Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

Well, I have to say that I'm at least interested in learning how it works. I've figured a few things out so far, seems like it actually could be fun. I pledged to T-1000 (Hudson), bonuses are nice for BH, getting discounts in my home system. Found a military strike that was basically a CZ for PP, but after a few kills it suddenly disappeared. Did the supplies and voucher deliveries, was able to see my impact on the system status which was cool.

As for the RES hunting, high intensity really isn't as far as bounty hunting, better off in regular RES and resetting to get a good spawn. I've been reading some things about ship integrity well I did a test... took my python with a 6.2 mill buyback showing 0cr 100% integrity. I hunted in a nearby RES until I earned 1 million credits then returned. My ship integrity did not budge at all. Maybe because I never take the Python anywhere it never suffers integrity loss, dunno. Seeing Courier and DB ships in RES now too.

DB Scout is a super fun ship to fly. I have one fitted with 2x2 MCs and 2x1 beams. The ship is nimble, much more fun than the Viper in my opinion. Great part is even fitted for combat you get 22LY jump distance

I'm still trying to wrap my head around PP, as it progresses though it is starting to make sense. Does anyone know where the modules info is listed or how that works?

Moved to Powerplay forum

stummies wrote:DB Scout is a super fun ship to fly. I have one fitted with 2x2 MCs and 2x1 beams. The ship is nimble, much more fun than the Viper in my opinion. Great part is even fitted for combat you get 22LY jump distance

Absolutely agree with you there, stummies! After seeing your comments and comments from Unnamedboxcar in another thread, I had to kit a Scout this morning.

I love having beams and multi-cannons again! Don't get me wrong... my Vulture is a heck of a ship, but for less than $7mil all ready for battle, this little scout is a beast!

I have "A" modules where appropriate, and as long as I keep 2 of my shield cells powered down, there is enough juice to run everything just fine. My loadout is here.

I can confirm that the bug that kept modules (such as shield cells) from being reloaded when powered down has been fixed.

I took the DS into a RES, and was surprised to see most of the wanted ships in wings of 3. My first encounter was two DB's and a Courier. Surprising, to say the least! I would certainly agree with others who have mentioned that the NPC is more of a challenge now that prior to 1.3. I had to be selective in my targets and much more careful about taking on winged ships that were higher level.

I have not pledged to a power. I don't know that I want to, although there are financial rewards. I plan to move my home base to Alliance space at some point and don't want to fight off the locals when I get there.

Ok on the RES stuff, so far I haven't been having luck at any kind of RES. Regular ones (not high or low) seem to fair better, but even them so far I've yet to get a decent spawn. I think UnmarkedBoxcar managed to get one the other day but I haven't.

I also have been running an experiment on integrity. As previously mentioned my Python is 6.2 million buyback. I have collected about 1.5 million in income between various RES locations and travelling to Eravate to fight in a CZ for 30 min or so. With all of that my ship interity is now 99% with a bill of 50k to fix it. I am not fixing my ship and will continue to use it to see how much it ends up costing me. I will say so far the integrity doesn't appear to really be that big of a hit...

On the power play stuff, it seems for the most part all I can do is courier missions, which of course I'm not really interested in doing if I have a choice. I've been doing a few runs here and there but there is a time limit on it, and I have to wait 30 min between runs to generate another load (or pay 100k to fast track it). I have a total of 160 merits now. I can see activity in PP, lots of systems need me to do deliveries or risk being lost. I guess my issue here is unless I pay dedicating time towards it is problematic, the generation of cargo to transport is too slow and I end up having to wait 8 or 9 minutes between a run. It also seems there is only 1 thing I can do that is combat related, and with that only 3 systems total I can go to PP CZs... everything else available is courier missions. Am I missing something here?

stummies wrote:Ok on the RES stuff, so far I haven't been having luck at any kind of RES. Regular ones (not high or low) seem to fair better, but even them so far I've yet to get a decent spawn. I think UnmarkedBoxcar managed to get one the other day but I haven't.

Had a reasonably 'normal' one last night, clippers and dropships, only been to one 'High Intensity' and it wasn't intense at all.

stummies wrote:I also have been running an experiment on integrity. As previously mentioned my Python is 6.2 million buyback. I have collected about 1.5 million in income between various RES locations and travelling to Eravate to fight in a CZ for 30 min or so. With all of that my ship interity is now 99% with a bill of 50k to fix it. I am not fixing my ship and will continue to use it to see how much it ends up costing me. I will say so far the integrity doesn't appear to really be that big of a hit...

I believe w&t integrity loss bottoms out at 70%, it doesn't affect anything normally, but obviously during combat if you lose your shields you are already x% closer to destruction.

The current cost has been acknowledged as a bug, so should be fixed soon^TM https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=152685&page=4, post #54.

stummies wrote:On the power play stuff, it seems for the most part all I can do is courier missions, which of course I'm not really interested in doing if I have a choice. I've been doing a few runs here and there but there is a time limit on it, and I have to wait 30 min between runs to generate another load (or pay 100k to fast track it). I have a total of 160 merits now. I can see activity in PP, lots of systems need me to do deliveries or risk being lost. I guess my issue here is unless I pay dedicating time towards it is problematic, the generation of cargo to transport is too slow and I end up having to wait 8 or 9 minutes between a run. It also seems there is only 1 thing I can do that is combat related, and with that only 3 systems total I can go to PP CZs... everything else available is courier missions. Am I missing something here?

I think (although I may be wrong), depending on power, you only get combat missions in certain scenarios, for example Arissa Lavigny-Duval doesn't use combat for preparation, there may also be rank restrictions.

stummies wrote:Ok on the RES stuff, so far I haven't been having luck at any kind of RES. Regular ones (not high or low) seem to fair better, but even them so far I've yet to get a decent spawn. I think UnmarkedBoxcar managed to get one the other day but I haven't.

Yesterday was I was testing my new DB Scout, I had medium size ships.... FD, Clipper, Python in the RES. When Boxcar and I were on in the afternoon, we had a 3 ship wing of wanted Clippers! It got exciting, but our Scouts took them all out... with the help of the cops.

I'm seeing more security services Conda's, and I have yet to see a wanted Conda since PP came out. I have seen several Eagles, Cobras, and Vipers that are high level and the bounties on them are in the $40-$50k range. Easy money for the 10-20 seconds that it takes to splatter them.

I've spent all of my RES time in regular sites, BTW. I have found that the bounties for larger wanted ships doesn't seem to be as high as it used to be.

Xebeth wrote:Had a reasonably 'normal' one last night, clippers and dropships, only been to one 'High Intensity' and it wasn't intense at all.

Yeah, that's about the best I've gotten too few a short burst of clippers/pythons/dropships, but then just small ships. Will keep trying.

I believe w&t integrity loss bottoms out at 70%, it doesn't affect anything normally, but obviously during combat if you lose your shields you are already x% closer to destruction.

The current cost has been acknowledged as a bug, so should be fixed soon^TM https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=152685&page=4, post #54.

Great, good to hear. I was testing only because I hadn't seen any response, and figured I'd eat the cost and try flying my Python.

I think (although I may be wrong), depending on power, you only get combat missions in certain scenarios, for example Arissa Lavigny-Duval doesn't use combat for preparation, there may also be rank restrictions.

Hmm, yeah Hudson has combat for expansion. Typing out a response kinda gave me the answer I was looking for, what I think I need to do is plan out doing expansion so while travelling I pick up the courier crap (prep, control) on the way. I felt like I was going to break stuff if I just killed things in expansion without putting any effort into maintaining what my faction already has, and hauling is boring for me.

So I read this...

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=152781

...and this makes me think the days of me calling Fusang home are over. It looks like Spawns are less random now and require some hunting to find good spawns. So far since 1.3 I haven't been able to pull in more than 400-500k before I run out of ammo or the spawn fizzles.

Conjecture for sure, but I'm going to do a little hunting to see if what they're saying is true.

I saw that post too.

I went into the RES at Fusang this afternoon with my new DB Scout. First I tried the regular RES... not much going on at all... hardly any wanted ships. I shot over to one of the low intensity sites in the same ring at Fusang 3 and found a LOT of small ship action. Vipers, Eagles, Cobras, etc. They paid $20-$45k per kill and kept me busy non-stop for quite a while. Sure... not a big paycheck but I have to tell you... it was a BLAST zipping around in the Scout chasing those pirates!

Then I decided to visit the high intensity RES at Fusang 2 (the one at Fusang 3 was dark). Immediately upon dropping in, I got a wanted Python. Then another.... and another. Yes, three pythons litterally back to back. They were not in wing (hardly any other ships on my sensor at all), and there wasn't a security service ship anywhere in sight. It was straight up one-on-one fighting. Two were novice and one expert. Then after a couple of minutes a Dropship spawned, then another Python, and a Clipper that almost killed me. I don't know why, but I have a hell of a time killing clippers. I had to run back to the station with 30% hull and a cracked canopy after some intense fighting (BTW, the clipper won). Oh.... and each ship paid around $80-100k.

Sure, the bounty wasn't as much as the 'good old days' of last week but the fun factor was high with the swarm of little ships and the intense one-on-one with the big ships. Obviously the spawns varied GREATLY between the 3 RES, and I'm sure it would have varied some if I had just reset the instance too, but I wanted to try the different intensity sites today.

IMO, we were all making way too much $$$ by bounty "farming" in RES in version 1.2, and it's been corrected to a more balanced level now. I mean honestly .... why should you be able to make $1-2 million per hour cruising around a RES having fun shooting ships? It was great while it lasted, and now I still enjoy BH but with different expectations.

If I want to know that I'll make $1-2mil per hour, I'll jump in my T-7 and transport some freight. (I usually do that about 1/2 of my gaming time anyway)

..... just my $0.02 worth.

I am taking a wait and see approach.

There has been enough talk about issues with RES, Bounties, Integrity Costs, System Prep, and others that I am waiting to see what happens to fix things before I even consider pledging and locking me into a Powers area.

On the integrity costs, my T7 which has always been extrememly cheap to to maintain has seen the cost issue come up. 1% wear and tear was over 45K credits last night. Before 1.3 it would be 2K. If this is not intentional, then I will hold off purchasing any larger ships for a while.

The idea that RES are only spawning low level ships is a little bit of a problem for me if I wanted to pull the Vulture out. I hope that gets fixed this week as well. Especially if the Bounty changes are going to force me to move around more.

I knew this weekend was going to be an issue when they popped 1.3 on late Friday afternoon, but it seems that this release was a little more problematic than the last time they dropped a Friday patch. Maybe it's my memory playing tricks on me. Does anyone agree that this release had more issues that kept people from playing than the last one?