What are you doing (ingame) now?

[Cometborne]

Went out for another exploration run to fill the gaps in my captain's log, entered an USS, "connection to transaction server failed". Quit and restarted game client, "cannot connect to frontier servers". So basically... nothing

[anikaiful]

... unlocking engineers. 6 so far unlocked (and ranked to some extent) and 3 more in line with info but not yet done "invitation mission" for...

[Cometborne]

Talking about unlocking engineers: "The Blaster" wants bounty vouchers - will any do, or does he want specific ones? I have assembled a nice collection of vouchers from various minor factions where I do not want to claim them because of the BGS effects (Apathaam Patron's Principles, Fuel Rats), or I because I do not want to fly 100+ LY to redeem a couple 10k from <insert random faction here>. Seems like an option for a win-win. For me, at least.

[Xebeth]

Talking about unlocking engineers: "The Blaster" wants bounty vouchers - will any do, or does he want specific ones? I have assembled a nice collection of vouchers from various minor factions where I do not want to claim them because of the BGS effects (Apathaam Patron's Principles, Fuel Rats), or I because I do not want to fly 100+ LY to redeem a couple 10k from <insert random faction here>. Seems like an option for a win-win. For me, at least.

Interesting question, I just had a whole bunch from all over the place and didn't actually see which ones he took, I assume it's any, it didn't give me choice of which ones to use.

[thebs]

Apparently I just suck at PVE combat in 2.1.

[KLED]

I've been flying my Courier around for the past couple of days because I don't want to risk my Cutter just yet (I can afford insurance and a single load of cargo, so a rebuy would pretty much bankrupt me at this point). I've just been flying around, checking out an engineer and doing some very light exploring. I need to find some missions or risk the trading despite these horror stories of bugged NPCs, because I've had my ass handed to me a few times by enemies in the Courier.

I took a mission last night to destroy two skimmers at a base, so I went there and there were no skimmers in sight. There was a security Viper MkIV parked on a pad, so I thought maybe if I annoyed them the skimmers would come out to play. I unloaded everything I had at the thing and got through about half of its shield by the time they had taken off and started fighting back, then even with me boosting around and spinning with FA off they managed to turn it into jousting again and again (this being a day after a Cobra MkIII humiliated me in a jousting match as my first fight in a combat zone).

When I finally took out the Viper, got myself a bounty for murder and pissed off the Empire & system's main faction, still no skimmers. I went and parked myself on top of the building, shot at it, blew up generators for more assault bounties, refused to leave the trespassing zone, nothing worked.

Finally I jumped in the SRV and saw a signal nearby, so I headed over to it and found a pack of skimmers. They stripped my shields in a matter of seconds while I managed to do about 3% damage to one of them, so I called the ship back and blew them all up. But they didn't count because they weren't part of the base.

TL;DR: Uuuuurrrrggghhhh

Though on the bright side, I spent about an hour or so screwing around in my SRV before that. I've never ready done much planetary stuff before, so once I got the hang of driving it was fun enough scooting around and looking for materials. I need to raise about another 20M CR to buy back and outfit a Clipper, so while I haven't made more than a few hundred grand in the last couple of days it's all been interesting enough that it hasn't felt like a waste of time. At the end of the day having fun is the most important thing.

I have nothing combat-capable except an Eagle, I might just grab a new Vulture before going for the Clipper.

Edit: Oh also, the SRV with a Vive is the tits. If flying the ship in VR impressed you, try the buggy! That reminds me I need to go back to Euro Truck Sim for a while.

[Mongorians]

CMDR's,

I am currently trying to figure a decent way to level up my federation rank towards my end goal of attaining a Vette. The problem is I have no real idea how to level up my rank with the faction. Any help or reference would be greatly appreciated.

CMDR Mongorians

You used to be able to go out to 17 Draconis and just throw money at the charity missions, but this may well have been removed with the update.

Basically just keep running mission for federation minor factions.

I remember hearing about this a while ago. Like you said since the update had dropped I am unsure if it is viable. I will look into it.

[Cometborne]

The other standard systems for charity missions by federation-aligned faction are Tun and - once you have the permit - Exbeur. Their advantage over 17 Draconis is that they are in a much more populated region of space, so it is much easier to get the supplies needed.

There is also a large random element in it. Quite a few of us completed their rank grind in the weeks before 2.1, and we had quite different experiences in terms of missions supplies. At basically the same time, I had the stations and surface ports in Exbeur throwing missions at me like multicannons while Tun was more or less dry; JohnLuke had no luck in Exbeur, but found Tun running with charity missions like butter in the midday sun.

Classified data transportation missions also gave a decent promotion return vs. game time used. However, they were made much more problematic in the late days of 2.0 by allowing the cops to scan you INSIDE a coriolis station. On one memorable occasion, I started the game client while docked, used the "return to surface" options inside a station (NOT an outpost), and got an immediate "scan detected" message.

Oh, and you were able to stack promotion missions to get a nice boost into your new rank. You can also add more promotion missions at other stations/outposts as long as you have not turned in any of your current promotion missions. However, do not stack too many, as the game will scale up the probability of pirates and cops (for the less-than-legal missions) based on the number of missions. A dozen imperial promotion missions at once were enough to spawn an NPC pirate and a cop ship near the outpost above HIP 10716 1 A, which normally has next to no traffic at all.

However, the above is all from 2.0, things might be different now.

[Phillipus]

Today I shall mostly be rolling the dice as I log in and out of the different modes hoping that missions that reward with Modular Terminals spawn so that I can get access to Marco Qwent the Engineer so that I can upgrade my Power Plant on the Cutter so that I can upgrade the thrusters so that I can turn quicker so that I can destroy the NPCs so that I can get rewarded with CR so that I can...you get the idea.

[anikaiful]

Talking about unlocking engineers: "The Blaster" wants bounty vouchers - will any do, or does he want specific ones? I have assembled a nice collection of vouchers from various minor factions where I do not want to claim them because of the BGS effects (Apathaam Patron's Principles, Fuel Rats), or I because I do not want to fly 100+ LY to redeem a couple 10k from <insert random faction here>. Seems like an option for a win-win. For me, at least.

Blaster dude accepts any and all (for the unlock).