Well over a year ago, one of my best friends casually mentioned that Elite Dangerous: Horizons was free for a very short time through Epic and I should grab it. So I did. I had a vague comprehension of what Elite Dangerous supposedly was; space trucking, combat and simulation. Hind-sight being 20/20 that really should have piqued my interest, but for whatever reason it didn't at the time. So I sat on the game for a year? Two? I don't even remember exactly. Around October of 2020 my brother and I built new PCs and I messed around with some of my old favorites, basking in my new PC glory. A few more months go by and I'm tired of most of my games and I think to myself, "I bet Elite Dangerous would look awesome on this monitor and my PC will run it like a beast now." (It did and it does, btw ) 
So I download elite, fire it up and hop in my sidewinder. My recollection of specifics at this point is very vague at best, but I remember feeling enthralled and basically hooked the first time I saw a starport and auto docked with it. I ran a few missions, racked up a few 10s of thousands of space bucks and said, yep, I'm heading for YouTube. I Immediately learned of road to riches, went back in and farmed up enough to get a hauler. I purchase the hauler and got my jump range up to 30 or so LY and hit the road.
This is where we get to basically what inspired me to make this post. Aside from the fact that I heard a lot of you veterans like hearing about plucky new commander's "falling in love with elite" stories and just wanting to share.
So I hit road to riches, I don't even know if I had enough credits to pay the insurance on my hauler at this point, but I'm hopping around, doing surface scans of every planet on the list, raking in the cheddar. Me and this game just clicked. I was listening to more research about the game while I was farming exploration data, but I was paying so much attention to the game, I probably only kept 10% of what I was hearing. So I end up making, in roughly my first three days playing elite, around 100m credits and I, with very little knowledge of what I was doing, despite what research I had heard, bought a Python just cus it looked good on paper and I remember hearing one video I had watched at that point refer to it as "glorious". Yep. First week I went Sidewinder > Hauler > Python and I am now still using said Python. Tbh, if the station I just happened to be at didn't sell Pythons I very well may have bought a different ship. Also, I wasn't specific about who I turned my data into, so I hadn't pushed one reputation at all yet, I still didn't know what I was doing at all but damn I just felt like a boss and like this game was made for me.
I go out, improperly equipped, and try core mining. It's a disaster. I forgot limpets (lol), I go back with limpets and I didn't have a pulse wave scanner, etc. I'm crashing into asteroids, having a hell of a time with the seismic charges, but eventually, I get my together and actually pull in a 34m credit haul. Then I discovered the commodity tools available online and my next haul I pull in something like 82m credits. Since then I just spent a lot of time trying to learn about everything; I've been exploring combat, working on engineering a little bit, started doing more passenger missions, embarrassed myself in an SRV and have destroyed my Python more times than I care to admit. Most recently, I have mostly started grinding my Federation rep just because I was already 3 or 4 ranks in and was already in Federation territory. I didn't really care about grinding rep early on, I was just farming credits or exploring or inefficiently participating in combat. I did buy a cobra just to see what the hype was about and to try out a smaller ship in combat but I sold it along with my hauler.
So here's my rub, I kinda don't know where to go next. I've been playing for about 6 months (but with a huge break of about 3 months) and I only own 3 ships, a DBX, my Python and the Fer-de-Lance I just bought. I wanna explore combat more obviously as I just bought a Fer-de-Lance, but I really feel like I need to get my engineering up to snuff before I even bother switching from my Python to the Fer-de-Lance. I didn't feel a whole lot better in it compared to my Python in combat, but I could definitely see where it could really shine if I properly outfit it.
I'm currently grinding federation ranks, currently warrant officer and have been running passenger and courier missions mostly. I have 6 engineers unlocked but not all of their upgrades. And after buying the Fer-de-Lance and doing some outfitting, I'm still sitting on 300m, which I know is nothing compared to most but idk, I was considering buying a Type-9 just because I've really been doing a lot of cargo missions lately and from what I can tell I can make more money in a Python over a Beluga amazingly by running bulk passenger missions. I also haven't tackled any illegal activity so far either, but I'm not opposed.
If anyone read all this and feels like helping a still very new commander out,
What are some ships cheaper than a Python that would be fun or worth checking out?
Is it worth it to get a Type-9? Should I just grind/save for a Cutter?
Without guardian tech or engineering, what are the best combat hardpoints for a Python or Fer-de-Lance? I do have the engineered frag cannon, double shot I believe it's called.
I also just pledged to Duvall, was kind of thinking I want those shields, good call? bad?
So I download elite, fire it up and hop in my sidewinder. My recollection of specifics at this point is very vague at best, but I remember feeling enthralled and basically hooked the first time I saw a starport and auto docked with it. I ran a few missions, racked up a few 10s of thousands of space bucks and said, yep, I'm heading for YouTube. I Immediately learned of road to riches, went back in and farmed up enough to get a hauler. I purchase the hauler and got my jump range up to 30 or so LY and hit the road.This is where we get to basically what inspired me to make this post. Aside from the fact that I heard a lot of you veterans like hearing about plucky new commander's "falling in love with elite" stories and just wanting to share.
So I hit road to riches, I don't even know if I had enough credits to pay the insurance on my hauler at this point, but I'm hopping around, doing surface scans of every planet on the list, raking in the cheddar. Me and this game just clicked. I was listening to more research about the game while I was farming exploration data, but I was paying so much attention to the game, I probably only kept 10% of what I was hearing. So I end up making, in roughly my first three days playing elite, around 100m credits and I, with very little knowledge of what I was doing, despite what research I had heard, bought a Python just cus it looked good on paper and I remember hearing one video I had watched at that point refer to it as "glorious". Yep. First week I went Sidewinder > Hauler > Python and I am now still using said Python. Tbh, if the station I just happened to be at didn't sell Pythons I very well may have bought a different ship. Also, I wasn't specific about who I turned my data into, so I hadn't pushed one reputation at all yet, I still didn't know what I was doing at all but damn I just felt like a boss and like this game was made for me.
I go out, improperly equipped, and try core mining. It's a disaster. I forgot limpets (lol), I go back with limpets and I didn't have a pulse wave scanner, etc. I'm crashing into asteroids, having a hell of a time with the seismic charges, but eventually, I get my together and actually pull in a 34m credit haul. Then I discovered the commodity tools available online and my next haul I pull in something like 82m credits. Since then I just spent a lot of time trying to learn about everything; I've been exploring combat, working on engineering a little bit, started doing more passenger missions, embarrassed myself in an SRV and have destroyed my Python more times than I care to admit. Most recently, I have mostly started grinding my Federation rep just because I was already 3 or 4 ranks in and was already in Federation territory. I didn't really care about grinding rep early on, I was just farming credits or exploring or inefficiently participating in combat. I did buy a cobra just to see what the hype was about and to try out a smaller ship in combat but I sold it along with my hauler.
So here's my rub, I kinda don't know where to go next. I've been playing for about 6 months (but with a huge break of about 3 months) and I only own 3 ships, a DBX, my Python and the Fer-de-Lance I just bought. I wanna explore combat more obviously as I just bought a Fer-de-Lance, but I really feel like I need to get my engineering up to snuff before I even bother switching from my Python to the Fer-de-Lance. I didn't feel a whole lot better in it compared to my Python in combat, but I could definitely see where it could really shine if I properly outfit it.
I'm currently grinding federation ranks, currently warrant officer and have been running passenger and courier missions mostly. I have 6 engineers unlocked but not all of their upgrades. And after buying the Fer-de-Lance and doing some outfitting, I'm still sitting on 300m, which I know is nothing compared to most but idk, I was considering buying a Type-9 just because I've really been doing a lot of cargo missions lately and from what I can tell I can make more money in a Python over a Beluga amazingly by running bulk passenger missions. I also haven't tackled any illegal activity so far either, but I'm not opposed.
If anyone read all this and feels like helping a still very new commander out,
What are some ships cheaper than a Python that would be fun or worth checking out?
Is it worth it to get a Type-9? Should I just grind/save for a Cutter?
Without guardian tech or engineering, what are the best combat hardpoints for a Python or Fer-de-Lance? I do have the engineered frag cannon, double shot I believe it's called.
I also just pledged to Duvall, was kind of thinking I want those shields, good call? bad?
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