freddie]

I decided to get this at last. The powerplay update sounds like it'll provide a nice metagame and make the galaxy feel more like a real living thing rather than numbers on a spreadsheet. Acting as a space-privateer for a patron sounds a lot more attractive than random acts of piracy.

I'm just doing courier/messenger stuff for now, though I did pick up an illegal rebel transmissions mission, which was cool once I figured out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing.
For smuggling, what can catch you and what happens if you get caught? Do I just need to dodge police ships? Will I just get fined, or will the station blast me with a death ray from 5 km away?
I got away with it by looking out for police ships and just boosting into the station as fast as I could. I suspect that some sort of stealth approach might be the 'right' way of doing things.

I'm keen to try out some combat, but I foolishly sold the guns on the sidewinder, thinking it would let me get some cargo space or money, and that the starter guns would be useless anyway.
What do I need for entry level combat and where should I do it in (relative) safety?

I think Lee's review is spot on that this is an amazing spaceship flying game. The sound and flight controls are excellent.
I have the excellent Thrustmaster X HOTAS and I'd say it's almost essential to enjoying the game. A throttle control really helps because a lot of game mechanics depend on it. There are a lot of controls, so it's good to have a lot of buttons (but you'll probably still use the keyboard for some things!).
An X-box controller or single joystick would be just about okay-ish, but there just aren't enough inputs to make it feel right. I'm sure some people play with kb/m, but it'd be hard to really enjoy playing the game that way.
I'm sure head-tracking/multi-monitor/occulus will make the game much better, but aren't necessary like a HOTAS. Likewise, you can spend crazy money on a HOTAS and some of them look really cool, but the basic Thrustmaster does the job just fine.
I get a strong feeling that no two players will have the same control mappings (Targeting mapped to the trim controls! Are you insane sir!?)

 

[Camp Freddie]

Thanks for the advice guys.

That Crab guy has some really nice google docs printable/editable controller templates, which I'll base mine on.

I think I'll have a quick exploration of kill-stealing at a RES site while I have my freebie Sidewinder, then I might try it seriously in a Cobra (or maybe an Eagle/Viper if I really like it).

 

[Camp Freddie]

After making a bit of cash by trading in my starter sidewinder, I got a couple of gimballed burst lasers and tried out some combat.
I also had my first death. Some big ass trade-ship blocked the cargo slot. I could only see it by the fact that it blocked out all the stars.

Helping the system police in a RES is a much faster/funner way of making money to get your first 'proper' spaceship.

For any newbies like me, I'd advise using courier missions and trading to get used to the controls and how the game works, then get some gimballed lasers from a high-tech system and upgrade the power distributor so you can fire for more than a few seconds without overheating.
Then find a Saturn-like ringed planet with a station orbiting one of its moons. There will be some RES sites at a short cruise from the station. Just fly around the asteroids and look for gunfire. Find out what the police are shooting, lock it until it shows as wanted, then blow it the fuck up (or distract the pilot with your your annoying laser pointer while the police vipers do the big damage). Jump to another site or back to the station once the area is free of pirates (I usually find 3 or 4 pirates before the area cools down).[edit: nope, just boost around a bit and the pirates will keep coming, thanks for the correction shifty76]
Gimballed burst lasers cost 9K each and do enough damage to make you competitive against pirates (i.e. not relying on the cops to help you out).

I assume that the 'difficulty' of RES sites is linked to their remoteness/wealth [edit: maybe not, it seems!]. Because I'm close to a station, the site is probably worthless for mining, so I'm only seeing pirates in Cobras or weaker - and usually outnumbered 3:1 by the spacecops.

 

[Camp Freddie]

Badaboom[/url]":34phumwz]Disclaimer, I'm new. I'm also flying a only slightly upgraded Eagle (two burst lasers and one multi cannon all gimballed). So my understanding is that the easiest way to make money is through bounty hunting. I've hit up plenty of nav beacons (sometimes successful) and signal sources (also sometimes successful). I've done some trading when I had the sidewinder, but I'm not a huge fan of putting every $ I have into the cargo hold and hoping to avoid interdiction at this point in the game.

I have managed to get my jump range up to about 10.5LY unburdened (9.8 or so burdened), so I'm finally able to get out of my starting area. Does everyone start in the same place? I started near LHS 3447 and Eravate. I guess I'm looking to find some RES zones so that I can start to fill the coffers. I made about 35k over 3 hours last night, and I blew 16 of that doing a personal weapons mission for the Federation. Last night was especially bad for finding things to kill.

So I keep reading that resource extraction sites are the places to find things to kill, but I've only ever found one and that was accidentally while I was in a stock sidewinder. Where do I find these things?

(also, game is fun, after switching to a HOTAS X, I'm enjoying it a lot more)

RES can be found in planetary rings. If you can find a planet in the system map that looks a bit like Saturn and has a platform orbiting one of its moons with the 'industrial/extraction' economy-type, then it'll probably have an RES.
There's probably more to it than that, but this worked for me.

 

[Camp Freddie]

I upgraded to an adder last night.
On paper, it's a fantastic early ship. Decent jump range, decent cargo and internal bays, 1 Med and 2 Small hardpoints. It get's relatively little advantage from class 3 shields, so you can fit a class 2 shield and use the class 3 slot for an extra big cargo bay.
I think I spent about 250K on it altogether, including major upgrades to the FSD and power distributor and moderate upgrades on just about everything else.

Unfortunately, in practise it's not quite so awesome as the stats suggest. The hardpoint placement is awful since the 2 smalls are on the bottom and the medium is on the top. This means that gimballed small weapons can't fire on targets that are slightly above you, and visa-versa for the medium weapon (fortunately, the gimball AI will not let you shoot your own ship!).
Manoeuvrability isn't bad, but it's not quite as good as the sidewinders/eagles/vipers that will be your primary opponents. So using fixed guns isn't really a solution.
On the positive side, it has plenty of power for small lasers, so I'm upgrading the pulses to burst. A high DPS weapon is much more important when I can only fire in certain orientations.

Despite the drawbacks, it's still a good ship for the price - especially if you want a multi-role ship and are bored of the sidewinder. I think I'll keep it until I can afford a Cobra.

 

[Camp Freddie]

The funniest NPC name I've seen was Maggie Milksnatcher. She was preying on miners, just like her realworld counterpart..
Unfortunately, the lady was for turning and hit her FSD.

It make me wonder how many other random-looking names are actually obscure references.

I've upgraded my Adder to a Cobra. It's a huge improvement, even with only modest upgrades. The small hardpoints have limited movement, but the mediums are good and it seems to handle better than the Adder in combat.

It's a pity the Diso event ended early, since I think I'll try out a rare trade run. Does trading build reputation with the faction who owns the buying/selling station?
I could do with building some rank for Sol and the Imperial Courier. I'm wondering if the Courier and Diamondback will fill in the gap between the Cobra and Asp, or between the Asp and Clipper? It seems like the Courier should be designed to be an optimised rare-trading ship. The Diamondback looks/sounds like it should be a good combat-mining ship.
I hope the clipper hardpoints aren't in some stupid position. The courier could have terrible convergence and tracking issues if the guns are in a bad position on the nacelles.

I managed to snag a combat bond just in time for defending against Patreus. Only got the 150K reward, but it all counts. I assume there is no fancy reward other than keeping Quivira independent.

[edit: fixed url]

 

[Camp Freddie]

PSA

New community goals:
Weapons to Persephone (not clothing!)
Or
Food to Summerland (need permit: lord rank)

 

[Camp Freddie]

The Courier looks smaller than I was expecting, but it's really hard to get a sense of scale from looking at cockpit sizes.
Based on Elite 2, it should be more expensive than an Asp - but who knows what they'll do this time.
I'm hoping for a high-performance ship, since I dislike it when space sims make make the ships increasingly tedious and annoying-to-fly as the cost goes up. I know for sure that I'll never want to fly a Type-9 or a Panther Space-Brick.

Maybe the Diamondback will slot into the annoying grindy place between the Cobra and Asp. There's a really big gap between <500K ships and >5 million ones.

I haven't had much time to play recently, but I've been messing around with a "Do ALL the things!" playstyle. I'm combining some ad-hoc rare trading with hopping into all the community goals. The goals tend to be 100-200 ly apart and it's much more fun to explore between them than to grind out a top X% grade or endlessly circle in a rare-trade bus-route.

 

[Camp Freddie]

dredphul[/url]":jjrfpvn9]That sound after hitting boost in a dark RES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYLDnQK ... e=youtu.be

OK, so I'm never going in a dark RES. That's just way too risky.

It looks like my next upgrade will be a Vulture, with a cost of 12 million to get some decent kit... ouch.

What weapon loadouts are people using in the Vulture (and Asp)?
I've just been using gimballed lasers and multi-cannons, but I'm guessing the large hardpoints favour fixed weapons (fixed cannon?)
But the Vulture only has 2 hardpoints, so do people have 1 laser and 1 kinetic for shields/hull?
I'm wondering if hit and run tactics with twin cannon would be a good idea.
How manoevrable are the Vulture and Asp (compared to a Cobra)? I'm hoping the Vulture is still fairly nimble since it's a pure fighter. The Asp looked a bit slow when I've fought them.

 

[Camp Freddie]

After a few near deaths and fines, I tend not to go crazy with speed docking any more.

My current trick is to practise using flight-assist-off to perform a perfect pirouette into a position directly in front of the mail slot. It's like gymnastics for spaceships.
I aim for a position in front of the mailslot and boost from wherever I'm dumped out of frameshift, then hit FA-off and zero the throttle. The trick is then to orient myself into a position facing the slot and re-engage FA at the right time so that I coast to a halt just in front of (and facing) the slot.
Nearly died once when I forgot to zero the throttle in FA-off, causing me to skid sideways into the station.
Anyway, it's good practice for using FA-off in combat without ending up in an uncontrollable spin.

 

[Camp Freddie]

I'm really hoping they boost the mission rewards. IMO they should give much better cash than just repeating a trade route or RES. The downside being that they are random/situational, so you can't use them as a guaranteed income.
The "Pirate this illegal cargo for me" missions are ridiculously hard/random/risky for a pathetic reward. Even the assassination missions are pretty silly, since you can get 150K in combat bounties much easier than you can with the buggy hunt for a tough-as-nails NPC.

I'm expecting Powerplay to nerf RES bounties though, they're just too good right now. It's too easy to get a 100K bounty on something by relying on the police to provide support and a meat(metal?)-shield. I have to remember that my Cobra can't solo a Clipper in an interdiction, no matter how many I've killed in a RES zone.

I sold a whopping 3 tons of metals to Wolf 406 just so I could get the diamondback discount. I expect that goal to be reached very quickly.
As I write this, "Preparing for the President" is almost complete, so cash your bounties in now if you have them. I reckon it'll be gone in a couple of hours. Still some way to go with the Sobek Boys though.

 

[Camp Freddie]

The Mobius PvE group is pretty good for trading CG's. It gets congested and feels alive, but no arseholes try to kill you.
People are also pretty good at exchanging trade tips, since the CGs can cause nearby stations to run dry due to all the demand.

I'm more of a combat player, and reaching the 70% goal is possible in a cobra without a huge time investment.
If you're starting off, then you can sell a single ton or bounty to qualify for the lowest reward of 75-100k, which could be useful.

They add some nice lore to the universe too.

 

[Camp Freddie]

Damn, I turned up too late to Persephone with my medicine. Had 38 tons of rates though, so still turned a nice profit.

Note that the Diso rare corn reward applies to everyone. There were 50t waiting for me and I never participated in the event.

Looks like the new Persephone goal is empire bounty turn ins. Hope this will raise my rank enough to get a courier, though the sneak preview stats on it are hugely underwhelming. They're all worse than the stock cobra stats but at 5x the cost so I assume it must have excellent agility or really good upgrade potential.

 

[Camp Freddie]

The new ships seem a bit underwhelming.
The Courier is a Cobra with better shields but worse internal space. It probably fits in as a Viper upgrade, and has a decent jump range.
The Diamondback is Cobra with better armour and much worse internal space. It's probably best used as a cheap pure explorer (shields, scoop, disco & surface scanner and that's all you have space for!). The strong hull probably helps if you pull an Icarus while exploring. Hopefully the powerplant can run cool while scooping.
I think most players will prefer the Cobra to either of them.

I'm not sure I like the 10% charge on selling outfitting. For all the 'realism', it makes playing a multi-role ship a lot less fun and strongly discourages experimentation. 10% will be a huge amount on Class A Clipper/Python/Anaconda equipment.
People will just end up designing their build on 3rd party websites and sticking to it, rather than 'organically' upgrading whenever they spot something that looks like it could be good.
IMO, the difficulty in finding the right upgrade components already acts as a sufficient barrier to prevent excessive module-swapping. Insurance already provides a big money sink.

I'm interested in the potential of Powerplay, since it will make the systems and zones feel different. It sounds like it might need more dedication than I'll provide though.
I certainly hope you don't get marked as hostile in all other powers' controlled space (i.e. most of populated space). I had assumed it would be more like community goals, where every week a system or two would be fought over (and thus easily avoided if you want to play regular Joe space-trucker for that week).
It sounds like all systems are fair game for 'preparation' and you're 'hostile' fair game for everyone with another alignment. I hope I've misunderstood this.
I'm sure it will be hell to balance it though, especially if the goals are asymmetrical - like if one goal is 'trade a bunch of stuff' and the counter-goal is 'kill traders'.

The mission spawn/balance changes sound very good though. I hope it will make them worthwhile.

Finally, I got a Vulture. It is good, especially versus large ships which die quickly to the large hardpoint guns. It's agile enough to beat the fighters too. Mine has an A-grade jump drive and class 4 scoop (because the outfitters didn't have what I wanted). It works very well for travelling around, since the big scoop re-fills the small fuel tank in barely more than the FSD cooldown time. This is a good example of why 'free' outfitting is a good idea, since I would never have tried it if it would cost me a significant amount to swap later to the optimum min-maxed loadout.

 

[Camp Freddie]

What does fuel use depend upon?
Is it only based on the jump distance, or on ship mass/size, FSD class/rating, etc.
The Diamondback seems pretty pointless, given the small fuel tank.

I might get a Courier when powerplay launches, since it's small, cheap and looks good. The internals are generally lower class than the Cobra so the costs to upgrade might make it cheaper overall than a decent Cobra. It seems to have really good shields too.
Still, my Vulture is going to be the clear winner for srs bsns combat. Maybe the Courier's lower insurance will make it useful for testing out risky missions.

 

[Camp Freddie]

I guess the Courier could be good for powerplay delivery missions. From what I've seen, they use up cargo space - but you probably won't be able to load up hundreds of tons of them.
The Courier would make sense as a combat-focused Cobra.
The Elite Wiki shows that it has a huge shield capacity, only just short of the Vulture's. With 4 utility slots for shield boosters, good speed and a small body, it could be really hard to kill.

Anyway, a new community goal, expires in one day!
Thargoids have kidnapped the President's Daughter Spaceship. Are you a Bad enough Dude to rescue her?

Sadly, while my Vulture is definitely a Bad Dude, it lacks any realistic ability to explore the final frontier and return the reports to Azaleach.
Lacking funds for an Asp, I've gone with a cargo-less Hauler, HMS The Map Is Not The Territory
It can jump 27-30 light years and the tiny mass means a jump takes a maximum of only 0.9T of fuel, allowing >100 LY in 4 jumps on a single tank. The scoop fills it in 30 seconds from empty, and you can easily stay topped up by scooping (at <max rate) while you run a detailed scan on the star.
All for 2 million credits, 85% of the cost being the scanners and only 300K for the rest of the ship. It can be done for a mere 1 million if you drop from an advanced to an intermediate scanner.
By comparison, it would cost about 15M credits for an explorer-focused Asp with 32-35 LY jumps and 6 jumps to a tank.
The Hauler is vulnerable to interdiction, and the heat shielding isn't the best - but it'll do. A chaff and/or heatsink launcher could make it a bit safer, at the cost of a LY or two of range.

The space near Azaleach is becoming rapidly explored due to the goal, but I got (my first) first discovery on a gas giant in a system about 150LY away. It has a name that looks like a randomly generated "uncrackable" password, but I saw it first!
I am become an explorer of worlds.

TLDR: If anyone is returning from an insane Sag A* run or similar, head to Azaleach today and claim a big community bonus reward (sign up before turning in the reports!)

 

[Camp Freddie]

I think there was a low-ish level backer reward to get you name on the NPC name list.

Looks like the president has been captured by Thargoids since the community goal failed. :devious:

 

[Camp Freddie]

It's hard to know what to think of powerplay. Some stuff looks like pointless grinding, and the payouts seem low or non-existent.
Why ferry a load of junkmail to grind up a faction bonus to trading, when you could take some rares and get actual cash?

Some people are complaining about a huge grind, while others are rage-posting about hypothetical traitors who could get level-maxed in every faction to build an overpowered supership from all the exclusive modules.
It all seems a bit contradictory, since if it's a grind, no-one will be doing it 10 times to get what is at best going to be a 'flavour' side-grade to some module. I'm pretty sure the unique items won't be better in every way than the regular versions. I mean, this is a game where the basic pulse laser is generally more useful than a plasma accelerator. Frontier aren't following MMO-style power curves (thank god!)

I just hope the new powerplay missions include interesting stuff. I (naively?) assume that carrying propaganda items will cause opposing faction NPCs to try to interdict you. Pity that there seems to be no reward for the mission though. Im not a Jehova's Witness, I'm a mercenary - and mercs get paid!
I've been a bit annoyed by how easy trading is. I'm rarely interdicted and when I am it's an eagle or occasionally a cobra. My worst experience is last night where I deployed weapons without realising I'd gone over my power cap in a recent upgrade, causing the whole ship to power down. Despite being dead in the water for about 30 seconds while I tried to redirect power, the NPC eagle only got me down to 95% hull before I could jump clear.

 

[Camp Freddie]

Some new effects of Powerplay have been added to the beta.

Each power now has passive effects on its controlled and exploited systems, which often vary based on the system's Fed/Emp/Allince/Neutral allegiance.
They modify illegal goods and the costs of certain goods, as well as bounty rewards and other things.
Most importantly, they affect everyone.

This looks pretty good to me, since it makes trading (and other jobs) more varied. You'll be able to find some trade routes that benefit from combinations of power effects, but will change as the powers' control fluctuates.
It gives people the option to not join a faction and be a true mercenary, making serious cash by exploiting power-struggles in the borderlands.

I'm still not completely sold on space risk though, and 1.3 seems to have been designed by hardcore "realism" fans who probably put "Spaceship Commander" as their profession on their census forms.
They seem to be adding a lot of real-time decay effects, coupled with the 10% tinkering fee for switching modules.
Now, your fed/imp/all reputation will decay in real time to friendly/unfriendly. If you go inactive for a week, you WILL decay from allied to (the high-end of) friendly. Which pretty much means that I'll never be allied with anyone except at the end of a play session. Combined with the bounty changes, it also means you can be a griefer/troll once per week and at worst be "unfriendly" to the space cops when you next log on.
The powerplay 'merits' decay by 10%/week too, so you'll need to spend an hour or two grinding those just to keep in the low ranks of a power.

I've always seen Elite as a "background game" and something I'll play to relax for a couple of hours when I don't want to play whatever my flavour of the month game is (currently Witcher 3). Making my standing decay will just mean I don't play casually, since I'd just be grinding to get back to where I was when I logged off.
I don't mind some high-tier faction rewards being given out to the top X%/week as a reward to the most dedicated players - but even the basic rewards (let alone the unique equipment) seem to need a constant grind at the moment.

 

[Camp Freddie]

I think some basic tutotials on how bounties/mining/powerplay works would be useful.
People are not really figuring it out as they go along, since the penalties for fucking up are pretty severe (insurance or rep loss can take a long time to recover from).
People are looking on wikis/reddits/fora to find out how the hell you do mining or what a RES is or what the powers do.

Glad to hear the outfitting cost has been dropped. I think it'd be okay to have something that's in line with the repair/refuel/reload costs, but 10% is a huge penalty for the Python and Anaconda, which are multi-role ships that are designed to be flexible.

I'd like to know if they are prioritising any particular areas/playstyles for future updates. e.g. exploration, smuggling, combat, faction politics

I didn't see the point in planetary landings or FPS expansions at first, but I now think planetary landings would be a brilliant way to make exploration more interesting. Landing on a planet could be quite tricky if you don't have the right heat/thruster setup to deal with climate and gravity differences. It could be a really pretty and atmospheric (pun intended) way to get a sense of scale, which you otherwise lack (is that a nearby red dwarf, or a distant red giant?)
The tricky part would be making enough variety to make you want to do it regularly.
You should definitely be able to get a "first!" credit (and serious cash credits) for being the first to set foot on a planet...
...but not literally. I still have zero desire for an FPS mode. The debug camera can look around outside and take some cool screenshots while I'm landed, I don't need anything more.

When I want to play an FPS, I'll play one. It won't be Elite. It's a saturated market with lots of very dedicated teams making good games. A relatively small space-simulation dev. team is not going to do a very good job. Star Citizen might manage it, but only because their Frostbite engine was designed for FPS games and they have a bottomless moneypit to pay for a complete FPS dev team.

I expect some powerplay bonuses will be toned down. 20% discount on slaves is about 3K/ton, before you add the extra profit from supply/demand differences. I'm okay with smuggling making that sort of cash because of the high risk of getting caught, but it's too much for regular trading.
Also, slavery? It's really not something I want to be encouraged to do in my escapist fantasies. I certainly wouldn't want it to be the best way of making easy cash.
It'd look a bit bad if new players going to reddit were immediately told to start trading slaves to get the cash for their first ship upgrade.

 

[Camp Freddie]

I'm not a fan of storing modules since it will cause a huge amount of tedious logistical admin and flying around to retrieve stored items. It's not going to make the game more enjoyable.
And it would still prevent ad-hoc tinkering because buying all the items outright would be hugely expensive when you just want to give them a try, which is why I dislike module fees in the first place (unless they are very low).
It seems like one of those "now you have 2 problems" solutions.

Anyway, it turns out the Diamondback comes in 2 flavours. Scout (the one we've seen) and Explorer (new, bigger, slower, more expensive).
The explorer looks like a very good alternative to an Asp and is between the Cobra and Asp in costs. Jump range is over 30LY when optimised and it can fit a scoop/shield/auto-repair/disco/detailed in its 5 internals (4,4,3,3,2).
It also has 1L and 2M hardpoints, making it the cheapest ship with L weapons - though I suspect it's too slow to compete with couriers (let alone vultures) in combat. People are saying it handles like an Asp.
It could be very good for rare trading with a 24T of cargo and a big jump range, while keeping a reasonable shield, scoop and guns.

 

[Camp Freddie]

schizrade[/url]":2p8y60tf]
I am currently headed back in to sell crap tons of data, equip bigger fuel scoop, biggest FSD and wait until 1.3 drops to get a secondary 32T fuel tank.

There's a huge Exploration CG just starting. It's supposed to last a month and has 10 tiers, which should mean a big payout at the end.

If you're heading back from some epic exploration mission, follow the news story to sign up to the CG before you sell the data (sorry, I can't remember the system name).

I decided to un-mothball my exploration hauler, fit a class A powerplant (much more heat protection, thanks to others for pointing this out), and head out to Betelgeuse.
It's about 500 LY and I wanted to see a big star.
TO be honest, it's not that impressive, since you can't really get the sense of scale. It looks much the same as a red dwarf, except you'll be fuel scooping it from 2000 LS instead of 2 LS.
It's not impressive until you stop to think that most stations (that I'd consider docking at) would be inside the star.

So, explorers - what are good things to see that don't involve Sag A* or similar size journeys?
I'm thinking of stuff maybe 1K LY out and I'm not bothered about getting "First!" credit. Are nebulas anything special?
Wolf-Rayet stars?
Where are some decent sized black holes (i.e. where you can see lensing) ?

 

[Camp Freddie]

SnowGhost[/url]":2y6zxngc]

alterSchwede[/url]":2y6zxngc]Does anyone else have the problem, that very occasionally the discovery scan fails?
What happens is that I honk at the system, i get the message that this many astronomical objects have been discovered but nothing shows up in the navigation menu. It does tend to work after the second honk, so it's not too much of a problem.

Yep, I've had that and also had details surface scans fail and it does it a 2nd time.
Same as you, never idetified a common situation I can point to as the cause.

I've had both those issues, but it's not common. I think it's just a server glitch or something.

PSA: people say there is a bug(hopefully) that is adding wear and tear damage again, with the insane repair costs from v1.1 (800k for a couple of percent damage on a python, etc.)
Actual combat damage rains cheap-ish to repair, so it's likely to be a bug.

 

[Camp Freddie]

There is only ever one type of each weapon per size. So you can't really upgrade, unless you consider a burst laser as an upgrade of the pulse laser.

Pro-tip for explorers:
Not only is there a CG, but the system is controlled by some dude that gives 15% outfitting discount (even if you aren't in his faction).
So, do the following
1) sign up to the CG.
2) Sell your advanced and detailed scanners (and anything else stocked by the station)
3) Sell your system reports (you must do something to waste 10 minutes so the buyback option expires)
4) Buy the discounted scanners and other modules
5) You are 250K richer and your insurance will be cheaper too

 

[Camp Freddie]

I haven't figured out powerplay myself yet, but I think you must make a major contribution for 4 weeks to qualify for tier 3 or more.
Tier 5 seems like an impossible grind that is for the hardest of the hardcore.

 

[Camp Freddie]

I had lots of server timeouts trying to sell my data, and I only had 6 pages. It made me 1.5-2 M credits and put me in the top 40% of the CG. It's only reached Tier 2 though, so there's a long way to go.

I took a trip to VY Vanis Majoris, which is maybe the biggest star in the game.
You can fuel scoop it from >5000 LS

On the way back I found an Earth-like binary and a couple of other Earth-likes, plus a few water worlds and gas giants with water or ammonia-based life.

I also found a couple of binary star systems with an improbably tiny gap between the stars (the gap was smaller than the diameter of the stars). I tried to run the gauntlet through the gap, but had to bail out as it got too hot. My hauler doesn't have the luxury of auto-repair or heat-sinks.

 

[Camp Freddie]

PapagenoF[/url]":314f4d9f]Quick question: has anyone figured out what the difference is supposed to be between illicit and illegal goods?

I'm guessing one is for stolen/pirated and the other for goods banned in the local system laws. I never noticed the different words myself though.

 

[Camp Freddie]

dredphul[/url]":3du34to0]A reddit post on why people doing PowerPlay should play in Solo mode: http://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/ ... solo_mode/
tl;dr -- You can easily farm NPC rival ships for cash and merit points in Solo versus the shitastic yields in Open
...
The increased amount of Diso rares will be expiring soon and I might try mining as a way to generate revenue. I don't think I want to go back to doing rare trade loops (been there and done that). I've made zero credits mining (I tried early on but got blown up before I cashed out), so it'll be something new at least.

I thought the Diso rare bonus ended ages ago. I would've done another round of trading if I knew it was still on!

Regarding Open vs Solo, I think everything is better in solo since the only reason to play open is if you like being ganked or ganking.
I'd love to try playing in open, but the death penalties are way too high. I know that NPCs won't kill me unless I do something stupid, but any player in a Clipper/Vulture or better could easily kill me and dump me with a few million in insurance costs (meaning I spend 2 or 3 days grinding back to where I was).
With the whole powerplay thing, I suspect that attempting any activity in contested systems or any community goals (the lore for which is based on powerplay) in Open mode would result in death very quickly, either from griefers or powerplay 'roleplayers'.

The latest path did NOTHING to fix RES sites. I jumped in a high intensity and a normal intensity and saw ZERO miners. Both had 4 system police ships. The high intensity one had a single pirate Adder, the normal intensity one had no-one except system police. This is in a system where the pirates are getting a massive boost in system influence due to a "Help the Hand Gang" community goal.
I didn't bother logging in/out or jumping to FSD and back to 're-set' the spawn, but the fact that empty RES sites exist shows that they're broken. I expected pirate activity to be lower than v1.2, but this is ridiculous. Do the Devs even test?

Conflict zones are much better now, and much more fun than a RES. I was doing 1 M credits in an hour at the Hand Gang CG zone. This was in a courier, so the lack of firepower limited my profits. The AI is much improved, even at mostly harmless/novice (the CG seems bugged so it's low ranking ships only). They chase you and seem much better equipped (more chaff, more turrets on big ships).

Anyway, I was going to post a quick review of my shiny new Courier.

The Good:
Excellent shields (equal to a Vulture, better than a Clipper!) and small physical size make it one of the toughest/safest ships in the game (but RUN AWAY if your shields drop!)
Small sizes for everything mean it's very cheap to get it fully pimped to A-spec (about 7 million)
Lots of powerplant power, so you can A-spec everything and make few compromises.
Good manoeuvrability, good top speed. You can track small ships and run from big ones.
Excellent view if you're using head-tracking.

The Bad:
Firepower is very limited by the Class 3 disributor. Even 3 pulse lasers will drain quickly.
You'll probably want at least one (multi)cannon.
I tried 1 pulse and 2 multis, which is a lot of fun (moar dakka) and lets you fight without needing 4 pips to weapons.
Lots of guns but little weapon power means that a boom and zoom/hit'n'run combat style could be effective.
The Vulture is better in almost every way (but costs twice the price).
Although it doesn't run hot, that reflective white-and-chrome paint-scheme isn't just for style. You'll heat up a lot when scooping (and you'll do a lot of scooping because the fuel tank is crap). Get the A grade powerplant, even if you don't need the power.

The Ugly:
Nothing. This is the prettiest ship in the game (with the arguable exception of the Clipper).

 

[Camp Freddie]

CQC looks like fun. I wonder how it will be implemented. I doubt they'll just let you kit out what you want and fight.

Knowing FDev they'll make it hideously expensive and/or grindy - but with a bit of luck they'll let you pay some trivial entry fee and give you free insurance for dying in the arena.

I've found that in v1.3, you get no notification about rank-based system permits. I ranked from Cadet to Petty Officer in the last week. I only discovered that Sol is now open to me when I tried plotting a course on the galaxy map and found that it now allows it.

 

[Camp Freddie]

The latest patch seems to have fixed Conflict Zones.

I dropped in on Tau Ceti . Sadly, I couldn't find a robot army on Tau Ceti III but I found a civil war.

The enemies ranged from competent to deadly in the 40 minutes or so that I was there.
I tried out a fixed beam plus 2 gimballed cannons on my courier. It's not a good idea.
The fixed beam is great fun and the power is managable. Gimballed cannons are a bad idea since they're too inaccurate.
Enemies always died from hull breach rather than powerplant, because these guns aren't accurate enough.
Vipers were my nemesis, since you need a gimballed laser to kill the buggers. A 'deadly' one took me longer to kill than an Anaconda.
Got half a million credits before I ran out of ammo.

The combat AI is much more evasive now, so I think the guns need another balance pass.
All projectile weapons are relatively useless at range due to the travel time. You'll want to be within 500M or they'll miss (and ammo is too limited to spam it). Multicannons seem okay, but plasma, rail and cannon are for point blank use only - and it's much harder to keep in range since the AI will now boost away if you get too close. Railguns and frags have too little ammo for anything except single target attacks (i.e. PvP and assassination contracts).
Fixed lasers are good fun, but gimballed lasers are just too good since they are essentially a guaranteed hit.
I think a fixed beam and fixed cannon could be good for 'big game hunting' but you'll spend forever killing a Viper.

I'm still not sure what the best loadout is for a courier. I think I'll try 2 gimballed pulse on the wings, plus a low energy gun on the fuselage. The placement makes a fuselage gimbal unable to track much above the horizon, so a fixed cannon could be good.

The courier is a great ship for a high-intensity CZ. You need good shields if you want to stay for a long time. The courier can survive ramming attempts by the AI that would crush a Cobra.

 

[Camp Freddie]

It's still not clear how powerplay merits carry over, since the terms have not been properly defined.

The basic explanation is that you carry over half your merits into the next week.
A more detailed explanation said that your merits from last week are halved and added, your merits from 2 weeks ago are quartered and added, your merits from 3 weeks ago are eighthed and added, and merits from 4 weeks or more ago are ignored.

What isn't clear is whether the detailed explanation takes the 'merits earned' in that week or the 'merit total' at the end of each week.

Plus there is lots of extra math due to the free merit-mcguffins, and teething problems with a 6-day week 1 and FDev's subsequent decay adjustment.

IMO, it's likely that the detailed explanation is talking about the merits earned in those weeks, such that the overall effect is roughly equal to the simple explanation.
My quick calculation is that you'll need to earn/buy 5,333 merits per week to get a 10,000 merit plateau (10,000 = x + x/2 + x/4 + x/8, solve for weekly workload of x). That would cost slightly more than your salary if you just tried to buy your way in (plus the opportunity cost of hauling 5,333 tons of mcguffins to fuckknowswhere).

If they using end week totals like some people optimistically assumed were double-counting the last 3 weeks, then if you keep your end-week total value at 10,000 merits, you will plateau at 8,750 of merits carried over and only need to top up 1,250 each week. That would be 'easy money', since even a Type 6 trader could shift 1,250 tons/week (costing 12.5 million but earning 50 million salary).

Anyway, good news everyone - RES sites seem to be working correctly.
Of course, I jumped in to the first High-RES I saw and forgot that the bounties are from minor factions now. So after killing some dangerous-deadly enemies I have >100K bounties from Glissen Hermits'R'Us Corp, who live 220,000 Ls from the RES. I don't think I'll be claiming that one. The police didn't show up either, so it was hard work taking out a dangerous dropship 1-on-1. The maximum potential bounty earnings seem as high as in v1.2, but I suspect you'll be kiting/retreating/dying a LOT more so the realistic earnings seem approximately balanced with mission rewards.

I also did a few assassination and pirate-hunting missions. No bugs there either. Found a wing of 8 NPC wanted sidewinders while looking for pirates and felt that I had to try interdicting them. I got one before the swarm of angry bees knocked out my Vulture's shields.

Repair costs are still bugged, but I found a workaround. I had 25K bills for 3% damage to a shield booster (worth about 250K new). For some reason, the station root-menu repair cost was bugged (about 60K), and the repair menu itemised cost was bugged (25K per 97% booster, 5K for 99% guns), but I got a (hopefully) correct total cost of 11K when choosing the "repair all" option at the top left of the repair screen. It seems like all the bugged costs are from weapon/utility modules. The itemised ship hull and internals repair costs were all very low.
So, watch out if you use expensive turrets.

EDIT:
Someone might've figured out the merit decay formula based on the current merit totals in week 3. It's a bit wierd and based on keeping track of how many merits you earned each cycle.

Your merits = this weeks earnings + last weeks earnings + half earnings 2 weeks ago + quarter earnings 3 weeks ago + eighth earnings 4 weeks ago.

So if you have constant weekly earnings, you're total will be 23/8 your weekly earnings. This means that you can hit 10,000 merits and a 50M salary by earning 3479 merits per week, which would cost 35M credits, giving a 15M credit weekly profit. You'd need to pay over 100M before you got any significant earnings though, so it's only a money-maker for the seriously dedicated (and don't think of going on holiday for a week!)

IMO they need to get rid of the rank salary bullshit and just pay reasonable amounts for casually performing powerplay missions (i.e. like other missions involving transport/assasination/piracy). Currently it's not worth bothering with powerplay unless Elite is your 2nd job.
IMO, powerplay should give about half the reward of the random missions (since powerplay stuff is not based on bulletin board RNG). It shouldn't be the top moneymaker but it should pay for itself at least.

 

[Camp Freddie]

I dropped in on some another hi-RES site.
Things seem much like v1.2, in that you get different types that are determined when the instance spawns (i.e. dropping from FSD, or logging in).
High intensity seems to guarantee that the enemies are high-level, but not big ships (though I don't know how a deadly pilot could still be flying an eagle...)
The police will still turn up in force at a hi-RES, but they sometimes take their time to spawn in.

Vultures, Couriers, Pythons and FdLs should find it a good (maybe the best) way to earn cash. Multi-role ships could probably make some decent cash too, but a wing of high-level Eagles or a well-armed Python could force you to retreat or die.
In a Viper/Cobra, you can probably do some kill-stealing from the police to make some cash, but you'll need to pick your fights carefully.

I did find a bug, which might be due to the system being contended (Mutijalibi or something, close to Coquim). Killing pirate-faction guys made my approval go down with both the empire and federation factions.
Also, handing in the bounties (1.8M, mostly imperial, at the imperial station) didn't raise my reputation at all. It doesn't seem to be a big effect since it didn't change any of the Allied/friendly statuses, but it did give me red arrows on all Fed/Empire major and minor factions. And although my pirate faction rep is also marked by red arrows, trashing 1.8M of their ships wasn't enough to downgrade me from neutral!

I think I'll go elsewhere since I'm trying to rank up in the Empire to get a clipper (one day...)
The pirate-clearing missions seem like a very good way to get reputation and money without pissing people off. Pirates spawn fast in open space near the star when you've got one of those missions equipped (bring an interdictor!).