Any other super-casual lost and clueless players here just for the spaceship fix?

[andrak]

Oh awesome! Well I'm not one for commenting on YouTube videos so I'll say here I enjoyed it very much. Excellent ideas, very well presented and you have a great voice to go with it.

Thanks very much. I should get onto making a few more concepts at some point.

 

[Dirtbird]

I wouldn't say I'm super casual because I do spend at least 5 hours a week on the game but it's because I enjoy it. I also do plenty of things wrong because after having the game for about 1.25 years, I make about 600k credits an hour on average, and on a bad day it goes well into the red. I play mostly Open, with bunch of people and we're all part of a player minor faction. We play with the BGS (sometimes really badly) and keep all our systems happy. In this time, I've only got about 900M in assets, 500M in space bucks and by most expensive ship is a Python. I may rank up enough to get a Federal Corvette one day, I may choose to chase Imperial ships one day. However, those things are not important to me and they will occur naturally at their own pace. I'm not grinding for them, perhaps you could say that the grind is something I don't notice while I mooch around with a great bunch of people flying amongst the stars.

Then again, if you like to fly solo, nothing wrong with that either. I remember playing BC Elite in 1986, and wondering what it would be like if there was another person at the end of the ships I saw on my screen way back then.

 

[Spandexxx]

Playing it your way is sort of the point of Elite.

Personally I tend to throw myself into games. After playing ED for a few hours I was hooked. Cue joining the forums, watching the youtube videos, finding the online resources etc etc. When not playing it I am at work fiddling in Coriolis or on here. No doubt I'll tire of it eventually. I was the same with X3. Utterly obsessed for a few months. Turned it off one day and never played it again. I think Elite is changing and evolving enough for that not to happen but I am already playing it a lot less than I was 6 months ago.

 

[Bill Clement]

OP- Coil, just keep on playing the way you feel like playing. The Cobra III is the best ship in the game and you have enough credits to outfit yours any way you like.

Can I offer a couple of pointers?

• If you build up your reputation with a local faction they'll pay you a lot better for doing exactly the same things you already do for small rewards- that includes all sorts of collectible goodies if you ever decide to give engineering a go. Just pick the kind of missions you like doing and keep coming back to the same faction's bases, outposts and stations for more.
• You can sell your modules back when you're done with them, making replacement modules a lot cheaper and allowing you to rebuild your whole ship if you really want to.
• The smaller modules are handy if you want to increase your jump range when you go exploring, since lighter is better. The trick is to carry the bare minimum of weight to allow you to go safely where you want to go. A very small shield is handy if you intend landing anywhere, for instance.
• There are some cracking out of game assets that you can use if you get a bit stuck, or feel like doing something a bit quicker or more efficiently. Try https://eddb.io/

Apologies if any of this sounds a bit patronising, I'm not trying to teach you to suck eggs. But if your time is limited and you want to see measurable results without having to grind your fingers to the bone there are lots of small things that can make a big difference to your in game experience. They'll allow you to see measurable improvements in whatever area you want, without puttting in any more effort or spoiling the freedom you/we enjoy to do whatever takes your fancy next time you flash up the game.

See you in the black!

 

[MajorHavoc]

Sometimes I take my fully upgraded/engineered unshielded Imperial Courier out to the nearest moon an boost along the surface at 800ms trying to keep it below 50 metres, HUD off at times (lost a few !) why ? no idea !

 

[krylite]

OP you can do a lot with a cobra mk3 and a hundred hours into the game. One way is doing the "road to riches" which will net you about 300 million, which you can kind of half-attention do, while doing something else (maybe Netflix) on another window. Then get the T-10 and equip it and you're pretty much good to go for most mission types as the T-10 defender is great at defense and /w fighter. If it's kind of lumbering and slow turning to you, just imagine it's like a 18 wheeler truck with a bunch of turret guns and a decent rammer. Have fun.

 

[WR3ND]

My average credit earnings in the game are around 160K per hour, much, much lower than many and maybe even most. In some respects I'm very much a "casual" player, in other ways, I am also very "serious." I play the game mostly for my own reasons and to have a good time playing as a sci-fi spaceship Commander in the Pilots Federation in 330X, and of course explore our galaxy firsthand, such as I am able to in the game, at least.

I play as a survivalist/adventurer/explorer. I haven't lost a ship in the game since 3301 (2015) and only 5 ships total so far. I'm generally out exploring in a fully combat loaded Vulture. I used to primarily play in Open, but since the Engineers and going on expeditions with other players, this has changed. I'm not all that much for the meta of things, instead preferring to play as though I would choose to be, as though I'm playing myself if I were in the game, at least so far as that is reasonably viable.

Basically, I don't particularly need credits nor larger ships to get along just fine for myself in the game. Beside, I like piloting nippier ships anyway. The largest ship I care to bother with is a Python, but even so in more limited use. The Vulture is much more fun for me to muck around in, in general.

 

[WR3ND]

... Oh and what's with the "glide" portion of landing on a planet without an atmosphere? Seems silly...

...

Think of it as an autopilot zoom type function so you can quickly get down close to the surface where you want to be and also slow down quickly to avoid crashing into it.

 

[krylite]

Oh and what's with the "glide" portion of landing on a planet without an atmosphere? Seems silly).

It's also the "cruise" aspect of the frame shift drive which ignores or negates much of weather , frictional and physical & inertial forces to help cushion or negate the otherwise flattening g-forces (like how today's UFOs magically propel). Which I'd suspect was the original base form of the frame shift drive. Hence super+cruise for the supercruise superluminal capable mode.

 

[Willa Allason]

Glide: because the slowest supercruise speed is 30km/sec and the fastest regular speed achievable is a little less than 1km/sec. So there needs to be some kind of transition. Also navigating to a planets surface in supercruise without either crashing or dropping out 150km away would be annoying as hell to pull off.

 

[kanhf0514]

Well, I play this game just for my love of flying a space ship in a 1:1 scale galaxy with decent visual, and occasionally shooting at NPC. I wanted to say I am pretty casual as I don't care much about min-maxing or PVP. However, my love of space ship does require a huge amount of credits since I only love flying the big ships and I hate flying in anything smaller than a Chieftain or Python. So yeah, i logged for nearly 300 hours of play time and most of the time was spent on grinding for credits. Now I got over 2 billion of assets and own all of the 4 biggest ships in the game. And right now I am still grinding for mat so I can upgrade my weapons.

Still, I am clueless on most of the other aspects of the game, thargoid hunting, guardian gears unlock...etc.

 

[[VR] Scifikomori]

Wow, thanks for the replies all!

@OP is there one of the bigger ships that interests you?

I can help you get a boost in credits to afford it if you'd like to try something out that's bit swish and fancy.

I'm not sure what you are saying, it sounds intriguing but I'm respectfully declining and just chugging along in my Cobra. But thanks for the offer!

I have a super casual buddy that I play the game with on rare occasions — by casual I mean he regularly crashes into things, doesn't use flight assist, doesn't use strafing and does almost no power distribution (pip) management.

While he has very limited time these days, he has played since beta and even with my help since then, he only has two ships so far = a Vulture and a Type-7 and he only has 1 engineer unlocked so far.
So yeah, playing at one's own pace is perfectly normal.


Also, don't mind the comments of X credits/hour, they are mostly aimed people who claim it's NOT possible to earn decent credits.
Earning that much is something you learn in the long run.

In my case a very long run I have two ships as well btw, there is an Eagle somewhere out there. Also, I sometimes try docking at space stations without flight assist, I think it's cool that it's included in the game. But usually I have that one on!

You're not the only one OP. Plenty of the top posters here who have rose tinted glasses and wax lyrical about the game do exactly the same thing. Just get a quick "spaceship fix". Then they spend 3 times as long on the forum defending the game.

They are the people who say there isn't a grind and ED is perfect. Mainly because they don't engineer, don't engage in powerplay, don't unlock anything, don't obtain any permits and don't fly anything bigger than an Asp.

Elite is great if you want to fly about aimlessly, without plans or goals. Not so much as soon as you do though.

Well, I'm not quite sure what you are getting at. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it is what it is. And it can be pretty darn enjoyable, but also kind of, well, grindy and boring I suppose. Without any goals (other than the grind) it's easy to be lost and aimless (as I pretty much am, but I enjoy it in my own way now and then). I think BlackSpaceCowboy said it best:

I'm a VR player too. I would also consider myself casual even though I probably poured over 100 hours into the game easily.

It's frustrating because it's close to my dream game. I'm in a functional spaceship in VR. I can fly around the galaxy and land on planets and moons. I can drive an SRV.

But that's essentially where it ends.

I used to really enjoy the game when I was just bounty hunting. It's only when I tried to get a better ship than my Vulture that the grind hit me like a ton of bricks.

My hope is to return to bounty hunting and maybe wing bounty hunting if I can ever get a game going.

I've upgraded my FSD on my Asp. So now I'll just ignore all the other upgrades and try to enjoy the aspect of the game I enjoy.

Well put!

OP- Coil, just keep on playing the way you feel like playing. The Cobra III is the best ship in the game and you have enough credits to outfit yours any way you like.

Can I offer a couple of pointers?

• If you build up your reputation with a local faction they'll pay you a lot better for doing exactly the same things you already do for small rewards- that includes all sorts of collectible goodies if you ever decide to give engineering a go. Just pick the kind of missions you like doing and keep coming back to the same faction's bases, outposts and stations for more.
• You can sell your modules back when you're done with them, making replacement modules a lot cheaper and allowing you to rebuild your whole ship if you really want to.
• The smaller modules are handy if you want to increase your jump range when you go exploring, since lighter is better. The trick is to carry the bare minimum of weight to allow you to go safely where you want to go. A very small shield is handy if you intend landing anywhere, for instance.
• There are some cracking out of game assets that you can use if you get a bit stuck, or feel like doing something a bit quicker or more efficiently. Try https://eddb.io/

Apologies if any of this sounds a bit patronising, I'm not trying to teach you to suck eggs. But if your time is limited and you want to see measurable results without having to grind your fingers to the bone there are lots of small things that can make a big difference to your in game experience. They'll allow you to see measurable improvements in whatever area you want, without puttting in any more effort or spoiling the freedom you/we enjoy to do whatever takes your fancy next time you flash up the game.

See you in the black!

It's alright, and thanks for the pointers! I knew about the second item, and kind of also the 4th but I haven't really looked into that as I play in VR. Nice tip about smaller modules too, kind of obvious but still something I hadn't quite considered

Sometimes I take my fully upgraded/engineered unshielded Imperial Courier out to the nearest moon an boost along the surface at 800ms trying to keep it below 50 metres, HUD off at times (lost a few !) why ? no idea !

Haha nice!

OP you can do a lot with a cobra mk3 and a hundred hours into the game. One way is doing the "road to riches" which will net you about 300 million, which you can kind of half-attention do, while doing something else (maybe Netflix) on another window. Then get the T-10 and equip it and you're pretty much good to go for most mission types as the T-10 defender is great at defense and /w fighter. If it's kind of lumbering and slow turning to you, just imagine it's like a 18 wheeler truck with a bunch of turret guns and a decent rammer. Have fun.

Nice tip, thanks! I might do this for a little while to see how that is.
As for netflix, that's something I considered. Tried OVR to get another window in VR, but unfortunately that's one case where Windows 7 shows it's shortcomings (one day I'll probably switch to 10, but not yet).

Glide: because the slowest supercruise speed is 30km/sec and the fastest regular speed achievable is a little less than 1km/sec. So there needs to be some kind of transition. Also navigating to a planets surface in supercruise without either crashing or dropping out 150km away would be annoying as hell to pull off.

Ah ofc, I didn't think this through. That would ruin a (virtual) day (or ship)! Still, I'd like to protest about the "Glide" name then Some kind of frame transition-ish name would be a bit more descriptive. Imho.

As for the FSD and FTL speeds, or any relativistic speeds, I think it's nice that the scale of things diminishes at higher speeds (length contraction and all that), but I miss some other view distortions (even if not strictly scientific, and ofc it's a game). But maybe it'd get old fast, I don't know.

Well, I play this game just for my love of flying a space ship in a 1:1 scale galaxy with decent visual, and occasionally shooting at NPC. I wanted to say I am pretty casual as I don't care much about min-maxing or PVP. However, my love of space ship does require a huge amount of credits since I only love flying the big ships and I hate flying in anything smaller than a Chieftain or Python. So yeah, i logged for nearly 300 hours of play time and most of the time was spent on grinding for credits. Now I got over 2 billion of assets and own all of the 4 biggest ships in the game. And right now I am still grinding for mat so I can upgrade my weapons.

Still, I am clueless on most of the other aspects of the game, thargoid hunting, guardian gears unlock...etc.

I went to Pleiadees (sp?) a while ago, which is the longest "expedition" (from around the Sol system) I've went, unfortunately it was before the barnacles(?) things where a thing. I haven't returned later (even if it's not that far either.. well, galactically speaking). Still a cool trip though.

Now I've set my eyes on the center of the galaxy, just to have a "small" little goal over time. Might do some other minor grinding first. Not sure how feasible it is with a Cobra, I'm guessing I have to fly along the spiral arm instead of across it because of jump range. But then again, why not?