Reposted from ELewis (I did not want to scan through 131 pages to find the original 
)
** ELewis17's Guide to Fuel scooping and Traveling to Lave **
****NOTE THE MOUSE WIDGET TIP HERE, IT IS AWESOME AND SHOWS YOU THE TRUE FORWARD CENTERPOINT OF YOUR SHIP****
Lave is also where all the cool kids hang out. Get there as soon as you can afford a reasonable Fuel Scoop and an Frame Shift Drive that'll allow you to jump 9 or so light years (more is better, but not really necessary).
A class 'D' Fuel Scoop Seems like a pretty decent sweet spot. The class 'E' scoop takes forever.
On fuel scooping: First thing is to make sure the 'mouse widget' is turned on in the control settings. This gives you the dot at the center of the cockpit. We'll use this to aim our ship. It is the last option under 'mouse controls'. My experience is with the Sidewinder and the Viper, so YMMV on this in different ships. Approach the sun, cautiously. Aim for the outside of the yellow ring that appears on the outside of the star. Increase throttle to full, and fly around the curvature of the star taking care to keep the yellow ring just outside the dot. Pay very close attention to your heat; at 130% peel away abruptly and fly directly away from the star until your heat drops to around 80%. Rinse repeat until you are full.
Plotting the course: I'm too lazy to dig out Gremlin's post on this, but it works rather well, so I'll paraphrase: Go to the galaxy map and search for 'Lave'. Adjust the camera in a manner that allows you to see both the system you are currently in, and Lave. It'll be upwards of 100 LY. Do not fret. It really only takes about an hour, and you'll make some money on your way. Pick a point about a third of the way to Lave. This isn't science. Just guesstimate. Now once this point is selected you'll need to give it a few minutes to generate your route. You can watch it plot your course with the blue dashed lines. Some people around here like to use this to assist, but I find it unnecessary, personally.
Now that you have some idea of how to not get burned to death while scooping from stars, and you have about a third of your trek plotted, it is time to start jumping and scanning upon arrival:
*You'll see the first system is automatically targeted once you've plotted your route, just hit 'J' and accelerate to full throttle. During the charging phase you'll want to point in the direction of your jump. Once the countdown begins (This is different from your charging phase) you'll want to push 'X', or whatever button/throttle system you have to bring you to ZERO throttle. If you leave it at full throttle, you'll jump to the new system and fly directly into the star. Not good.
*Arrival at new system. Now you've made your first jump, and are staring directly into the soul of a star. If you get an alert in the upper right corner of the cockpit that says something like "(x) new astronomical bodies discovered" er...something like that, face the star's center and push 'T' to target the star. In the bottom left you'll see that it begins scanning the star. This takes about 15 seconds or so. Once this is complete, go to your target panel by pushing '1' on your keyboard, navigate to the 'Navigation' tab using WASD+QE, run the selector down until you see the icon that denotes that it is part of your route. This looks like several small spheres with lines connecting them. Select that using 'SPACEBAR'. Scoop from the sun taking care to not get cooked, press J when full, and make your next jump. Go to stations and repair as needed. Also good to stop at stations from time to time, as it'll provide you with a respawn point should the worst happen while you're out there.
Rinse and repeat until you are at Lave. Here you'll sell off your scans to Universal Cartographics for a cool ~20k of profit.
Reposted from Deftly
** Deftly's Early Start Rare trading guide **
5 (sic rares around Lave,) actually, although the max you can carry from Zaonce is 1. I've been meaning to post about it, it's a pretty good way to get some cash early on. These are the max rare goods you can get from the following stations:
Lave - Lave Station - Lavian Brandy - 7t
Leesti - George Lucas - Leestian Evil Juice - 14t
Leesti - George Lucas - Azure Milk - 7t
Zaonce - Ridley Scott - Leathery Egg - 1t
Diso - Shifnalport - Diso Ma Corn - 15t
Orrere - Sharon Lee Free Market - Orrerian Vicious Brew - 16t
Uszaa - Guest Installation - Uszaian Tree Grub - 14t
Once you're carrying the max for that rare good, it will no longer pop for you. Rare goods also no longer repop unless you visit another station. So I would run regular trade routes between the stations, accumulating rare goods, and when I got over 70t or so, travel 150ly and sell them off. At 15,000cr/ton profit, you can make a million credits in a few hours (depending on cargo space). Getting into an upgraded Type 6 seems to be the point where regular trading can become more profitable.
OP cleaned up with links instead of Wall of Text
Thanks for tending to the OP, Wayfarer. Looks good.
Flintheart Glomgold wrote:I'm not sure that is always true. If I'm at a station with high demand and there is a neighboring station that is trading to it I have found that becomes a legitimate trade route, although not the best trade route.
This is true, high demand is high demand wherever you go. But to get those really good 500-1000+ profits you still have to go off the grid and look for those untouched systems that don't have a lot of AI and player traffic.
Yes, this is why I spend so much time "away from the action" in the fringe stations. The only problem with that is that there are mostly extraction stations. I've been logging prices and find the lowest sellers and the (usually) single consumer of gold or other valuable metal. It ends up being an ore trip and a metal trip but I find the routes do not get played out.
The disadvantage (and occasional advantage) is that there are a lot of anarchy stations and systems.
Even when I was mostly doing open play I may only see a single other player the entire night.
The disadvantage (and occasional advantage) is that there are a lot of anarchy stations and systems.
#1 reason why I'm planning on selling my Type-6 and buying an Asp.
Thanks for tending to the OP, Wayfarer. Looks good.
I just now organized them into categories for a bit easier scanning. From here on out just tell me what category you want something to go into (if it isn't obvious).
Clearly I read this thread constantly 
, so will automatically update good stuff I catch.
I went back to about page 113 and added a bunch of good stuff everyone has found.
Here are three posts I made about joystick recommendations. The first would probably suffice, since it links back to the previous two.
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...
and here is a mostly up to date google doc of how I have everything configured for my combination of CH Throttle, T16000M, TrackIR, and GlovePIE script:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Also, I made an alternate version of CMDR Nutron's spreadsheet. Less data, but more usable as reference for alt-tabbing. I might even add in a few extra alternative stops, unless I decide to move on the regular commodity trading before I feel the need to tinker with/optimize his route a bit more.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
EDIT:
Oh, also this reference sheet about shield generators is quite helpful: http://i.imgur.com/1FL7I48.png
Here are three posts I made about joystick recommendations. The first would probably suffice, since it links back to the previous two.
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1...and here is a mostly up to date google doc of how I have everything configured for my combination of CH Throttle, T16000M, TrackIR, and GlovePIE script:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Also, I made an alternate version of CMDR Nutron's spreadsheet. Less data, but more usable as reference for alt-tabbing. I might even add in a few extra alternative stops, unless I decide to move on the regular commodity trading before I feel the need to tinker with/optimize his route a bit more.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
EDIT:
Oh, also this reference sheet about shield generators is quite helpful: http://i.imgur.com/1FL7I48.png
added
Yeah, they started planning well before launch, but, without the ability to be in two places at once with multi characters, I can't justify going that far outside of settled space. Kinda nerfs the exploration side of the game. It was a feature that was talked about before Beta, but I haven't seen anything official since.
Yeah, they started planning well before launch, but, without the ability to be in two places at once with multi characters, I can't justify going that far outside of settled space. Kinda nerfs the exploration side of the game. It was a feature that was talked about before Beta, but I haven't seen anything official since.
There was this a few days ago:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showth...
On the list, but not soon.
I think I figured the key to bounty hunting (apologize if this has been already posted and I missed it). Go into the Resource Extraction Points. I've been dancing around them looking for USS. Nah, there are full blown battles going on in the Resource Extraction Points. I've been making > 80k per trip into one from bounties.
I think I figured the key to bounty hunting (apologize if this has been already posted and I missed it). Go into the Resource Extraction Points. I've been dancing around them looking for USS. Nah, there are full blown battles going on in the Resource Extraction Points. I've been making > 80k per trip into one from bounties.
RESes are indeed, the shit.
I've been doing a lot of the bounty hunting missions against anacondas instead of fighting in RES sites. I just can't seem to find any with good bounties available. I've only seen one anaconda that wasn't friendly in days of looking and he kind of appeared in a strange spot. I was fighting cobras in open space quite far away from the actual RES point and I noticed a radar dot even further out from the asteroids. I went to take a look and it turned out to be a wanted anaconda, but then he jumped out before I could engage.
I've now visited over 1,000 systems.
I celebrated by upgrading my discovery scanner to Intermediate.
Finally got into my Cobra. That laser/machine gun combo really bodies people, doesn't it?
Finally got into my Cobra. That laser/machine gun combo really bodies people, doesn't it?
It's the bestest. *hugs Cobra*
Finally got into my Cobra. That laser/machine gun combo really bodies people, doesn't it?
Beam lasers+multicannons is widely considered the best loadout right now from what comments I've seen. It's certainly the most efficient because it has a nice balanced mix of damage. The more expensive weapons like cannons and rocket pods do massive spikes of damage, but are harder to use and the cost of ammo spikes dramatically. If you look up that "fastest way to kill an anaconda" video it has a great breakdown. You can mount 6 rocket pods on an asp and blow away an anaconda in a couple seconds, but you could spend over half of your bounty just on ammo!
Having watched a couple videos I'm willing to give the viper a second shot. I learned two things that could make it better than the Cobra in a straight up fight:
1. The number of charges you get per shield cell varies depending on the type. A is better than E, C and D are better than A and B has the highest capacity of all! B is also the heaviest and it's not entirely clear how much the rank and size of the shield cell determines how many shield points you get from each charge.
2. Because of size-weight ratios the Viper actually has a higher maximum shield strength than the Cobra does. The difference is almost +50%, so if you plan to never let your shield collapse the Viper is actually superior at taking damage.
The downside of the Viper is the very limited reactor rating, it maxes out at beam lasers and multicannons simply because you don't have the power to mount anything bigger. Cobras by comparison can get away with a single railgun or plasma accelerator.
Nice! 
I hit 300% heat in my sidey, got away with about 20% hull :/
So, uh, don't set your speed to zero in a RES while you go help your wife unload the groceries from the car. I came back to find that a NPC pirate was attacking me. He had specifically targeted and destroyed my thrusters so I had no control. Never got it back either. I lost over $200k in uncollected bounties including an additional $50k in replacing my viper. I was not happy.
So, uh, don't set your speed to zero in a RES while you go help your wife unload the groceries from the car. I came back to find that a NPC pirate was attacking me. He had specifically targeted and destroyed my thrusters so I had no control. Never got it back either. I lost over $200k in uncollected bounties including an additional $50k in replacing my viper. I was not happy.
You lose your collected bounties if your ship gets destroyed? That's good to know.
Save & Exit: takes seconds, puts you right back where you were when you come back. Use that if you need to pause the game.
So, uh, don't set your speed to zero in a RES while you go help your wife unload the groceries from the car. I came back to find that a NPC pirate was attacking me. He had specifically targeted and destroyed my thrusters so I had no control. Never got it back either. I lost over $200k in uncollected bounties including an additional $50k in replacing my viper. I was not happy.
DAMN WIFE
Nah, seriously man, save and exit.
The ship outfitter supports Pythons now, by the way, so I added some builds to my post a few pages back. Man, are those things ever pricey.
The ship outfitter supports Pythons now, by the way, so I added some builds to my post a few pages back. Man, are those things ever pricey.
Yeah, sounds like the upkeep cost for that thing (and some of the other larger ships) can be damned prohibitive.
I'm not buying the more expensive stuff until I figure out how to make them worthwhile to pay for their upkeep.
Of course, if I figure out how to get enough cash to buy them in the first place, I suppose I'll have that part figured out.
From the department of random questions: Is the "Mercenary" livery for Sidewinders only? If not, what other ships are there versions for?
I like British racing green but am considering a new ship.
zeroKFE wrote:The ship outfitter supports Pythons now, by the way, so I added some builds to my post a few pages back. Man, are those things ever pricey.
Yeah, sounds like the upkeep cost for that thing (and some of the other larger ships) can be damned prohibitive.
I'm not buying the more expensive stuff until I figure out how to make them worthwhile to pay for their upkeep.
Of course, if I figure out how to get enough cash to buy them in the first place, I suppose I'll have that part figured out.
Yeah, I'm just assuming they'll have addressed that issue by the time I can afford one. 
From the department of random questions: Is the "Mercenary" livery for Sidewinders only? If not, what other ships are there versions for?
I like British racing green but am considering a new ship. :)
I'm pretty sure it's also available for Vipers and Cobras.
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