Newcomer / Intro Eric's collection of "Share your wisdom"

Ericlas · Dec 16, 2014

Greetings fellow CMDR!

This thread is all about sharing our wisdom and giving advice and "lessons learned" to other commanders.
If it's for fresh starters or returning commanders after a break or even for the advanced that never thought about this information you give.
It's not ultimately to share your secrets, but feel free to do so if that's your wish.
And of course i'll start by myself, with the first ones.

If possible, try to fit your advice into one of the categories below, but of course feel free to create a new one, if you feel that it fits better.

I'll update the first post regularly so readers don't get lost.

Credits go out to all that helped collecting all the info below. See the exclamtion marks behind the tips!

General:

Your ship consums fuel, not only when you hyperjump! (See at your lower right corner) Make sure you either have a fuelscoop to refuel at stars (see Fuelscooping below) or a station (and of course enough credits) at hand to stock up again. If you get stranded somewhere without one of the above mentioned, you will have to self-destruct.
always make sure your throttle is set to zero before you press the "launch" button
after using the auto docking computer, your ships power setting are being resetted, be sure to set them up to your choice again
When wanting to go to Outfitting, use Enter Hangar first. This lets you continue to use the various panels and screens (check your stats, set destinations, look at commodities) while being dragged down below, while if you just use Outfitting, you will freeze up with "Stand By" for the whole trip on the little elevator. (ty FaolGlas)
Stolen cargo (any cargo actually) can be dumped when docked at the station without penalties. Good if you happen to miss a deadline for a mission and want to avoid being scanned when exiting the station. (ty LordKee)
You are not scanned when landing on outposts (Eric: there are few outpost with security vessels though, so check first). Look out for an outpost with black market; good place to dump all the stolen canisters you happen upon. (ty LordKee)
be sure to always have enough money in the bank to cover your insurance cost displayed on the right panel, bad things can and will happen

Controls:

Make sure that in the Control options you turn off "firing deploys hardpoints". Otherwise eventually when departing a station you will hit that button and end up firing on the station (ty murraypaul and Ganjis)
Clear the "Eject all Cargo" binding as a safety precaution, until you got used to your key bindings
Before you get serious, go to options > controls and set every control to your liking. Test your settings in the tutorial scenario's because they load fast and nothing's lost if you boost into the tower on landing. Fiddle with them until you have them just so. (ty schurem)
Try out all the different control options (joystick, game pad controller, mouse+keyboard), you may find one is more accurate than the other or does fit your playstyle better.
Try out Voice Attack (Eric: a 3rd party programm allowing you to use voice input to interact with the game http://www.voiceattack.com/), but don't allocate too many commands to it, or make them too similar. You'll only forget them and/or mis-speak them. (ty jptreen)
Voice Attack is too slow for some critical commands, but you can work that out by playing and coming to your own conclusions (hint - don't bother with binding 'Shield Cell Boost' to a VA profile, you'll be dead before it activates.) (ty jptreen)
Don't set a single word command for boost in Voice Attack. It makes a mess in the station. (Eric: everytime you use that word accidentally, it will boost your ship...exactly into the direction you are looking at that moment (ships, walls, towers etc.) (ty Zplintz)
The latest beta of voiceattack allows binding of a joystick button for "listening" to commands. If you assign that to the same button as "Mute Voice" (something like that) in the ED controls, you'll never trigger a voice attack command while talking to someone in-game. (ty hurricanepilot)

Docking:

try to approach a station from the inner side of its orbit, 90% of the time you will face its docking bay upon entry of the instance
the entrance of the station always rotates counterclockwise (when viewed from outside). This helps in determining where to go when you're at an angle to the station where you can't see the entrance, but you can see which way it's rotating. Also see the arrows on the coriolis-stations-3d-portrait in your lower left corner. (ty Captain_Chaos)
double check you have a docking permit before entering a station, to avoid a costly fine or even destruction
check your cargo for 'stolen' goods before approaching a station, if you are being scanned by security vessels you will get a massive fine
check your docking display (appearing when you are close to the pad) for the correct ship heading to be able to dock
when docking at an outpost, you are approaching from the right direction if the pad number (01,02...) appears to be at the back of the pad, not the front. (ty murraypaul)
check if your ship is small enough to be able to land on an outpost, they can only fit small and medium ships (gamma 1.04)
deploy your landing gear while un/docking as this disables the boost function, until you are clear of any possible objects you can accidentally collide with. (ty Ganjis)
For your first docking attempts, try to make use of your vertical and lateral thrusters on landing. Once you get the hang of using them well, it becomes an easy and gratifying part of your gameplay. (ty schurem)
After you got some experience at landing, how your thrusters work and your ship reacts to your input, try to just land it like an airplane on a runway: line up with the raised/angled "deflector" and just clip the top of it at about a 10-degree nose-down attitude and roughly 25m/s, then progressively slow to under 10m/s as you settle over the platform, cutting to about 5m/s as you place the ship icon in the "blue circle". In the final line-up with the "blue circle" you can start to raise the nose of the ship. The "stick" that shows your height relative to the deck should almost be gone by the time you enter the circle, but don't fly too low too early, or you'll hit the deck and bounce along. Use pitch & yaw to make minor corrections in yaw angle and descent, but it's pretty forgiving, as long as you're at the right height when you enter the "blue circle". This method is more fluent and faster than the above described. (ty EDbubba)
Next step will be trying to dock with Flight Assist OFF. You'll quickly find that the ability to slowly drift in a linear direction close to the landing Pad can be extremely useful. Also, you can use to "slide" towards a big station's entry port at very high speed, while orienting your craft towards it as desired (just check your scanner for collision potential, so don't powerdrift right into traffic - the Thrusters will take several seconds to stop your ship and then doing it - it temporarily will gain forward momentum (ty FalconFly)
when using a docking computer, odd things can happen, so be sure to have an eye on your ship and his work (i.e. player ships don't act in the routines of NPC ships, they may not wait for you to pass the stations entry )
in case the Docking computer is trying to kill you - Flight Assist Off immediately cuts it out (Eric: as well as throttling up or disabling the module in your right hand panel), for as long as it is active, without adding unwanted thrust momentum to your ship - just be aware you'll keep drifting in the current direction until you stop it (ty FalconFly)

Navigation:

traveling in super cruise: (there are different methods to get you to your target the fastest way possible, the overall compromise sums up to the following) you can head toward your destination at 100% throttle but when your ETA is around 6-8 seconds, reduce your throttle into the blue markers, you'll cost right on in with out over shooting (ty jnye, dogmeat, Goof) (Eric: Gravity and sometimes lag influence this method and let's you still overshoot sometimes, so keep your eyes open for the "Slow down"-warning and find your own pace)
For quick travelling and jumping to other systems you can use the destination-list (left hand panel) Systems in reach will be shown there sorted by their distance from you. But it has a hard limit on the number of systems it can show (32?), so if you have a 20LY+ range you can have more systems in range than the list can show. If you cannot find your desired target, use the galaxy map for travel. (ty _Flinn_ and EDbubba)
the distance you can jump depends on the amount of cargo you are carrying. Check thus before accepting missions/planning trade trips. (ty murraypaul)
the distance you can jump is also affected by your ships equipment. If you are playing a pure trader, you can drop some mass, and increase jump range, by selling your starting lasers. (ty murraypaul)
do not sell your shield generator. You will be interdicted, and will need your shields to keep you alive long enough to escape. (ty murraypaul)
when interdicted, the interdiction process can and will place you quite further away from your destination if the throttle is kept at a high level, throttle to minimal thrust will minimize the actual distance (Eric: but also effect your manoeuvrebility as a downside) you're travelling while evading the interdiction. Just make sure you don't hit dead 0 - which will immediately lead to a submisstion to the interdiction. Alternatively, you might get so close to a stellar object, that you automatically drop out of supercruise (safety exit) if you find that useful vs. the interdiction risk. (ty FalconFly)
there are various possibilities in the Galaxy Map to search for a specific system, economies, allegiance, population and so on. You can find them in the 3rd tab. Galaxy Map -> View -> Realistic/Map -> Filters -> Show by Colour & Show by Size pulldown menus (ty FalconFly)

Combat:

be sure to have all weapons in fire groups before engaging a target, esp. If you bought new ones
your kill warrant scanner needs to be in a fire group to be usable
you have to face your target to be able to use the kill warrant scanner and you have to maintain this alignment until the scan is finished, you also have to be in a certain range to be able to scan your target, this range depends on your scanners grade
Hold down KWS button even if you drop out of range / sight of your target, it stores the progress of your scan for a while and will restart from where it left off rather than at the beginning of the process. (ty jptreen)
be carefull not to hit any other vessels when you engage a target, it will make you wanted
when being interdicted (Eric: and you are about to lose the "mini-game"), throttle down and submit to prevent damage and long FSD cooldown time. If attacking ship is too much to handle, boost away and jump. (ty LordKee)
Set your throttle within the blue zone for maximum manuverability, in normal flight as well as in supercruise. (ty Diofantos, Goof)
Pitch is more sensitive than yaw. (ty Diofantos)
Using roll & pitch together is always faster than using yaw alone, in Elite games. (ty vjek)
If you turn off "report crimes committed against me" authority vessels will not assist you, preventing them from kill-stealing your bounties. (Eric: that doesn't help you when they already engaged a target at a NAV-beacon or extraction site and keep in mind they will not assist you in any other situation as well ) (ty vjek)
When being interdicted, set shields to full when you drop out, then get your bearings. One day it will save your ship. (ty jptreen)
If you're using a HOTAS, find a button to use as a dedicated 'shift' button, then forget about it for now. Over time, you will slowly run out of buttons on your HOTAS, and will thank me later when you can use Chaff / Shield Boosters / Heatsink / PIPs / FA Off near instantly without ever taking your hands off your controls. This Gives You An Edge. (ty jptreen)
Set your Kill Warrant Scanner and FSD Interdictor to the same trigger group in the same fire group. This means you have to change fire groups far less often, because the KWS only words in normal space and the Interdictor only works during Frame Shifts. (ty jptreen)
Turning off your power distribution module saves a fair bit of power/heat generation when silent running. You don't need to worry about losing power to engines/shields/weapons, the three systems remember the last setting they were on before you powered off the distributor. They will recharge normally, you just can't change the distribution settings while the module is off (ty Goof)
Shield banks can make a huge difference in a duel-situation. They will restore your shields (it's an effect over time), except when they are fully collapsed. This advantage can make the difference between win or lose a duel. (ty SOVEREIGN)

Trading and Missions:

be sure to always have enough money in the bank to cover your insurance cost displayed on the right panel, bad things can and will happen
You cannot rely on the trade routes on the Galactic Map, to trade profitably you need to manually keep track of station prices and supply/demand (gamma 1.04, ty murraypaul)
Deliver/Fetch missions make more money than trading, and rank up your faction reputation, allowing access to better missions. Always prefer missions to straight trading, then use trading to fill up any space in your ship (ty murraypaul)
When first starting out, only take Delivery missions. Fetch missions require you to buy the commodity before getting paid, and you won't have the capital to do that. (ty murraypaul)
Mission list seems to refresh every 5 mins 00, :05, :10 etc). With the long mission timers in Gamma 1.04 you can pick up several missions to same destination if you are not in a hurry. (ty LordKee)
When running a mission, do look out for USS encounters. Sometimes you'll get interesting offers from the NPC ships related to your current mission. (ty LordKee)
When arriving at a station carrying cargo, always check the bulletin board before selling your cargo. You might get lucky and find a mission to fetch the cargo you already have, which will pay much more than just selling it. (ty murraypaul)
if you care about your standing with the Federation or other faction, do not get caught with stolen or illegal goods! If you want to smuggle them, take them to an outpost or an anarchy. It can take a lot of effort to restore your good reputation with the major factions. (ty sswam)
if you must take stolen / illegal goods into a large station, go in cold and silent and fast, come out as fast as you can 4-pips to engines and boosting (and landing gear up!) so they won't have time to scan you. (ty sswam)
to add to the above described "cold entry": line up with the station entry in a distance of approx. 10km, boost towards the station and activate "silent running"-mode, that will close your heat vents and -in simple terms- make you disappear from radar, if outiftted use heat sinks to cool your ship, your thruster will still work and allow minimal flight path corrections, as soon as you reach the entry deactivate silent running and try to slow down as quickly as possible to avoid hitting the back of the station (there is a tower so don't misjudge your distance to the wall), Attention: even if you are "gone" from radar, ships in 200m distance and closer will still be able to lock on and scan you)

Exploration:

You need both a discovery scanner and an detailed surface scanner to effectively explore (ty _Flin_)
your discovery scanner has to be in a fire group to be usable
you can explore 'unexplored' astronomical objects with your normal sensors, even from greater distances, simply align with them and check the lower left display if the scanner is working (however you can not discover new objects, therefore you need a Discovery scanner)
when you discovered some systems with a scanner but left some of them "Unexplored", you can actually later return to these to scan them (ty FalconFly)
Upgrade your FSD to make longer jumps (ty Diofantos)
To improve your payouts for exploring, your first major upgrade after an FSD should be a Detailed Surface Scanner (ty _Flin_)
This is currently bugged (Gamma 1.04). When entering an unexplored system and discovering objects with the Basic Discovery Scanner (BDS), there is no point then scanning the objects to obtain more data, you will not get any extra credits for it. You need to return to a station and sell your current data, then return and scan objects. (ty murraypaul)
systems with high buy prices (> 500 Cr.) at Universal Cartographics usually indicate valuable exploration targets. There will probably be a few bodies in there. You need to discover these. Then maybe scan them (with a detailed surface scanner, until the BDS bug is fixed). It can happen that it is a multi sun system and the planets are all 3 suns and 300k LS away. In which case it's not worth the time. (ty _Flin_)
earthlike planets and metal rich planets give good payouts when scanned (ty _Flin_)
selling exploration data should be done in a system and at a faction where you want to raise your reputation (ty _Flin_)
the first well rounded explorer vessel is the Cobra. It can fit 2 Scanners, Shields, Fuel Scoop, Cargo Bay (imagine you find Alien artifacts without one) and an Field Maintenance (Autorepair) Unit. (ty _Flin_)

Bounty Hunting:

be carefull not to hit any other vessels when you engage a target, it will make you wanted
be sure your target IS wanted before you engage it (normal scan it by just keeping your target in front of your ship, until it is marked as 'wanted' or you will be treated as offender and risk a fine (ty Deggial)
Scans from supercruise do not carry over to the actual fight and must be repeated (ty Deggial)
claiming Empire or Alliance bounties found with the KWS: "There are sometimes stations allied with totally different factions. You may have an entire system labelled Federation, but one of the station can show up Alliance or Empire, that's where you'd go to cash those in." (ty sswam)

Unidentified Signal Sources (USS):

USS spawn randomly while you travel in Supercruise through a system. You can either spot them visually or select them from your Navigations tab.
There are different scenarios inside a USS, like Lakon T9 traders waiting for customers (seems not to be working in Gamma 1.04), a convoy under attack, a powerfull pirate waiting for prey etc.
Sometimes when approaching a USS in Supercruise, you'll see it "spawning" a ship. You have two options now; If you are interested in bounty hunting, follow and interdict the ship as this is the criminal who attacked the trader inside the USS. If you are more interested in free, but marked as 'stolen' goods, enter the USS. You will find the remains of a spacecraft and some of its haulage floating in space. (ty Deggial)

Mining:

You need only 1 mining laser to break pieces off from an asteroid.
You need a refinery to start mining. (the number of bins in your refinery determines how many different materials can be processed by your refinery. (i.e. if you have 1 bin and pick up a chunk consisting of 50% Gold and 50% Beryllium you have to choose one of them to be processed and you can afterwards only process this material until you have 1 ton of it to be put in your cargohold))
You need at least 1 ton free in your cargohold. (processed materials from your refinery will move to your cargohold as soon as they reach the mass of 1 ton)
Find the right spot: Spend time in the map looking at each system that has a system view (ty BillD)
Look for ringed planets that are metallic in Major Reserves or Pristine (clicking on the asteroid belts in the systems) (ty BillD)
As for richness there are 2 priorities:
1) Reserves (I believe this means the percentage of a material in the chuck you break off) Pristine > Major > Common > Depleted (not sure if there are more categories) (ty bollwerk)
2) Material Type: Metallic > Metal Rich > Rocky (ty bollwerk)
Make sure there are bases in the system not too far away. Avoid where there is a base at one sun and mining location at the other, it takes too long to supercruise and sell your stuff (ty BillD)
For ringed planets you don't have to mine at the extraction sites where most likely pirates hang out. Dive into the same ring (slowly) just a bit further on from the Extraction site. If you come out in the belt and there are ships on your radar, full power to engines, burn in opposite direction and go silent. Get about 60K away. Make sure you were not followed. Travel near outside of belt so you can Hyperjump away if being chased. (ty BillD)
Approach asteroids SLOWLY. Without references you may misjudge your distance from the rock. (just constantly fire your mining laser during your approach and stop when you see it hitting the ground)
Fire your mining laser until a piece of the asteroid breaks off, target it and determine, what it is made of, if nothing valuable (have a look at a commodities market before), move to the next one. (ty BillD)
Once you strike it lucky, target first piece and burn off many chunks from the roid. The chunks will vanish after some time so keep eye on %hull of the first target piece, this lets you know how long before it will vanish, so don't sit there breaking off bits for too long with beginner mining laser. (ty BillD)
Make sure you have a hot key for reverse. Picking up ore with forward motion and then pressing reverse to back up for next piece is faster than tuning all over the place. (ty BillD)
open your cargo scoop as this disables the boost function, as a safety precaution (ty Ganjis)
Also pick a marker like the planet or sun (or extraction site) and work towards or away from your mark so you can orientate yourself and don't get all turned around and end up sampling the same rocks again (ty BillD)
When your cargo is full and your refinery bins are filled to 100% - they can be used as another ton of cargo each. (ty FalconFly)
As soon as the Cargo from Cargo hold is sold, the Refinery will empty its full bins into the now free Cargo hold (it may not show up immediately in the Commodities market for sale, so exiting the Market and opening it again will show your additional cargo for sale). (ty FalconFly)
Colliding with rotating asteroids at low speed or getting hit by asymmetric asteroids actually doesn't harm your shields much and isn't as dangerous as it looks (i.e. while scooping). The ship's speed, however, is a good killer when colliding with asteroids at higher velocity. (ty FalconFly)
When approaching an asteroid and you note you're slowing down not enough - give your engines a few more pips, the thrusters will have quite a bit more power that way and can often save a bad approach. (ty FalconFly)
Also, after mining with i.e. maximum pips on Weapons (to achieve faster mining), for scooping it's best to balance the power distribution again. The thruster power gained from operating on standard power vs. less than that will be helpful in expeditious scooping. (ty FalconFly)

Fuel Scooping:

Don't try and refuel at a white dwarf star (ty Bevz)
You can't refuel at brown dwarfs (ty Bevz)
Stars you can refuel at are type G,M,A,F,K (easy to remember) (ty vjek)
When you approach a star you can refuel at, don't scan the system as it'll draw attention to you (you don't want to be interdicted while refuelling!) (ty Bevz)
Approach slowly on 25% throttle, face-on until your heat is about 90° and aim at the star's horizon, your heat should stabilise at about 95, and you'll be filling at a good rate. You don't take damage until you go over 150, so you can go closer than this if you want.
When full, put the star directly behind you and SC out at about half throttle until your heat drops. Don't hyperspace as soon as your tanks fill or you'll overheat (ty Bevz and Razorwire)
a 309 CR scoop will collect at 18/s but when you do you overheat; better slow (10/s is good) and steady (ty Bevz)
Type 2A fuel scoops max gather rate is 75, Type 3C fuel scoops gather at 126. Type 3A fuel scoop gathers at 176. Size trumps quality in fuel scoops. (ty vjek)
Keep an eye out for interdictions (Eric: there will be a ship passing by trying to get behind you, you can hear the sounds of it when it passes you and it will 90% of the time show up on your radar); you don't want those. (ty Bevz)
if you get buzzed by a ship looking for interdiction, put the star behind you without throttling up, the bad guy will fly into the suns gravity well and drop out of SC (ty Razorwire)

Outfitting:

Don't just assume that A and B equipment is better - check that the power and weight figures match up with your overall plan for this ship. Sometimes the C and D options can use less power or be a bit lighter - important qualities in esp. the smaller ships (ty SmileyMan)
when choosing bigger gimbal or turret Laser weapons, notice that the grade (A-I = quality) affects their aiming skills and even a 500000 Cr turret beam laser won't hit anything if it's a Grade F or even lower. Class E appears to be the minimum gimbal/turret weapon that starts to have useable accuracy, class D is already getting quite useful.
So as a rule of thumb: never go for expensive but low-quality. (ty FalconFly)

Silent Running: (ty Sandro Sammarco - Lead Designer- Elite: Dangerous)

Ship heat: As you power draw increases (from turning on modules that require power), your power plant generates heat inside the ship. This is represented by the heat bar to the left of your sensor disc.
The effects of heating up your ship are that eventually some systems might shut down and the ship will start taking damage - effectively cooking itself.
Separately from this, your ship has a signature, which describes how visible you are to other ship's sensors. As heat is radiated out, your signature increases. This radiation rate is not the same as your internal ship heat, though obviously there is a direct connection. The hotter your ship is, the more heat it's radiators put out, and the bigger its signature.
When you rig for silent running, you close off your ship's radiators. Your ship still generates heat and cooks, but to other vessels it appears cold. As part of silent running you also turn off shields as the context is that these effectively radiate heat directly.
So how does signature work? Well, the smaller your signature, the closer a ship has to be before its sensors will detect you as a fuzzy contact (where the sensor marker flickers and moves around) and then as a resolved contact.
You can gain a similar benefit that silent running gives you by manually turning off modules. Your power plant runs cooler so less heat is generated and radiated. However, unless you basically turn off everything (including life support) the effect will be less effective.
There are two caveats to silent running benefits:
A) when your ship gets very close to another vessel its sensors will be able to detect you even if you are rigged for silent running. This auto-resolve distance is normally around two to three hundred metres.
B) ships can be fitted with more powerful sensors that increase the distance that they can detect you, and that can push the auto-resolve distance out to around five hundred metres or more (good sensors are the silent runner's worst nightmare).
All this being said, silent running can be used during combat, but it's a very dangerous gambit. Missiles, turrets and gimbal-mounted weapons *do* use signature to determine when they can lock on, so going silent can often make them lose lock until you are very close. In fact, if you rig for silent running and you're not within auto resolve distance then an aggressor will not even be able to target you to check your shield/hull status.
Silent running is certainly most effective at range, of course, out beyond the auto-resolve distance.
It's also important to note that we specifically did not want a "cloak" stealth ability that was indefinite, which is why silent running has various limitations.

Beld · Dec 16, 2014

Thanks for posting that, lot of information i'm sure will come in handy, or atleast pop into my head after i fail to remember it

capt_carl · Dec 16, 2014

Don't forget to mention that Cargo isn't covered under insurance, Never invest all of your money in cargo in case of the badness..

Newcomer / Intro Eric's collection of "Share your wisdom"

Ericlas

Beld

capt_carl