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Has anyone noticed any different comms chatter in the top left? On a stream last night there was something from a funeral barge like "too young, too soon" and I just saw a comment from a wedding barge "I've not written my vows yet, what can I say?". Developers having some fun??
And it looks like Chakpa is in lockdown. How ironic. Even in fantasy world I can't escape it 🙂
I didn't notice that. However the space station voices seem to have become text, not sure how that happened.
I'm on a quest for engineering now. My reactive composite armour is at g3 thermal resistance, but I need access to someone for shields. Preferably without going to Colonia but maybe I'll have to. I'd need to make a note of the mats I'd need as I'm not going back again. Is there anything you can't do when you're there?
Need some more cash too, down to my last half a bil.
In other news, I played Farpoint in VR. Visually amazing, and the shooting is absolutely ace and waaay better than normal shooting. Also, I feel sick.
I’m on a quest for engineering now. My reactive composite armour is at g3 thermal resistance, but I need access to someone for shields. Preferably without going to Colonia but maybe I’ll have to.
Have you unlocked the Dweller? He then gives you access to Lei Chung, who gives you the G5 shields.
Unlocking the Dweller isn't too bad (sell to 5 black markets). Unlocking Lei is grindy AF unless you have done a lot of trading in the game. His unlock is having sold at 50 markets
Not done any black market activity yet. I fancy trading though so I might try that out for a while - make some cash and unlock Lei on his own. I like to stay on the right side of the law 🙂 I've probably got 15 markets in the bag already since I used to stack trading with delivery missions for extra cash.
I might be able to make some good money from the delivery of nanomeds from Kuma, as per the recent news.
Trading is a welcome change of pace I find. Chuck in a couple of cabins and you can stack short hop passenger missions as well. I role play 'the harassed freighter pilot who isn't going out of his way for those lousy passengers, who want champagne service for beer money'.
The nanomeds appear to be acting like any other rare, so not a cash cow by any means, but a welcome addition (along with Galnet).
Apparently sub-surface mining could be the new thing (after being the poor relation for so long) and the new triple has been found.
Personally I am staying in my home system for a while, nice and peaceful while the FC frenzy dies down a bit.
If anyone wants to do the Guardian Module site in Synuefe I would be happy to help. I have done it, but would enjoy going again to help out. There is a good 'Raws' site in the same system and more Guardian data is no bad thing.
Matt
I might do that next time I am in the mood for online.
I also downloaded GTAV for £12. I played it through on PS3, so on the PS4 Pro it should look great. I might play it through again since it was so long ago.
Just give me a shout if you're up for it. The FSD booster is around +10.5Ly.
The last GTA I played was Vice City, though I bought IV but never played it. I have however spent a great deal of time killing zombies(ish) in Days Gone.
Matt
IV was gritty and profound, I really enjoyed it. But V is back to the glorious black humour and the richness of the world is outstanding, there's so much of it. Absolutely 100% recommended. Plus there's online multiplayer mayhem too.
Red Dead Redemption II is on Xbox Game Pass, I have it downloaded but I've not played it yet
I bought RDR2 when I got PS4. But it suffers from the same issues that RDR1 did which is that galloping around the badlands on a horse is nowhere near as much fun as tearing around a seedy American city in a stolen car.
In other Grips' household gaming news, the kids' Nintendo Switch just arrived. We made them save up their pocket money and told them we'd double their money. They are still in about £50 of debt but we had to buy the switch when it was available.
Can you unlock secondary engineers without the primaries? Black Market trading is actually pretty easy, there's good money/rep in smuggling and illegal black box missions.
It looks like you need to do both. You have to discover Cheung via The Dweller, and then trade 50 markets to get him to actually talk to you.
Black Market trading is actually pretty easy,
Go to a station with a Black market, accept a delivery mission from another faction at the station, collect the goods, abandon the delivery mission which marks the goods in your cargo hold as stolen, sell them on the Black market in the same station, pay the fine for stealing the goods.
All without ever leaving the hangar.
Is it as easy as this or is actual smuggling required?
Genius.
@perchypanther as molgrips said, pure genius.
@molgrips - yes, the silent space station "traffic controller" is a bug (as I understood from some streams earlier in the week at least). I've also noticed the mission alerts about delivery bonuses or threats don't appear in the Comms panel but you hear the message alert.
I took someone's advice early on and I've been scanning & trading my way around as I go so hopefully certain things will be easier to unlock later. I've been trading on top of mission runs, been using Inara & EDDB, feels like cheating a bit. I traded tritium for the 1st time, about 13Kcr profit per ton.
There seems to be NPC Fleet Carriers too. I docked on one in solo last night. Couldn't do much on it though - no marketplace, couldn't buy fuel. It would be good to see if it had an itinerary and if I could hitch a lift somewhere.
Oh, and I got my Sol permit last night. Saving the tour for tonight. Any suggestions for sightseeing in Sol?
Genius.
Only if it works.
Thinking more about it, i'm guessing the fine will be more than the Black Market sell price otherwise you could just sit in your ship and print money all day.
However, you could do it loads of times in a station, don't pay the fines and then just leg it. 😉
Oh, and I got my Sol permit last night. Saving the tour for tonight. Any suggestions for sightseeing in Sol?
They've got Hutton Orbital Mugs at Persephone
You only need to do it in five stations to unlock the engineer, any other black market trading is purely for fun.
The thing that would screw you up is the loss of reputation. Eventually, not sure how soon, but you would stop being offered the missions.
13KCr per ton is tidy, only one way though?
Matt
Eventually, not sure how soon, but you would stop being offered the missions.
That's when you leg it to a new station with a new set of factions and do it again.
I'm guessing the bounty would catch up with you eventually.
@matt_bl - yeah, one way, 17.6LY. Bought in HIP 67086/Volnyov Base, sold at Toluku/Mistress Lilith Memorial (which was awesome to fly into, a station positioned just above the rings of a gas giant).
@richmtb - well, I'm certainly not flying to Hutton Orbital to buy them!!! 😉
@son-of-mike I have worked out a 12KCr/t total there and back route near one of my home bases, so it's definitely good trading money.
Matt
13k per ton, I can ship 350t in my Anaconda I think, so 4.5m on a trip that'd take what, 15 minutes inc pirates? let's say 20m/hour. Not as lucrative as LTD mining but still decent.
I'm currently grinding for Federation rank (Lt Cmdr currently) between two systems (Canopus and Exphiay) and , because I'm allied with all the factions in both systems I can fill my Anaconda with missions goods and easliy make 10-12 million one way and 5-6 million the other. There are also a reliable stream of courier missions on top of that that probably add another million or two per trip but i'm doing them for the rep+++. I reckon an easy 30 million per hour just to consistently play the interdiction game.
Hmm, dunno if that would work, I seem to remember earning a few big fines when I dumped a mission, certainly more than the cargo was worth. You would also show up on any warrant scans if you legged it without paying.
Stolen goods are easy enough to come by, any illegal mission will net you bits and pieces before you scoop a black box or after murdering a civ. Alternatively you can buy legit goods like personal weapons or booze and sell them where they are outlawed.
So for smuggling you either need silent running to float into the station; or fly over 200m/s?
Fly in at 200m/s, it is the security circling which scan you I think. I've never been scanned at that speed. Then straight into the hanger when you land.
Matt
Just pop a heat sink as you are scanned, it negates the scan.
Or get good rep with the controlling faction, then you are almost never scanned. Once you are "Friendly" with the faction you can smuggle what you like!
200m/s through the mail slot is fine until you get given a landing slot right by the entrance!
Oh, and I got my Sol permit last night. Saving the tour for tonight. Any suggestions for sightseeing in Sol?
I haven’t done it yet, but you could track down voyager. I believe it shows up as “ancient probe” on the FSS.
Heads up, fellas!
Smith Port in Khowatsu system is buying Tritium at 85,561 Cr per ton.
Parked right next door (literally) is a fleet carrier selling Tritium at less than 60k Cr.
I leave you to do the maths for yourself! 🙂
@trampus - screw Sol, I'm off to Khowatsu now!! 🙂
@tenfoot - that's on my list! I might try scanning them up close to see if I can hear the golden disc. It would be great is FDev updated the game with all the probes and missions from real life. Or if they put in discoveries like 'Oumuamua.
@ son-of-mike Maybe hang on a bit.
I was just super cruising up to the FC (which was called 'Sells Tritium @ 60k', btw.) when it disappeared off screen. Whether this is just a glitch or if it has jumped system I do not know.
I will look further after my tea! 🙂
How many FCs have Culture ship names? I'd expect at least a few.
Update on the smuggling plan:
It doesn't work. You need to jump systems before the Black Market recognises your stolen goods. I also appears that you can't then go back to the original station and sell them either. They must recognise that they were stolen from there to stop smart-arse chancers such as myself.
You'd expect the black marketeers to be aware of wise-guys yes.
I've got work to do tonight so my wife has offered to try some exploring for me. She hasn't played before and is notoriously bad at things like flying and driving games. We're on our way to Colonia...
We haven't flown into a sun yet so seems to be going ok... 😉
I'm running missions around the place. I haven't seen an FC in real life yet. Judging by some of the images on the net they're like confetti in some systems!
Matt
There were a few in EZ Aquarii. I docked at one just to see what it was like.
Well, a long range weather forecast for you - don't book a holiday in southern Italy for 11-Jun-3306 - it looks like a nasty storm. Northern Spain is good, so Basque MTB would be a good shout. Judging by the light pollution it looks like London has gone and the metropolis is now greater Inverness and Aviemore (Avieness? Invermore?), although there were some bright lights on the Welsh border, maybe Wrexham. The Great Glen looks a bit wider/wetter - global warming perhaps? But Norfolk is still there.
And Mars has terraformed nicely. But Voyager is +2.3 million Ls out - I am not bovvered.
My overnight park on a FC ended up 400ly away. I spent a few hours exploring then parked back up. Couldn't see any way to communicate with the owner, may well have been on a different platform. Anyway logged in today to find myself dumped, and floating in space 😂, now trying to decide whether to carry on outwards or head home.
@trampus - bought tritium for 4034/t at No Mina/Avicenna Port, sold it 3 jumps away at Lansbury/Landis Settlement for 86,250/t (profit 82,216/t). Resulted in 7.89Mcr for me in the AspX.
Spotted a couple of carriers in Deciat and Djiwal. Never seen as many commanders in one place, they're everywhere!
Need a manifest scanner and mass inhibitor methinks. Or I may just start interdicting for shits and giggles.
Bought an AspX tonight but need to go find some bits before it's mission ready.
Are the fleet carriers armed?
Got a shit-ton of hardpoints, I think? Like - 20 huge?
Comparable to stations in their lethality; and indestructible I think.
Indeed, cannot be harmed. I'm sure that I saw a video where if you get low enough onto the decks the the guns could not depress low enough and fired over your head. How you then get out is probably the trick. Very fast ship maybe?
I've decided I want an Imperial Clipper, time to go undercover!
Matt
@V8ninety I had a deja vu moment yesterday, when an Elite wing mining mission prompted 9 deadly condas to come after me one by one. A wingman would have be so handy!
I laughed at them as I dodged the interdiction in my mining python (now with added sub-surface missiles) then took it to them in my fighters. Fortunately the law was on hand and I only had to take out two on my own, one in the Chieftain and one in the Vulture (one of them even ran away 1-on-1 against the Vulture!). I may have made more in bounties than it cost in hull repairs after each fight but only just.
Matt
Many thanks, Son-of-Mke, for the tip about No Mina to Lansbury. At 224T per trip that works out at a nice 19.3m Cr. Each round trip takes about 20mins so a conservative 50m Cr per hour.
The irony is that No Mina is only 2 jumps from my doorstep! 🙂
Alas my FC goldmine disappearing was not a glitch. It is worth looking out for though. I know that FC's set a % of transactions as an earner. Maybe that setup worked for them and will become common place. Early days and lots of angles yet to be discovered.
The word is that sub-surface mining, which was previously garbage,has been radically buffed and people are getting crazy amounts of LTD's from each rock.
@perchypanther - yup, heard the same on D2EA's channel
Need a manifest scanner and mass inhibitor methinks. Or I may just start interdicting for shits and giggles.
hahaha - interdicting a fleet carrier? Proper LOLz. Genius idea. Yeah, follow that escape vector in your 5Bcr space shed that can't steer.
@molgrips - yeah, V8ninety is right, indestructible and shooting at them puts you in space prison. I learned today (via YT) that carriers are persistent across play modes so I hope that means they exist in solo to trade tritium with. The Yamiks was estimating 240mil/hour tritium trading using his Clipper. Off to buy a Python tonight for that exact purpose.
@trampus, maybe it's cheating to some but you can use the Commodity finder in Inara to find the best buy & sell prices, the lists can be sorted by distance, price etc.
https://inara.cz/galaxy-commodity/
What I've heard as well Perchy. I'm out this evening doing some Void Opals, sub-surface style, as they have the more consistent price at the minute. Around 1.4M. I'll let you all know how I go on!
D2EA has a video of a live stream he ran last night. Interesting stuff.
There is talk of 300t per hour and 50t for some single rocks. D2EA was definitely getting up to 11 chunks from single sources (rocks can have multiple sources and a chunk is at least 0.6t), which is about half a core asteroid.
Could be interesting, as it may remove the need for mining goldrushes. It will be possible to mine effectively in any single hotspot, in the same way that core mining works.
Matt
I learned today (via YT) that carriers are persistent across play modes so I hope that means they exist in solo to trade tritium with.
I can confirm they do
My wife is currently half way to Colonia in my Asp Explorer so I'm out for a while!
Well the triple hotspot is still required! I mined at a single LTD hotspot near where my home base is. I found zero LTD sub-surface deposits, about 5-6 rocks with less than 10% surface content and fortunately 5-6 cores.
I found some tritium sub-surface deposits, but they weren't fantastically common. The mechanism for sub-surface mining is fun and you can get a good few chunks per roid, but it seems pretty likely that the triple overlap affects the number of sub-surface deposits found and the number of chunks it spits out.
Matt
200 jumps in. Committed now.
hahaha – interdicting a fleet carrier? Proper LOLz. Genius idea. Yeah, follow that escape vector in your 5Bcr space shed that can’t steer.
Lol, I menat trolling regular CMDR ships but that would be proper funny if there was a glitch that meant my Cobra could stop a carrier engaging FSD.
Yay, just kitted out a core miner. Timing. (I imagine most kit is interchangable anyway)
@V8ninety I had a deja vu moment yesterday, when an Elite wing mining mission prompted 9 deadly condas to come after me one by one. A wingman would have be so handy!
@Matt_bl Good times 👍🏼 I’m sure the stars will align and we’ll do it again soon 😎
@Molgrips Whaaaat? Half way to Colonia?!? Worst part of that is when you get there, you’ve still got to get back! Although maybe you can hitch a lift on a carrier...
The plan is to hang out for a while and maybe do some missions etc and use it as a base for more exploration. Might invest in bringing my other ships out there.
If you hitch a lift on a carrier do they expect anything in return? Are you at risk of a scam or piracy or what?
Can the carriers be used for nefarious purposes?
If you hitch a lift on a carrier do they expect anything in return?
Dunno; I guess that’s between you and the carrier owner. As for nefarious purpose, again, dunno, but probably.
What range and cargo capacity is your Anaconda at Mol?
There's someone on Reddit offering rides to Jacques station and back, they'll even stop off on the way to pick you up.
Can the carriers be used for nefarious purposes?
Of course they can. Griefers gonna grief.
The most obvious way would be to jump across a gap that smaller ships can’t cross and dump passengers there with no way to get back.
I painted my ship yellow yesterday and renamed it the Bananaconda.
What range and cargo capacity is your Anaconda at Mol?
Er about 45 I think? It's fully loaded atm. I'm exploring in the Asp Explorer now which is at max 52 but 48.something with the current loadout.
Did some calcualtions for fast travel. I've been looking at two methods.
1) The obvious one - skirt around the star in the fuel scoop zone and if you have a big enough scoop (6A in the Asp Explorer which can bring in 750/s) you can brim your tank and just keep going. But you have to keep an eye on the heat, and you can't start charging until you've finished scooping and got around the star. This method for me can be done in about 55s per jump.
2) As soon as you jump in, hit full throttle and turn 90 degrees away from the star. As soon as your FSD has cooled down charge it up again. Then when it's nearly charged start pointing towards your next jump destination. The jump can be done in about 45s so you'll drain your tank. Then when empty you will have to go and scoop a full tank.
So does the time saved per jump in option two compensate for having to actually stop and scoop a whole tank? For me, yes. I did 8 jumps on a whole tank in about 6 mins and scooping took a minute ish, I forget. But it averaged out about 50s per jump on the whole. So saved 5 seconds. Not a lot, but over 600 jumps this could save half an hour over the Colonia run.
Of course these numbers are minimum times - you have to be on the ball and not make any misalignments or premature button presses resulting in overheating etc.
After about jump 300 you start to make mistakes, fit a heat sink or two.
Nearly at Colonia - might get there this weekend and then I'm going to sprint to SagA just honking.
On the subject of mistakes, managed to make a bit of a heavy planet landing 2k+ly from the bubble (distracted on final approach, not even high G). Did quite a lot of hull damage but I didn't want to abort and head back so used EDDB to find the nearest station. Turned out to be a fleet carrier a few hundred ly away. I was allowed to dock and repair everything, but I don't see how to communicate with the ship's owner. If they're on a different platform I guess you can't. Anyway now fixed and back on my way to nowhere in particular 🙂
I haven't fitted heat sinks, and I'm not landing on planets on they way out there. Once I get there I'll fit out for some better exploring.
I switched off all unnecessary power drains Inc shields, that reduces the heat and gives you more margin of error
So I picked this up on steam sale yesterday - how playable is it on a keyboard and mouse? Would I be better off with a joystick or game pad with analogue inputs
I play PS4 so no idea, but from the comments i have seen on reddit, PC players use a mixture of keyboard and mouse, gamepad and HOTAS. Each seems to have their advocates, so i'm guessing it's personal preference.
Give us a shout if you have any questions. In the early days there seems to be hundreds of interesting ways to kill yourself.
Matt
there seems to be hundreds of interesting ways to kill yourself.
SimSheep?
SimLemming
I've just looked in the Codex (RH Panel) and I have died 26 times so far at a cost of 52M credits, with a further 4M in repairs!
My best (if you're that way inclined) was when I inadvertently turned on silent running and overheated into a ball of flame!
Good luck and o7 cmdr
Matt
Mol, will you join Inara so I can have a nosey at you ships please? Perchy, you too? 🙏🏼👍🏼
Ok.
I've died I think three or four times and two of those I was ganked.
Cheers!
I’ve never been killed by another human player. It’s always been my own overconfidence or incompetence that’s done for me 🙄
So I picked this up on steam sale yesterday – how playable is it on a keyboard and mouse? Would I be better off with a joystick or game pad with analogue inputs
As I said on the last page, keyboard and mouse is fine. No way would I even consider a gamepad but HOTAS is next level.
I can't get my profile to sync from Frontier to Inara - something wring with their OIDC config it seems.
I’ve never been killed by another human player.
If you want I can fix that >:)
I have rarely met any other human CMDRs - only the ganker who killed me twice, and then I found some other CMDR in a Keelback on a planet where Thargoid artefacts were reported. It was cool to watch him driving about collecting stuff for a while - then he vanished 🙂
Out of those 26 times, I've never been killed by a human cmdr, though I have had maybe 3 hostile interdictions. I play in open all the time.
Seriously, now there are fleet carriers you cannot move for humans. Best LTD sell price 20+, each Gaurdian site 2, etc, etc.
My biggest killer is overconfidence!
Matt
Inara profile has synced. Have a nose.
Serf!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah not sure how that happened...
Think I've only died 3x, ran out of fuel and... Oh, quite a few times in the mission we did as a wing. Single figures I think.
On the INRA thing but don't know how to link.
#1600