Elite Dangerous Catch-All

zeroKFE wrote:

First 2.3 Dev Update:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showth...

As expected this does feel like a feature for the 'big 3'. I think they were right to make the pragmatic decision to allow 'telepresence' style grouping up, rather than insist on crews forming only at the same station or planet. It seems like the only way multicrew would actually get some use. That said, the internal consistency of the game does feel a bit all over the place now.

babakotia wrote:
zeroKFE wrote:

First 2.3 Dev Update:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showth...

As expected this does feel like a feature for the 'big 3'. I think they were right to make the pragmatic decision to allow 'telepresence' style grouping up, rather than insist on crews forming only at the same station or planet. It seems like the only way multicrew would actually get some use. That said, the internal consistency of the game does feel a bit all over the place now.

Yeah maybe it's finally time for a jump point at Hutton Orbital.

babakotia wrote:

Having said that I'm also very much enjoying making incremental upgrades to my Python.

Me to, though on a very boring cruise to qualify for Marcus Quent at the moment!

But the engineers thing has given me a bit of direction that i was lacking last time I played Elite a year or so ago

babakotia wrote:
zeroKFE wrote:

First 2.3 Dev Update:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showth...

As expected this does feel like a feature for the 'big 3'.

I don't know, it seems like a feature for anyone who wants to be social to me. Not only does it allow anyone with a friend with a large ship to jump onboard and screw around with their turrets or fighters, there's also this:

As long as their ship has enough seats (different ships have different multicrew capabilities) a Commander can directly invite players, or can set their vessel to allow multicrew access. Commanders looking to play as crew can either accept direct invites, or activate a new “looking for ship” feature, which will automatically place them as crew on a suitable vessel with multicrew access allowed, making the process quick and painless.

Which means you don't even have to know the player who with whom you are signing on as a crew member. A brand new player could conceivably jump on LFS, get on board a Corvette or Anaconda, and earn their first few million credits nearly risk free by flying a fighter as an assistant to a bounty hunter or combat zone fighter. That seems pretty nice to me.

Oh, and while this is definitely mostly targeted towards combat (which is my biggest disappointment so far -- that the scope, at least initially, is limited to running turrets or fighters), it opens up the world of exploration and plot/mystery hunting to players who don't have time to jump to the other side of the galaxy. (Even more so if they allow you to use SRVs in addition to fighters, although that remains to be confirmed.)

Oh good call. I'll just multicrew with you out in draconis and make enough for my own Python or anaconda.

zeroKFE wrote:

Which means you don't even have to know the player who with whom you are signing on as a crew member. A brand new player could conceivably jump on LFS, get on board a Corvette or Anaconda, and earn their first few million credits nearly risk free by flying a fighter as an assistant to a bounty hunter or combat zone fighter. That seems pretty nice to me.

It also makes sense for people to begin their combat careers in a support role.

Now if only ship launched fighter kills counted for CQC skill... Mine has been sitting at "utterly harmless" since CQC came out, and then died.

zeroKFE wrote:
babakotia wrote:
zeroKFE wrote:

First 2.3 Dev Update:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showth...

As expected this does feel like a feature for the 'big 3'.

I don't know, it seems like a feature for anyone who wants to be social to me.

IIRC, the first ship that's described as a "multicrew" ship is the Asp Explorer. I'd assume that pretty much everything above it in price would be multicrew capable.

Actually, even before that the Cobra has two seats. The Vulture does too for that matter, although that’s maybe not so much before the Asp as it is around the same time.

The lower rebuy cost and multi-directional targeting certainly gives me more of a reason to use turrets in combat. With the current turret values I'm not sure they're worth it on anything smaller than, say, a Python, but with someone manually targeting them? While letting people jump into my ship from my friends list for combat? That sounds worth it.

The only ship I've put a fighter hangar on is my FedCorvette, but it's a two-fighter one. I'd be happy to join up if people want. I never seem to have enough time to play though. I may have to drop other games from my rotation, I really need to finish unlocking Engineers.

For giving people turret control, it seems like the ideal setup would be to keep hardpoints positioned close to the cockpit under helm control, and move others (especially bottom ones) to turrets.

cube wrote:
zeroKFE wrote:
babakotia wrote:
zeroKFE wrote:

First 2.3 Dev Update:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showth...

As expected this does feel like a feature for the 'big 3'.

I don't know, it seems like a feature for anyone who wants to be social to me.

IIRC, the first ship that's described as a "multicrew" ship is the Asp Explorer. I'd assume that pretty much everything above it in price would be multicrew capable.

Well, yeah. But given that turrets aren't optimal on most ships, and only a few have ship-launched fighters, it doesn't sound like there's going to be a lot for crew to do on most of them. Changing loadouts for occasional multicrew will be a faff.

Hmm.. can someone explain settlement data scanning? I got Tamren's links but there is a low security settlement in Orcus so I figured i'd just check it out. Land like 5KM away.. there's python's circling, but everything is quiet. I go up to a data point next to a defensive turret outside it says "Public" so I scan it and some sort of countdown activates... I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be worried or not. It did say something about 1/4 open or something like that.

NOthing is attacking me so I scoot around... I see "Skimmer control (Private)". OK.. well I don't want skimmers... so I scan that.. oops...all hell breaks loose. I start running but get blown up. That's ok I'll just respawn in my ship and go... well as soon as I spawn in I have a python and 2 skimmers kicking the crap out of my ship.

Hello insurance.

Am I only supposed to scan "Public" ports? Does every port give me data? I didn't see anything that said xxx "data received". I have that edengineer addon running but I was too distracted by all the commotion to pay attention to see if it ticked up.

Good to hear you can just instantly join anybody for multicrew, even if that thread over on the forums had people complaining that you don't have to actually fly there to join up. Some people are just shocked they're trying to make it fun instead of a massive grind.

I've got to say, the Engineers grind broke me last summer and I haven't wanted to play since BF1 came out. This feature was my last hope for getting back into Elite, and I am very (pleasantly) surprised that there won't be some sort of grind to unlock multi-crew if you already have a capable ship.

Carlbear95 wrote:

Hmm.. can someone explain settlement data scanning?

Am I only supposed to scan "Public" ports? Does every port give me data? I didn't see anything that said xxx "data received". I have that edengineer addon running but I was too distracted by all the commotion to pay attention to see if it ticked up.

Basically, every settlement with 1-3 + marks will have data towers in it. You have to find an activate all of them within a time limit, each tower you activate gives you more time. Once you get all of them you will recieve a message in your inbox detailing each type of data you recovered which then provides 3 units of data in your inventory. Very small settlements only have a couple buildings but large settlements can be huge with data points located in walled compounds and on top of buildings.

Apart from data points you can also find a communications hub which will give you "core data" you can sell anywhere for a small amount of money. These are marked as "public" and warning messages will play when you scan them but the settlement won't turn hostile. Anything marked "private" when you target it will make the settlement angry if you interact with it. There are other objects in a settlement you can interact with but doing so will provoke a hostile response. You can destroy generators to power down forcefields and hack skimmer/turret controllers to disable them. There is also a cargo handling thing you can hack but afaik it doesn't do anything.

Skimmers are not much of a danger if you keep moving at top speed. The regular gun-skimmers can be easily shot down, the slightly bigger missile armed ones are a problem if you are outnumbered but a single missile launcher will take a long time to wear down shields. I had a couple skimmers chase me back to my ship and the point defence started shooting them down. The only real dangers are turrets, which are quite powerful but slow tracking, guardians which are super-skimmers with multiple missile launchers, and any ships that happen to be patrolling above the colony as they can destroy your SRV quite easily.

Once you get used to it you can even go into high security settlements and pilfer the data before they turn hostile.

Yeah, it took a few attempts before I realised *NOT* to scan anything other than the Data Points. Nothing. leave it all alone!

For the bigger bases, I found the 'path/route' maps on one of those spreadsheets pretty useful. They taught me that some data points that are inside a compound can actually be scanned through the wall from the outside, if you know where they are.

After doing each base type I've tried so far a couple of times, I found I actually remembered the path and it became simpler.

Still RNG whether you you get the specific data at the end that you were hoping for, though. Curse you Modified Embedded Firmware!

I've just started the 5000ly for Palin and don't seem to be making much progress - I've charted and travelled what looked like 2000ly in two chunks but the meter on Palin engineer page says I've only done 100ly more than when I start.

Clearly I'm doing a poor job of route planning so any tips would be VERY welcome!

There seems to be quite a lot of lag in updating those counters - try saving to menu and reloading.

babakotia wrote:

There seems to be quite a lot of lag in updating those counters - try saving to menu and reloading.

Thanks will do (also didnt help I was heading outwards from Sirius rather than inwards, so was running out of stars!)

I've noticed trying to progress Lei Cheung and Selene Jean - mining or trading in markets, the counters don't seem to keep up, it takes ages for them to actually reflect what you've done in game. Then again, I haven't started Palin yet, but as I recall it's 5000 ly from your starting position, so travelling 2000 ly in any direction should have had some effect on the counter surely. What does the counter say in the right-panel? Pretty sure it tells you furthest distance travelled in the statistics.

I figure I'll just pair the Palin one with one of those "take me to look at a pretty star" long-range passenger missions and double-dip.

Unlocking Selene Jean was pretty quick; I'd tried mining in both a T7 and Adder at various points and hated it, but I did it with a Python and it wasn't bad at all. Fire lasers, send out limpets, play guitar for a minute or two while they collect. That's one good thing about all the delays and waiting in this game; I'm pretty sure it's making me a much better guitar player.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I figure I'll just pair the Palin one with one of those "take me to look at a pretty star" long-range passenger missions and double-dip

The 5000LY is hideous: jump, scoop, wait for drive to spool up, wait for countdown, stare at hyperspace animation over and over again. And I think it is going to be 5000 out and then 5000 back to unlock him!

Has taken me 3 hours to do 3500 ly so I would be sure you really need Palins upgrades before you consider this one.

It goes much faster if you have access to a 50LY capable AspX. I was already qualified because I made a trip to Sagittarius A back in the day.

Tamren wrote:

It goes much faster if you have access to a 50LY capable AspX. I was already qualified because I made a trip to Sagittarius A back in the day.

Sadly my one ship only manages 30, but this is definitely making me realise that exploration is not my career path!

Wasn't so long ago that a jump range of 35 was considered blazingly fast. And to get even that much you had to strip an anaconda down to it's bare bones and downsize the fuel tank to a coffee cup. I don't miss those days at all, now it's easy enough to give any ship at least a 20LY range, which is what I consider acceptable for local bubble travel.

I'm at 40ly now, and just haven't gotten back to Felicity Farseer to get a better roll on my FSD. Also want to unlock Bill Turner for a few lightweight mods. Related question; do I need to switch my allegiance to Alliance for him? I'm already friendly due to past pledging, but saw something online mentioning needing to go Alliance as party of the whole Alioth permit process and asking here seemed easier than actually googling it.

LondonLoo wrote:
Tamren wrote:

It goes much faster if you have access to a 50LY capable AspX. I was already qualified because I made a trip to Sagittarius A back in the day.

Sadly my one ship only manages 30, but this is definitely making me realise that exploration is not my career path!

Yeah, you have to be able to get into the zen of the scoop/jump routine. I just ran out to Jacques Station, which is 22,000 ly out, in my 30 ly AspX. I'm about halfway back.

Of course, I did Distant Worlds in a 26 ly Type-6, so I'm probably certifiably insane.

tanstaafl wrote:

Yeah, you have to be able to get into the zen of the scoop/jump routine. I just ran out to Jacques Station, which is 22,000 ly out, in my 30 ly AspX. I'm about halfway back.

Of course, I did Distant Worlds in a 26 ly Type-6, so I'm probably certifiably insane.

No comment

tanstaafl wrote:
LondonLoo wrote:
Tamren wrote:

It goes much faster if you have access to a 50LY capable AspX. I was already qualified because I made a trip to Sagittarius A back in the day.

Sadly my one ship only manages 30, but this is definitely making me realise that exploration is not my career path!

Yeah, you have to be able to get into the zen of the scoop/jump routine. I just ran out to Jacques Station, which is 22,000 ly out, in my 30 ly AspX. I'm about halfway back.

Of course, I did Distant Worlds in a 26 ly Type-6, so I'm probably certifiably insane.

Yeah, I went out past the rift, into the outer spiral arm with a 40LY AspX. Going out was zen, coming back was mind-numbingly horrible. It took me about two weeks, doing it in small chunks to keep me from uninstalling. I think the last time I went out I got 17k LY away from Sol... and I've barely played since I got back. The burnout is real when you go that far.

I'll keep at it as my dear old Python really needs the upgrades!

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

Related question; do I need to switch my allegiance to Alliance for him? I'm already friendly due to past pledging, but saw something online mentioning needing to go Alliance as party of the whole Alioth permit process and asking here seemed easier than actually googling it.

To get an Alioth Permit you to get Allied status with the Alioth Independents minor faction. The best place to do this is 78 Ursae Majoris, just use mode switching to stack up a bunch of missions and you will get allied eventually. A Python or Anaconda is the best ship for varied mission running, but if you don't have one an AspX will do. Once you get to Allied just hang around a station in 78 Ursae and refresh the mission page until you get an Alioth Permit mission.

You'll need a Sirius permit as well in order to unlock Marco Qwent and later Palin as well. To get that you need to get allied with Sirius Corp. It's possible to run missions for them in Procyon but the stations are far away from the jump in point. I would recommend going out to Sothis/Ceos and run data missions or long range hauling back to the bubble. Again, mode switching is your friend here. Once you have allied status with Sirius corp hang around in Procyon until you reroll a permit mission.

Also this may be coincidental but I was only able to get a permit from a station, not a surface outpost.