Newcomer / Intro Noob here, looking for a bit of help

MrNooby

M
So I bought this game just a few days ago - managed to finish all the training simulations (except that last combat one with all the waves of ships). I thin kit took me over an hour to get the hang of aiming with fixed lasers on that sidewinder fight (and even now I'm pretty horrid with fixed weapons). Anyway, I got some gimballed pulse lasers first chance I had, and I'm sitting on 20kish credits.

I'm not entirely sure what to do from here though. I've tried a little bit of everything - I tried hunting pirates/criminals, but I can't seem to find many, I've been checking nav beacons and signal sources, and often those I find, I don't get the killing shot so I don't get the bounty.

I tried trading - I bought the most expensive item in the market where I was (that had a med/high supply) and sold it where there was some demand, and made a measly 2.6k credits.

I tried smuggling, when I found some ancient artifacts (that was actually pretty decent, 4 of them sold for a little under 20k).

And I tried pirating (aka I got sick of seeing everything clean and went on a killing frenzy) and managed to kill 2 fighters and a transport ship that had nothing in it. So I had a rather large bounty on my head, and read that I could simply kill myself to get rid of it, which I did. Now I have a dormant bounty (which as I understand it, will become active again if I commit another crime in the area, or if I'm scanned). I tried docking in at a station under the control of the faction I had the bounty with, but I don't see any option to pay it off.

Oh and I had a bit of fun on one of my pirate kills, where I missed the killing shot because some guy (a real player) ran right in front of my lasers and got hit. Then I took my anger out on him for missing the kill and got him to 1% hp and stopped just to make him nervous. That was fun :D

So, my questions.

How do I get rid of this dormant bounty?

Where can I find larger amounts of pirates that won't get stolen off me? Are there specific systems I should be going to that are better for newer players or pirate hunting?

I've heard about mining, but how profitable is it?

And what ship/load out should I be going for, as a bounty hunter?

Any other tips are also appreciated - I've got the hang of driving, fighting, docking, leaving a dock, system management etc, so I know the basics (I think).
 

SciCobalt

SciCobalt
Hi, Thought Id try and offer some help.

First the dormant bounty - When you do something illegal a faction will assign a bounty to you. If a player kills you then they get the cash, presumably from the faction that assigned it. You are then re-cloned at the last station you were docked at. If this station is owned by the faction that assigned your bounty then you have to pay it off. If you are re-cloned at some other station then the faction that gave you the bounty assumes that you are dead and marks the bounty as dormant. Only you and the issuing faction know about this dormant bounty and no KWS scan will reactivate it. However, if the issuing faction scans you again, then they now know that you are no longer dead and the dormant bounty gets reactivated. After a period of time (someone please help us out with this - I don't know what the period is), the dormant bounty disappears. So don't worry about it unless you plan on annoying the issuing faction again.

Some tips for the other stuff: My advice is to not worry too much about the money and just do what you enjoy. Ok if what you enjoy is making money then yea - make money. At the moment mining is not very profitable but hopefully this will change in the next couple of weeks with the new Power-play update. If you like ratting / bounty hunting then a good tip is to do this in a high population system. Resource Extraction Sites (RES) are another good source of bounties and the richer the RES and more populous the system, then the higher the bounties on the pirates. Gas giants tend to have the richest RESs. A good suggestion is Leesti - its a high tech/high population system with two RES sites around a gas giant. Part of the fun is to play with other CMDRs but with that comes the risk of someone else getting the last kill. (its also the same in conflict zones). If you are getting fed up with this and just want to make cash and practice your fighting skills then you can play in solo-mode, or even better in group mode with just a few of your friends (you can then feel free to annoy them and tell them what a hole they've been when they single-last-shot that anaconda you've been grinding down for 30 minutes).

Oh - final bit of advice - use reddit and this forum to get your answers. Whenever I've wondered about something, someone else has already asked the question. Its all on here. A good way to make 'friends' is also to hang around a station and ask folks in the Local? I was once stalked by a python across three systems and 4 interdictions. When I finally turned round to try and take him on he just asked - "erm excuse me. do you know how to activate debug mode?" LOL

Hope this is of some use to you. See you out there.
SCB
 
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MrNooby

M
I'll be sure to check out that system. I got myself a kill warrant scanner, and decided to take on 3 sidewinders at once....surprisingly I didn't die. I managed to take out one of them, and the bounty with it, and escaped the other two with 20% of my hull remaining - that was in a astroid belt (is that the same as a RES)?

I'm not so interested in the credits themselves, but getting a better ship. Since combat is where my interests are, I imagine that the sidewinder might not cut it later on in the game.
 

MrNooby

M
Okay, I got really lucky and found an ASP with a 120k bounty, and managed to get the killing shot. I now have 230k, enough to buy a viper (and get some gear for it I hope).

And I now have a billion more questions.

If I buy another ship, can I switch between the ships as I like? Just go to any station with a shipyard and switch? In one system, the LH3447 one I think, the place I end up is /really/ far away from the nearest station (except one which belongs to the cartel and won't take my bounties), the nearest is over 100,000LS away. Is there anyway to speed up my travel a bit? It took me a good 10 mins or so to get there, makes me hate that system.

What's the difference between the size of hardpoints? Just the weapon does more damage?

I see two fuel bars (I think they're both fuel?), one thin, and one with big chunky bars. What's the difference between the two, and why does my fuel scoop only fill the thin one?
 

wiblflibl

wiblflibl
I can't answer re hardpoints due to being an explorer with no weapons, but:

You store a ship at a particular station and you have to return to that station to switch to the stored ship.

It's always going to take some time to travel 100Kls in SC, the only way I know of to speed it up slightly is to avoid the gravity wells of stars/planets as much as possible - often a curved or S shaped route is quicker than a straight line.

Top fuel bar is fuel used to run your internal systems (and SC?), the lower fuel bar is your main fuel tank. Scooping fills only your main tank, the other fills automatically when empty by taking fuel (1 ton?) from the main tank. You get a quite scary "Main fuel tank drained" message from the ship's computer when this happens, but it's nothing to worry about (unless you main tank is empty)!
 

Dommarraa

Dommarraa
Eravate hub would be a better home base than lhs3447, many people would recommend you move further afield.

Always fit the right size weapon for the slot. You can use smaller weapons, but just don't, if you can't afford the weapons, you can't afford to fly the ship
 

MrNooby

M
Yeah, 3447 isn't my home. I only stopped there to collect a bounty.

So, my viper is awful. I find it really hard to aim at ships when the hardpoints are on the bottom...most of the time my lasers just won't fire. Could use small ones instead of mediums, but that kind of defeats the entire purpose of using the viper for better hardpoints.

Adder has the same problem.

Vulture looks nice (saw on wiki) but I don't know where to buy it, or where to get 5m.
 
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Blaubart

B
KillingTime: I think you need to be the last PLAYER to have a shot on the ship. But I'm not too sure.

MrNooby: to travel faster from system to system you can change the way the navigation works (galaxy map) it's usually set to find the most economic route. I'd rather recomend getting a fuel scoop and take the fastest routes. This can easyly save you 75% of the required jumps. Also: you can jump further the lighter your ship is. Don't clogg it with unnecessary modules.

For gaining cash with bounty, I recomend going to systems that are close to anarchy systems. But you need a working goverment there. It's also better to go alone because noone steals your bounty away. And i found the bounties weren't worse than anywhere else (i do recomend using the KWS - at least on ships larger than combra)

p.S. there is a list of locations where you can buy the vulture on the wiki page (look for "Purches Locations"). you have to expand it though. - i personally started bountyhunting with a cobra, It has the same problem like the viper with the lower hardpoints but it has 4 hardpoints in total. I put some fixed beam lasers on the lower hardpoints and 2 gimbled multi-cannons on top. worked like a charm
 
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