I’ll be investing in thruster engineering for my Cobra and AspX. Especially the AspX. FSD drives and gunstuff too. DSS boost is a nice extra, it makes planetary surveys so much easier.

I may be calling for volunteers to fight in a war in the near future.

All hail the Emperor!

(or not)

I can’t work directly since PC but can still influence accordingly.

I’ll help out with a war – are we aligning the fleet?

Either way I currently suck at combat and I’m over a billion miles away but should be back within the week.

I have a combat thingy at decait I think.

I really need to understand the BGS more…how do you try to take control of a system?

Over a billion miles away? I’m 10^17 miles out!

What I do is pretty crude compared to the guys who control the efforts of large squadrons over 10s of systems but it works exactly the same.

If you get your faction to equal influence with the controlling faction then you go into either an election or a war with them. Whether you have a war or an election depends on the type of factions, if you are both corporate then it is an election. The winner of the election/war would then become the controlling faction, taking the most high profile asset (station or landing) from the loser.

At the minute I am on equal influence with one of the other factions (not controlling), but unfortunately they are at war elsewhere, so can’t get into a war/election with me. I am hoping to take their station to use as a base to then take on the controlling faction.

Having a station gives you more options for building your influence in the system, you can trade goods in to your own station for a profit and sell cartography data, on top of running missions.

Matt

How do you become a faction?

At the minute there are three ways, none of which makes a great deal of difference to the way things work.

You can apply to become a player faction (I think you need a number of players) if accepted I believe then Frontier set you up in an appropriate home system from which you can’t be kicked out.

You can adopt a non-player faction and work for them. This is what I did, systems with low traffic are easier to influence.

You can work for an existing player faction. Lots of groups/squadrons have players that do BGS, like Terra-Ex Astro Corp (D2EA’s player faction), and they will send you the orders of the day, to protect or further the factions interests. You can also find a player faction which has been abandoned and become them. Apparently when they first allowed player factions the application process took months and so some players lost interest.

Matt

I’m up for a bit of waaaaaaaaaagh! Got about three shooty builds in various stages of development now, I’d like to test them out wing stylee. I’ve got three evenings from tomorrow night if that works?

Over a billion miles away? I’m 10^17 miles out!

I’ve got a puckka Krait MkII with a fighter hangar that you can drop into if either of you can’t make it back and want a piece of the action 👍🏼

So, is there any typical pathway for engineering

You’re going to be doing a lot of travelling so yeah fsd first, which puts a strain on your power plant so that next, thrusters are nice too, thankfully farseer does all 3. Also lightweight sensors (even moar range) and detailed scanners (for exploration) and shield boosters can be useful. after that go for what suits your play style. But most of the engineering (except guns) is good for all play styles as you can lightweight and overcharge stuff to run smaller/lighter units and get more jump range for trade/exploration. Customising your ship to your exact requirements is fun for a gamer nerd like me, just beware the grind.
Do some mining for cash for parts/ships and you’ll unlock selene so you can Heavy duty your standard armour, again useful for anyone incase you faceplant a planet/station in your lightweight explorer/trader.

anyone running fleet carriers for making money? how?

Was wondering about buying one, doing a marathon mining session filling it up then running it over to the best selling station/system, how easy is it to offload your gear tho? Do you have to run it all down to the station in a normal ship?

Or would you sell them to player traders in same system for 10-20% under the sell price so they can make a small but quick profit?

Was wondering about buying one, doing a marathon mining session filling it up then running it over to the best selling station/system, how easy is it to offload your gear tho? Do you have to run it all down to the station in a normal ship?

I’m sure that would work, with a dedicated T9 for ship to shore cargo transfer.

More to the point though; I can’t see the point. If I’ve managed to accrue several billion, what’s the point in accruing even moar credits. I can already afford everything that can be bought, and sufficient credits for carrier upkeep are easily achievable by current mining techniques. The economy is certainly a bit broken in this game. Still love it though 😏

Not a long term strategy, just a one off. I was upto 1.5 billon before I took a long break, just came back and via (yeah kinda broken) LTD mining scraped enough to get a carrier but it’ll be close to clearing me out. Wanted to get a safety buffer to pay for carrier upkeep and a hefty bank balance for the carrier itself then leave it to do some more passive kinda money earning just to pay for itself. Leaving it to buy stuff of players at a decent price, holding onto it for a boom then offloading the lot at a good profit sounds a good idea

That is the way I’ve seen people make money with carriers. Now that they can offer LTDs up to 2.3M/t the potential has exploded. Who is going to go back to the bubble for an extra 100-200k/t, when you could go back to the ring and fill your hold again in the same time.

Once you’ve got 5-6000t in your fleet carrier then a profit of 100-200k/t when a 1.5-1.6M station becomes available means you’re golden. It’s not quite passive but it’s low effort, hell you can even sell at the sell station, reduce your profit by 50k/t and not need to do any work!

After hating on fleet carriers since they launched and still raging when they crash me out approaching engineer planets, I can see me getting one! They make so much sense for BGS:

All your ships are there, no waiting for the miner or passenger ship or combat ship to be delivered.
You can park at the station of choice, no more 15 minute supercruise every time you take a mission outside of the system. No cruising back to a station to rearm.
You can load them with goods demanded by mining missions
You can load them with illicit goods to smuggle into stations

The speed you will be able to affect influence will be incredible.

Looks like i’ll be mining a bit!

@V8ninety I’ll let you know when the war starts, we are locked together in influence, but their other war hasn’t finished yet.

Matt

On a vaguely related note, does anyone use PAs? I have a couple on my Federal Funship but can’t hit a thing with them. I’m ok with fixed weapons and rails on the Viper, but literally no joy with PAs

Matt

I’ve not experimented with different weapons much, just stayed with the tried and tested engineered beams+multis combo.

Yep, let me know Matt. Up for winging it at some point over the next evening or two in any case.

On a vaguely related note, does anyone use PAs?

I can’t hit a donkey with a stick fixed weapon so when I tried them I was useless.

On my way back to the bubble, 4k ly tonight (via the arse of the galaxy, not worth it).

Another 10 days to be back and then start on the combat elite.

Take my advice and when you get back swerve anywhere with loads of fleet carriers, I’ve been kicked out for about 3/4 hr so far, cos I strayed into a good sell system for painite.

Matt

Yup that’s probably why I was having so much grief getting into Deciat the other night. Some of the systems are just getting ridiculous now.

On another note I see there is no faction called ‘Interesting Times Gang’. If we are going to be a faction it has to be that (I know I can rely on @molgrips to second this :D)

IV?

On a vaguely related note, does anyone use PAs?

got some on a python, works ok-ish good for taking out big PVE ships, useless at fighters (got a cpl beams for those). Im a bit better with those than rails, for everything else I use gimballed, tried fixed beams but couldnt git gud. you could try engineering them for long range which speeds up projectile speed. APAs are a rapid fire version if you can be bothered with powerplay.

Thanks I’ll give the Long range a try. Fighters are a pain, I went Viper to Viper with a deadly opponent and we just couldn’t do enough damage to each other jousting. It was comical, I had to reload the dakkas twice! In the end, instead of accelerating to joust, I reversed and we just had a stand-off. Fortunately the guy with the best shields won, ME!

Matt

been there done that 🙂
have you seen some vindicator jones videos on youtube? Tips on practice getting on the top/back of ships and staying there, out of fire radius and keeping your weapons on them.

Love the Vindicator Jones vids, but hate how easy he makes it look. I’m ok against the bigger stuff when I get in position, but often take a real kicking getting there! Asps are fun when you’re in a smaller ship, they turn quickly but only at really low speed, plus they have the giant saucer profile.

Matt

@V8ninety I’m around tonight if you want to wing up. There is a war going on in a close system or we can wing mine some painite if you fancy making a bit of cash. Let me know. Matt

Some damn fine flying last night Cmdr Matt! Think I’ve added considerably to my combat bond count. 😎 o7

Very late to this party but only just got round to upgrading my PC to play half decent games.

I’m really interested in getting deep into a game (if that makes sense) and love the concept of this game, however to be frank I’m a bit rubbish with controllers that use more than 8 buttons at once.

Can I ask how challenging this is to play – do you need to go all in and have extreme dexterity before or are there idiots guides for the dinosaurs like me?

Only asking as I can’t remember the last time I spent £20 on a PC game 🙂

Can I ask how challenging this is to play – do you need to go all in and have extreme dexterity before or are there idiots guides for the dinosaurs like me?

Dexterity isn’t really required, the main challenge is understanding what’s going on. It’s a game that appeals to people who like details and simulation. There is combat which you can seek out but it’s tricky to completely avoid. If you are trading or doing missions with cargo there’ll be pirates, however you can minimise this by taking easy missions in safe systems. But you will meet them at some point. You can usually evade them if you have a suitable ship (which you do early on), and even if caught you can usually get away. Or, you can simply give them what they ask for, although you have to be quick on the buttons with this as they don’t give you long to respond!

When fighting, on the PS4 you can get away with accelerate, decelerate, the movement stick and two fire buttons. But to do it well you need to flip weapons and use the other stick at the same time. The flying itself isn’t that complex really.

I don’t know what it’s like on PC though.

@V8ninety Great scrapping, it really is challenging in CZs. I haven’t logged on to see what happened at the tick, but if that hasn’t pushed the war in our favour nothing will. A proper workout for the Krait and the Funship, thought those Spec Ops guys were a bit of a surprise!

We hit a medium combat zone and decided to pick on an enemy space cow, a Spec Ops wing arrived and in no time put me in rebuy and battered the hull in V8ninety’s Krait. Next time we managed to double team a Spec Ops Fed-de-lance, just in my case!

Matt

PC is fine, a 5 button mouse (left, right, middle, click up and down) is sufficient for flying, after that it’s just keyboard controls. Thankfully the mapping is fairly consistent so doesn’t change between modes.

@Twonks there is a world of idiots guides, otherwise I would have spent all my time blowing myself up in numerous moronic ways. No wait I did do that!

Inara and EDDB are your friends for third party tools (use them as much or as little as your roleplaying or immersion allows). These will lead to others for mining and exploring, which I don’t use.

For the practicalities, check out down to earth astronomy. obsidian ant, commander plater on you tube (Yamicks is you want a slighty different (sweary) take on the universe).

And always fly with rebuy, not so important once you’re established but the 8 million credits I had to suck up last night could have hurt earlier in my life.

o7 and have fun!

Matt

Cheers. I’ll do some further reading and probably buy it.

£20 isn’t too bad really and wasted easily enough on other things.

I use a PS4 controller through Steam so hopefully can get to grips with it after a fashion.

If you do get it, persevere with it. It might seem a bit daunting at first and the learning curve a bit steep, but it’s a great game. Only problem I find, is finding the time to play it, as it does require a bit of commitment at first, and time just seems to whizz by while you’re playing.

Very much this, it can be a big effort to get ‘established’. By that I mean being able to pick and choose what you want to do and in the time you have available. For example, get one engineer has a huge effect on how quick you can get around, but there is a significant effort to unlock and obtain the stuff you will need.

Matt

Only problem I find, is finding the time to play it, as it does require a bit of commitment at first, and time just seems to whizz by while you’re playing.

I very much third this. It’s an astonishing time sink. A very enjoyable and occasionally frustrating one.

Steep learning curve: check
massive time sink: check
Commitment/concentration (you cant pause game): check

I started on K&M and the biggest thing holding me back there was key ghosting, you’re often doing several things at once, if you’ve got a posh keyboard or you use controller it shouldn’t be an issue, early days I knew I was going to get seriously invested in ED so bought a hotas.
Ship makes a difference too, once you’ve got the basics and do a bit of engineering you can “manage” your game to be as dangerous/frenetic or fairly mild/peril free as you like – in solo or a none pvp private mode. Open will always be dangerous. I went to a haz res in a shieldless viper with APAs last night no pip management, weapon switching or anything else, just moving and shooting. Lots of fun.

Where are you guys waging war?

Also is there a minor faction STW are trying to get promoted in a system? If not does someone want to pick one? I’m after some medium term goals and (I assume) I cant do that sort of thing on my own.

@DONK you can do it on your own, but as I am finding out it can be a lot of work.

I have adopted the New Kuwembaa Labour minor faction. They are nearly out of the bubble, native to Kuwembaa. When I started they were established in 4 systems which were more or less in a stable state. I gradually tweaked up their influence and took over a station in one system.

Then the Carrier patch hit and everything went haywire, suddenly NKL went into expansion in Kuwembaa and infuence in other systems plummeted or went through the roof. I couldn’t control it so NKL moved into a 5th system. Unfortunately it’s a good one, so I am trying to protect that and retreat out of a less good system. In short I am flitting round trying to change 5 systems at a time, mercenaries like V8ninety are a gpdsend!

I would join up if STW chose a faction, the good thing is that BGS is cross-platform, PC/XBOX and PS4 all affect the same.
Relatively the bubble is huge, but some of the systems around key areas, like Shinrata, Sol etc., are high traffic and hard to change and full. Towards the edge you may get one ship a day normally.
I believe there are even player factions lying idle (you cannot retreat from your native system).

Matt

I went to a haz res in a shieldless viper with APAs last night no pip management, weapon switching or anything else, just moving and shooting. Lots of fun.

I can highly recommend CQC for this!

Tried CQC for the first time.

Seems like it would be good fun but I, as a complete noob at it, joined a multiplayer deathmatch expecting to be in the middle of a group of multiple targets / aggressors

Just me, level 0 with the shonky starter ship and one other dude at level 14 in a much more fighty ship.

It wasn’t ideal and consisted of me basically running away, in an unfamiliar arena, for 30 seconds before getting killed again.

Tried again to get a more occupied match. Same dude again.

Clearly just him and me, alone in the entirety of Xbox land.