Newcomer / Intro The Harmless' Guide to the Galaxy

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Yep that's next on the agenda, sometime tonight or tomorrow most likely. If you're an original Elite vet I think you'll be surprised at how familiar the combat feels :)
 
The closer to the sun it is, the closer to the nav beacon it is. Therefore it is a much shorter trip to get to the station. Time is money!

Tru dat. If you have a trading run that takes an hour to complete and makes 19,000cr profit or one that takes half an hour to complete and makes 10,000cr, then don't do the first one, do the second one twice.
 
A few trading tips from someone who has been doing a bit of trading even I don't intend to make a full-time career of it.

- Never make a journey without taking something along to sell at your destination (exceptions below)
- If need to get from A to B and you know that there is nothing you can buy in A that you can see for more in B (a rare situation indeed although there may be times where it just isn't worth it)
- If you need the jump range (cargo weighs you down and stops you jumping as far)
- If filling your cargo hold will leave you with not enough cash to pay your insurance, or carrying valuable goods through a dangerous area is considered too risky (if you die you will lose what you spent on cargo)

- Look at the market for commodities selling for much lower than the galactic average
- Look at the info panel in the market to see if these are being exported to somewhere you can visit, or want to visit
- Show trade routes for that commodity in the galaxy map to see where it is being exported to
- Look at the system economy types in the galaxy map to see if it makes logical sense that there would be a demand for that commodity in that system (e.g. crop harvesters in an agricultural system)

- Look for missions that ask you to fetch commodities for a price (indicated by an icon showing two opposite-facing arrows), they often pay much more than you would be getting on the open market and you have a long time usually to find the commodities
- Use the previously mentioned techniques to use the galactic map to try and source these commodities
- There is no penalty for failing to get the commodities in time
- Take lots of these missions at the same time write down a list of what you have to get where on a piece of paper.

- When you exit hyperspace fly upwards and get above (or below) the solar-system plane, you're less likely to get interdicted up there
 
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- When you jump to a system, you arrive near to its primary star (the top star when looking at the system view); the other stars will likely be a *long* drive away so be careful about where you think you're landing. In general it's better to ignore any station that's not around the primary star - it's too far to bother travelling there.

I'd basically stay away from any system that isn't 1 sun with planets layout. LHS3447 Yaping Enterprise is 100k Ls away from your drop in point, easily a 10 minute flight, even though it's attached to the top left star.

And you always overshoot supercruise there, for bonus annoyance :/
 
As I can't try this out right now, care to elaborate? I'm either way too careful in my tedious crawling towards the destination or I overshoot.
You'd think that, in the year 3300, someone has managed to come up with a system that drops you right at the doorstep, but nooo.

Make sure your destination is selected. 100% throttle. You will see the ETA counting down as your speed increases. At 6 or 7 seconds on the ETA timer, throttle to 75%. This will allow your ship to decelerate at the optimum rate. Now for the trick to shave time off the end of the journey. As you approach your destination, at all times keep an eye on the oribtal planes and the location of the destination target rectical. Angle off a bit and approach the station so that a planet/moon's gravity well doesn't throttle down your frame shift drive prematurely. Watch your speed, at 1.0 Mm/s hit full throttle and center the destination. You can even do this very slightly over 1.0 Mm/s. Keep your finger on the frameshift button. You will continue to decelerate in the blue speed zone on your target panel despite being full throttle, and you will approach much quicker than you would at 75% throttle. As soon as you see the blue text saying that it's safe to disengage, hit your frameshift button quickly. You may appear to fly by your destination, but you will notice that in the info panel it says that the destination is locked in. :)
 
Excellent thank you. Just really had my first day playing for a few hours and had already picked up some of the hints so its going to be an early start tomorrow to get it going..... Thank you once again
 
Thanks. I'd only made the roll/yaw changes to the bindings. I'm off to try the others before taking note of the rest of your tips.
 
I posted a quick how-to about scanners a little while ago. Feel free to use what you want from the following (slightly amended from original):
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Assuming you have a discovery scanner in one of your internal compartments, here's a quick howto for it:
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Bind the scanner to Secondary fire: Go to the right hand UI and tab across to Fire Groups. Scroll down to the Discovery Scanner and use Space to change the setting from nothing through 1 (primary fire) to 2 (secondary fire). Leave it on 2 and, for ease of use, in the first fire group unless you have a combat loadout that includes Chaff/Heat Sinks/Missiles etc. that also use the secondary fire button.
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Somewhere on your keyboard or stick you will have a key/button assigned to Secondary Fire. Unlike weapons, you can use the Discovery Scanner in Super Cruise. When you enter a new system that is Unexplored, change to the fire group that includes the scanner and trigger it by holding down the key/button. You will see a blue bar as it charges and then you will get a foghorn sound and a splash notice about detection in your HUD. This is the scanner operating. Its range depends on the type (Basic, Intermediate, Advanced) with the Basic scanner picking up everything within about 600 Ls, Intermediate ~1200 Ls and Advanced detecting everything in the system no matter how far away (that's why real explorers always have Advanced scanners).
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In the left hand UI you will now see a list of Unknown system bodies. To scan these for more information select one and point the ship towards it. If you are close enough the scanner will automatically start to scan, indicated by a swirling icon in the target information box at the bottom left of the HUD display. This scan will take about 15-20 seconds and then information about the system body will appear. Note that the range at which the scanner triggers appears to be related to the size of the system body, so stars can be scanned from a distance but you need to be much closer to planets and moons (usually 5-100 Ls). Note that you don't need a Detailed Surface Scanner to do this, the Discovery Scanner will work but it just returns less information ( = fewer credits later).
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All the information you collect can be sold at Universal Cartographics in stations and outposts but there is a restriction: you need to travel 20 Ly from the system you scanned to sell the data, so it's money for the future rather than insta-cash. Note also that like bounties and other rewards you lose your scan data if your ship is destroyed.
 
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Fantastic guide so far! As a <week old noob there's so many good tips. Looking forward to updates. Are you going to do exploration & mining? Thank you.
 
Fantastic guide so far! As a <week old noob there's so many good tips. Looking forward to updates. Are you going to do exploration & mining? Thank you.

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& thx Googol, that's very helpful too.
 
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