Newcomer / Intro What did I miss?

[aeolian7]

Greetings Commanders - I've been away from the game for a looong time (4, maybe 5 years?) but am finally in a position to spend some time on it again. Obviously quite a lot has happened since I was last here - can someone catch me up a little please?

1) I see the Thargoids have turned up - do I need to be worried about running into them day-to-day or is it sector-specific? How tooled up will I need to be to deal with them?
2) Is Rare trading still profitable? I used to run rare loops quite frequently as I was grinding my bankroll up but it looks like profitability has been nerfed significantly.
3) Exploration: the FSS interface is new to me and looks pretty fiddly. Have this and the DSS changes made exploring new systems faster / slower, more or less labour intensive, etc?
4) I've had a look at the Popular Guide to Exploration and a few others but I haven't seen a good practical checklist for how to efficiently scan a new system. Can anyone recommend a good high-level guide? (e.g. Jump in, clear the star, switch to analysis mode, something something FSS, surface scan some (all?) planets, leave.)
5) What's a good way to make money these days?
6) I also see we've got surface landings and even walking around / FPS bits now... are these generally seen as good additions to the game? I don't think I'm going to concern myself with them quite yet, I've got enough to re-learn as it is...

Sorry for the question dump and thanks in advance for any responses. Now I'm off to reset all my key bindings...

 

[metatheurgist]

1 - Nope. They tend to leave you alone unless you P them off. You need to be very tooled up to fight them
2 - It's the same. It only appears diminished because everything else became stupidly profitable
3 - Much faster. The FSS does the same thing from one spot as flying to each and every body used to do
4 - FSS everything except asteroids. Then DSS the juicy ones
5 - Mining, Combat, sometimes CGs pay stupid returns
6 - I like it

 

[Chrystoph]

Greetings Commanders - I've been away from the game for a looong time (4, maybe 5 years?) but am finally in a position to spend some time on it again. Obviously quite a lot has happened since I was last here - can someone catch me up a little please?

1) I see the Thargoids have turned up - do I need to be worried about running into them day-to-day or is it sector-specific? How tooled up will I need to be to deal with them?

Completely optional as to whether they are dangerous.

2) Is Rare trading still profitable? I used to run rare loops quite frequently as I was grinding my bankroll up but it looks like profitability has been nerfed significantly.

Rares are still there, although a bunch have been locked through poor gaming choices. As to profitibility, meh, other methods requiring less effort. If you want to do it for enjoyment's sake, it still makes money, just not top notch.

3) Exploration: the FSS interface is new to me and looks pretty fiddly. Have this and the DSS changes made exploring new systems faster / slower, more or less labour intensive, etc?

Different people will give you different answers. If you are a completionist, it takes longer. If you are just looking for ELWs, etc, it can be faster.

4) I've had a look at the Popular Guide to Exploration and a few others but I haven't seen a good practical checklist for how to efficiently scan a new system. Can anyone recommend a good high-level guide? (e.g. Jump in, clear the star, switch to analysis mode, something something FSS, surface scan some (all?) planets, leave.)

That is more or less it. The honk gets you any stars in the system, going "up" or "down" from the ecliptic is easier for FSS work, and then, it gets fiddly because it changes up depending on what you want to accomplish. If you are looking for "interesting" systems, you don't get the system map populated with non-stars until a given solar has been FSS scanned.

5) What's a good way to make money these days?

Trade missions -

Spoiler

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGj6duQ9xDY

6) I also see we've got surface landings and even walking around / FPS bits now... are these generally seen as good additions to the game? I don't think I'm going to concern myself with them quite yet, I've got enough to re-learn as it is...

Surface landings - Guardians, Engineering

 

[aRJay]

1. Yes they are back, apart from the scouts you need specialist weapons to deal with them effectively, but hey can generally be avoided.
2. What is profitable or not has changed a lot recently, rares are still making good money but not the obscene profits that seem to be the minimum requirement for some players.
3. Yes and no, the FSS takes some setting up in controls but once done you can jump into a new system and get all the information the ADS and old DSS provided without visiting every body in the system visiting the planets and mapping them with the DSS provides more info and profit.
4. I don't keep track of the guides but I fly in Analysis mode and honk systems as I arrive, travel a short distance so the star won't block much then throttle down and FSS all the bodies, to maximise profit per time just go and map the high value bodies.
5. The good way is to do things you like, there will be lots of suggestions on how to just do things to make more money than can be used.
6. Horizons added landings and is now bundled in with your base game so you will have access to some airless worlds that you can drive around as well as being able to engineer modules in your ships, it also lets you do passenger missions. Odyssey has just launched on PC and lets you land on planets with tenuous atmospheres and do things on foot it adds a new perspective to the game and promises to be interesting unfortunately it is not performing well at all yet, many of its features will become part of Horizons in the autumn when it is due to roll out on the consoles as well.

 

[aeolian7]

Thanks all, very helpful. Now if I could just remember why the last thing I did before quitting all those years ago was buy an Anaconda and tool it up enough to start a small war.

 

[Chrystoph]

If you aren't used to Engineering, combat has changed a lot in recent years. Don't presume that an A rated ship is high quality these days.

 

[aRJay]

Thanks all, very helpful. Now if I could just remember why the last thing I did before quitting all those years ago was buy an Anaconda and tool it up enough to start a small war.

Well if you left around 80-100 tonnes of cargo space it might have been for rares running there were some loops with large pads.

 

[d8veh]

We were doing a megaship turrets mission a couple of days ago in Brib, which would normally be safe space, but thargoids turned up out of the blue and attacked us. The first time, it was Scouts. The next time it was an Interceptor, which got us with its shutdown field. It blew up my colleague, but let me escape. We tried a third time, but the Interceptor came back again and this time we both got away.

The target megaship was damaged and had green slime on it. No Thargoids came to other places in the system, so they were tied to that particular POI.