Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

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Re: Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

Postby Don Vito » Tue Apr 12, 2016 12:35 am

Cmdr Kharma wrote:Yep.....

Take the smaller ships seriously if winged.....

Nearly bit the bullet the other night.....

Dismissed the 2 sidewinders in the wing and went straight for the Asp.....

BIG mistake......

Sideys normally last about 10-15 secs if encountered alone.......

But when you are not paying attention and have 2 of them AND an Asp opening up on you, shields disappear pretty quick .....

Took one sidey out...But had a cracked canopy and no shields...So legged it with about 40% hull......


When combatting a force that has superior numbers take out the smaller ships first, fastest way to reduce fire-power being deployed against you.
Leave the plasma accelerator, take the food cartridges.

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Re: Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

Postby Soup Grelos » Tue May 24, 2016 6:36 pm

Well, I usually do the opposite thing, using chaff to avoid small ships fires. Once I get rid of the big one ,they take the drive, the cowards, lol

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Re: Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

Postby GaidinBDJ » Thu Jul 28, 2016 9:43 am

I've got a couple dozen hours in and here's the things I've figured out that I wish I had known earlier.

    Don't sweat too much about what system you start out in. Just pick a decent-sized system near where you start that has a station close to the star and start doing your thing. If you want a system with lots of player activity, Lave seems to be a good choice. Personally, I started in (and am still based in) Eravate.

    Screw up in your Sidewinder. Even if you get the money together quickly, don't upgrade and risk a more expensive ship until you've learned the ropes. Run a few delivery missions to nearby systems so you get the hang of flying, docking, and so you work out your controls the way you like them. Later, when you get into scooping, practice in a Sidewinder.

    Ideally, you've got a stick and throttle. A good game controller would be a second choice (like and XBox 360 controller). Playing effectively by keyboard (especially if you have an interest in combat) is best left for the second coming of Eubie Blake. Either way, play with the controls. ED lets you use buttons as "shift keys" so you can map a d-pad to something like power allocation by default and then have (Button)+(D-Up/Down/Left/Right) be for fine thruster control for docking/landing. You can also allocate a separate set of controls for situations like driving your buggy or when your landing gear is deployed.

    Cobras are your friend. Save up for a Cobra MkIII as soon as you can. They're good multi-purpose ships with lots of fuel space and can take some sizable components for when you want to customize one for a particular task. Right now, I have three. If only I could name them...

    1. One for "in-system/short jump" that has cargo bays, a buggy hangar, and a fair amount of cargo space. This I use to hit up planets and go camp Nav Points/RES.
    2. The second is for mid-to-long haul cargo that has lots of cargo space, a scoop, and upgraded friendship frame shift drive, and an advanced scanner. I use this one for rare runs and "mission meandering" where I just stop and pick up the top paying delivery missions and move on. (That's why the advanced scanner. So I can quickly find destination ports)
    3. The third is eventually going to be one that I take out "to the black" to explore/sightsee but for now it's my jack-of-all-trades that I swap out stuff on all the time. Right now, it's sort of outfitted for mining because there were a couple stupidly high-paying mining jobs at my home hub the other day.

    So, yeah, I'd jump straight to the Cobra as the direct upgrade to your Sidewinder unless you've done some Googling and have a specific role/mission in mind. Even if you just want to snag a mission, it's usually pretty cheap to swap in (or outright add) basic components to fill a particular role. I wasted my money on Adders, Haulers, and Eagles thinking "Well, it's more expensive so it must be an upgrade" and being pretty unsatisfied with the limited options the provided. A Cobra is a good multipurpose ship.

    Do community goals if one come up near you. I had a trading-run one pop up 200ly or so away that, with about 2 hours of easy runs, is going to net me 10mil once it's over. Keep an eye out for those in your neck of the woods.

    Learn how to scoop. It's not hard and you'll need is to be able to travel decent distances. It's not that hard. When you jump in, point your ship so that your ship is heading into the middle of the "glow". Once your scoop engages, throttle to zero and rotate so the star is directly below you. If you're scooping too slowly, nose down a bit and throttle up for a second or two before dropping to zero and put the star back underneath you. If your heat gets to high, nose up and do the same thing. Heat in the 60-70% range is save and you should have a somewhat reasonable scoop rate. Once you get that down, you can get into heat sinks and riskier sun-diving stunts. Also, I've never been interdicted by an NPC in the "heat zone" of a star. Not sure if it never happens or is just rare, so you should be safe in an unshielded mule ship if you're willing to be patient

    I got all twitterpated when I saw that Erevate had an RES with low temp diamonds and thought "Wow, that'll be easy money." and spent way too much on a big ol' mining setup only to discover they're rare. Frankly, mining is a pain in the ass in ED. I'm sure some people have carved out a niche doing it but, unless you have a high-paying mission for something you know you can mine easily, I'd skip it until you can get into the big ships and do it properly. Mining is definitely an a economy of scale in ED.

    If you have Horizons, hit up planets. Driving that buggy around is *fun*. I'm beginning to forgive Nemesis for the "Picard wants to drive his buggy" scene. If you want to make decent change at it, fly around above 2km in your ship until you see the blue circles. Land in the middle of one and set out in your buggy to look for the outpost. The buggy scanner is odd. It's basically divided into thirds horizontally. Signals near the bottom are resources you can shoot and scoop, signals in the middle band are outpost/ships, and signals at the top are data point. First thing I'd do once you get your buggy on the ground is drive a bit away (100m or so) from your ship and turn and see what it looks like on the scanner. That should give you an idea of how it works. Anyway, go find the outpost, shoot down the drones (if you have a throttle and stick, I'd map your mouse axes to the turret so you can switch to your turret for *much* better shooting ability). Grab two cargo containers and drive back to your ship. Then board your ship and land it right next to the outpost to ferry the rest back to it. No point in taking a lot of long trips. Cargo space is *very* handy in your planet-exploring craft.

Well, that got a bit rambly. Oh well.

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Re: Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

Postby thebs » Thu Jul 28, 2016 2:51 pm

Soup Grelos wrote:Well, I usually do the opposite thing, using chaff to avoid small ships fires. Once I get rid of the big one ,they take the drive, the cowards, lol

I'm in the small ships first camp. Less guns coming from different angles. Take out the smallest first, then get the big guy.

BTW, before an Anaconda, I'd never take on 3+, and only 2 in a Python. Now, I feel confident with 3+, in an Anaconda.
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Re: Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

Postby thebs » Thu Jul 28, 2016 2:57 pm

GaidinBDJ wrote:I've got a couple dozen hours in and here's the things I've figured out that I wish I had known earlier.
    Don't sweat too much about what system you start out in. Just pick a decent-sized system near where you start that has a station close to the star and start doing your thing. If you want a system with lots of player activity, Lave seems to be a good choice. Personally, I started in (and am still based in) Eravate.
    Screw up in your Sidewinder. Even if you get the money together quickly, don't upgrade and risk a more expensive ship until you've learned the ropes. Run a few delivery missions to nearby systems so you get the hang of flying, docking, and so you work out your controls the way you like them. Later, when you get into scooping, practice in a Sidewinder.

While I agree on learning in a Sidewinder, being I made my early money through trading, I'd recommend a Hauler once one feels comfortable. I didn't bother with an Adder, and I'm glad I did not. But I did get into a Hauler.

Just watch the FSD range ... couldn't make a trip, and got a bounty on my head as a result. Also do the CGs, the best way to make a lot of money ... fast. I wish I would have known about them when I first started. But I didn't until I was already in a Asp/Vulture.

GaidinBDJ wrote:
    Ideally, you've got a stick and throttle. A good game controller would be a second choice (like and XBox 360 controller). Playing effectively by keyboard (especially if you have an interest in combat) is best left for the second coming of Eubie Blake. Either way, play with the controls. ED lets you use buttons as "shift keys" so you can map a d-pad to something like power allocation by default and then have (Button)+(D-Up/Down/Left/Right) be for fine thruster control for docking/landing. You can also allocate a separate set of controls for situations like driving your buggy or when your landing gear is deployed.

If money is an issue, the Thrustmaster HOTAS-X is a great value. Here in the US, they run US$50, but they are often on-sale for as little as US$30.

Otherwise, I'm totally into the Saitek X-55 and, now X-56. I got my X-55 on-sale for US$150. But I just paid US$250 for the X-56.

GaidinBDJ wrote:[list] Cobras are your friend. Save up for a Cobra MkIII as soon as you can. They're good multi-purpose ships with lots of fuel space and can take some sizable components for when you want to customize one for a particular task. Right now, I have three. If only I could name them...

Agree on the Cobra Mk III, although I also like the newer, Viper Mk IV for protecting oneself doing various jobs. The latter can be configured with >20ly range IIRC.

But I did go from the Sidewinder to Hauler to Cobra III. I really enjoyed my time in the Hauler, and I still buy one when I just need to pick up an old ship at another Starport.
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Re: Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

Postby GaidinBDJ » Fri Jul 29, 2016 11:05 pm

Schmobius wrote:
Black Rose wrote:I've mentioned this in other posts, but I use reverse thrust all the time when in combat, pretty much for the entire battle, unless my prey is running.

I started doing this after a Clipper did it to me, and was counter-circling my every move. It was like he was glued to my 12 o'clock, and it was scary. Since I was driving an Asp at the time, I didn't fare well taking the full force of his guns without respite.


This is an amazing tip. I tried this at a RES the other day and was tearing through ships. I also found it handy to play around with toggling flight assist so that if they overtake you while you're in reverse you can just flip flight assist off and pitch with them as they fly past you and be firing the whole time.

The only drawback is I did smack into an outlying asteroid because I wasn't paying attention to how close I was getting and couldn't see it.

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Re: Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

Postby GaidinBDJ » Sun Jul 31, 2016 1:28 pm

Got a new one:

Bind "Flight Miscellaneous->Enable Frame Shift Drive to Supercruise" to its own control, especially if you have Horizons and make planetary landings. A lot of times on planets, you'll set your route before you leave only to find out your next jump is blocked by the planet. By making supercruise its own key, you can just fly straight up until you escape mass lock, translate to supercruise, and get the distance you need to get a line of sight to your next jump destination all without having to reset your nav target.

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Re: Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

Postby thebs » Sun Jul 31, 2016 7:56 pm

GaidinBDJ wrote:Got a new one:

Bind "Flight Miscellaneous->Enable Frame Shift Drive to Supercruise" to its own control, especially if you have Horizons and make planetary landings. A lot of times on planets, you'll set your route before you leave only to find out your next jump is blocked by the planet. By making supercruise its own key, you can just fly straight up until you escape mass lock, translate to supercruise, and get the distance you need to get a line of sight to your next jump destination all without having to reset your nav target.

This is an automatic. On my X-55/X-56, it's Toggle 3 -- up for Frameshift (any), down for Frameshift (low wake-only).
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Re: Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

Postby Michael Connally » Tue Sep 06, 2016 9:23 pm

I recently set up a command for 25% forward throttle. I have found it way more useful than I thought it would be. I use it during fuel scooping sometimes when I'm almost empty. I also use it when taking my time to fit the anaconda through the mail slot. It's also great while using the cargo scoop.

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Re: Tips and Tricks for a Brand New player

Postby Loriath » Wed Sep 07, 2016 6:12 am

Michael Connally wrote:I recently set up a command for 25% forward throttle. I have found it way more useful than I thought it would be. I use it during fuel scooping sometimes when I'm almost empty. I also use it when taking my time to fit the anaconda through the mail slot. It's also great while using the cargo scoop.


Nice. Do the same for 75% and you will never overshoot a target again. Hit it when you are 6-7 seconds from your target and it will auto adjust your speed so that you don't have to do a "Victory Lap" again unless you are like the rest of the A-Team and are often shooting soo much Bull that you end up doing the "Victory Lap" every second approach.
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