OS Neutral Elite Dangerous Tips

[quagmire]

For instance: in ED, if you take damage you can fly to any station and repair it, cost about 19 credits for 1% damage in my Sidewinder (basic ship). In X3 Reunion, damage can cause components to fail, like the jump drive. Your speed will be affected (halved or more) meaning you can't run. Only a handful of stations in the galaxy ("shipyards") do repairs. And when you get there: the repair cost is the replacement cost. To repair 1% damage, it costs 1% of the purchase cost. Considering you start off with a 400K credit ship, and 5K credits in cash, that's a major problem. Took me several days of gameplay before I could repair a badly damaged ship from one of the stroryline missions. ED is a cakewalk by comparison - though I have to admit, I really grew to like the difficulty of Reunion. It's a bit refreshing

I've only briefly played the others, Terran Conflict, Albion Prelude and the latest, Rebirth. I still think ED could appropriate some ideas from that series though. I am finding the ED gameplay a little bit empty.

Components getting damage can cause them to fail. I have had my thrusters malfunction, etc and eventually fail( leading me to self-destruct) after enough damage.

And not all stations can repair your ship as well. The major stations can, but not all the outpost stations. At most the outpost stations that can't repair your ship can only replenish your oxygen.

 

[Huntn]

Ackerman Station- Everate System in orbit around Earth-like planet. One of those stations with an inside. Entrance on other end of Station.

 

[whooleytoo]

Got the TrackIR (with Pro clip), and mixed feelings about it so far.

"Out of the box", it's not 100% natural or anything like it. I downloaded a recommended (player generated) profile which sets acceleration curves suitable for Elite - such as tweaking the camera yawing around the side screens & lots of positive camera pitch but little negative pitch.

Even still it's not ideal. There's a 'dead spot' in the middle which stops things being too shaky, but it adds a lag when turning which is annoying and unnatural, I've been able to tweak that out easily enough. I'm still getting the side-screens perfect - so I just turn my head rather than "move my head to the point TrackIR needs it to be at for the screens to activate". Get it wrong, and it's like watching a movie with a very shaky webcam. Plus the device itself is very cheap and flimsy, I nudged the cable which moved the LED clip a bit, meaning I had to stop and recalibrate (or else role-play a Galactic trader / fighter with a 45 degree neck!)

Now the plus: it gives you a big advantage in combat. You can easily target enemies off-axis (even those not showing up as Contacts, Silent Mode?) by just turning your head to select, then pressing Target. If you lose sight of someone, you can re-acquire them much faster by looking up/left/right rather than simply relying on the scanner; plus you can see what they're doing rather than just the vague bearing that you get from the scanner. Plus, it's great being able to select the side-screens just by turning your head.

Had a great fight last night, up against a Sidewinder that seemed to be turning FA off a lot and we ended up side-by-side, him trying to weave in behind me and me playing with the throttle and FA trying to get in behind him, all the time looking right at him and what he was doing. Without the TrackIR, I'd just have been going in circles around him wondering where he went. Funnily enough, it's actually in combat that it feels most natural and you forget about it, when you're looking about in the cockpit and trying to keep the focus on a screen that it starts feeling awkward.

 

[Huntn]

Got the TrackIR (with Pro clip), and mixed feelings about it so far.

"Out of the box", it's not 100% natural or anything like it. I downloaded a recommended (player generated) profile which sets acceleration curves suitable for Elite - such as tweaking the camera yawing around the side screens & lots of positive camera pitch but little negative pitch.

Even still it's not ideal. There's a 'dead spot' in the middle which stops things being too shaky, but it adds a lag when turning which is annoying and unnatural, I've been able to tweak that out easily enough. I'm still getting the side-screens perfect - so I just turn my head rather than "move my head to the point TrackIR needs it to be at for the screens to activate". Get it wrong, and it's like watching a movie with a very shaky webcam. Plus the device itself is very cheap and flimsy, I nudged the cable which moved the LED clip a bit, meaning I had to stop and recalibrate (or else role-play a Galactic trader / fighter with a 45 degree neck!)

Now the plus: it gives you a big advantage in combat. You can easily target enemies off-axis (even those not showing up as Contacts, Silent Mode?) by just turning your head to select, then pressing Target. If you lose sight of someone, you can re-acquire them much faster by looking up/left/right rather than simply relying on the scanner; plus you can see what they're doing rather than just the vague bearing that you get from the scanner. Plus, it's great being able to select the side-screens just by turning your head.

Had a great fight last night, up against a Sidewinder that seemed to be turning FA off a lot and we ended up side-by-side, him trying to weave in behind me and me playing with the throttle and FA trying to get in behind him, all the time looking right at him and what he was doing. Without the TrackIR, I'd just have been going in circles around him wondering where he went. Funnily enough, it's actually in combat that it feels most natural and you forget about it, when you're looking about in the cockpit and trying to keep the focus on a screen that it starts feeling awkward.

Interesting! Seeing what the enemy is doing, which way turning, etc, is usually a very big advantage in a dog fight, even in space.

 

[whooleytoo]

New Nvidia drivers were detected last night, wasn't sure if I should use them or stay with the Apple-provided drivers, but I gave them a go. They also included GeForce Experience, which "optimises" your game settings. For me, it came up with very different setup for Elite than I'd selected. I had 1280v720, AA on, ambient occlusion on. Framerate was fine, bar hyperspace jump and around planets, stations were very pixellated, and all menus etc. were a little bit blurry.

With the Nvidia settings (and the new drivers), I'm on 1920x1080, AA and "AO" are off, it's still jumpy in hyperspace and around the planets, but it looks dramatically sharper. I think the framerate in general play (which was great) is now a bit lower, so I might tweak it again.

 

[garnerx]

New Nvidia drivers were detected last night, wasn't sure if I should use them or stay with the Apple-provided drivers, but I gave them a go. They also included GeForce Experience, which "optimises" your game settings. For me, it came up with very different setup for Elite than I'd selected. I had 1280v720, AA on, ambient occlusion on. Framerate was fine, bar hyperspace jump and around planets, stations were very pixellated, and all menus etc. were a little bit blurry.

With the Nvidia settings (and the new drivers), I'm on 1920x1080, AA and "AO" are off, it's still jumpy in hyperspace and around the planets, but it looks dramatically sharper. I think the framerate in general play (which was great) is now a bit lower, so I might tweak it again.

What kind of computer are you using? Elite doesn't seem to demand all that much from the hardware. You can use Ctrl-F to check your framerate in the game. It has always been jumpy in supercruise regardless of settings.

That Geforce Experience app has been pretty useless in my experience. It seems to just max out all the game settings, regardless of the effect on framerate.

 

[whooleytoo]

What kind of computer are you using? Elite doesn't seem to demand all that much from the hardware. You can use Ctrl-F to check your framerate in the game. It has always been jumpy in supercruise regardless of settings.

That Geforce Experience app has been pretty useless in my experience. It seems to just max out all the game settings, regardless of the effect on framerate.

Just an 2013 iMac, with a 1GB 750M, so fairly low/mid end I'd say. After playing at these settings for a day I think it's ok; the stutters are happening in the same places (jumping into hyperdrive, near planets, superdrive approaching stars/planets, interdictions around any planet/star) but generally I'm getting much sharper graphics with little frame-rate effects. For me, the Experience app downgraded anti-aliasing and ambient occlusion, so it wasn't just "bumping everything up".

On another note, I took on my first Anaconda last night, didn't end well. I lost about 50K in unclaimed bounties and maybe another 30K in unsold exploration data (didn't realise that was lost when you die). It all was going well, the security ships were taking it on and I was just joining in taking sneaky pot-shots at it, when it suddenly turned its attention on me and I was dead within 5 seconds.

I can do fine against most of the lower ships, but Imperial Dropships (though I did kill one as part of the Naval Progression) and Anacondas, no way. Do those both have turrets? Because it seemed that regardless of what angle I'm approaching them they're always firing at me. I'm grinding them down fine, but as they're constantly hitting me from any angle my shields are constantly going down, and once down my hull is destroyed very quickly. I obviously need to upgrade the hull/armour, but can't afford the weight penalty - can't yet afford a better FSD to counter it.

 

[garnerx]

I remember spending a while getting Crysis 3 to run with the maximum possible effects my computer could handle while still maintaining 60 fps. Then the Geforce Experience app said the game was not optimised, so I thought I'd let it do its thing but it just whacked everything up to maximum, which killed the framerate. I haven't bothered with it since.

I think those big ships like Anacondas often have turrets, but you can put a turret on anything. You can see exactly what kind of heat they're packing by targeting the ship and looking in the left panel. It gives you a list of components (which you can target individually, if you like).

 

[whooleytoo]

Yeah, I'm a bit obsessive about tweaking, to be honest. Give me a game with an average framerate and no options, and I'll be happy. Give me a screenful of options to play with and I'll never be able to leave them alone. "Did that change give me 0.5 extra fps? Was that a stutter, should I roll-back that last change?" Anyhow, I'm very happy now with how Elite looks. Bar the emptiness.

I was kind of wondering about the subsystem targeting. Since I'm not having much luck against the harder ships, should I keep upgrading until I do, or can I "fight more clever"? Would targeting (say) the turret and taking that out earlier make the fight a lot easier?

I have noticed if I divert power to weapons, the target reticule on the enemy ship seems to move, as if the component being targetted changes based on the weapons power level. (Either that, or the "change subsystem target" control is mapped the same control as "divert power to weapons", but I don't think that's possible.)

 

[garnerx]

I don't really know how you're supposed to fight 'clever' in this game. There's no place to hide - if you're in range of a more powerful ship, it will hit you.

My plan was to get the biggest possible shield and the best weapons, but now I've done that on my main ship it's too valuable to take into combat. I could go after an Anaconda for the sake of a 15k bounty, but if I mess it up and get killed then it's 1.1 million to replace the ship.

I haven't managed it myself, but perhaps taking out the turrets would make an Anaconda a bit easier. I know you can get countermeasures to jam missiles and stop turrets targeting you, but they cost weight and space.

 

[quagmire]

Yeah, I'm a bit obsessive about tweaking, to be honest. Give me a game with an average framerate and no options, and I'll be happy. Give me a screenful of options to play with and I'll never be able to leave them alone. "Did that change give me 0.5 extra fps? Was that a stutter, should I roll-back that last change?" Anyhow, I'm very happy now with how Elite looks. Bar the emptiness.

I was kind of wondering about the subsystem targeting. Since I'm not having much luck against the harder ships, should I keep upgrading until I do, or can I "fight more clever"? Would targeting (say) the turret and taking that out earlier make the fight a lot easier?

I have noticed if I divert power to weapons, the target reticule on the enemy ship seems to move, as if the component being targetted changes based on the weapons power level. (Either that, or the "change subsystem target" control is mapped the same control as "divert power to weapons", but I don't think that's possible.)

What ship are you in? Don't try to go against an Anaconda by yourself until you're in a Viper that is suitably upgraded. It's suicide in a Sidewinder. Now if you encounter a dirty Anaconda in a RES, let other people pummel it without engaging( this will keep it from attacking you) then join in fairly late.

My strategy in dealing with an Anaconda on my own is to face it head on, but in reverse keeping it 3-3.5 Km away while doing barrel rolls, etc. This will minimize the hits on me keeping my shields up while taking his shields down. Then when the shields are down, I move in close and stay behind him as best as possible( this will limit the weapons he is able to hit you with) and target his powerplant( you would do this before engaging the Anaconda). The power plant will be destroyed before the hull hits 0% and he will go boom as soon as the power plant hits 0%.

 

[Huntn]

What ship are you in? Don't try to go against an Anaconda by yourself until you're in a Viper that is suitably upgraded. It's suicide in a Sidewinder. Now if you encounter a dirty Anaconda in a RES, let other people pummel it without engaging( this will keep it from attacking you) then join in fairly late.

My strategy in dealing with an Anaconda on my own is to face it head on, but in reverse keeping it 3-3.5 Km away while doing barrel rolls, etc. This will minimize the hits on me keeping my shields up while taking his shields down. Then when the shields are down, I move in close and stay behind him as best as possible( this will limit the weapons he is able to hit you with) and target his powerplant( you would do this before engaging the Anaconda). The power plant will be destroyed before the hull hits 0% and he will go boom as soon as the power plant hits 0%.

For that type of fight, I rely on the Federation Authority ships (or whoever they are) to carry the brunt to of the fight.

An interesting point about targeting parts of the ship, I see little opportunity to shoot a specific part of a ship, maybe with fixed weapons, but especially not with gimballed weapons, unless there is game mechanism I am unaware of.

 

[quagmire]

For that type of fight, I rely on the Federation Authority ships (or whoever they are) to carry the brunt to of the fight.

An interesting point about targeting parts of the ship, I see little opportunity to shoot a specific part of a ship, maybe with fixed weapons, but especially not with gimballed weapons, unless there is game mechanism I am unaware of.

Go into the left panel and select sub-systems( or sub-targets or whatever it is right next to contacts) and scroll down until you see power plant and select it. Your weapons will automatically adjust their aim( for gimbaled ones) for it.

 

[Huntn]

Go into the left panel and select sub-systems( or sub-targets or whatever it is right next to contacts) and scroll down until you see power plant and select it. Your weapons will automatically adjust their aim( for gimbaled ones) for it.

Thank you. I did not I put much thought into what that page was for. :-/

Edit: If you could program Voice Attack to target specific sub systems that would be outstanding!

 

[whooleytoo]

What ship are you in? Don't try to go against an Anaconda by yourself until you're in a Viper that is suitably upgraded. It's suicide in a Sidewinder. Now if you encounter a dirty Anaconda in a RES, let other people pummel it without engaging( this will keep it from attacking you) then join in fairly late.

My strategy in dealing with an Anaconda on my own is to face it head on, but in reverse keeping it 3-3.5 Km away while doing barrel rolls, etc. This will minimize the hits on me keeping my shields up while taking his shields down. Then when the shields are down, I move in close and stay behind him as best as possible( this will limit the weapons he is able to hit you with) and target his powerplant( you would do this before engaging the Anaconda). The power plant will be destroyed before the hull hits 0% and he will go boom as soon as the power plant hits 0%.

Interesting strategy, thanks.

Part of the problem might have been "next subsystem" was mapped to the same control as "divert power to weapons" (didn't realise that was possible), so I probably was pummelling away at some crafts' discovery scanners or fuel scoops and wondering why I wasn't getting anywhere!

Btw, has anyone started getting bounties on them for shooting Wanted craft? It happened 3 times last night, the first I thought I'd made a mistake, the second time I could see the Wanted status after I'd fired the first shot, the 3rd time I'm 100% certain it was Wanted before I shot. Does this happen from time to time, or is it a bug? I'm starting to get good returns from BH (up to 220K per visit to a RES) so it's annoying when I have to turn and run or get destroyed in the middle of that.

(On the plus side, I got a 600CR bounty for one shot, but a 11,000CR reward when he was eventually destroyed by the security services, so it worked out in the end! )

On the TrackIR: forget the negatives I mentioned before, I was using the generic profile rather than an Elite-specific one. With this, there's a 'deadzone' around the side-screens which makes them simple to stay focused on (with a tiny down-side, it's now more difficult to look back beyond 90 degrees, but I don't use that very often). After a week with head-tracking, it'd be very hard to go back to playing without, it really makes dogfighting a lot more fun.

Also I think I'm getting the hang of tight-turns with FA off. If you flick it off and then goto max throttle immediately (feels great with a HOTAS setup, pull back hard on the stick, ram the throttle fully forward!) the craft swaps ends incredibly quickly. You can really tell you've done a good job when you're flying back through your own exhaust/vapour trails!

 

[whooleytoo]

Are some RESs better than others? I just realised yesterday you can tell from the System map if there is a RES or not (it tells you what's being mined - or nothing). So now I'm wondering can you tell if higher bounty targets will appear in certain RESs? (i.e. more valuable mining -> more valuable targets for pirates -> more valuable bounties)

I was in one where every bounty was about 2K so things were going slowly, then tried another and every bounty was 10-20K and they were coming thick and fast, made 220K in no time. Is it just blind luck, or does it depend on what's being mined?

 

[Janichsan]

So, guys: now that the Wings update allows for some co-op gameplay, would anyone be interesting in adding each other to the in-game friend list for some cooperative bounty hunting?

(In advance: since I'm located in Europe, I would mostly be available between 3 and 6 pm EST (8 and 11 pm CET).)

 

[garnerx]

So, guys: now that the Wings update allows for some co-op gameplay, would anyone be interesting in adding each other to the in-game friend list for some cooperative bounty hunting?

(In advance: since I'm located in Europe, I would mostly be available between 3 and 6 pm EST (8 and 11 pm CET).)

I'd be up for that, although I have visitors this weekend who'll be using the spare room where the computer is at. I haven't played in over a week, just updated it last night and noticed they've added even more controls. I'm a bit rusty. If you want to add me, my in-game name is calistan.

 

[whooleytoo]

I'd love to give Wings a try, but a) I'm not very good, and b) I'm usually not home from work until 10GMT so too late

Has anyone else noticed the dogfighting is a bit more.. manic since the 1.2 update (or maybe that's partly just a coincidence). Dropped into a pitched fight between two wings yesterday, tried to take out one who was Wanted and ended up with 4 craft trying to kill me where normally even two are rare.

And in a RES, I had an Imperial Clipper and a Python attack me in quick succession, managed to take out both fairly easily (46K bounty on the Clipper, plus 22K for the Python, woohoo!) before some craft unknown took me out with a single shot, in spite of me having full shields and hull. Yikes. Raced back to the same RES and got another Clipper and an Anaconda - which jumped before I could take it down. Sooner or later, I'll get one of them.

Plus nearly everyone on my radar was friendly (green) but several were wanted, didn't know whether to attack or not.

I just read the news item too about the Farragut capital ship launching (from Hudson Dock) so I made the 120Ly journey to take a look. They also have discounted dropships (35M credits instead of 37M), but that's still way out of my league. It's cool having little in-game events like that to keep an eye out for.

One question though - is a Cobra worth the upgrade from a Viper? It seems there's a massive gap between the Cobra and the next decent ship up.

 

[whooleytoo]

It seems yesterday's patched has upped the bounties by quite a bit. In my last trip I made 370K, including 5 50K+ bounties. Still probably not as profitable as trading, but a lot more fun.

 

[Huntn]

So, guys: now that the Wings update allows for some co-op gameplay, would anyone be interesting in adding each other to the in-game friend list for some cooperative bounty hunting?

(In advance: since I'm located in Europe, I would mostly be available between 3 and 6 pm EST (8 and 11 pm CET).)

When cooping BH does anyone know if bounties are split in half or if they automatically add twice as many pirates? I would assume while solo and involved in fights with authority ships assisting, that I'm getting a full bounty, that the same principle might apply for doubles, each get the full bounty, while acknowledging that would not happen in real life. A single bounty for a single body... Bottom line, I'm wondering if by partnering if I cut my take in half?

Honestly mostly I do solo. But I'm wondering if ED has built in voice comms? I'm in a guild that has a Teamspeak server. The other part of the equation you'd have to be willing to travel possibly long distances to rendezvous. What they need is an instant warp feature for this activity.

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Are some RESs better than others? I just realised yesterday you can tell from the System map if there is a RES or not (it tells you what's being mined - or nothing). So now I'm wondering can you tell if higher bounty targets will appear in certain RESs? (i.e. more valuable mining -> more valuable targets for pirates -> more valuable bounties)

I was in one where every bounty was about 2K so things were going slowly, then tried another and every bounty was 10-20K and they were coming thick and fast, made 220K in no time. Is it just blind luck, or does it depend on what's being mined?

My impression which may not be accurate is that bounties/type wanted ships that appear vary based on the ship type you are in and if bounties are low in a RES you can super cruise out and then back in or if there are multiplee RESs in a single planet's rings, move to the next one To reset pirate generation and payouts.

 

[garnerx]

Bottom line, I'm wondering if by partnering if I cut my take in half?

Try it and find out!

I'm currently at Founders World, would travel to wherever other people want to meet - the whole of inhabited space seems to be about 10 minutes wide, it's not like anyone wold want to meet up at Sagittarius A or something.

 

[whooleytoo]

My impression which may not be accurate is that bounties/type wanted ships that appear vary based on the ship type you are in and if bounties are low in a RES you can super cruise out and then back in or if there are multiplee RESs in a single planet's rings, move to the next one To reset pirate generation and payouts.

It's less of an issue now, given they've boosted bounties so much in the last update. Someone on the Frontier forums said they've had bounties up to 150K, and I've had a 45K bounty from just a Cobra. So even an 'average' RES seems to be quite good now.

It's a good question about who gets the bounty though. Wingmen could get in the way, if anything, in a many v one dogfight (unless the "one" is an Anaconda) so having to split the bounty too would be a disincentive.

 

[fat jez]

It's less of an issue now, given they've boosted bounties so much in the last update. Someone on the Frontier forums said they've had bounties up to 150K, and I've had a 45K bounty from just a Cobra. So even an 'average' RES seems to be quite good now.

It's a good question about who gets the bounty though. Wingmen could get in the way, if anything, in a many v one dogfight (unless the "one" is an Anaconda) so having to split the bounty too would be a disincentive.

Might be why bounties have increased if they have to get split up to 4 ways?

 

[whooleytoo]

Might be why bounties have increased if they have to get split up to 4 ways?

I hope not - I believe I read they beefed up the bounties so people weren't forced to trade as the only realistic way of making enough money for the better ships - but you might be right. I want to dogfight AND play as a group AND keep all the money (AND have my cake AND eat it too).

For me, bounty hunting - particularly in a RES where you're weaving in and out of huge rocks - is the best bit of the game. Even in Solo mode, where you're just against AI players. I thought I was getting so much better, I was at zero-throttle sliding around a dropship and he couldn't turn fast enough to get a shot on me.. a few seconds later I came up against a Master level Eagle who was kicking my ass, I just couldn't turn fast enough to target him and he kept taking out my thrusters, just about escaped intact.

No room for cockiness in space! At least it's comforting to know that the AI can be very good, it's just that most NPC ships/pilots you meet aren't top-level.