It's going to be a hard road :)

[Armante]

Full disclosure: I've been playing since Beta 1.something, and enjoying testing the systems and learning how to fly, trade, mine, explore and fight. I've done okay, earning my way to Haulers and Cobras.

Now we are at Gamma, so I started a new game and found myself in Federal space at a small outpost (Bose?), only 100 Credits to my name. Wow. I guess we were spoiled with a 1000 in Beta!

I check the Bulletin Board and find I cannot accept any missions because no faction trusts me yet. Fair enough - they don't know me from a bar of soap. I find I play the game best if I pretend it's real. In other words, my life just started over and I have nothing.

Having so little money there is little to trade, and no information to be had yet about neighbouring systems. So i have a look and decide to buy three ton of Food Cartridges to see if anyone wants them for a modest profit. I launch off the dock and marvel at the view. The graphics are looking good, stuttering is improved in places though I do notice some slow-downs occasionally. I check out the Navigation panel and realise this is a very busy little system - there are many belts, rings and stations - to the point you could probably trade in-system to start with.

So i make the very small 1.3 Ly jump next door (not a lot of fuel used, so that's good) and find another busy system. These are nothing like the Eranin and iBootis systems, so it's nice to be somewhere new. I could probably do a bit of exploring to earn a few credits on the side, earn my way out of here. Then - BOOM - interdiction by a Viper, rated Dangerous and heavily armed.

Right, I think, I've run a few combat missions, earned my kills. I can probably take him and earn some more credits! Well, a few passes later I've lowered his shields and dropped his hull to 83%. Only problem is he's just chewed me up, my canopy's gone, hull's down to 13% and I'm on 3 minutes of oxygen. Next thing I know I've lost control of the thrusters and everything else and I spin hopelessly out of control to my end.

Ouch.

Jumped and killed for three measily tons of FC's. I didn't stand much of a chance actually. Lesson learnt, be more careful and run when you have to. Made me think though - anyone new to the game would potentially have a very rough time of it. If that had been my first flight I'd be scratching my head wondering what was going on and what I was meant to do to start with.

So yeah, starting with little in a faraway system that I didn't recognise at all certainly levelled the playing field a bit. I'm looking forward to finding my feet again and making my way in this galaxy of ours.

See you in the black, Commanders!

 

[adoredtv]

There is a higher chance of you making a really bad mistake now. Example, I was happily flying around with 4T of something in my cargo bay when I randomly decided to do some exploring.

2 (very) long binary explorations later, I realised I was getting low on fuel. I decided to head back in the same direction, hit the FSD and noticed that my fuel would have dropped below 15% had I gone back to the previous system. Just managed to hit "cancel" on my targets UI, checked the map and remembered that my original system target was within 1 jump. Pretty sure I'd be floating around in the space between my first binary system discovery on zero fuel otherwise.

I like it - you have to plan stuff out and be smart. I've been getting "brave" and taking on all-comers as well. Even took an NPC Cobra out in my basic 2-weapon Eagle. It's risky though and you feel like you are always likely to run into a disaster at any moment. That's how it should be.

 

[Renideo]

I'm a big fan of having that fuel scoop when exploring. It's way too easy when you don't have a fixed destination at a station to go slightly too far from the nearest refuelling stop. Plus fuel scoops are very cheap.