Newcomer / Intro Starting out in Elite

Oman MkII

O
Hey guys!

I've got some questions about trading I wanted to ask:

1 - Can I see prices/demand for a station that I am not docked at?

2 - The best I can get per run is about 2000 - 5000 cr shipping metals with a decked out Hauler, how can I get a better income without resorting to 3rd party tools (and preferably not rares either)?

About Combat Zones as well; I understand that when you reach a Combat Zone you have to choose a side. I can go to Personal (or whatever) and change my affiliation on the first page that comes up, but the list has all of the factions currently in the system (but not Federation/Empire?). When I got to a combat zone, I scanned several ships but all of them had no faction - have I missed something, or is this a bug? Is this the correct place to choose a side, or is my global faction?

What about exploring? I can map out discovered sectors, but how can I find new sectors?

Loads of questions I know, but I can't find any answers so far, thanks for the help.
 

markkuk

M
1. Not in the game, you need to use external tools (or keep notes with pen and paper)
2. If you don't want to use third party tools, then your only option is to wander around the space looking for a better route.
3. Use the Functions (last) tab on the Systems (right-hand) panel to choose a faction. See pages 36-38 of the manual.
 

Hellhawk666

Hellhawk666
Just on 3rd party tools, some give access to shared data, but there are others that only keep your local data. Some of these can interface with output from the Elite OCR app that works very well and saves immense time with noting down prices. I quite understand not wanting to share or use shared data, but the tools I've described just work as glorified pen-and-paper and make the game much more fluid.

Something like this should have been in the game right from the start, IMHO.

Not sure I understand the exploring question - just go somewhere and scan the objects you find. There are no hidden star systems. If you are exploring beyond inhabited space be sure to outfit a fuel scoop. An Advanced Discovery Scanner and Detailed Surface Scanner are also pretty essential for explorers.
 
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Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Oman MkII said:
About Combat Zones as well; I understand that when you reach a Combat Zone you have to choose a side. I can go to Personal (or whatever) and change my affiliation on the first page that comes up, but the list has all of the factions currently in the system (but not Federation/Empire?). When I got to a combat zone, I scanned several ships but all of them had no faction - have I missed something, or is this a bug? Is this the correct place to choose a side, or is my global faction?
Click to expand...

You chose a faction in the 'function' tab (the most right tab of the right panel), and then you chose the 'faction' option. Only the two sides will be listed. The tab with all factions in the system is not for chosing sides. If you want to see what side another ship is in, check the 'contacts' tab (left panel).
 

Chrisfs

C
For exploring, the sectors themselves are just map grids, but there are 400 billion solar systems, and only a very small fraction have been discovered yet. It will take you a little while to get out of 'known' space, but it can be done and while be able to be done for quite some time.
 

faluc

F
Trading: If you want to find a good trade route yourself, take a look at this great tutorial: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=91538

Scanned ships show no faction: You were probably in an independent system. The ships will not show Federation or Empire there, since they belong to neither.
Also keep in mind that in a conflict zone you have to declare for a sub-faction not the main faction. You can do that on the last tab of the right hand side panel, it's in the first row.

Exploring: There are no un-discovered sectors, on the galaxy map you can see every star system there is. Exploration is only about finding the objects within the star systems. It has been compared to driving a google maps car on known roads rather than looking for totally new places to go.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Oman MkII said:
Hey guys!

I've got some questions about trading I wanted to ask:

1 - Can I see prices/demand for a station that I am not docked at?
Click to expand...

You can't see the prices, what you can do if the data is available (and sometimes you have to buy the trade data to enable this) is select other systems in the drop-down top-right of the commodities screen (instead of galactic average) and see what is being imported/exported from that system.

2 - The best I can get per run is about 2000 - 5000 cr shipping metals with a decked out Hauler, how can I get a better income without resorting to 3rd party tools (and preferably not rares either)?
Click to expand...

I believe that anything over 1000 cr per ton is an OK profit for trading.

About Combat Zones as well; I understand that when you reach a Combat Zone you have to choose a side. I can go to Personal (or whatever) and change my affiliation on the first page that comes up, but the list has all of the factions currently in the system (but not Federation/Empire?). When I got to a combat zone, I scanned several ships but all of them had no faction - have I missed something, or is this a bug? Is this the correct place to choose a side, or is my global faction?
Click to expand...

When you get to a combat zone you choose a faction from the functions menu in the right-hand panel. Once you've done that shoot the red ships.

What about exploring? I can map out discovered sectors, but how can I find new sectors?
Click to expand...

When you arrive in a system, if it's unexplored then, assuming you have a discovery scanner bound to a hardpoint, fire the scanner and after a few seconds it will HONK and reveal new planetary bodies within the range of the particular discovery scanner you have. Pick the nearest Unexplored body from your navigation panel and fly towards that body. After a while your ship will start scanning the body (rotating scan icon and tinkling sound) and then resolve the name of that body. If you have a detailed surface scanner installed you will also get additional data about that body. Repeat for each of the bodies in that system and then jump to the next system. Sell the data at a station's Universal Cartographics for credits.

Loads of questions I know, but I can't find any answers so far, thanks for the help.
Click to expand...
 

the100thmonkey

the100thmonkey
Hello and welcome!


  1. No. Once you think you've found a potentially profitable route, it's a good idea to check it out and scope prices before committing a significant proportion of your cash to it.
  2. Prices are better in low CMDR-traffic systems. Look for large populations to keep the prices steady under sustained trading and look for the shortest refinery > industrial routes you can find. For best results, head towards the frontier.
  3. Go to the right hand menu and cycle through the tabs to the last one. The faction option for conflict zones is there. It's the first option, iirc.
  4. All sectors I've ever been through in the deep black are already extant; the systems within each sector are what you can get your name attached to for posterity.

Have fun!
 

Oman MkII

O
Wow, a few hours and there's loads of answers already.

Thanks for the heads up on exploration, I had misunderstood the concept - on my map there was known space with a "new" system in the centre, I think it was just unclaimed. It makes good sense now.

As for the combat zones, I had read that there was an option under the "functions" tab, however when I looked could see an option for faction, but I couldn't change it. I'll double check later to see if I was looking at the wrong thing.

I had thought that there might not be a massive profit margin for starting out in trading, but I had hoped for a better deal; at the start I found a refinery sector in boom, and I was shipping out from there for 3000cr or so, but it dropped off drastically last night. Even if >1000cr is a good margin as Alec said, that would still mean >100 trips to get a new ship... a bit of a drag. I'll check out slaves and smuggling as suggested.

I'll give everything a try and see how it goes, thanks all.
 

Cmdr Bernard

Cmdr Bernard
Trading is very slow at the beginning with only ~16 cargo space. I made more money with missions, bounties and exploring when I started. However, you can always fill up your remaining cargo space while flying missions as additional income. Trading gets really good later, though.
Exploring is actually very easy and quick money in the beginning, as a lot of nearby inhabited systems are marked unexplored (at least it was in my starter area), scanning those water worlds and high metal planets gives quite some credits. And you can scan systems while doing missions, and cash in a few bounties all at the same time. Not saying be a full-time explorer, but just with that basic discovery scanner you have some constant income flow in addition to other sources (missions, bounties).
 

Oman MkII

O
It might be just me, but when I'm in a conflict zone I select a ship and after scanning them I can see "System Defence Force; Dangerous; Clean; No Faction" (see screenshot).

View attachment 30977

Then when I go to the functions tab, under Factions, there is "None" instead of "Choose Faction" which I can see in DaGaimez's tutorial video https://youtu.be/kygj4iWUw_M

View attachment 30978

What I'm thinking is that each ship should have a faction or some affiliation, and the lack of that is possibly the problem. I also saw in DaGaimez's video that when he arrived there was already a massive fight going on, but in my first screenshot, all of the ships are just flying about peacefully in a massive formation.

Could this be a bug, and should I report it? I'll keep looking at the other conflict zones around, I'm in Sun Takush at the moment.
 

Universal Evil

Universal Evil
I believe you have to click the "none" under funtion tab in order to get the two choises to choose from.. after you've done that half the ships wil then turn Red and the others turn green. then just start shooting the Red one....
 
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