Newcomer / Intro couple questions

[Darkspecialist]

Can i own multiple ships?

and if so and i havent found it on this website so much but can one person do all these things below? per this site https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Roles

how long of game play usually does it take to settle into one of these roles especially if i want to leave this surrounding area you start in and the bubble i see people talk about?

like i think im interested in mining and maybe long distance exploration. is that something i can start now in hour 1 just with a small ship and work my way up to the largest to get me out on the edge of the solar system?

thanks


Courier

Courier role
Main article: Courier
Starport bulletin boards will often offer missions that require little or no cargo space and can be an easy (albeit low) source of income. Missions that require no cargo space will be marked with one horizontal arrow pointing right whereas courier missions that require some cargo space are marked with a cargo container and an arrow pointing to the right. Missions that have two horizontal arrows going left and right require you to buy the stated cargo and return to the port with it. Accepted missions can be turned in (completed) by travelling to the mission's destination and using the starport bulletin board there.
Trader

Trader with a Type-9 Heavy
Main article: Trader
Trading is the act of buying commodities at a low price and selling them for a higher price. In Elite: Dangerous the Galaxy Map can help traders determine profitable trade routes by providing purchasable market data as well as displaying NPC trade routes and economy types. As profitable as it can be to haul cargo around the galaxy, pirates are a hazard and can differ depending on the system.
Explorer

Explorer
Main article: Explorer
Exploring is a (mostly) lonely and time consuming job. The profitability depends on how much undiscovered data the player has to sell and, when the system is all but unknown, the profit can be quite substantial. Starting from game's version 1.1, it will display tag with commander's name alongside astronomical object to indicate which person first discovered and sold this exploration data to authorities. However, you are still able to explore said star system and make credits regardless. *When you discover/explore a region/planet, you must travel at least 20ly away from that location in order to sell that particular data.
Miner

Miner Type-9 Heavy
Main article: Miner
Mining involves using various specialized tools to locate resource-rich asteroids, extracting and refining various raw minerals and metals from those asteroids, and then selling the collected commodities for the highest possible profit. Although more time-consuming and manual than simple trading, the number of tools available to miners allow for a more custom approach to the task, and massive profits can be earned depending on what mineral is collected and where it is sold.
Smuggler

Smuggler Type-6
Main article: Smuggler
Smugglers are similar to traders except that they sell goods where it is illegal, on the black market. Smugglers have to use stealth, cunning and special equipment to outwit the Police and sometimes military authorities, especially around stations, to sell their goods at a profit while escaping fines and a criminal record. Smugglers can also be a special class of couriers, where the player is asked to transport forbidden items.
Pirate

Pirates in planetary rings
Main article: Pirate
Pirates naturally earn combat ranking by attacking and destroying other ships. The primary motivation for pirates is the cargo carried by their prey. Pirates use powerful weaponry and their fearsome reputations to encourage traders to hand over their goods.
Mercenary

Mercenary Cobra
Main article: Mercenary
Mercenary work is found at starport bulletin boards which send the player to fight at Conflict Zones and warzones. In zones with active fighting a mercenary can find near constant work.
Assassin

Assassin Asp
Main article: Assassin
An assassin requires flight experience and solid equipment as their targets are highly dangerous. The payout for taking down targets can be extremely rewarding, but make sure to never underestimate the enemy - their bounties are large for a reason.
Bounty Hunter

Bounty Hunter Fer-de-Lance
Main article: Bounty Hunter
Space is a rough place and there are plenty of pirates in the anarchy systems who need to be retired. The bounty hunter takes advantage of the in-game bounty system, earning credits and combat rank for destroying wanted ships. Bounty hunters specialize in lethal, offensively-focused ships which are capable of reliably destroying their prey.
Passenger Carrier

Space tourism with a Beluga liner
Main article: Passenger Carrier
Passenger Carriers are similar to Traders except they transport paying passengers instead of cargo. Passenger contracts operate in a similar manner to mission board contracts. Ships that are equipped with Passenger Cabins may pick up passengers in the Passenger Lounge available at many stations. There are two main types of passenger contracts: VIP and non-VIP (bulk).
Multicrew

Multicrew in a Corvette
Main article: Multicrew
Players can serve as crew members on each others' ships, instantly transferring to a secondary bridge position via drop-in, drop-out matchmaking, accessible via an option on the Comms panel. Some ship types can have up to 3 people in Multicrew, controlling either the Helm (Piloting), Gunner (turreted weapons), or Fighter con (two ship launched fighters).
Scavenger

Scavenger and a drone
Main article: Salvage
A scavenger is a minor role to retrieve Cargo Canisters found in space, at salvageable wrecks or on a celestial body's surface using a Cargo Scoop. Whether retrieving an item is legal or not can be seen by the GUI text that appears when targeting it - either "Legal Salvage" or "Illegal Salvage".
Cargo that a player both jettisons and abandons becomes legal salvage, while if they only jettison it it's illegal salvage for everyone but them. Cargo that is already marked as stolen can only be jettisoned.
Infiltrator

Data Point at a settlement
Infiltrator jobs can be found at various mission boards and require the player to attack or covertly retrieve data packages from a target settlement. Infiltrators are often tasked with attacking a certain quantity of a specific settlement's defence drones known as skimmers, destroying settlement's power grid or obtaining a data package by scanning a settlement's data points via the data link scanner.
Though infiltrator missions offer a high reward, performing these actions is usually illegal and thus often result in a hefty fine or bounty. Since settlements appear on planets, the Horizons expansion is required to complete these missions and the player will likely need an SRV. It should be noted that settlements vary in size and security level.
Support

Cobra and a repair limpet
Support is an informal role in which one player aids another by refueling their ship or repairing its hull. This can be accomplished with the Fuel Transferer for refuels, Repair Limpet drones for hull repairs and the Regeneration Sequence to restore an energy shield. While this role does not guarantee any monetary reward, it can be an interesting and entertaining pursuit on its own. Many explorers often find themselves in need of fuel or repairs while wandering the far reaches of the galaxy, and combat ships can benefit from hull repairs both during and after a battle. The Fuel Rats are good example of this. In AX Conflict zones you can support people with Decontamination limpets to remove caustic chemicals off a ship's hull.
Search and Rescue

An Anaconda inside a damaged station
Main article: Search and Rescue
The Search and Rescue role concerns providing assistance in emergency situations. Certain Legal Salvage items, such as escape pods (occupied or damaged), "black box" flight recorders, and personal effects, can be turned in to a station's Search and Rescue Agent contact for a reward. Damaged stations offer passenger missions to evacuate refugees to the nearest Rescue Vessel, and Rescue Vessels offer missions to salvage items from inside damaged stations.

 

[Chris Simon]

Yes.

The limit is 250 ships IIRC. 30-ish per station (so you can't cram them all in one place but I think it's rougly set that you can have one of each ship in the game together). Though this info is a couple years old and I haven't bothered checking if something's changed, but if it did, it would be up, so you can take this as a lower boundary.

And yes, you can do all those things, but it will take you LOOOOOONG time. So brace yourself. Not everything is easy and quick in Elite. Well, to be honest nothing is. You're in for a ride.
As for how long it takes to "settle into a role"? Well, it'll take you a weekend to learn to fly if you didn't do that already. After you know how the ship itself works, roles are relatively easy to understand, but hard to master. Especially combat, of course, but even mining requires tricks that you have to discover along the way (or read a guide to mining) to be really efficient.
So personally, it took me five years to learn combat and I'm not even good at it. Mining, trading, exploration, those are kind of low effort, relaxing jobs that don't really push you anywhere so try to enjoy them, there's no rush. If you survive the initial "culture shock" you're probably going to be playing for thousands of hours.

 

[Faded Glory]

Can i own multiple ships?

and if so and i havent found it on this website so much but can one person do all these things below? per this site https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Roles

how long of game play usually does it take to settle into one of these roles especially if i want to leave this surrounding area you start in and the bubble i see people talk about?

like i think im interested in mining and maybe long distance exploration. is that something i can start now in hour 1 just with a small ship and work my way up to the largest to get me out on the edge of the solar system?

thanks

Yes, you can own multiple ships. I own 30, and that's not really that many. You just require enough credits to be able to purchase and outfit a new ship without selling your existing one(s).

Yes, you can do anything you want to in the game. It's a sandbox.

How long to do things will vary, but these days its pretty quick to acquire a decent amount of credits to buy and outfit 'specialist' ships to do the different things you are interested in. Bear in mind that you will likely want to engineer your ships, and that is a different 'currency', not credits, and can take a little longer.

You can do mining - indeed any activity in the game - in any ship you want. Some will naturally be better suited than others, but that's not to stop you doing things in ships that aren't perfectly suited to the job at hand. You can certainly explore in any ship you like. People have explored in everything from Sidewinders to Imperial Cutters. You will probably want to outfit (and engineer) your ship to make it as effective for the task at hand as possible.

Can you get started in one hour? No idea. That may be slightly ambitious, but I'd suggest not trying to rush this game, that's not really the best or most enjoyable way to play it.

 

[Ashnak]

Well, as for that 1 hour timeline... it took me longer than that just to set up my controls.
The other ting is, if you're talking about our solar system, i.e. the Sol system: you're not allowed to go there yet. You will need to reach a certain rank with the Federal merchant Navy before they will consider letting you go there.
On the other hand, if you're talking about the Galaxy - well, it took me 3 years to get from Sol (ok, nearby Sol - that CMDR doesn't have the Sol permit yet) to the farthest reachable point. In theory, that could be done within 6 hours, though, if you know exactly what you're doing and have set up a ship specifically for that purpose. The Galaxy is BIG. There's also Alpha Centauri - flying to the second of the two stations in that system will take you roughly 90 minutes. So, I don't know what you want to achieve in one hour.

What I would like to achieve in one hour, though, is another attempt at a run in "Signs Of Life" (see my sig)

 

[Hawk of Battle]

Yes, you can own multiple ships. In fact you'll probably end up with a bunch of ships for different roles.

Yes, you can do all of those things. That's why they're mentioned on the wiki as things you can do. Not sure why you'd think you can't do those things.

How long does it take? Impossible to say. Depending on what you want to do you could buy a smaller ship and go do most of those things very quickly. It depends on what you want to do, how fast you can make the credits and what ship you want to do it in. If you wanted to go mining, check out the Miner page on the wiki for some ship suggestions, see what you can afford, and work towards those. If you want to go exploring, you could go and do that right now in your starter Sidewinder (you just won't get very far, very fast), or work on getting something a bit bigger (just remember to equip a fuel scoop!). It's entirely up to you.

Since the game has a fairly vertical learning cliff, your first hour is probably going to be more realistically spent trying to figure out how to do stuff like fly from 1 place to another, understanding throttle control in supercruise and how to navigate and find stuff on the galaxy map and adjusting and remapping controls to your liking, all whilst trying to make a few credits to buy a better ship. How you make those credits and what that ship will be is up to you, but the simplest and easiest way initially is to do some data courier missions to nearby systems. They are fairly straight forward, you likely won't be attacked and you'll learn a bunch of that stuff I just mentioned as you do them. Then you can think about new ships and what you want to do next.

 

[aRJay]

First set up your controls then do the tutorial training missions from the main menu then adjust your controls so that everything works easily for you using the training as a repeatable way of checking that you are making things better.

You can do all of those rolls, you don’t even need missions to do many of them.

Ship choice is very personal but when it comes to an exploration ship pick one that you like the view from and the sound in the cockpit you could quite possibly be there for a long time so you might as well enjoy it.

 

[d8veh]

You can't do the last one. We haven't had any burning stations for ages.