Elite: Dangerous Discussion

[EPICTHEFAIL]

Was watching one of the latest Obsidian Ant vids and he covered the new trade tools which look good, quite excited about those. Will very likely give using 3rd party sites if they work out well. Will have to convert my T9 back into a trader when I get back from my outing and see how it compares to my Cutter.

Well, the new and improved T9 has a cargo bay only a hair smaller than the Cutter, but it’s also nowhere near as capable of protecting itself, so do keep that in mind if you fly without guns and fighters.

To change the subject slightly, the Q&A livestream has revealed a few items of interest regarding the future of the game. First of all, module storage is being doubled, which is great news for people who regularly swap gear. Secondly, a few unguarded comments made about Q4 suggest we’ll be getting preliminary design ideas for the feedback forum sooner than expected, and that exploration changes will involve, among other things, more detailed planet scanning, getting information about planetary geology and surface features and the like. Nothing concrete, but as someone who spends way too much time in the system map looking at the planets’ orbital parameters, I am looking forward to it already. And wing missions are going to be a work in progress throughout Beyond, with Q4 in particular apparently including further improvements as a part of Squadrons.

So yeah, not much in the way of new information, but it’s good stuff overall.

[Chaz]

Out on the edge of nowhere.

[Chaz]

Well finally gone far enough to get Palin’s invite, now I just need to decide whether to turn back now or keep going. I’m thinking I might turn back, as I still need the sensor fragments to unlock him, and I want to be back or not far off when the new patch goes live.

[EPICTHEFAIL]

Well finally gone far enough to get Palin’s invite, now I just need to decide whether to turn back now or keep going. I’m thinking I might turn back, as I still need the sensor fragments to unlock him, and I want to be back or not far off when the new patch goes live.

Best place to get fragments is to go to the Interceptor crash sites in the Pleiades and blow up Thargoid sensors (or maybe probes, can’t remember which).

No information when the patch is coming, by the way, but hopefully it’ll be either this week or early next week.

[riesje]

make sure you’re able to do the mission, I left mine to expire, and since then Im unable to get the invite again.

[TheDreamlord]

Looks like Feb 27th is the release date for the new big update.

[EPICTHEFAIL]

Looks like Feb 27th is the release date for the new big update.

Yup, and it seems the Thargoids will be entering the Bubble once it launches. And Guardian-tech weapons are coming, which is pretty cool (I’m curious to see what this “plasma charger” is all about). Frontier have also been making changes to the KWS mechanics (pretty big ones, too, and nowhere near being nailed down), which do look quite cool.

[Chaz]

Patch notes are up, but looks like the servers will be down for quite a while.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/409060

Option added so players can choose how flight controllers address them (Commander Name, Ship Name or Ship ID) when approaching a station.

That’s nice, I wonder how well their text to speech engine will cope with some of the more unusual names though?

Rebalancing pass over station repair targets has reduced them to about 10% of their 2.4 values.

Yeah that was needed. The sheer amount of stations needing repair and the sheer amount of stuff that each one needed, coupled with the 2000ly round trip to supply the needed commodities, meant that none of them were going to be repaired anytime soon.

[EPICTHEFAIL]

Yeah that was needed. The sheer amount of stations needing repair and the sheer amount of stuff that each one needed, coupled with the 2000ly round trip to supply the needed commodities, meant that none of them were going to be repaired anytime soon.

Yup, that’s a lot more achievable for smaller player groups. Hell, maybe even individual players who truly cannot think of anything better to do and just happen to have a Cutter lying around.

That’s nice, I wonder how well their text to speech engine will cope with some of the more unusual names though?

It still pronounces individual letters, except for the Ship ID where (I think) it pronounces the first letter and the last two digits.

By the way, there’s a new Commander Chronicles video, and it’s pretty good:

Yeah, definitely giggled a bit. And then cheered when that Guardian thing appeared. Maybe it’s a ship, maybe it’s a combat drone, I don’t care, it looks sweet. And I also don’t care how big of a grind it is, I’m still going for this stuff, especially if they keep and expand upon the Guardian ruin mechanics.

[Chaz]

I see they’ve brought out another new voice as well as the new Victor one, but this one is a purchasable one from the Frontier store. It’s called Celeste, which is a bit weird because I’d just renamed my Anaconda to Celeste the other night. I wanted a name that was evocative of a derelict ship as my Anaconda is a bit grungy looking, and naturally I thought of the Mary Celeste, and so just used Celeste.

[EPICTHEFAIL]

The new Guardians content is… pretty neat. I made the trek out to the three new Guardian Structures (I’ll order them by distance, since they are lined up pretty neatly away from the Bubble), just to see what’s what, and ended up spending a whole day exploring and figuring stuff out. I like the design of the new bases - very regular, geometric, with lots of symmetry, and very deliberately planned. They make a nice contrast with the messy, biological Thargoid structures and haphazard, utilitarian human architecture. And I really have to applaud the sound design and, surprisingly, the music. Ordinarily Elite’s soundtrack is merely okay (a few great atmospheric tracks aside), but the Guardian Structure soundtrack is something else. It’s tense, but still conveys that sense of awe when you’re creeping around these ruins, and it fluidly merges into a faster but still tense combat track when a Sentinel appears, and it works so amazingly well.

The first and third bases contain the main new mechanic of the new Guardian content, the Pylon activation puzzle. Basically, you drive up to the base’s terminal (they are very easy to spot, since the bases are structured so that everything basically points towards it), see the terminal and the main pylons activate, then shoot the pylons with your SRV’s guns to charge them up. Then drive around the base looking for the other pylons while fending off attacks from the Sentinel drones. The Sentinels aren’t all that difficult, since while their impulse cannons do throw you around they aren’t particularly aggressive, and their weapons take a while to recharge. I think some of their behaviour and attacks might be bugged though, since they don’t always seem able to use them. Once the pylons are charged up, deposit an Ancient Relic (you can find them all over the place) to activate the terminal, and scan it to receive “blueprint fragment” Guardian data (required for Guardian TB items). This triggers a final combat encounter with multiple Sentinels, the number varies depending on the base.

There is other stuff at the bases, too. The Sentinels drop Guardian materials, and panels can be shot off of various structures to acquire Guardian mats as well. There are also obelisks, which this time around don’t require item combinations (thank goodness) and give various bits of data, including stuff you can also get from the main puzzle, occasionally. The second base doesn’t even have the puzzle, just these secondary objectives (and a nasty Sentinel ambush).

So, what can you get from this? Stuff. Galnet mentions delivering stuff to Ram Tah, but either this is bugged or it’s not yet available, because he doesn’t have any options to give him Guardian stuff. The Tech Brokers, however, do have some cool things, a powerplant that does seem a bit underwhelming (it’s just a pre-packaged OC powerplant), a charged plasma weapon that I’ve yet to unlock but that does look quite neat, and the one I did unlock, the Gauss Cannon…

Which is glorious. It’s basically what a C3 railgun would look like, if we had one, but in a C2 slot. Almost twice the damage of a C2 rail, much better armour penetration (140, which is mad), a silly power requirement, and only marginally less silly thermal load (25 per shot, versus a normal C2 rail’s already excessive 20). Oh, and it’s effective against Thargoids, too. So is the plasma charger, but we’re not talking about that here. As for combat performance, it may claim to be a pure thermal weapon, but this thing is born to melt hulls. It’s got high impact damage but low penetration damage, so while it’s not a great module sniper it is great at tearing huge chunks out of anyone stupid enough to be without shields and cover within its range. It does have a pretty big heat penalty to go with that extreme power, but when you have the firepower of two railguns for the price (and slot) of one, that’s really not a bad tradeoff. It does probably suffer against mirrored bulkheads, but even then it’s definitely not to be underestimated. Half of 70 damage per shot every 2 seconds still produces a rather large number, especially when you factor in that ridiculous AP value.

I imagine someone will build a Fer-de-Lance with 4 of these, cry at the heat output and power requirements and then laugh as small ships vanish in a single volley. I might do that, actually.

[Chaz]

I haven’t been out to look at the Guardian stuff yet. Just tried out the Chieftain for a bit, and then swapped most of the parts into the FAS I bought a while back but hadn’t got around to kitting out (fortunately the FAS and Chieftain are almost identical in their module loadout, the cost of each ship is near identical too). Used all A rated modules where necessary, with no engineering.

I think the Chieftain is good but a bit limited. Not much in the way of internal compartments to do anything with it but kit it out as a pure combat ship really. Good fire power and maneuverability, and I love the hardpoint placement, but you can tell it’s been designed as a Thargoid killer first and foremost, due to its more hull tanky nature.

For taking down regular NPC’s and just general mission running, I think the FAS is still the better ship. Good speed and great maneuverability and only a smidgen less fire power than the Chieftain. Also has a bit more wriggle room in terms of its internal compartments, making it a bit more handy for the occasional delivery mission and the like.

I took both of them to a hi res and had a good time taking down bounties. They’re both very evenly match ships but overall I prefer the FAS as it’s just more fun for regular day to day Elite stuff. If you’re going Thargoid hunting though, then you’ll want the Chieftain. I’ve still got both right now, but if I had to sell one, it’d probably be the Chieftain.

Loving the extra space for materials, as that old limit of 500 total units always felt woefully restrictive given the sheer amount of materials they kept adding to the game. Likewise also love that it now shows you how many you have of a material when you target it for scooping, AND you can filter out unwanted materials from your contacts list too. You’ll want to carry as much of everything as you can now too, as the materials brokers (another great addition) require obscene amounts of lower tier materials to trade in for the high tiers. But at least there’s now a way to get some of those more awkward and harder to find materials.

Still haven’t figured out how to properly use the new trading tools yet. Think I’ll need to look at a quick how to video on that one. I’m sure in one of the recent Frontier vids, they showed how to use them.

Not picked up any bounties yet, so I’m still to see how that all works out. Maybe I should go grab a few planetary scan missions, as they always seemed to hand out bounties for scanning the private beacons (and they pay very well too).

[Chaz]

I see Ram Tah has got a 30 million cred mission to check out the new ruins if you go along to Mitchel Dock in Meene. Will have to go pick that one up.

Also I hear that wings are getting 2 million per player for taking down Thargoid Cyclops’s. Anyone fancy a bit of that action? I haven’t done any Thargoid hunting yet or kitted out with any of the AX weapons, so would like to give it a go, especially with those rewards. You get paid in combat vouchers I think, so I’m guessing that’s something else you have to pick up mission wise from somewhere?

[EPICTHEFAIL]

I see Ram Tah has got a 30 million cred mission to check out the new ruins if you go along to Mitchel Dock in Meene. Will have to go pick that one up.

Also I hear that wings are getting 2 million per player for taking down Thargoid Cyclops’s. Anyone fancy a bit of that action? I haven’t done any Thargoid hunting yet or kitted out with any of the AX weapons, so would like to give it a go, especially with those rewards. You get paid in combat vouchers I think, so I’m guessing that’s something else you have to pick up mission wise from somewhere?

The Ram Tah mission - you get the new one from anywhere in Meene apart from Felice Dock and Phoenix Base. Felice still gives out the old (10 million + per-obelisk rewards) mission. The new one seems like more of the same, but in the new Guardian locations (and yeah, item combos are still a thing, it’s just that the obelisks aren’t entirely useless without them).

As for Thargoids, the PF bonds can be handed in at any stations, but you can (so I hear) pick up missions at damaged stations (the yellow icon ones) to hunt specific Thargoid ships. I think these are just normal missions, not wing missions, but I’m not sure. Where weapons are concerned, you probably already have a good idea of what you need (AX multicannons, AX missiles, flak guns, xeno scanner, field neutraliser, lots of hull tank, maybe a decon limpet if you feel like it), but I will note that the new Guardian weapons seem to be amazing at killing Thargoids. The gauss cannon rips their hearts out in one or two shots and the plasma charger seems to be very good at shredding their hull (though C3 missiles are close enough that it really doesn’t make much difference). I think I might try the gauss out on them this evening, fly the Anaconda out to the nearest damaged stations and hunt a Cyclops or two. I don’t have the charger yet, bit short on Guardian mats for it.

[Dave_L]

So this is weird: I can’t seem to mount a vehicle bay.

I’ve got the hangar mounted, but when I try to buy the vehicle bay for it it just makes a weird grinding sound and I don’t get my vehicle bay.

I’ve had an SRV on this ship before. And I know I’m not accidentally not playing Horizons because I’m docked at a planetary base. I’ve got a planetary scan mission needs doing and I can’t do it without my SRV!

[edit]Okay, looks like the error was it telling me that I didn’t have the vehicle bay when I actually did. Dumb.

[Chaz]

Tried a wing assassination mission with a random from the comms channel at Jameson yesterday. Neither of us were particularly great at combat and he had no idea how to fly in a wing. We managed to do the mission in the end but it seemed a bit bugged and I didn’t get my reward, boo!

So cmdr in chat channel says anyone want to do a wing mission, I say OK. I create wing with this guy and he selects an assassination mission. I get the message for the mission share and accept it in my transactions tab. Mission to take down the usual goon with about a 2.5 million payout. All looks good so far.

First odd thing is that only he can reveal the mission target location when we get to the target system. I have the mission also but my using the ADS does nothing, only when he uses his does it work to give us the location. Surely this should work for every wing member who has the mission and not just the cmdr who shared it?

We get there and fly around the target body for a bit, and then he sees the mission uss, but I do not. Meaning I can’t drop out into it and bring us both in at the same time with nav lock. He drops in and I just have to follow his wing beacon. By the time I drop in he’s already in combat. The target ( a deadly Anaconda), is in a wing with 5 other ships, all dangerous and above and flying a mixture of Vipers, Vultures and even an Asp. He gets destroyed the first time (he’s in a Python he only bought 2 weeks prior) and I have to bail out for repairs, as the target did not show as wanted until I scanned it with my KWS and by that time I already had an 800 cred bounty, so when sys sec arrived I was hot too.

So we licked our wounds and went back for a second go. This time made sure to keep my nose clean and we held out until sys sec arrived to help turn the tide of the battle. Finally nailed the wing and the target. I think I got about 250k or near as for the mission target from my KWS scan. The other guy had to log off, so I flew back to Jameson where we picked up the mission to hand it back in.

It was then that I noticed that I no longer had the mission in my transaction panel and that there was nothing to hand in or a reward to pick up. The mission target was clearly named as such when I was fighting it, so it seems that as soon as it was destroyed, that the mission just vanished for me and I got no reward for it. Which is a bit poo. Either that, or because it seemed all along that even though the mission was shared with me, that it was still the other players mission, and so when he logged out it perhaps went with him.

Would be nice to try another one with someone else to see if it happens again. Logged it as a bug report anyway.

Well it gave the FAS a good run for it’s money anyway. It’s a sturdy little tub. I think my hull dropped to about 30% in both fights and yet my modules were for the most part almost untouched and it remained fully combat effective throughout. In most other ships I’ve flown, by that point my canopy would be blown and bits would be exploding and fizzing in the cockpit and modules would be trashed. That’s with only 2 hull upgrades in the military slots, not an upgrade to the ship’s hull itself.

[Blackcompany]

For kicks, I grabbed an A rated Chieftain, hoping it would serve as my “one ship” and…I am both elated, and disappointed by it.

Elated at its maneuverability and performance in combat. This is a really, really good ship. It handles like a small ship, hits like a large one and fights extremely well.

But internal slots are as you mentioned extremely limited. Its basically a Medium Vulture: Good for combat, and CAN handle light delivery…but that is going to be about it.

I still wish I could just enjoy content without having to drag a fleet round the galaxy with me. I badly do. I wish I could just have one ship that was good at a variety of roles. But the dream still eludes me. And at least an A rated Chieftain is fun to fly.

[Curry]

Hey guys. Bought Elite at full price at launch. Got super fed up with the grind, slow flow of content and direction of the game (I love the flight model, so annoyed that all they do with it is give you grinds instead of fun missions, please give me freelancer style gameplay.

Anyway, I got an Oculus now, and I want to start playing again with my friend. Keep in mind I haven’t played for about a year and a half so I reckon there’s a lot of new stuff to keep me occupied and I’m gonna try not to min-max too much as that leads to the grind of doom and the death of my will to play.

My question now: is Horizon’s worth getting for me and my friend? What does it add that’s really fun? And do you have any other general tips for a returning player? Thanks!

I can get it for 17,50 euros at shady key websites and I don’t intend to give Frontier any more money than I have to.

[Det.Bullock]

I’m heading for my first black hole using a neutron star plotter to avoid having to do all the 123 jumps to get there.
Boy, I thought white dwarves were pretty but neutron stars are quite spectacular and much less dangerous for the supercharge manouver too!

[EPICTHEFAIL]

Pretty! (And quite handy to have nearby, because they let you cross nearly the whole bubble in one jump.)

Wow, three weeks since the last post, must be a new record. To be fair, I haven’t had much cause to use the thread as a personal blog lately, since I’ve mostly just been messing around and experimenting.

On the topic of experimenting though, I have an announcement to make: I am, in fact, a complete retard. I came to this conclusion after having believed that the Gauss cannon was good against human ships even though all evidence was pointing to the contrary in a manner so obvious it might as well have been carrying a placard reading “this is shit and so are you”. Well, last week’s patch disabused me of this notion after it revealed that the Gauss actually did less anti-human damage than a standard C2 railgun, which produces much less heat and draws much less power. It just happens to have a close-enough-for-government-work-to 2X damage multiplier against xenos, so it’s still amazing against them. Likewise for the plasma charger, though that is at least still a viable sidegrade to the standard plasma accelerator due to its low heat output and decently high shot speed (and ability to essentially switch fire modes depending on whether you charge it or not, so it’s the closest we have to a plasma repeater for normal ships). So yeah, sorry if I misled anyone into grinding for the Gauss if they were only going to fight human ships. They’re still good in a pinch if you find a human USS while looking for NHSS, but not great.

So yeah, that was embarrassing. To make matters more embarrassing, the plasma railgun effect got changed in a manner that did not get grandfathered, the changes being a reduction to the damage debuff and massive decreases to heat output for all railgun effects. And it’s now one of the most expensive effects in the game due to requiring four tier 5 data per application, plus arsenic and a few other things. So yeah, bit of a faff to get now, but I did have enough for two LR plasma railguns (the long range mod is still the king of the meta for hitscan weapons as far as I can tell), which are amazing. By the way, remote engineering does not remove non-grandfathered effects, so you can just apply it at G1, bookmark the mod and upgrade it at your leisure if you want.

I’m still um-ing and ah-ing over whether to go looking for a human tech broker now and gather materials for some of the new human experimentals (the shock cannon was pretty good in the beta, and the bigger CRCR might come in handy if Obsidian Orbital ever comes back online), or go hunting Thargoids while waiting for new Guardian experimentals to drop, because Frontier did accidentally leak a few new ones - a shard cannon (some kind of multicannon, I imagine), a shield booster and, most interesting of all, an FSD booster, which I am very, very curious about.