I made Combat elite in about a year of bounty hunting and powerplay undermining and conflict zones. I then did my last bit of naval rank unlock for the empire running missions from cubeo, hip 10716 and for the feds donation missions at 17 draconis. Once I had unlocked the cutter and vette, that I couldn't really afford I made trade elite about 4 months later by moving millions of imperial slaves around zemina Torvals territory, chujohimba & pancienses. Then when passengers came in I went into exploring by proxy, ie ferrying "famous explorer's" to distant tourist beacons generating loads of cartography data as I j)onked (jump+honk) my way through half a million light years.
So all in all my triple elite status took me about three years, combat elite came naturally, trade elite took a lot of effort and I wasn't really enjoying it, so I bought myself a fer-de-lance, a specced and gold painted it, parked it at jameson memorial, and didn't let myself fly it until I was trade elite. During the trade elite campaign, I went through python --> conda --> type 9 --> cutter and innumerable hours of space trucking. The only redeeming feature was I was a very active powerplayer back then and would park up the current cargo barge near the end of the week to go spank out merits for the imperial powerplay faction(s) objectives. Exploration elite was a mixed bag, sure there was a heap of mindless jonking, but there was also some cool vistas, which in VR certainly made an impression on me. One such example is "red and green glory" which is a mountainous planet surface inside a red and green nebula, illuminated with a strange purple blue light from the systems neutron star all combining to create a very eerie feeling - utterly alien and haunting.
Nowadays, "Trade elite" be spanked out in 15hrs of void opal mining, exploration elite is just a few laps of the roadto riches and or a stack of passenger missions, whcih I seem to recall some youtuber posting something about sothis/robigo/some such exploit hub generating passenger missions paying millions for a 45min supercruise? And combat elite can be done by farming thargoid scouts which are all elite ranked. So in essence, in the game as it stands today, triple elite that used to take a couple of years of shrewdly aimed gameplay can now be punched in in about 40hrs.
So all in all my triple elite status took me about three years, combat elite came naturally, trade elite took a lot of effort and I wasn't really enjoying it, so I bought myself a fer-de-lance, a specced and gold painted it, parked it at jameson memorial, and didn't let myself fly it until I was trade elite. During the trade elite campaign, I went through python --> conda --> type 9 --> cutter and innumerable hours of space trucking. The only redeeming feature was I was a very active powerplayer back then and would park up the current cargo barge near the end of the week to go spank out merits for the imperial powerplay faction(s) objectives. Exploration elite was a mixed bag, sure there was a heap of mindless jonking, but there was also some cool vistas, which in VR certainly made an impression on me. One such example is "red and green glory" which is a mountainous planet surface inside a red and green nebula, illuminated with a strange purple blue light from the systems neutron star all combining to create a very eerie feeling - utterly alien and haunting.
Nowadays, "Trade elite" be spanked out in 15hrs of void opal mining, exploration elite is just a few laps of the roadto riches and or a stack of passenger missions, whcih I seem to recall some youtuber posting something about sothis/robigo/some such exploit hub generating passenger missions paying millions for a 45min supercruise? And combat elite can be done by farming thargoid scouts which are all elite ranked. So in essence, in the game as it stands today, triple elite that used to take a couple of years of shrewdly aimed gameplay can now be punched in in about 40hrs.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
