Note: there are tactics & recommendations in here that are valid for solo players. But this is mostly info you can get elsewhere and primarily for the "this is stupid, tell me more" factor.
This tactic provides the "pirate massacre wing missions with zero skill" option, which I used today to make ~100MCr an hour. It is a combination of a bit of fun, a bit of tedium, and a bit of record keeping. The risk is pretty much zero, but the idiotic part is that I'm using three accounts at the same time.
The setup is: take the time to build up three accounts with the right unlocked engineers, trips to the jameson crash and shard fields to gather materials, hours of HGE farming for the other materials, trips out to unlock the guardian modules (but it turns out the guardian fighters are pretty bad), and then faction grinding to unlock the Corvette for all three accounts. Let me tell you straight up that there is a lot of hours of grind to get this far with three accounts running simultaneously. (Honestly, the Corvette unlock is the absolute worst part of this... multiplied by three.)
The plus side of running three accounts for long trips is that you don't get bored: you're always flying one ship (or two ships, since a stick in each hand and lots of glancing will get you two fuel scoop runs at the same time) while the other ship(s) are in mid-jump. The downside is that some activities (SRV driving) are a one-at-a-time affair. So things like shard gathering and the guarding unlocks are tedious sequential jobs.
But, once you're all stocked up on materials, credits, and faction ranks, you can then start the tedious task of unlocking the engineers and assembling the right corvette combat platforms for some idiotic solo 3-ship massacre missions.
Other notes:
Fly stupid, commanders!
o7
This tactic provides the "pirate massacre wing missions with zero skill" option, which I used today to make ~100MCr an hour. It is a combination of a bit of fun, a bit of tedium, and a bit of record keeping. The risk is pretty much zero, but the idiotic part is that I'm using three accounts at the same time.
The setup is: take the time to build up three accounts with the right unlocked engineers, trips to the jameson crash and shard fields to gather materials, hours of HGE farming for the other materials, trips out to unlock the guardian modules (but it turns out the guardian fighters are pretty bad), and then faction grinding to unlock the Corvette for all three accounts. Let me tell you straight up that there is a lot of hours of grind to get this far with three accounts running simultaneously. (Honestly, the Corvette unlock is the absolute worst part of this... multiplied by three.)
The plus side of running three accounts for long trips is that you don't get bored: you're always flying one ship (or two ships, since a stick in each hand and lots of glancing will get you two fuel scoop runs at the same time) while the other ship(s) are in mid-jump. The downside is that some activities (SRV driving) are a one-at-a-time affair. So things like shard gathering and the guarding unlocks are tedious sequential jobs.
But, once you're all stocked up on materials, credits, and faction ranks, you can then start the tedious task of unlocking the engineers and assembling the right corvette combat platforms for some idiotic solo 3-ship massacre missions.
- Corvette (x3)
- Two gimballed medium beam lasers with efficient engineering and regeneration sequence effect. These are used for tagging enemies (making them hostile) and being a heal-bot for any of your other ships that might be losing too much shield.
- All other weapons are turreted beam lasers, but only mid-sized or small, with long range mods and thermal shock effect.
- Everything is engineered for shield strength, good power generation, and low thermal output. The ships are entirely stationary, so speed and turn rate is not important. Note that corvettes work quite a bit better than cutters due to power & thermal issues. Prismatic shields are nice. 6 of 8 of the utility slots are shield boosters, with most being modded to reinforce resists. End result is thermal resists ~40s and ~70s for the others.
- Class 7 fighter bay, with 30 autocannon condors available. You can chew through a lot of these in a multi-hour fight, and it's good to have two launch rails so you can immediately drop a new one if you lose one. Get a Harmless pilot and let them grind up to Elite.
- Some collector limpets are good, because a decent number of ships will explode within 1km of the three ships parked. Free mats for future use.
- I use three matching simple joysticks (old sidewinder pro usb sticks) and keyboard/mouse for flying multiple ships. They all have identical layouts, because you do not want to be switching layout between computers as you jump back and forth. When things go wrong your brain will forget where the buttons are.
- I use a programmable Logitech keyboard for a number of important things: most notably is a row of "assist" macros that target a wingmate and assist-target them, then sends a fighter "attack my target" keystroke. When one ship has an enemy targeted, tap the appropriate "assist" button on the other two and they'll send their fighters to attack, too. Also, having a macroing keyboard/device is a MUST for doing powerplay grinds to get things like prismatic shields. Let's say you've got plenty of credits and want to move 750 units of materials with the 100K-timer-override... do you know how many mouse clicks that is? But you can set up a macro to buy the unlock, purchase 10 units of powerplay materials, and cycle until you have a full hold. FDev's UI is a total piece of crap for many tasks, and I suspect it's because of being limited by the need to support VR in everything.
- If you're not already rich and need to get some money quick early on you can do some "LOW" risk resource extraction cheesing to get ahead. The tactic here is to take some missions that you normally aren't fit for: massacre pirates. I recommend doing this all out of Stromgren Orbital in the Baal system. You're looking for massacres of pirates (not deserters) in the Zeta Horologii system. Once you have a couple of these, bounce over to Zeta Horologii and fly to a "LOW" risk resource extraction site in the rings of the gas giants there. I always use the ones that are ~880 LS from the central star. You can also use the "MEDIUM" and "HIGH" sites, because the cops are present there, too, but the ships get tougher and the risk gets greater. Avoid "HAZARDOUS" until you're kitted out, as there are no cops at hazardous sites. All you need to do is chase around Zeta Horologii Brotherhood Pirates until they attack someone mining or neutral, and wait for the cops to swarm them. Once they're mostly dead, jump in and get some hits. You'll get kill credit, bounty credit, and materials will drop on death. DO NOT PICK UP ANY COMMODITIES. If you have anything other than limpets in your hold you will get scanned and mobbed by pirates. You can do this for a few runs to build up the cash to get some good gear and try riskier tactics. Switch to MEDIUM or HIGH as you build up your combat vessel. Eventually you'll get that engineered anaconda or cutter and be able to park into a hellstorm of fire with few worries.
- To prevent canisters from being picked up, go to the Contacts tab of your Navigation panel. Find canisters/fragments in the list and select them and "add to ignore list", they will then be ignored by your limpets, if you're using them. Even when you're fully engineering and have 3 corvettes, if you are sitting in a busy spot and are continually scanned by pirates you can have a dozen or more of them going hostile with you at the same time. Be on the lookout for accidentally picked up commodities and dump them if you aren't prepared to handle lots of pirate attacks.
- I start at Baal, get upwards of a dozen wing missions on each of my three accounts. I fill my holds with collector limpets, make sure I have pilots assigned, and head to Zeta Horologii. DO NOT SHARE ANY MISSIONS IN YOUR WING. This happens later.
- There I head to the HAZARDOUS resource extraction site on the nearest gas giant rings.
- Once at the site I position myself near the center point of the rings, deploys weapons, fighters, and ensure my pips are where I want them. I actually have been doing 4sys/2weap just to keep overheats from being an issue if I'm not paying attention.
- Everyone is in a wing in a private instance.
- I wait for pirates (of any faction) to come scanning. If I'm not already handling more than, say, 3 or 4 pirates, any new guys that show up I'll tag with my main lasers and add them to the furball.
- My ship's weapons are set to auto-fire, so the turreted weapons are always seeking and shooting at any red-hostile enemy in range. These weapons are engineered as long range for that reason.
- When a ship shows up, I tag it with one account. Then hit the correct "assist" macro on the other two computers and they send their fighters to join. That takes care of making that target red instead of purple. (Actively hostile instead of just hostile to my wingmate.) I hop from machine to machine using my gimballed lasers to tag each other purple enemy (if they're in a wing or the fighters are already busy elsewhere) until all enemies are equally hostile to all ships. Then I just let the turreted lasers steadily whittle away everything. I'm not sure how effective thermal shock is, to be honest, but I feel it does really mess up internal systems when an enemy is getting about 10 small to medium lasers all dumping thermal heat into them continuously.
- If a one of my ships loses a ring of shields, just take one of the other ships and dump some regeneration sequence into the shield for a bit until it comes back up. This might require bumping up weapon pips and managing heat in some situations. Normally just wait until a lull in combat and touch up shields then.
- If a fighter gets toasted, just launch a new one from the other rail and put it on aggressive. Those three fighters can do a lot of chewing on enemies if they try to run. I get most single runners, although if they're an anaconda that's engineered they might make the high wake.
- I'm sitting in the middle of the ring because that means an enemy has to thrust out of the ring in order to engage their FSD. This is plenty of time for fighters to chase them down and toast them. If you try this outside of the mass lock they'll jump out far easier.
- While this is generally low risk, there are times when you'll accidentally pick up a commodity and not notice it, then have a dozen pirates suddenly mobbing you. It's not totally boring and tedious. You can push yourself to the limit of your build and see how crazy you can get before it's too much. There've been a few times I've had to boost and bail due to biting off more than I can chew. However, when I bumped up from two accounts to three, the amount of idiocy I can engage has increased. Having two ships to "heal" the shields on a third makes keeping up with incoming damage a lot easier.
- Turning in all those wing missions is a process. It requires careful coordination, or you'll miss out on rewards.
- Once everyone is ready (or you're ready because you're crazy and have three accounts) go to the Transactions tab of the Nav panel.
- You'll need a notepad or notepad.exe. Take your pick. I just use a notepad and a pen.
- Make a column for each of your pilots.
- On each account pick one wing mission, write down the millions and thousands units of the reward on your notepad under the pilot column. So, for a reward that is 9,634,039 Cr, write down 9634. Those digits are almost always enough to uniquely identify that mission. Only once have I ever had two missions that had identical reward totals. You're going to use this reward amount to identify it in the turn-in screen.
- Share out the missions: one per account.
- Accept the missions on the other accounts.
- Go to the missions screen in the station and then use your notes for the starting digits of the reward to find that specific mission, and then turn it in.
- Now return to the Transactions tab and do this action all over again: record digits, share out the mission, accept the mission on other accounts, then turn it in.
- You can accept the "wing rewards" as they appear during this process, or you can let them stack up and get them at the end. I'm not sure if there is a 20-mission limit for wing rewards like there is for active missions, or if they're all in the same bucket.
- It's takes me a good half hour to go through the 20-30 missions and get them all turned in and get all the rewards squared away.
- Pluses: you'll get a fair number of tier 5 materials without really impacting your overall credit haul if you need materials. If you need Empire faction (for Cutter) you can take the REP+++++ variants and knock out big chunks of that grind this way. Just make sure you're turning in with an Empire faction before picking the REP+ reward.
Other notes:
- Running three computers at the same time can keep your room toasty warm. This may be good or bad depending upon the time of year.
- I run with graphics turned to pretty much minimal settings, despite having some hefty hardware. The reasons vary: sitting in a planetary ring for a few hours with ship detritus floating around will eventually make your system start stuttering. Best way to clear this up is to fly 20Km away or so and then back, or just low wake out, turn around, and drop back in. Also, if you're ever doing drop-to-desktop HGE gathering, the minimal graphics settings will make the shader startup times drop to only a couple seconds.
- This tactic is a good way to keep yourself amused during otherwise unexciting conference calls. The fact that you don't really need to pay attention that much is helpful for this. A fair portion of today's run was only loosely watched as I did other work.
- Can such a setup be easily scripted/botted? No. There is no method by which you can make the ED client do automated work like this. Believe me, I've thought about it because at a certain point you get bored with the game and start thinking about silly things to make the game more interesting.
- This is mostly why I've done the ludicrous work to get three accounts kitted out: to give myself arbitrary goals and then achieve them. It's been fun, but I think this bit of idiocy might be the last thing I do before I wander off and let ED sit dormant for a while. Perhaps I'll see if I can dominate a combat zone or three, or if this tactic utterly fails there.
- I've found the wing support in ED to be pretty much terrible. The auto-FSD-drop feature is just junk, although is occasionally works as intended. I mostly quit using it because it's more frustrating than anything.
- Trying to beat the interdiction mini-game on two sticks for two pilots simultaneously is... uh... not something I can do. Submit and boost, boost, boost!
- You will forget about a ship every so often because you're doing something on a different pilot. I was fortunate not to blow one of my Corvettes up by crashing directly into Black Hide and then just sitting there thrusting into the ground for about ten seconds. Doing simultaneously planetary landings is some mild entertainment.
Fly stupid, commanders!
o7
