Newcomer / Intro What are you up to?

[CMDRQuainMarln]

And you believed him?

You really ought to know better than that by now.

I'm happy the Chieftain is my best ship vs. Scouts and Interceptors. It means my Krait MKII can remain outfitted for the role of combat and mission running where it excels, and the Chieftain is exclusively for AX combat.
I've treated the Chieftain to one of those Styg.... whetever it is colours. It's blue. I'll grab a picture this evening.

Oh yes, grabbed some reinforced mounting plates and a Guardian Module Blueprint at lunch time. Just got to head back and buy those guardian hulls...

 

[Marvin the Martian]

I've treated the Chieftain to one of those Styg.... whetever it is colours. It's blue.

Mine. Hangar is dark, but it is a multi colored blue:

I need to remake all my pictures since they brightened the hangar lighting in patch 14.

 

[CMDRQuainMarln]

I've discovered why AX pilots fighting Thargoid Interceptors with shieldless ships do not really need caustic resistance on their armour, and so don't use Guardian Hull Reinforcements as a result:

"Tharghoid Interceptors to Absolute damage against your hull if you have shields. And Caustic damage if you don't have shields."

I'm going to be fighting Scouts for a while where caustic missiles are a thing, and I can't always dodge the caustic cloud left behind by Scouts when they explode. So looking forward to trying the Guardian Hull Reinforcements.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

I've discovered why AX pilots fighting Thargoid Interceptors with shieldless ships do not really need caustic resistance on their armour, and so don't use Guardian Hull Reinforcements as a result:

"Tharghoid Interceptors to Absolute damage against your hull if you have shields. And Caustic damage if you don't have shields."

I'm going to be fighting Scouts for a while where caustic missiles are a thing, and I can't always dodge the caustic cloud left behind by Scouts when they explode. So looking forward to trying the Guardian Hull Reinforcements.

I could sit right next to an Interceptor and take no damage at all. I followed one around pumping it full of lead for a long time (I'm thinking about 10 minutes) but couldn't kill it. ( I didn't know about shooting the hearts out first and all that.)

 

[Codger]

I took a break from fitting out my Challenger to do a bit of Exobiology because the payouts might not last. Also today is laundry day for me, so I have to keep getting up

I found Festive Frutexa here

And Festive Fonticula here:

Tried to recreate the promo image for the paint job. I shoulda done it on an icy planet. Oh well.

I'm now Elite I in Exobiology. Yeah. Kinda silly, but there it is.

They shouldn't have made the ranks credit-based.

If they scale the ranks now, people who haven't turned in any exobiology data since the increase would see their ranks go down, unless FDEV is storing the dates of payouts or something. I bet they are not.

If they nerf the current payouts it will be more fair, but people will still be quite upset, like FDEV went back on their word and made Galnet a lie.

So, I dunno what they'll do. At least I got some decent credits out of it all

I still have to engineer the beam lasers on my Challenger. I think the rest is good for now. Once I do that I'll be able to test it out in battle.

I painted it pink and gave it a new name. Should be pretty scary to the Thargoids. They like green, you see. Pink will make them think twice!

 

[Nekozji]

Docked at a port that's under attack, seeing a lot of this...

So, I dunno what they'll do. At least I got some decent credits out of it all

I would expect an announcement in about a month that exobiologists have helped slightly improve the AX weaponry on offer, and scale back payments to maybe 30-50%. More than that and it starts being terrible return for time vs trading or moving refugees.

 

[Ashnak]

Docked at a port that's under attack, seeing a lot of this...

View attachment 336068

That should be the spaceport that's under attack, not the server port.

 

[0threeleven]

Yeah, desperate times call for desperate measures. That bacterium can be really hard to spot on a hilly planet surface.

Hey, use you're external camera on your SRV, I don't know the keyboard binding because I use an xbox controller, you can look it up in settings. But you know all this already, right?

 

[WeComeInPeace]

On my way to steal a sensor from a Thargoid ship... What could possibly go wrong. Limpets, check. Boost speed 738 m/s, check. Cargo scoop enabled, check. Let's go!

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Hey, use you're external camera on your SRV, I don't know the keyboard binding because I use an xbox controller, you can look it up in settings. But you know all this already, right?

I don't like doing that. It's like logging in and out. I find it kind of cheating and cheap.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Boost speed 738 m/s

WHOA!!!

 

[CMDRQuainMarln]

I took a break from fitting out my Challenger to do a bit of Exobiology because the payouts might not last. Also today is laundry day for me, so I have to keep getting up

I found Festive Frutexa here
View attachment 336071

And Festive Fonticula here:
View attachment 336072

Tried to recreate the promo image for the paint job. I shoulda done it on an icy planet. Oh well.
View attachment 336073

I'm now Elite I in Exobiology. Yeah. Kinda silly, but there it is.
View attachment 336074

They shouldn't have made the ranks credit-based.

If they scale the ranks now, people who haven't turned in any exobiology data since the increase would see their ranks go down, unless FDEV is storing the dates of payouts or something. I bet they are not.

If they nerf the current payouts it will be more fair, but people will still be quite upset, like FDEV went back on their word and made Galnet a lie.

So, I dunno what they'll do. At least I got some decent credits out of it all

I still have to engineer the beam lasers on my Challenger. I think the rest is good for now. Once I do that I'll be able to test it out in battle.

I painted it pink and gave it a new name. Should be pretty scary to the Thargoids. They like green, you see. Pink will make them think twice!
View attachment 336075

I suspect Vista Genomics of being on league with the Thargoids. Huge payouts to lure avaricious commanders away from the war

 

[CMDRQuainMarln]

On my way to steal a sensor from a Thargoid ship... What could possibly go wrong. Limpets, check. Boost speed 738 m/s, check. Cargo scoop enabled, check. Let's go!

Must be an Imperial Courier you're flying....?

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Must be an Imperial Courier you're flying....?

Racing Eagle.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Got it (edit: the sensor). One more time...

 

[Codger]

Had a chance to test out the new Challenger build.

Woo hoo! It was like night and day!

Thanks @Marvin the Martian for your advice on this! My build is very similar to yours, now. Those Guardian Hull Reinforcements are way better than the Grade 4 regular ones I had in there before.

Caustic damage? It was minimal. The beams kept my heat down, and overall the ship performed extremely well.

I was fighting at a planetary port, which was unfortunately in the dark. Hitting the ground was my biggest fear

I fought for maybe a half hour, then had to log. I made 2.7 million in combat bonds. I'm not sure how many scouts that was. Maybe a dozen?

An interceptor showed up and that's when I decided to take a rest. I heard the "Surge detected" warning and attempted to use my Shutdown Field Neutralizer, but I kinda fumbled with the fire groups. I did hit it, eventually, but I'm not sure what it did. Maybe I was in time, because I didn't get shut down. I might have just been far enough away.

This is the build I have so far, modeled after Marvin's build. I used a shield I already had, and some other stuff too, but I came pretty close to what he has. It seems to work.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

Now it's up to me to gain experience. I was flailing around a lot.

 

[0threeleven]

I don't like doing that. It's like logging in and out. I find it kind of cheating and cheap.

The way I look at is if this were real life we'd definitely be using drones launched from the SRV, and if they weren't available, I would build one myself.

 

[Fnord Velkor]

...

An interceptor showed up and that's when I decided to take a rest. I heard the "Surge detected" warning and attempted to use my Shutdown Field Neutralizer, but I kinda fumbled with the fire groups. I did hit it, eventually, but I'm not sure what it did. Maybe I was in time, because I didn't get shut down. I might have just been far enough away.
...

Didn't they say they were going to introduce a "hot-key" bind for the shutdown field neutraliser? (Like we have for heatsink, chaff and SCB.)

Yes they did - woohoo, no more mucking about with fire groups for that baby ( it is under Miscellaneous in the Ship Controls section)

 

[bugbait42]

I'm still on the Exo trail in the Sanguinious Rim and managed to find quite a few species in various systems that were new Codex ones for me. I've yet to find a body with bio signals that hasn't been mapped and footfalled by others, and with fleet carriers all over the place and the vastly increased rewards I'm not really surprised!

I nearly lost my ship a few systems back when landing on a planet - approached too fast and too steep due being impatient and got an emergency exit out of orbital cruise, which in itself wasn't too serious, but I then stupidly thought I could repair the damaged modules with the AFMU whilst hovering above the surface, and while I was doing that collided with the planet several times and ended up with no shields and only an 11% hull.

Obviously I should either have landed or gone back out in space to do the repairs but oh well... Anyway I found a helpful fleet carrier in EDSM only 3 systems away, where I got all my repairs sorted and sold all my exploration data so far to the Cartographics the commander had included on his or her FC.

I just now went back to one of the crystalline shard systems, to see if I could find more stuff and this time was able to get a whole bunch of tellurium. Oh and @Fnord Velkor - I can now confirm that the turret works great in Ody thanks, although I was actually able to shoot quite a few clusters from the cockpit anyway, so I'd say the Ody surface prospecting has definitely been improved in the update.

 

[Nekozji]

Fancied trying some new HUD colours. Many are very blue and cold but this one seems like a subtle shift down from the default orange without losing the warmth.

Also yes, this was a mildly alarming jump. Looked shiny from the outside though.

And then the night bus duty resumed. Honestly, I hovered here for a solid 5 minutes to get a decent photo and never got shot once. The thargoids may have been informed about the rules of war.

There was then a long pause while the mission board stopped working, so the day bus had to pick up the slack. I'm not steering in this image, that's just how much a cutter skids.

Some loitering later, the moon fell into the shadow of its parent body and it was back to being the night bus.

Bugs got a few shots off this time, but nothing that penetrated the shields.

Another 130+ civilians safe and clear. At this point I'm wondering where they're finding them...