Greetings fellow PS4 CMDRs!
Further to my introductory posting here I thought I'd drop by the platform-specific board and introduce myself, and share a few observations from my recent gameplay. I've just kitted out my Keelback for a bit of interstellar Red-Crossing, S&R and salvage work, and while it's certainly not been a profitable venture it's been fun with no lack of excitement! It's always amazing, even as a new player who has barely scratched the surface of the game, to find something new and intriguing every time I log back in.
Being the wannabe-interstellar-do-gooder that I am, I set a course for Maia which I presumed was the 'heart of darkness' of the galaxy where'd I'd find the biggest mess to clean up. Oh boy, I knew my Keelback wasn't a fighter but I was totally unprepared for my first encounter with the Thargoids! It didn't help that on the way, answering a few NPC distress calls and checking out USS on my route, I did a bit of light bounty work which the SLF handled without breaking a sweat... helps to build a false sense of security! I've picked up salvage and data from deep-space derelicts, found planetside wrecks with long-lost cargo; it seems like every PoI I visit is a new story fragment. So by the time I arrived in the Pleiades I was feeling pretty excited and pumped to do some good!
Of course, nothing deflates your ego like a collision with reality. The challenge of going from threat 0-3 degraded emissions to the non-human signal sources was a shocker! Hoping to swoop in, snatch up an escape pod or salvage a black box then swoop out again, the first pair of Thargoid contacts (I'm presuming they were scouts) would have had me if I didn't have the SLF to rear-guard while I low-waked outta there. So now I've learned that discretion is the better part of valour on more than a few occasions and it only cost me a single rebuy so far. But that's not all I've found out in the black...
As soon as I jumped into Maia and saw there was a megaship under attack, I knew I was in the right place. No time to waste, but if I'd learned something from our brief xeno encounters I was going to come out of supercruise with my eyes on swivels and the SLF deployed to watch my six. The megaship was venting fire from damaged structures, and surfaces were marked with a corrosive material; hardpoints deployed, distribute more power to shields and engines, no getting caught with our pants down here. A transmission comes in from the megaship, requesting emergency hull repairs, and I feel like I've found my calling as I accept their request. I asked the sandbox if I could play a S&R role, and the sandbox answered! Now here is where my experience faltered just a little... now I know the joys of ED is the sheer scale of gameplay and mechanics to discover, and it doesn't hold your hand one bit. That's great, because the sense of achievement you get when you find something out or accomplish something new is all the greater for it. However the other side of the coin is that sometimes the game communicates it's mechanics a little bit too ambiguously, or I don't yet fully understand them... anyway my point is, not a criticism of the game but that I'm very much still an amateur player with much to learn.
The first attempt at assisting the megaship in distress quickly turned to panic as I tried to figure out the correct mechanisms to get the datalink scanner working and find the hull breaches; I'd previously set it to NOT automatically deploy hardpoints when I 'fired' because I was getting tired of whipping my guns out ever time I tried to scan something. The range at which it can interact with objects also feels a bit 'elastic' if you know what I mean, unless again there's something I'm missing. By the time I'd worked out what I was doing the megaship warned me of a FSD anomaly, xenos inbound! Crikey! Now I've read about the infamous 'shutdown field' but it's still pretty damn unnerving to have your HUD and systems shut down and leave you drifting helplessly
and by the time my systems were back online I was for sure stuck in a fight I couldn't win. But every defeat is a lesson isn't it, and now I know how to deliberately overheat to clear off caustic materials, so there is that! After my first failed attempt to assist the beleaguered megaship I came back later for another attempt; this time the mechanics had changed, and they wanted me to 'blast' open the emergency hatches and help scoop up the escape pods...now here the ambiguity struck again and if I hadn't quickly asked the internet I could have been fooled into thinking I just needed to shoot them open, but I needed dedicated hatch-breaker limpets, so I narrowly avoided incurring a fine for being such a damn do-gooder. No matter, because by the time I'd finished working out what I was expected to do the Thargoids were back! With no way to help the stricken megaship I turned on the attacking ships, doing what I could to cover the other rescue ships in the area. It was a tough fight, and probably the longest one I've been in so far, and by the time I had to abandon the area and low-wake to safety my hull was battered and sizzling in parts and my multicannons were spinning empty. But for my efforts I fragged three Thargoid scouts, my first xenos kills, and damn if that doesn't feel like an achievement!
One final point to note, is that since departing from Irkutsk Station in Alioth this Solo-only player has been on Open... so far the gameplay hasn't been any different really. But it's there, just at the fringes. Sometimes while I'm hunting for salvage opportunities planetside I'll see a ship in the distance hovering or doing the same thing, or occasionally a docking request will be denied and I'll have to politely queue for my parking space. And there's a slight tingle of excitement when I'm dropping into a system, wondering if this will be the jump where I get space-mugged. There's something about other humans that's more unpredictable than stock NPCs. And moreso because of the organic possibilities this vast sandbox galaxy offers, I don't think I'll ever go back to Solo. Tonight or tomorrow I might even lurk on the periphery of an AX CZ if I can find one (I believe when I first dropped into Maia there was one right by the damaged megaship) and see if I can help out the frontline combatants with some repair limpets and SLF cover. Even if I only help out one other CMDR get back into the fight, it'll be worth another rebuy or five for the stories it writes
TL;DR... I'm loving ED, and I'm never going back to Solo!
See you in the black CMDRs!
CMDR Achtung-Goomba
IRV Dorman Long
Further to my introductory posting here I thought I'd drop by the platform-specific board and introduce myself, and share a few observations from my recent gameplay. I've just kitted out my Keelback for a bit of interstellar Red-Crossing, S&R and salvage work, and while it's certainly not been a profitable venture it's been fun with no lack of excitement! It's always amazing, even as a new player who has barely scratched the surface of the game, to find something new and intriguing every time I log back in.
Being the wannabe-interstellar-do-gooder that I am, I set a course for Maia which I presumed was the 'heart of darkness' of the galaxy where'd I'd find the biggest mess to clean up. Oh boy, I knew my Keelback wasn't a fighter but I was totally unprepared for my first encounter with the Thargoids! It didn't help that on the way, answering a few NPC distress calls and checking out USS on my route, I did a bit of light bounty work which the SLF handled without breaking a sweat... helps to build a false sense of security! I've picked up salvage and data from deep-space derelicts, found planetside wrecks with long-lost cargo; it seems like every PoI I visit is a new story fragment. So by the time I arrived in the Pleiades I was feeling pretty excited and pumped to do some good!
Of course, nothing deflates your ego like a collision with reality. The challenge of going from threat 0-3 degraded emissions to the non-human signal sources was a shocker! Hoping to swoop in, snatch up an escape pod or salvage a black box then swoop out again, the first pair of Thargoid contacts (I'm presuming they were scouts) would have had me if I didn't have the SLF to rear-guard while I low-waked outta there. So now I've learned that discretion is the better part of valour on more than a few occasions and it only cost me a single rebuy so far. But that's not all I've found out in the black...
As soon as I jumped into Maia and saw there was a megaship under attack, I knew I was in the right place. No time to waste, but if I'd learned something from our brief xeno encounters I was going to come out of supercruise with my eyes on swivels and the SLF deployed to watch my six. The megaship was venting fire from damaged structures, and surfaces were marked with a corrosive material; hardpoints deployed, distribute more power to shields and engines, no getting caught with our pants down here. A transmission comes in from the megaship, requesting emergency hull repairs, and I feel like I've found my calling as I accept their request. I asked the sandbox if I could play a S&R role, and the sandbox answered! Now here is where my experience faltered just a little... now I know the joys of ED is the sheer scale of gameplay and mechanics to discover, and it doesn't hold your hand one bit. That's great, because the sense of achievement you get when you find something out or accomplish something new is all the greater for it. However the other side of the coin is that sometimes the game communicates it's mechanics a little bit too ambiguously, or I don't yet fully understand them... anyway my point is, not a criticism of the game but that I'm very much still an amateur player with much to learn.
The first attempt at assisting the megaship in distress quickly turned to panic as I tried to figure out the correct mechanisms to get the datalink scanner working and find the hull breaches; I'd previously set it to NOT automatically deploy hardpoints when I 'fired' because I was getting tired of whipping my guns out ever time I tried to scan something. The range at which it can interact with objects also feels a bit 'elastic' if you know what I mean, unless again there's something I'm missing. By the time I'd worked out what I was doing the megaship warned me of a FSD anomaly, xenos inbound! Crikey! Now I've read about the infamous 'shutdown field' but it's still pretty damn unnerving to have your HUD and systems shut down and leave you drifting helplessly
and by the time my systems were back online I was for sure stuck in a fight I couldn't win. But every defeat is a lesson isn't it, and now I know how to deliberately overheat to clear off caustic materials, so there is that! After my first failed attempt to assist the beleaguered megaship I came back later for another attempt; this time the mechanics had changed, and they wanted me to 'blast' open the emergency hatches and help scoop up the escape pods...now here the ambiguity struck again and if I hadn't quickly asked the internet I could have been fooled into thinking I just needed to shoot them open, but I needed dedicated hatch-breaker limpets, so I narrowly avoided incurring a fine for being such a damn do-gooder. No matter, because by the time I'd finished working out what I was expected to do the Thargoids were back! With no way to help the stricken megaship I turned on the attacking ships, doing what I could to cover the other rescue ships in the area. It was a tough fight, and probably the longest one I've been in so far, and by the time I had to abandon the area and low-wake to safety my hull was battered and sizzling in parts and my multicannons were spinning empty. But for my efforts I fragged three Thargoid scouts, my first xenos kills, and damn if that doesn't feel like an achievement!One final point to note, is that since departing from Irkutsk Station in Alioth this Solo-only player has been on Open... so far the gameplay hasn't been any different really. But it's there, just at the fringes. Sometimes while I'm hunting for salvage opportunities planetside I'll see a ship in the distance hovering or doing the same thing, or occasionally a docking request will be denied and I'll have to politely queue for my parking space. And there's a slight tingle of excitement when I'm dropping into a system, wondering if this will be the jump where I get space-mugged. There's something about other humans that's more unpredictable than stock NPCs. And moreso because of the organic possibilities this vast sandbox galaxy offers, I don't think I'll ever go back to Solo. Tonight or tomorrow I might even lurk on the periphery of an AX CZ if I can find one (I believe when I first dropped into Maia there was one right by the damaged megaship) and see if I can help out the frontline combatants with some repair limpets and SLF cover. Even if I only help out one other CMDR get back into the fight, it'll be worth another rebuy or five for the stories it writes
TL;DR... I'm loving ED, and I'm never going back to Solo!
See you in the black CMDRs!
CMDR Achtung-Goomba
IRV Dorman Long
![[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_](https://d2aefvhu2f0gi9.cloudfront.net/data/avatars/m/159/159397.jpg?1610496247){kind=avatar}
