Newcomer / Intro My first two hours

Porina

Porina
Two hours in solo game that is, not including the time spent watching videos, trying to map the joystick controls and doing some of the training missions. As a result of this I have a few questions:

1, hitting things. I kinda thought this would be really bad, but I've had two crashes and got no damage from either. First time was when going in to dock, an NPC ship flew across my path. Second time I forgot to lower landing gear before final dock and ended up bouncing around a bit. Are these to be expected? Are there cases where hitting things would be a really bad idea?

2, fuel scoop. Sounds like a great idea. I took the exploration start, and I'm in a Cobra mk3. Got a fuel scoop fitted and when trying to scoop (pointing at the... whatever it is called line), I can either get fuel but heat up fast, and going higher up I get nothing. I can't seem to find somewhere in between where I can get fuel without burning up. And going in and out would be rather tedious. Am I doing it wrong?

3, on the topic of flying too close to the sun, I get unexplored points to visit. The outer ones, no problem, but sometimes they are stars themselves. I can't seem to get close without getting too hot, or am I really doing this wrong?
 

DragonIV

DragonIV
Hitting things: Speed and mass as the killer things here. Crash at speed into the station wall, boom. Same if you crash into a much larger ship, or they into you. At low speeds, you'll bump off with a bit of shield impact. If you really want to see yourself go boom, put your landing gear up inside the station and afterburner into a wall. :) Pro-tip. Don't do that.

Fuel Scoop: move in on the star slowly. You won't take heat damage until something like 130-140% heat, so as long as you keep the heat under that, you're fine. Generally speaking, you can hit your max scoop rate while staying under the heat damage temp. Trick: move slowly towards the sun, and stop moving once your scoop maxes.

To Explore things, target them in your scanner the same way you would target a ship and face it to ID it. You don't need to be very close to a star to identify it. Generally speaking, the larger things are, the farther away you can be from them to ID them. Stars can be IDed from hundreds of light seconds away.

Hope this helps!
 

Zieman

Zieman
1. Hitting things at slow speed and with shield up - no probs. Hitting things without shields and/or at high speed = expensive and/or lethal. :)

2. Not sure how you're doing it, so I cannot comment on if you're doing it wrong or not. Here's how I do it: point the ship's nose above star surface, about upper 1/3 of the corona - full throttle until temp 80% - zero throttle. If you want to increase the intake, accelerate a bit and slow down again. With 3A fuel scoop you should be able to to scoop at 150/sec at 98% temp (may need A powerplant & power distributor, to dissipate heat better).

3. Zero throttle - at 30 km/s you don't plummet to your death, you have ample time to scan the star and turn away.
 

JohnRoberts

JohnRoberts
Two hours in, and you got a Cobra -> you're doing just fine!

1) Hitting stuff if you (and it!) are going slow is not a problem. It speed that kills.

2) If I need to scoop a lot of fuel, then I slow right down. This makes finding the sweet spot easier.

3) Probably you need to select the star as your target, then it scans it. You don't need to be that close.
 

Porina

Porina
Thanks all, I'll give that a try in a moment.

I can't take any credit for getting the Cobra though, it was my start option!
 

cmdr lowest

C
I think it took me about 2 weeks to upgrade from the start sidewinder to a cobra. 2 hours?

Yeah, I smashed my Cobra into a starport wall once. My only crash so far. I was being complacent and came in too hot with the boost. I slammed on the space brakes but it just didn't slow down in time. Big explosion...

Edit: Just saw the update post. Are you sure you are starting in a Cobra? Is this a backer thing?
 
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Trader38

Trader38
Hi & welcome.
Hitting things is a matter of mass/velocity. You have shields (?) which should buffer you against small bumps.
Don't forget your landing gear :D
Fuel scooping is a matter of practice, you need to be in supercruise and find a position 'floating' above the sun. Easiest way is just as you jump to a new system put 0% throttle and as soon as you arrive pull up until you see the line of curvature. Slowly apply throttle until your scoop deploys and watch your temp. Immediately pull back on the throttle to 0%. If your temp rises pull away from the star and apply a little throttle. It's a balancing game of temp over scoop. Better scoops work err... better :)

You need to approch the 'Unexplored' icons with them selected as a target (again in supercruise) depending on the size of the 'object' you will need to get within 100ls/20ls/5ls and should see 'Scanning' in your target info window (assuming you have a Discovery Scanner fitted).

Remember most things are done whilst in supercruise, exceptions being fighting, mining, docking ect

Enjoy :)

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

Grr zero replies when i started typing !!
 

Johnny Cyclops

Johnny Cyclops
Fuel scoop. On hyperspace arrival at a star, kill the engines but stay in supercruise, nose towards the middle of the star. Ship temperature (indicator to the left of the scanner) should be displaying high 70s%. Fuel scooping starts around 80%, so VERY gently accelerate towards the star, and KILL the speed to NIL (effectively in supercruise (SC) this means 30km/s) when it hits 90%. Between 80% and 90% you'll be scooping fuel; the scoop rate is faster the nearer you are to the star, but also the temperature will be higher. When done, pull the nose up and wheel around 180 degrees then accelerate away still in SC. DON'T try to immediately hyperspace jump (if that was your plan) as you'll fry; wait till the temp is back in the 70s%.

Once you get competent at not frying, you can nudge the temp all the way to 98%. At 100%+ you'll get warnings of heat damage, but I think actual damage only kicks in at 125%+. Finally, your target in that system (say a starport) can sometimes be behind the star, so it's possible to cruise with a little speed around the edge of the star, but that's a bit more learning.

Not all stars can be scooped. Brown dwarfs (usually purple in colour) don't give fuel. And other stars do so at different rates.
 

Jester69

Jester69
Hi Porina, I'm not claiming to be an expert but I've been playing since official launch so have some experience of doing things the wrong way and sometimes the right way!

1 The significance of hitting things does vary but I can confirm that hiring the inside of a station hard enough (say due to accidental activation of boost! ) can cause the shop to instantly explode! ... Top tip; bind boost to thrust for landing override.

2 Fuel scooping efficiency varies with the fuel scoop you have fitted. Unfortunately with the cheaper models you do have to limit scooping time to keep temperature down. But temp can go to around 150% before you take damage.

3 Stars can be scanned from a good distance. If you are heating up but unexplored object is not being scanned (make sure it's in the centre of your screen) then maybe it's an object the other side of the star, not the star itself, in which case you'll need to fly around the start.

Hope this helps and if any of the gen is incorrect, I'm sure someone will correct me.
Good luck out there!
 
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Porina

Porina
Just had a go with the fuel scoop, and lowering my speed seemed to help a lot. That should save on expenditure while I get used to things.

Also tried pointing at the sun... it works! I'm guessing when I tried before, other objects I can fly to, I could point at easily so it worked. Since I couldn't "fly" to the star in the same way, I never pointed at it long enough for the scanners to do their job until now.

It was my intention to start off exploring while I get enough cash to seriously trade. So tomorrow, I'll go thataway *points in random direction*
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Porina said:
It was my intention to start off exploring while I get enough cash to seriously trade. So tomorrow, I'll go thataway *points in random direction*
Click to expand...

Before you do, you might want to consider getting all modules to Class D and FSD to class A... but if you can't afford it, don't let that stop you. Get out there and have fun.
 

Porina

Porina
Can't remember what grade the equipment is on ship, but I do recall with the up to 40k I had, upgrade potential wasn't there. Seem to be doing ok for now anyway, I'm sure once the credits come in I'll do better.
 

Porina

Porina
I'm starting to rack up the flying hours now... looked at the equipment on my ship. All the kit is "loaned" so I get zero value when selling/replacing it. The spec isn't bad to my noob eyes, in that anything better I can replace it with is going into the many hundreds of thousands to millions of credits. Wont be getting those any time soon.

I've got two new questions:

1 - persistence. What happens when you exit the game? Is your ship still present there in the universe? Or do you simply disappear? I did a bit of Eve a long time ago and I remembered the rule there was never to log out unless you're docked as you'll still be out there.

2 - distant navigation while exploring. Say I want to plot a route to another system many jumps away. Along the way I see unknown places wanting to be scanned. If I target them for scanning, I lose the next jump and find it tedious to have to go back to galaxy map and re-plot the course each time I do that. Is there a better way of doing it?
 

Derpster Frey

D
1. Everything is saved in the online Universe. Doesn't matter if you play in Solo, Open or Group. You ship disappears when you quit.

2. It's currently a bit cumbersome, I believe they are working on figuring out methods to resume planned route.
 

MaccGyver

MaccGyver
Porina said:
2 - distant navigation while exploring. Say I want to plot a route to another system many jumps away. Along the way I see unknown places wanting to be scanned. If I target them for scanning, I lose the next jump and find it tedious to have to go back to galaxy map and re-plot the course each time I do that. Is there a better way of doing it?
Click to expand...

Once you've got a route plotted, the next system in the route will show on the Left ship panel (Nav tab) with a little icon on it's row - looks like 3 spheres connected by two lines. You should be able to select that next system through the Nav option, instead of going back into the Map and re-plotting.

Not trying to put words in Derpster's mouth, but what I think he's getting at is the speed at which the route plotter currently works - right now, it almost instantly plots routes up to around 20 Ly away from your system, and can then take up to a full minute (or longer) to calculate all the way out to the max (around 100 - 125 Ly). If you zoom out, you can watch it build out the routes in a sphere around your location. I've heard the 1.1 patch will speed up how long it takes for those 100+ Ly routes to plot.
 

Porina

Porina
CMDR Derpster Frey said:
You ship disappears when you quit.
Click to expand...

:) Is there a mechanism to prevent abuse in online play? e.g. I never did it much, but I think WoW had a 30 sec cooldown so you can't just disappear if you're under attack for example.

MaccGyver said:
Once you've got a route plotted, the next system in the route will show on the Left ship panel (Nav tab) with a little icon on it's row - looks like 3 spheres connected by two lines. You should be able to select that next system through the Nav option, instead of going back into the Map and re-plotting.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll have to look out for that. Might try visiting Sol tonight. Not entirely sure where it is relative to me either but at least I have found the search function :)
 

Derpster Frey

D
If you're in combat, there's a 15 seconds timer from when you click exit to when you actually disappear. It tells you.
Mind you, this can be circumvented, but is currently considered an exploit.
 
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