Elite: Dangerous

[someone else]

Don't own this game. Is mining or trading fun? I find it boring in space sims in general, combat is where the fun is.

 

[praetor]

Is mining or trading fun?

mining can be fun... for like 20 minutes. trading is not even remotely fun. combat is really fun

 

[Burning Bridges]

Mining can be fun if you know what you're doing. It can also be extremely frustrating. The trick for me is not to go into systems that have low security, and to use you brain and not get too greedy.

I made 1 million in one trip, and I think I can make some more of these. I have secured a lot of contracts and they pay me up to 60,000 per ton, even my Cobra can become quite a cash machine that way.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Lat mining trip went to 1.4 million in a Cobra Mk III, I sold Painite alone for almost 1/2 million. Of course these trips take much longer than normal cargo runs, I would say 3 hours or so. But its satisfying to make a lot of money that way.

I could probably go on forever doing mining in this ship, but can anyone tell my how much the insurance is for a fully equipped Asp Explorer? I realized it is the only multi purpose ships that is worth getting.

My entire operation is worth ~8 million right now. I think I will need twice as much before I can get one of the popamole tier ships.

The Cobra is great, it's just terribly annoying that I can either have Prospector limpets (which font work for me but for some reasons increase the amount of ore by at least 200%) or a fuel Scoop but not both. I could, but that would technically cut my cargo in half from 32 to 16 tons. Which would of course totally fuck up my operations.

That means I usually take the limpets and make a lot of tank stops. With the Ass Explorer I could probably take everything on board and still have 60 tons cargo or so. Which is kind of ironic, I need to make shittons of money tp get a ship that makes making money a whole lot easier.

 

[praetor]

if you don't care much about combat or plan on having another ship for that (vulture, viper, eagle, courier...), the Asp is definitely the ultimate "can do everything in it" ship when it comes to price/performance

if you don't mind the grind, i'd recommend getting a permit to Alioth as it's permanently discounted 20% there (so 20% less rebuy), other than the usual buying all parts at Li Yong Rui space of course.

a fully A rated Asp, no discounts, no weapons, no internals except for a class 5A shield, will set you back ~27mil, so a rebuy of 1,3mil (although for that kind of money you could get an entry-level Clipper... just saying)

 

[Burning Bridges]

Ok I guessed so and didnt want to make NotAGolfer's mistake. 1.3 mil insurance is a lof of money for relative beginners like us and I will not enter such such ships before I have 10- 20 million.

I only pay 160,000 in insurance for my Cobra and I just figured out a way to make 5,00,000 to 1,000,000 per landing without even hyperjumping.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I shouldn't have praised the game. Now system authority vessals attack me for now reason when asteroid mining. No fine, no hostility, nothing. I even flew back to their fucking station to pay the fine, but nothing. I don't even think this is a bug as people have reported this as far back as 2014. I had just fired back at an attacking ship some time before which is pretty unavoidable as you keep getting attacked. This game is both fun and annoying, dont really know what to say. It should have been designed by someone else as there is clearly something wrong with how the game tries to punish the player constantly for having fun. There goes another 1/2 million and hours of my time.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Bounties

A convoluted system of timers and active/dormant bounties was introduced in Retail 1.3.

If you commit a major crime (e.g. murder an innocent ship) or let a fine for a minor crime mature into a bounty you will receive an active bounty from the minor faction who has jurisdiction of the part of space you are in. You currently only get bounties from system minor factions, and not from major factions (as of Retail 1.3).

Bounties for minor crimes such as accidentally firing on an innocent ship will only last for 10 minutes, but bounties for major crimes such as murder last 7 days.

While the bounty timer is active you will have wanted status in that system, and will not be able to pay off your bounty! Fines gained while the bounty is active will be added to your bounty, but extra bounties gained are added to your bounty and reset the timer!

After the bounty's timer has timed out, you may see “on H-jump” where the countdown used to be - this means you need to leave the system and then come back for the bounty to fully expire (this is apparently to do with how ED calculates wanted status only on entry to a system)

This game is fucked up man. I dindo nothing, just minding my own business while getting attacked all the time and now I am declared a criminal. This shit already cost me a fortune and my belief that I could like this game after all.

Fuck you, Frontier development!

 

[praetor]

This game is both fun and annoying, dont really know what to say.

that sums it up pretty well. it's got both some of the best stuff in a space shooter ever (like the flight model, atmosphere, ship design [purely subjective, i know ]), and some of the worst design decisions ever made in a game (the way powerplay is done, the ship balance, the crime and punishment system, the static faux-dynamic economy, the lack of basic features, the mission design, the soul-crushing grind...). i really really really hope they fire the lead designer sometime soon and hire someone actually competent. i don't think the game will ever be truly great without some radical changes in the game design department

btw, you probably got a bounty because you fired on a ship attacking you before you scanned it. yup, the bounty system is that retarded.

and yeah, having a buffer of more than one-two rebuys is definitely advisable

but you can outfit a decent Asp that can defend itself (against lower ranked enemies, of course) and is fit for mining and/or exploring and/or rare trading (there's a couple of routes which can net you more than 1mil/h in an asp if nothing has changed since last year) for 13-15 mil without discounts (so 11-13 mil with discounts ) which would put you at a rebuy of ~600-750k. use something like this as a starting point (fill utilities and weapons with whatever you like. chaff, shield boosters, C1 pulses an C2 multis are cheap and effective), then slowly upgrade as you play (f.e. first the shield to 5C bi-weave, then powerplant to 4A [and 5A further down the line], distributor to 4A, fuel scoop to 3A. you could also forgo the advanced discovery scanner at first and buy it only later. it's a nice thing to have while rare trading for some extra profit). just remember to always buy your modules in Li Yong Rui space

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yeah David Braben cannot be a good designer, and what he did in the 80s doesnt count. The game is great in a few aspects and totally shit in most others. I can see now why everyone seems to play this for 200 hours and then wants to smash Braben in his grinning ugly face. What I hate most is that the game doesnt want you to have fun and mixes hard scifi with horrible arcade shit - I can stomach one or the other and I like hard games, but why a game wants me to spend hours watching at the hyperjump animation and getting destroyed without reason and without time to react.

Is it possible that Braben is actually hating gamers and does this on purpose?c I have never seen another game that so much wants to piss me off whenever I start liking it. And I have seen a lot of shit. Even the old Elite was better because at least you had saves and not these retarded insurance payments.

 

[Burning Bridges]

As to my bounty problem. The situation is like this. I found a high security system where I have pristine metallic ring and a station nearby that buys Painite at a decent price (69,000 or so). The game noticed that a man finally has found a way to make a few credits without constant waiting for hyperjumps and the mission screen, and decided to fuck him up because he occasionally shot back at pirates that wouldnt let him mine.

The whole weeked I had worked up a plan for this system and now I was actually making negative profits because the system authorities kill me for no reason (I tried 3 times and the first ship that finds me mining will instantly kill me) and when I go to the station there is no fine, no bounty, nothing, I even have cordial relationship. According to some guides I now must wait an unknown amount of time, like 7 days realtime before the bounty may have cooled off. And by then the prices for Painite have probably plummeted by 200%. I have seen this before when I traded advanced medicines. Can a game be really that retarded?

I tried to find a comparable system but the constant hyperjumps kill me (I have jumped ca 400ly today and could puke at the thought of the process). Also I cannot keep names of 100s of systems in my head. At some point I will stop giving a shit and the game becomes a completely mindless jump from star to star, without giving a shit what you see along the way.

 

[praetor]

Yeah David Braben cannot be a good designer

man, i wish Braben was the lead designer. the lead is Sandro Sammarco, who's a garbage-level game designer

edit:

The whole weeked I had worked up a plan for this system and now I was actually making negative profits because the system authorities kill me for no reason (I tried 3 times and the first ship that finds me mining will instantly kill me) and when I go to the station there is no fine, no bounty, nothing, I even have cordial relationship. According to some guides I now must wait an unknown amount of time, like 7 days realtime before the bounty may have cooled off. And by then the prices for Painite have probably plummeted by 200%. I have seen this before when I traded advanced medicines. Can a game be really that retarded?

yeah, bigger bounties/fines have a 7days "cooldown" before you can pay them off (yup, retarded as fuck). but if you don't have any bounty on you (visible on the left-hand panel under "transactions" iirc), open up a ticket with their support, they're usually a super-friendly bunch that is very quick to respond (if their game designers were as good as their support, this would already be one of the best games ever made :/)

oh, and no way in hell prices very that much. the shit-tier "dynamic" (lol) economy is curated by FDev, so prices can go up/down by much smaller amounts (~20% cheaper/more expensive. i believe every commodity has a fixed floor/ceiling, that's why 95-98% of the commodities are pointless since only the most expensive are worth trading... and that's without getting into more interesting stuff, like the fact that nothing is consumed/produced so all those numbers are 100% meaningless. fucking Rebel Galaxy has a more dynamic, lively, interesting economic model)

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yeah. The way I see it, for the life of me I cannot imagine that Braben has played a computer game since 1990.

So he probably gave this to some bright individual with past accolade as a game designer. Of the games he is credited with I only remember Republic The Revolution which was a singular example of terrible design.

 

[someone else]

It should have been designed by someone else as there is clearly something wrong with how the game tries to punish the player constantly for having fun.

Yeah someone else should have designed the game.
Can you make money by combat? Like bounties, military employment, mercenary contracts, assassination, piracy?

 

[Berekän]

Yes to all of that (although I believe piracy doesn't pay much)

 

[Tommy Gun]

Before the update I thought the game had some good ideas but they were poorly implemented. It’s also infuriatingly complicated in part, as the above discussion about fines and bounties shows. The first time I get a fine, why cant the game give me a comms message setting out how I go about paying it, instead I have to go on a third party website and wade through 30 page threads to find out the best guess on a solution.


I uninstalled it on Sunday. The game for me is shit since the 2.2 update. It takes way too long to load the maps, the missionboard and starjumps. Also drops the connection too much now. I had some fun, but I'm done.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I have seen some people make a lot of money with combat, yes.

The problem is whenever I see it these people have access to the best ships, and they don't need more money. Like for example someone with 1 billion credits explaining how to mine with an Anaconda and make 10 million a trip, or destroying another Anaconda for 350,000 credits bounty money just like that. Personally I cannot even afford all A-upgrades for my cobra and must be happy to make 1/2 million currently per trip because the game constantly fucks me in the ass, that is when I'm not making net loss because someone instakills me while I'm working on an asteroids, with 1hour worth of cargo.

I know I eventually will have the money I need but I either have to find a way without sperging for a month, or I will be burnt out by then. Which is the crucial flaw of the game, it forces you to play for weeks doing the same things over and over, so that you can afford a better ship with which the game becomes a little more bearable (for 10,000% the credits of your cheap ass beginners ship). At first you really want to advance in the game but at some point the brain will realize that there is a better, third option: which is to uninstall the fucking game and become a hater.

I uninstalled it on Sunday. The game for me is shit since the 2.2 update. It takes way too long to load the maps, the missionboard and starjumps. Also drops the connection too much now. I had some fun, but I'm done.

This is a point which hasn't been discussed enough. I personally have a huge problem with games that download inventories and save data from a server, making every menu transition a pain in the ass. A game with that much workload should be designed like a software tool and response times should be instantaneous. And they would be instantaneous on a modern PC, it's only the fucking internet connection that makes everything slow as shit (and I am playing singleplayer!) not to mention the connection losses and forced wait times which are further salt in the wounds.

If this was ancient Persia I think someone should go to Cambridge and put a certain group of developers in a dungeon, forcing them to do nothing but play the game with all the problems for the next 12 months, lets say they only get food if they make 2 million credits. That would be poetic justice.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I could afford the Ass Explorer and make it D-rated. I have 2.3 million left and insurance is 370,000. That means I have not a huge cushion but 1-2 mining runs and I am in the green. I must still be careful (a refinery etc must also be bought). But the Asp has even more Cargo space than a Type-6 so mining runs should bring in around a million - without mining equipment I have 88 tons cargo, with the modules I estimate around 70 or so

But I need a break from this game now badly. Buying the ASP was probably the last thing I will do an never fly it As to 2.2 I see only marginal improvements and it has only become harder to make money than ever. Some of the missions are actually borderline piss-taking, like "bring in 2 units of Xy for 781 credits", yes I actually saw that In fact all the cargo missions I saw were absolutely worthless, the only ones that paid off handsomly were those mining rushes were they pay 5-10 times the normal price.

 

[Burning Bridges]

As to the actual mining, I had planned to take mostly Painite but then it turned out more efficient to make a frontal assault with a large ship and take everything, and later vent out crap. There were good times when my refinery was literally going katsching, katsching, katsching and every ton of Palladium after another is also 14,000 per ton. I got up to 14 tons of Palladium or Samarium in 1 asteroid. Kept everything that goes over 7,000 credits per ton and dumped the other crap. And the larger your cargo the more limpets you can bring and the less you must worry about inventory management.

 

[praetor]

you know what's the most ironic bit, Burning Bridges ? the playing period from start up to buying and outfitting an Asp to mostly A is the most fun part of the game (or at least it was for me). i still ask myself why i played as much as i did (~2bil in total assets, lol) as after i a-rated my Asp, i traded it all in for an Imperial Clipper and just grinded from then on until i hated the game from the bottom of my heart an then 2.0 came out which was more of the same but in a buggy, 2.1 was and still is a monumental P2W clustefuck which still lacks basic functionalities so it makes at least a tiny bit of sense (how incredibly fucking stupid do you have to be to implement a feature like this the way it is without commodity storage?! how?!), and 2.2 adds pretty much nothing gameplay-wise although at least it finally added some more visual variety which the game badly lacked since release (and still does. it's a good start but there's still a long way to go)

right now, other the the act of piloting your spaceship, which is simply superb (it's essentially the only reason i endured the mind-destroying grind. simply docking is enjoyable even after thousands of times), everything else is just crap even compared to indie games. they really need to turn things around but they won't since the fanboys lap it all up and Sandro is a colossal idiot (as 2.1 and PowerPlay prove).

it desperately needs a mission overhaul (more interesting, more challenging, more involved, less of them, better rewards), more fleshed out main factions (so the differences aren't just in galnet articles and the ships you unlock. start by making the military career paths meaningful, different and interesting, for example) and a complete redesign of PowerPlay (seriously, just scrap the thing and redo it from the ground up. but they never will 'cause Sandro thinks it's actually good and will only do some minor changes to make it "better" [which it will not]), a much, much better and actually dynamic economy, a combat scenario overhaul (so that every combat "career" path doesn't revolve around finding a RES/NAV/CZ and just farm endlessly respawning dumb NPCs), and exploring needs to be more than honking and taking screenshots inferior to SpaceEngine (slowly moving towards that with 2.2)

when you take into consideration how long it takes them for the pretty simple "big" patches (particularly this year with 10 months for 2 "major" updates) it's obviously too much work for them and it's not something they can advertise as a selling point. it's a great shame, 'cause it's so, so close to be the definitive space game, but simultaneously so very very far because of all the stupid, amateurish, illogical design decisions. no other game has made me so sad

 

[Burning Bridges]

Anyway, the Ass Explorer has payed off handsomly and I also had a good run of RNG luck.

32 tons of Painite in one trip isnt bad is it?? If I had not run out of limpets I may even filled the refinery bins with stuff (that actually works and can give you up to 9 tons extra cargo), seeing Painite of all things go ca-ching ca-ching ca-ching was one of the most pleasant experiences I ever had in the game.

Sold for 73,000 a ton and together with the other stuff the profit for the last trip was 3.1 million.

I also think I understand how the yield works. That means if I dont get a good yield I would enter supercruise and go to some other spot in the ring. I think the yields are randomized when you drop into the rings.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Painite isn't that rare actually. I have more problems finding Osmium, and failed to fullfil most contracts for that material.

Anyway, my cash shortage after the purchase of the expensive new ship is solved. Today I made altogether 6.5 million credits in 1 day, almost as much as I did in the whole game before that.

 

[Burning Bridges]

It should also be mentioned that the trading in this game is totally pointless. Trading was the bread and butter of Elite but see those prices above? Most of the commodities are worthless as trading items.

Imo trading is also not working at all. I currently have a situation where the price of Painite goes up and down. One time I log on its 40K. Half an hour later it'S 73K. In a "dynamic" market where prices change every moment according to supply&demand this makes no sense at all.

In my experience all you need to know about the trading screen is that there only a few items worth checking: advanced medicine, progenitor cells, consumer electronics. There are some more, but 80% of the screen is stuff that is uninteresting. It is also enough to remember that most proces come in classes, lets say you have planets where for example advanced medicines cost under 1500 and some others where they go up as high as 4000. This again means that all you can hope for is 2000-2500 per ton, with lets say 30 tons cargo 60K - 75K. And this is not enough to justify not taking on missions instead. Hence the need for people to spend the whole game just going from A to B to C to D and so on just carrying cargo like a fucking trucker.

 

[Suchy]

Dude, go bounty hunting for some quick cash. In the last two evenings I made 50mln by stacking a bunch of missions against the same pirate faction. Diamondback Scout is a pretty damn good and cheap combat oriented ship and you can grind for an A-Grade Vulture in a few days. Now, with a Vulture, you can go high/hazardous RES hunting, earning about 1-3mln per hour. Still stacking up pirate hunting missions pays better, but gets boring fast. Nevertheless I'm flying an A-Grade combat oriented Python, that still has 128t cargo space. Grinding materials for the engineers now. I'm at 4th tier F-Drive upgrade, which gives me about 20ly jump distance. Pretty decent, considering that I use a military hull and 2x hull reinforcements, and it's still not the final upgrade on the drive. Now, if I unlock the hull engineer, I should be able to switch back to light alloys and upgrade that one instead, should give me a huge range boost. Then shields , thrusters and in the end weapons (already has quite a punch). Python is finally the ship I'm going to stick to, but the thing was expensive. ~50mln for the ship, another 150mln for upgrades, and now almost 10mln insurance. I wanted to have a combat explorer and Python allows to do just that (though you need to learn how to fly it properly when fighting). For pure combat I may get a Fer-De-Lance at some point, but it has a pathetic jump range and no cargo space left once fully armed.

 

[Burning Bridges]

But thats what we meant. If you can afford a Python you must have played so many hundreds of hours, and you dont need cash. A relative beginner in a Viper or Cobra will have a much harder time, with puny 3B shields or whatever he can afford. No, right now the most risk free way of making cash for me is to go to a high security system with pristine metallic rings and mine the shit out of them. I have been able to ramp up the cargo in the Asp to 96 tons, and I am looking at 2-4 million per trip.

I would agree that the Diamondback Scout is a good choice, and I even had it before the Cobra. But it has relatively weak shields too. It is arguably the best option for anyone looking for a combat ship that doesnt cost a fortune.