Xbox Newbie Tips & Tricks

Jace Harriman

Jace Harriman
I've had Elite Dangerous on PC since launch, but stopped playing a little before Horizons, and have come back to it in the last few weeks. My enjoyment has led to a friend of mine picking up the game, but he plays on Xbox, and since Elite has been on sale lately on console (only twelve quid for ED+Horizon!) I've picked up an extra copy so I've got a version of the game I can potentially play with him from time to time.

tl;dr - I have a lot less buttons than I'm used to, and my various PC habits don't quite translate across all that well. I'm relying on supercruise more because I can't tap a 75% thrust key, I haven't even tried manual landing yet, I can't decide if I like my pitch axis inverted or not, etc. I am however liking how quick and easy a lot of the press-and-hold business is, especially how easy/intuitive it is for supercruise and landing gear and all that business.

Do you guys have any tips and tricks for playing on console? Any custom key bindings that are must-haves, any default ones that aren't worth it (ie. do you guys ditch the galaxy and system map binds, since it doesn't take much to access them from the externals console?), that sort of thing? Any activities like mining or planet landing or such that I should watch out for being a different experience on console? Also how much customisation do we get for key bindings - can I set up "double tap LB" as a set throttle to zero bind, or left+Y as something different to Y+left, or is rebinding the combos the game gives us by default the best we can do?

Thanks for the help!
 

LetItBleed1980

LetItBleed1980
At this point I can't remember a lot of what key bindings were default and what I customized. One very important change I remember making is extending/retracting the landing gear. With one of the two buttons being the same as the boost button led to multiple accidental boosts inside of a station. I've never used a key binding for 75% throttle as I've never found it too much trouble to just decrease it manually. In fact I never really bother with bindings for throttle unless I'm exploring and then I use B with the Up and Down on the D Pad for 100 and 0 percent respectively. Using B I don't have to worry about boosting in Supercruise. I use LB + RB for my landing gear, that might be too easily accessible a spot for people to want to use on the gear but I really like having them there as I use them a lot for braking. Not in combat or anything but when docking or planetary landings.

As far as FSS goes I can't really recall what all my bindings are, it's almost muscle memory and I can't really think of what I do beyond using RB and LB for zoom in/out and I use RT (which in SC with my exploration fire groups just fires my scanners) and up on the D Pad to bring up the FSS.
 

Jace Harriman

Jace Harriman
Godnamedthor said:
Set RB+LB for 75% throttle. That helps a lot
Click to expand...

LetItBleed1980 said:
I've never used a key binding for 75% throttle as I've never found it too much trouble to just decrease it manually.
Click to expand...

I've had a lot of trouble finding the sweet spot for supercruise. I'm not sure if it's a symptom of the UI design, not being used to how much of a difference each click of the bumper makes, being six feet further away from the screen than I'm used to, some facet of my medical issues, or some cocktail of the above, but it's been giving me a frustrating amount of problems. On PC having that keybinding makes things effortless, and I find it more useful than having a 100% binding (just hold down the accelerate button for a while), so I guess it's one of those your mileage may vary things.

The landing gear being linked to the boost key is definitely an odd choice though, for sure. And I'm glad that double bumpers is an option. I guess I will flail around with all the buttons and see what combos I can potentially stumble across!
 

CptArcher

CptArcher
I love using combos. I'll share my binds and maybe give some ideas and help out. I have nearly everything bound. I don't even have XYAB bound to anything by themselves because it interferes with commands.

Binds

Pitch/Yaw left stick
Vert/Lat thruster right stick
Roll LB/RB
Throttle LS/RS
Throttle 0 LS+RS
Throttle 100 B+RS
Throttle 75 A+RS
Throttle 50 X+RS
Throttle -100 B+LS
Throttle -75 A+LS
Throttle -50 X+LS
Nav Menu X+Left Arrow
Chat Menu X+Up Arrow
Module Menu X+Right Arrow
SRV Menu X+Down Arrow
FSS X+LB
Discovery X+LT
Ship Lights X+RB
Night Vision X+RT
PIPS Y+Directional Arrows
Heatsink Y+RB
Chaff Y+LB
Shield Boost Y+RT
ECM Y+LT
Next Firegroup B+RT
Prev Firegroup B+LT
Change Mode B+LB
Deploy Hardpoints B+RB
Target A+B
Target Highest Threat A+UP arrow
Target Next A+Left Arrow
Target Prev A+Right Arrow
Target Next Hostile A+Down Arrow
Target Next Subsytem A+LB
Target Prev Subsystem A+RB
Zoom radar out A+RT
Zoom radar in A+LT
Cargo Scoop B+Up Arrow
Landing Gear B+Down Arrow
Target next system in route B+Y+Up Arrow
Camera B+Right Arrow
Toggle orbit lines B+Left arrow
Boost X+Y
Flight Assist Off A+B
Supercruise B+Y+LB
Hyperspace B+Y+RB
Target wingman Target B+Y+Down Arrow
Silent Running B+Y+RT
Galmap Y+A
System Map X+B
Toggle Headlook LB+RB
 
Last edited:

Vetinari

V
Godnamedthor said:
Set RB+LB for 75% throttle. That helps a lot
Click to expand...

Thats similar to the longer one above and probably normal. I went a different way entirely.

Swopped fire & accelerator - Trigger is acceleration and Bumper is fire. This gives me alt commands on the trigger for speed. -100%/0%/75% & Boost to 100% (B + RT)

Combine left stick 'dead zone' to pitch & yaw and then into roll at extremity. Allows right stick purely for thrusters. Gives me much more control especially with fixed weapons on the right fire button.

Swopped Landing Gear from B + down to A + down, too many boosts at the wrong time :)

SRV - swopped brake to X and turret to B, fire and accelerator buttons swopped as above but one major exception. All (3) scanners and weapons on Right fire group and LB becomes Thrust instead of left stick click. So much more control and easier on the fingers especially if doing SRV Buckyball. I just ignore the 'wrong mode' warning when scanning.

I keep the shortcuts for gal and sys maps just to save menu clicking.

Chaff is Y + down, Heatsinks are Y + LB - no need to assign to a fire group.

I dont use 3 button combos as too fiddly for me, have set a few but rarely manage to trigger them successfully. If you can manage them you get a whole other ball game.

Basically you have to really prioritise and only go for what you will use all the time with a few extras, I have next enemy (no prev), highest threat and prev subsystem (not next) as my priorities for example.

Edited for clarity and mistakes :)
 

LetItBleed1980

LetItBleed1980
Jace Harriman said:
I've had a lot of trouble finding the sweet spot for supercruise. I'm not sure if it's a symptom of the UI design, not being used to how much of a difference each click of the bumper makes, being six feet further away from the screen than I'm used to, some facet of my medical issues, or some cocktail of the above, but it's been giving me a frustrating amount of problems. On PC having that keybinding makes things effortless, and I find it more useful than having a 100% binding (just hold down the accelerate button for a while), so I guess it's one of those your mileage may vary things.

The landing gear being linked to the boost key is definitely an odd choice though, for sure. And I'm glad that double bumpers is an option. I guess I will flail around with all the buttons and see what combos I can potentially stumble across!
Click to expand...

I generally don't keep the 0 and 100 percent throttle options unless I'm out doing some deep space exploration, and it's just a recent thing I decided to do because it never occurred to me to set a key binding for something so simple. But when I'm out doing one FSS scan after another it is nice to just instantly throttle up/down when it's something I have to do constantly. Sometimes I can get pretty far away from a star and gain quite a bit of speed so I often have to hold it down for several seconds to get it up/down. And the combination of my throttle down and Enter FSS binding are really close and I can perform both almost in what feels like one swift motion where before it felt like more work. It probably doesn't save me much time or effort but it just personally feels more streamlined and less effort for exploration work.
 

Drake Pliskin

Drake Pliskin
I am like you OP, I have played ED PC version on & off since 2014. I bought ED for my XBox a couple of years ago and hated the controls so I uninstalled. I was so used to my X52 flight stick, I just hated using the controller. Because I prefer console gaming to PC (I know, I'm weird) I hardly ever played ED and was missing it so I reinstalled and tried again. Same thing, didn't like using the controller and I kept crashing. Difference this time around is that I didn't throw in the towel right away, I kept flying. I continued to use the default controller layout and low and behold, I got used to it after a couple of play sessions and now I love it; I even transferred all my credits from the PC version to Xbox.

Long story short; be patient, you will get used to the controls in due time.
 

LetItBleed1980

LetItBleed1980
I'm curious, what is the default setting for opening the FSS? For a long time mine was RS Click and D Pad Left or something like that (I can't remember if that was default or just something I did long ago) but I recently changed it because I was constantly coming out of FSS and go to maneuver with the right stick only to have my head move around instead. I don't think it happened every time, I just wasn't always quick enough with the d pad but during exploration it happened enough to make make me reassign it.
 

Drake Pliskin

Drake Pliskin
LetItBleed1980 said:
I'm curious, what is the default setting for opening the FSS? For a long time mine was RS Click and D Pad Left or something like that (I can't remember if that was default or just something I did long ago) but I recently changed it because I was constantly coming out of FSS and go to maneuver with the right stick only to have my head move around instead. I don't think it happened every time, I just wasn't always quick enough with the d pad but during exploration it happened enough to make make me reassign it.
Click to expand...

I'm at work so I cannot double check atm, but I believe it's currently Hold Y + RB on the controller.
 

Rebel Yell

Rebel Yell
What I hate the most is we don't have the possibility to create different custom profiles (there's a way out on PC as it's possile to store the custom bindings files away from the main directory).
 

Cmdr Nemo

Cmdr Nemo
Rebel Yell said:
What I hate the most is we don't have the possibility to create different custom profiles (there's a way out on PC as it's possile to store the custom bindings files away from the main directory).
Click to expand...
Apparently your not aware of the fact that you can delete any and all of the default configs on any device you chose, be it the key board and mouse, the gamepad of choice or a hotas.
And you can use the same exact configs you use for flight as you do for srv as you do for turret. Then you add in the multiplyer and you can double up almost any combo you want.
My warthog has considerably more available buttons then my gamepad. Thus using the same configs for flight as i do for srving, and utilizing a mutiplyer, I still only use two thirds of my warthog buttons.
 

Rebel Yell

Rebel Yell
Cmdr Nemo LXXI said:
Apparently your not aware of the fact that you can delete any and all of the default configs on any device you chose, be it the key board and mouse, the gamepad of choice or a hotas.
Click to expand...

On console there's only one custom profile... and there is no possibility to edit the files (yeah :) on PC I have customised the various layouts re-mapping all the files).
 

Jace Harriman

Jace Harriman
So I'm having a ton of trouble with the 75% trick for supercruise. Even if I start out at 0 and just fly at 75% the whole way, by the time I get close to the destination I'm going too fast. Instead of hitting that 0:07 sweet spot you get on PC, it's dropping down to 0:05, and unless I fiddle-faff the throttle down three or four clicks, I'm overshooting into a loop of shame every single time. It's an issue for me on both Xbox and PS4, and it doesn't seem to matter what ship I'm in, or what keybind I set... but on PC, speed at 75% in supercruise still works flawlessly.

Is this some sort of "console calculates things differently" issue, or do I have a really weird specific bug on both consoles somehow?
 

CptArcher

CptArcher
Hey OP, quick tip about the 75% throttle, it's not good to use in supercruise assist (SCA) and I'll tell you why. Now I don't know if it's a bug or something, but when when enabling SCA by setting throttle using a 75% bind, when dropping out of supercruise at a destination, the ship will continue on by itself at 75% throttle. If manually setting throttle to the blue zone, the ship will stop at 0% throttle when exiting supercruise which may be more desirable.

So in a way, it's like enabling supercruise dethrottle. (not to be confused with hyperspace dethrottle)
 

Sensei Jacksama

Sensei Jacksama
Jace Harriman said:
So I'm having a ton of trouble with the 75% trick for supercruise. Even if I start out at 0 and just fly at 75% the whole way, by the time I get close to the destination I'm going too fast. Instead of hitting that 0:07 sweet spot you get on PC, it's dropping down to 0:05, and unless I fiddle-faff the throttle down three or four clicks, I'm overshooting into a loop of shame every single time. It's an issue for me on both Xbox and PS4, and it doesn't seem to matter what ship I'm in, or what keybind I set... but on PC, speed at 75% in supercruise still works flawlessly.

Is this some sort of "console calculates things differently" issue, or do I have a really weird specific bug on both consoles somehow?
Click to expand...
I play on xbox and I don't have this problem. Your certain you have a keybinding set up for 75%? Alternatively you could be accidentally tapping the throttle and that will throw you off. Have you tried supercruise assist to see if it happens when it's activated? Your not attempting to do planetary landings that way are you? It doesn't work with landings. I don't meant to come across as condescending. Just trying to check off boxes and see where we're at.
 
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