@dave_tacitus: Weird, my dormant fine has never budged. I'm just gunna ignore it for now and hope all is well :P

@capum15: Thanks for the heads up about the glitch! The frequency I get attacked for doing nothing wrong is a little frustrating, but I'm sure they'll find it. I was gunna go and try to report it on their forums or something, but if it's known then that's alright.

Nice fuel scooping btw! I haven't given that a go yet, but I did come dangerously close to getting stranded with no refueling station on a 100 ly journey.

@dave_tacitus said:

I've now got this thing:

Don't think I'm quite cut out to be a space trucker, at least not with the Transporter. It's slow, ponderous and worse than useless in a dogfight ... but it carries 50 tonnes of cargo and has a massive fuel tank.

A couple of hours later I bought a Viper which I've tricked out and garaged for whenever I fancy a bit of fun.

It's my mid life crisis ship. ;-)

But it looks fucking rad. Once the whole wingmen system is up I'm sure it'll be better with some friendly attack ships flying with you. Potentially a lot more interesting too.

@bollard: Fuel Scooping is pretty great. I usually fuel up around half a tank, just in-case I hit a star you can't do that at. Only thing that sucks is that since it's an Eagle, I can't have a discovery scanner along with me. I'm never gonna run shield-less, and I need the cargo hold for this trade route to upgrade to a Hauler or something.

Edit: Also if anyone doesn't know, all you need to fuel scoop is the scoop. You then just creep close to a star while in Super Cruise and it'll deploy when close enough. It's easier when coming directly out of a jump, as it puts you only a few LS out of the star. Throttle to zero (30km/s) then tap throttle up once (or slowly throttle if using a HOTAS). As soon as it starts, get ready to stop after the rate and heat rise.

Just keep heat under 100% and you're golden. I can get a 20 refuel rate at about 95-7% heat with my current scoop (a B1 I think? pushed it to 25/s but got about 101% heat, so I stopped). You just sit back and wait a bit for the tank to fill up. I usually keep the throttle zeroed as I turn away. Then just punch it and once the hull cools down, frame shift away.

@dave_tacitus: That's a lot of credits.

@thesquarepear: Id not worry about learning the game, its really not that complicated. The VR rig however...its a cost but oh boy its worth it.

My Type 6 now has an 80 ton cargo capacity, meaning I'm raking in 100k profits from non-rare goods on some routes. Still a sitting duck, though, but I've been able to get back into supercruise before my shields go down.

So far...

Next stop is the Asp, and I've always been an asp man. ;-)

As Asp-man in Wang City?

Seriously, though, I find that insane compared to the pittance I've made thus far.

@driadon: I've found a great little trade route if you're near Sol. Superconducters from Sol to Bhritzameno for 500 creds a piece profit then Progenitor cells on the return journey for 1200 creds profit per unit.

@dave_tacitus: If Butz Market doesn't have the cheapest biowaste in the entire galaxy, I'll be slightly dissapointed. Also, Wang City should be orbiting Uranus.

I'm here all week, folks. Try the veal.

That's an amazing route, but don't tell too many people or it'll get saturated ;) Also, where do I get the permit to enter Sol from?

What sort of weapon loadouts are you folks using? I'm rolling with a dumbfire missile launcher and dual pulse lasers on my Eagle. Been thinking about swapping the pulse lasers for a single gimballed beam laser, and then replacing the missile launcher with dual cannons/multicannons.

As it is now, I mostly save the missiles for when I need to take something out quick or for particularly troublesome targets. Otherwise it's just the pulse lasers, and I figured the cannon-focused loadout would be better suited for dealing hull damage over those things. I suppose I could try it and if it doesn't work out just rebuy my old stuff.

My Cobra has class 2 dual gimballed pulse lasers which are fantastic, even if they do run out of power rather fast. Does the missle launcher have any kind of tracking? I used a cannon for a bit but sold it because it was impossible to hit anyone, even with a gimballed cannon! Also yeah there is totally no harm in trying anything. You get a full refund when you swap (assuming you're at the same station/the prices are the same, I think).

I tried the flak cannon which is basically a shotgun and it was no fun. I am yet to try multi-cannons, I just want something that as you said is more effective for hull damage once I take down the shields with my lasers.

@bollard: No tracking, but I try to only use them when it's a sure hit (mostly when they're really close). They're easy enough to hit with at those times, but I thought since I was literally piggybacking ships in most fights I might as well try out a flak cannon. Geez, that thing really isn't as much fun as I imagined. Granted I tried them on an Anaconda, so maybe on smaller ships it'd be more effective and satisfying. The thought of getting right up in a ship's face and unloading dual flak cannons still seems super-badass, so I might not give up on them just yet.

I haven't messed with much gimballed stuff in the main game, but I remember really liking the setup from one of the tutorials (I think it was the one where you face 2 fast ships and also get homing missiles). Had to find that sweet spot between you and your target from what I recall, but even they it'd miss a fair bit. Guess that's the trade-off! I'll mess around with some multi-cannons tomorrow and see how they feel.

Do the gimballed pulse lasers run out of power fast even when your power setting for weapons systems is maxed? At around 3 pips I can fire my pulse lasers non-stop, but they're class 1 and fixed. Really liking my Eagle. Gotta know when to book it though; thing can't take much of a beating. But it's pretty fun staying in a ships blind spot blasting the crap out of it.

@theht: Even with 4 in weapons on class 1 fixed pulse lasers they run out eventually. Gimballed probably runs out twice as fast. And yeah gimballed can miss, I find that if someone is in the middle of your screen you will do more damage with fixed, but because you can still hit enemies even as they are getting out of your line of sight and aren't central it makes up for it in terms of damage.

It came with the Mercenary Edition but if it's acquired the same way as the other permits (I've got 3 or 4 of them now, and the stations have been really disappointing) then you just build up your rep with the systems close to the locked-off one and you'll eventually get offered a permit.

@dave_tacitus: Ah okay, that's annoying. Is that a long process?

Anyone here playing single player and care to discuss their experiences?

(Having a difficult time finding a thread on the official forum as to the exact diffs between single player and multi player)

The only difference should be that you'll only encounter other players in multiplayer. Otherwise it's the same. Apparently any world changes that players might cause (economy, events, whatever) will also affect people in "solo" mode, and just the same the things players do in solo mode will affect anyone in open or group multiplayer. That's what I read about it all anyways.

Not sure if you know about this, but there's no offline mode any more with this game. Whether you're in solo mode or not, you'll need an internet connection.

For what it's worth, I've only been playing in open multiplayer and hardly ever come across other players, let alone interact with them.

@theht: thanks for clarifying. I'd heard SP != offline, but was unsure about the exact implications.

I think you mean that he'll encounter other players as well as NPCs like in offline mode. You don't only encounter other players.

Everyone's probably got those 'You don't have to be mad to work here ... but it helps' signs on their desks.

Anyone else kind of hit that content barrier?

I'm at a point where I think I've seen all the depth this game offers, which isn't a good thing. I hope they plan to add more variety in content because right now it feels like all I'm doing is either interdicting people, trading, or looking for unidentified signal sources.

@lunnington: I know what you mean.

At its core the game is still the 1984 Elite and while that's fine for a while, expectations have moved on in the last 30 years. I'm still having fun but I barely played the game over Christmas.

I already hit that barrier during the "Gamma Phase". I haven't really played the game since the release back in December. This has to be one of the shallowest games I have played in many years. Playing Elite: Dangerous actually gave me a completely new perspective on the X3 games.

I think this game has a lot of potential for people to make their own stories in the world. I think coming at it from the standard single player perspective of "give me something to do" made me a bit bored of it. I'm waiting for a friend to get it, I hope they patch in some good co op mechanics for missions.

The emphasis in Elite games has always been in making your own story, and I don't play it unless I have a goal in mind... Right now I'm bumbling around the middle of nowhere trying our differen high supply/demand trade routes and nowhere near where the story stuff is happening.

There is plenty of more content to come... We have only 15 out of 30 promised ships so far, and the ability to form player wings is expected early this year. They also have planetary landings and movement around ships/stations planned in the longer term, and whole bunch of content that you can see in the design discussion archive of the official forum.

Having spent much of the last year testing elite through its alpha, beta and gamma stages, I'm trying out different games, but still am playing elite for a few hours per week

The issue kinda is that this is a remake of the 1984 Elite despite Elite 2 and 3 expanding on the concepts a lot in the early 90's. Elite II: Frontier was pretty much everything No Man's Sky is marketed as, and Elite: Dangerous is a fairly big step back from that.

@fisk0: They want to take the time to do planetary landing stuff properly, which is why it is coming later. The alternative was to do a rush job, and fix it later; FD thought that this was a bad approach.

The landings planets in Elite II were very bare-bones, and would not sit at all well with the rest of the Elite Dangerous experience

Doesn't the game already come across as kinda rushed? The way people are starting to hit the content barrier already could potentially give people an early negative impression that could be hard to repair even if the issues are fixed later on. It would probably have been better off if they had held off release for a few more months and getting that stuff done before exiting the beta phase.

For a game that's supposed to be a multiplayer experience (after they removed the offline mode at least), the social features could've used a massive overhaul before launch too.

I've bought a Cobra again and am going to start freelancing rather than the increasingly boring grind of trading in the Type 6. I'm kinda conflicted about Dangerous right now - I've put 200-odd hours in and enjoyed most of them a heck of a lot but I've hit the content wall hard. Bounty hunting is fun against human players but they're still few and far between.

@fisk0: yes I totally agree that they could have done with a few more months... I get the impression that the early release was strongly motivated by the investors. However they have chosen to do a subset of the planned features well, rather than cram as much stuff in as possible, broken as it is.

@Dave_Tacticus: I feel the type 6 pain, and I've only been at it a few hours. I was trying out high profit trading and got greedy, swapping my lovely jack of all trades cobra (combat, exploration, mining and 32 tons of cargo) for a cargo bus to make the most money. People who go for the most money tend to get burned out. As long as you remember to spend some time and credits just playing around without worrying about making profit (messing around can be expensive) then you should be fine.

I think the best chance of pvp is in those systems highlighted by GALNET as conflict zones.

Well, finally got my cheap HOTAS, and it is awesome! Takes some time getting used to though. That said, I will play this a lot more now.
Two questions though: I got the Eagle for pre-ordering the game, which I only remembered the other day. I think it is quite a lot of systems away from me. Do I have to go there physically to switch ships?
And two, anyone got a good trade route to share?

I like to try a few things in the beginning of these games, so I have tried a bit of exploring, fighting and mining. Mining seems to take a lot of time, effort and a different ship than the Sidewinder (or at least more money for a better refinery). Think I spent half an hour mining with a few hundred creds as reward.

@jaqen_hghar: Yes, you have to physically travel to where the ship is to retrieve it. I hope they add some way to move all of your ships to one station sooner rather than later.

Bounty hunting is the way to go if you enjoy combat. Look for resource extraction sites near stations that offer repair/rearm services. Once at the site choose your targets carefully. Compare their rank and ship to your own, and don't bite off more than you can chew. Follow the police around and attack their targets. Doing that allows you to go after juicier targets than you could alone, just be careful with your shots. And before you attack anyone check out their info in the Contacts panel, particularly their faction. You may not want to attack someone from a faction you want to be friendly with, even if they're wanted.