How in the name of all that's holy is it possible to play this game?

[Dogoncrook]

Don't know where the manual is supposedly one exists. But the new player forums are less hostile and helpful in the future I'd ask questions there.

At the start go to the system map, at the station your other ship is stored in there will be an icon. At any station with a shipyard you can see your other ships and their location. Go there and pick it up if you want it sell it for 40k, selling the sidwinder won't work as it's a loaner.

Early game trading and selling exploration data is a good way to align with the locals. Check the system map and see who actually owns the station by clicking on it. That is who will be influenced by turning in data or making trades.

To find out which faction is which and what they are about, go to the right panel in the cockpit. On the first tab you can click through multiple pages. The second page display factions political influence in that system with bars indicating %. Click each faction to see what form of government they have and their beliefs. Keep in mind just because say the feds own the system there may be independent, corporate, civilian etc. Stations I'm that system. These sub factions may or may not be aligned with major factions.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I don't find this game hard at all. It might be because I have over a year's worth of experience flying with m+kb in War Thunder so I have no trouble maneuvering or docking or anything. This game is in fact a lot easier than War Thunder.

Here's what I suggest as a new player:

- Spend time examining the various systems around your starting system. Make note of what stations are around you and what services they offer.

- Your other ship will be at a station in the system you started in. The system map will show a blue ship icon above the station it's docked at. Just pray it's not Dalton station because it's 110,000Ls away.

-I haven't gained enough faction with anyone to get better missions. It feels like it will take forever and a day to raise my reputation, so I just ignore it.

-Stations are easy to disengage at. Assign a button to set speed to 75%. When you are 7-10 seconds away click the button and you will automatically reduce speed enough to be able to disengage when you're close enough. I don't know if the timer varies according to drive or ship size/mass but for my eagle 7 seconds is fine.

-Sol isn't reachable without uprading FSD. I'm not sure I can get there even with my upgraded FSD, I haven't tried since I don't have a permit yet anyway.

-I'm making money mostly by doing trading missions and some exploring. There's not much else available, but I will be trying to hang out at nav beacons and resource extraction sites soon to try to collect on bounties.

-Missions are very strange in the way they branch. I've done three Hunt missions and none of them have concluded the way I expected. The last one, to Hunt Pirates, failed entirely after I destroyed a pirate who offered a different resolution by killing authority ships instead. Why it would fail because I killed him I have no idea. None of it makes sense. I wouldn't go crazy with storylines until they've had time to review and improve them.

Haven't died yet to know what happens, but if I get sent back to Dalton Station I'll shoot myself. I hate that system.

Sol is reachable. The route planner only shows as far as you can make it in one tank I believe. Naturally since you can refuel you can make it much further. To get to sol plot a course to a system halfway, then when you get there, plot again and you can generally make it. In the populated Parr of the galaxy the stock ships can actually make it almost anywhere.

 

[tomPhoenix]

Interesting that moderators are stepping in on this one. It's a fair question (though we obviously can see his frustrations) due to the lack of good new player onboarding and incomplete nature of a phased release model. *shrugs* Frontier asked for this. It's not so much disrespectful as it is clearly Frontier not liking it and being able to handle it... In fact I find the threat of penalizing a frustrated user and closing a thread to be extremely inappropriate and poor customer service. Abuse of moderator power. But I digress...

I too have not reached Sol and it was too far - unjumpable (well, maybe not anymore after upgrading). It is possible to start in a location that prevents you (at least easily) from getting to it. That said, since the last time you played they've added a route planner which can help. That has only gotten better and better with each patch and it's brand new! So I think that will be a great tool in the future.

Though, I wouldn't worry about Sol because there's plenty of other systems with things to do. So that's what I would suggest. If you want to reach Sol, make that one of your goals in the game. That's your story. Do some local missions and NPC pirate hunting. Follow pirates around in super cruise (target other "contacts" and see if they are wanted) til you see them jump out around planets and such. Select the low energy wake and follow it down, it will let you jump out of super cruise right on top of it and the NPC. You can then blow them up and get some credits. The easiest of NPCs still net you like 1,200 credits or so. It's not too bad. IF you can't do missions.

Once you get some credits, buy a better FSD and ensure you are light. Look for modules that are lighter in weight and you'll jump farther. I have my eagle going nearly 12ly now. Far better than the 8ly or so it did brand new.

Fuel scoops do help, you just have to be careful with them and note that certain stars won't let you scoop fuel (the purple ones, brown dwarfs I believe).

Make sure you're not going too fast to disengage super cruise too btw. One of my guesses as to why you were having trouble there.

Best of luck! It truly took me 2 hours plus to get acquainted with the basics of the game. The tutorials are ok, but could be better for sure. This game does have a decent time commitment, but it is bigger than it looks at first. Sure, incomplete, but they are working hard on getting more features and so far have proven that they can. I just keep my fingers crossed for faster of course =) I think everyone does.

 

[Mikey2305]

A very steep and often frustrating learning curve. The information is out there for everything you need to know but difficult to track down sometimes because it is pretty piecemeal and all over the place. And there isnt a manual per se. Ask nicely and we will do our best to help because weve all been there ourselves. Stick with it because its worth it... Good luck commander

 

[Dogoncrook]

Interesting that moderators are stepping in on this one. It's a fair question (though we obviously can see his frustrations) due to the lack of good new player onboarding and incomplete nature of a phased release model. *shrugs* Frontier asked for this. It's not so much disrespectful as it is clearly Frontier not liking it and being able to handle it... In fact I find the threat of penalizing a frustrated user and closing a thread to be extremely inappropriate and poor customer service. Abuse of moderator power. But I digress...

I too have not reached Sol and it was too far - unjumpable (well, maybe not anymore after upgrading). It is possible to start in a location that prevents you (at least easily) from getting to it. That said, since the last time you played they've added a route planner which can help. That has only gotten better and better with each patch and it's brand new! So I think that will be a great tool in the future.

Though, I wouldn't worry about Sol because there's plenty of other systems with things to do. So that's what I would suggest. If you want to reach Sol, make that one of your goals in the game. That's your story. Do some local missions and NPC pirate hunting. Follow pirates around in super cruise (target other "contacts" and see if they are wanted) til you see them jump out around planets and such. Select the low energy wake and follow it down, it will let you jump out of super cruise right on top of it and the NPC. You can then blow them up and get some credits. The easiest of NPCs still net you like 1,200 credits or so. It's not too bad. IF you can't do missions.

Once you get some credits, buy a better FSD and ensure you are light. Look for modules that are lighter in weight and you'll jump farther. I have my eagle going nearly 12ly now. Far better than the 8ly or so it did brand new.

Fuel scoops do help, you just have to be careful with them and note that certain stars won't let you scoop fuel (the purple ones, brown dwarfs I believe).

Make sure you're not going too fast to disengage super cruise too btw. One of my guesses as to why you were having trouble there.

Best of luck! It truly took me 2 hours plus to get acquainted with the basics of the game. The tutorials are ok, but could be better for sure. This game does have a decent time commitment, but it is bigger than it looks at first. Sure, incomplete, but they are working hard on getting more features and so far have proven that they can. I just keep my fingers crossed for faster of course =) I think everyone does.

I can't be sure but that is refferring to a reply, of course I bit too, but that is probably what the mod is referring to, the mods here are not heavy handed at all I wouldn't worry about it.

I really don't get enough playtime to help, but starting a newbie group and picking a single system to kind of base out of would help introduce players. A lot of us here started when there where only 50 systems and having a couple weeks of focus helped immensely.

 

[Erik Marcaigh]

If you're having troubles with landing and supercruise, check out the tutorials. They'll walk you through, but you have to pay attention to the pop-up messages you'll receive along the way.

Good luck, Commander!

----
On a separate note:

Interesting that moderators are stepping in on this one.

If you look at post#2, which was edited by the mod and the Mod's statement that he had to close the thread, I'd wager 100,000cr that there were additional insulting posts that have been completely removed to ModLand, where only they can see the worst of the worst, and shield our eyes from it.
The mods know what they're doing, and it's our job not to question them, but to let them work and be good citizens ourselves. You've got some great game points in your post, tomPhoenix! +Rep

 

[Vandaahl]

7 - Explore!

Jump to a system without map data. You can recognize these systems in the galaxy map by the red planetary icon. On entering, you'll get the message you discovered one object, the star you just almost crashed into. Now slow down, target the star and point you ship to it. After a second or 2, notice a scanner is starting to work (spinning icon down-left corner) After 30 seconds scanning is completed and the name of the star will appear in screen.

Now use the discovery scanner. If you have not bound it to a key or mouse button, do that in the fire group panel on the right. Press the scan button you just bound, and another scanner will start it work (blueish bar middle-left). When you've recovered from the sound it creates when it is finished (BRAAAAAAAAAAPPPP!!!!), you'll get a message what you just discovered, and all the objects will appear in screen. If you don't get a message after the BRAAAAAPP!!, then you picked a system with no planets, or none are in scanning range. Now do the same thing with all the objects as you did with the star. When you pick the right system, you can instantly buy a hauler on your return.

Its tedious, but safe and credits guaranteed. Good luck!

 

[Antidepressiva]

Just wanted to stop by and say welcome to the op. I like this thread. People helping out newbies . Kudos to all of you who answered op.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Plenty of good advice. Remember that you ARE learning ALL the time, it's just the learning curve is a long one. Don't confuse making 'wrong choices' as 'not getting anywhere'. It's all information.

Learn to fly the ship and fly them will. It's what the games about. Once you've learnt the basics of ship control, be shy about taking jobs involving combat. If you're going to survive for any length of time in the game in whatever way you choose, you'll need to dogfight well. You might die early on but you'll learn valuable skills you'll need later.

Try mining, bounty hunting, trading, exploring etc. and find what you like doing best and hopefully what you're best at. You're going to spend to lot of time doing it, so best to find out early your preferences.

Read the subplots re: slaves revolt etc., Elite is a submersive game and you'll get a better feel for the universe when you feel more involved with it.

And have fun!

 

[IceBlitz]

Thank you all so much for your fantastic replys.

I think it's dawning on me, on what my problem with the supercruise disengange is.
I have disenganged supercruise probably 100 times in Beta, I'm fairly drilled on how to do it.

The problem now was that when I am in safe speed and distance it WON'T disengange, just comes a error sound ingame.
Then I saw someone above wrote that the full release has TWO different buttons for supercruise, and jump.
Omg, if this has been the problem I will throw myself out the window.

It would make very good sense that when supercruising, and hitting the jump button when I am going to disengage and haven't set a target for jump, I would only get an error sound and nothing would happen.

Going to check now. I'll let you know if I have to replace a window!

 

[IceBlitz]

Omg.

It was the remapping of the Saitek that Frontier did between beta and full release that got me stuck.
I thought it was a bug since I had done it 100 times before.

Srsly, all that frustration yesterday. So stupid!
The button I used was frameshift drive to hyperspace. So it worked to get from normal flight to another system, but when you exit hyperspace jump you get into supercruise, and from there I couldnt disengage because it was the wrong button.
Well, FINALLY I can play! I'm a bit upset but veryu much relieved

 

[Sallen]

8. How do I play story/campaign?
No such thing in this game. Sorry, no hand-holding

A story and hand-holding are two different things.

This is hand holding: http://wow.allakhazam.com/gallery/albums/vot/kaltunk.jpg.
These are stories: http://atthebuzzerpodcast.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/bioshock_infinite_2.jpg, http://k41.kn3.net/5C143BF38.jpg, http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb...en/images/7/7f/DeusExHumanRevolutionCover.png.

It's easy to mix them up if all you play are MMOs, but you should learn the difference

 

[RhymeRhyme]

Check out youtube... you will find so many videos on how to e.g. handle to jump out of FSD, where to find 'wanted' ships for bounty hunting (look out for beacons on the map. there is a good video explaining it) and much more. This game is a real open world, no guided paths, which makes it great. It's a bit hard at the beginning but with all the people playing the game and recording videos, it gets better pretty quickly. I kept my first ship and sold the EAGLE immediately to make some money. I invested it in a better power distributor, better engine and thrusters. Then went to the sites (shon in one of the videos) where you normally find 'wanted' ships and since then I'm making good money from bounty hunting.

Before that I was trading with 4t space cargo for tiny money. Total wast of time at the beginning.

Watch YouTube!! It helped me a lot. Also in how to improve my ship in which order etc.

 

[Muadiib]

There is a button that engages supercruise, hyper space and takes you out of supercruise, it's a new button I think and it's context sensitive. It's called "Enable Frameshift Drive" and does all that you want in one button.