Multicrew needs the current addon, though

So apparently bounties in HazRES just fart out cash and I managed to bypass a ten million credit grind with the help of some friends within a couple of hours. Geez, I've been in the wrong business all along, of course shooting people is going to be where it's at! It got me a shiny new Diamondback Explorer, so I guess I can go back to jumping around now. I dunno, I wish there was a bit more risk in trading? AI interdictions are laughably easy to break, and there is no risk whatsoever otherwise. It would be cool to get a use out of that big ol' hardpoint.

I realized that one of the big issues of the game is context. I don't get fed who the superpowers or the factions are around, it all feels very gamey when I'm just a pilot in a ship with credits to be earned. X3 has cheesy cartoon races with personalities, some voice lines, systems that are vastly different from each other with impossible vistas and a snippet of lore for each, plus you inevitably pass through them as you go about your business. You immediately know where you are. The scale in Elite is much larger, and you lose a lot of intimacy as a result: who's gonna remember those randomly named systems and whatever tiny faction I got allied with? Maybe gating myself into a smaller area of 'stomping grounds' would feel better? I do appreciate flight control's different accents and the new station decorations though. I'm starting to wish not every single piece of livery cost a significant portion of the price of the game, holy hell those prices. They would give me at least a tiny sense of familiarity, something that is 'mine'.

Mistycica wrote:They would give me at least a tiny sense of familiarity, something that is 'mine'.

Your ship. Name her, love her. She's your home. *insert inspiring Malcolm Reynolds speech here*

...I've been watching Serenity too much lately.

--IronDuke

One can actually name one's ship now? Wonders never cease!

You can give it an ID too, six character max. Funny how many people are choosing R2-D2.

--IronDuke

IronDuke wrote:You can give it a six-character ID too. Funny how many people are choosing R2-D2.

--IronDuke

But that's five characters.

Ship names are definitely a nice touch. I've mostly been shamelessly stealing names from The Expanse, because who doesn't love a ship named the Weeping Somnambulist?

It is pretty difficult to get into the lore, especially with no real history with it. But I've been reading up, so hopefully I'll get it eventually. I at least have the general gist of the overarching superpowers.

The little factions are sort of a plus- it's nice to see 5 factions don't own literally everything- but they're often obviously procedurally-generated, with some real awkward-looking names for some of them that look like someone Mad Libbed a bunch of adjectives and nouns together and called it a day.

The number of ways to earn money is cool, however. I finished a long run all the way to Altair and back (about 30-40 LY I think) last night to get passenger compartments for my Hauler so I can start a sort of taxi service. Maybe I'll get a fuel transfer unit too, just in case I want to moonlight as a Fuel Rat at some point.

We were asking for ship names from very early on - so about four years.
I'm only surprised that they haven't monetised them.

They monetized the ability to stick them on the ship's hull. People can still see the ship names on the HUD of course.

--IronDuke

IronDuke wrote:

Mistycica wrote:They would give me at least a tiny sense of familiarity, something that is 'mine'.

Your ship. Name her, love her. She's your home. *insert inspiring Malcolm Reynolds speech here*

...I've been watching Serenity too much lately.

--IronDuke

The Graceful Brick is one cherished ship, yes :3 There are many like her, but she does the Kessel run in a reasonable distance packed choke full of biowaste. (and yes, the Weeping Somnambulist is definitely one of, if not the best name for a ship ever!) Interestingly smuggling doesn't seem to be that easy anymore, need to be friends with anarchists, and they aren't offering enough to beat the 200k normal runs. Hmm.

I made a couple of trips to Sothis, it's a long haul, especially in a wing, but we keep each other company. It's incredible how some people just -need- to have fourteen units of poop shipped back to the bubble... I also started passenger hauling, I like the little snippets of lore presented via the visitor beacons, it's a good addition.

I'm sitting on an awkward amount of money, but I'm not that anxious to progress up now that I have two really cool boats c:

Mistycica wrote: fourteen units of poop shipped back to the bubble... I also started passenger hauling

sounds like a pleasant trip for your passengers.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

Mistycica wrote: fourteen units of poop shipped back to the bubble... I also started passenger hauling

sounds like a pleasant trip for your passengers.

Mistycica wrote:

IronDuke wrote:

Mistycica wrote:They would give me at least a tiny sense of familiarity, something that is 'mine'.

Your ship. Name her, love her. She's your home. *insert inspiring Malcolm Reynolds speech here*

...I've been watching Serenity too much lately.

--IronDuke

The Graceful Brick is one cherished ship, yes :3 There are many like her, but she does the Kessel run in a reasonable distance packed choke full of biowaste. (and yes, the Weeping Somnambulist is definitely one of, if not the best name for a ship ever!) Interestingly smuggling doesn't seem to be that easy anymore, need to be friends with anarchists, and they aren't offering enough to beat the 200k normal runs. Hmm.

I made a couple of trips to Sothis, it's a long haul, especially in a wing, but we keep each other company. It's incredible how some people just -need- to have fourteen units of poop shipped back to the bubble... I also started passenger hauling, I like the little snippets of lore presented via the visitor beacons, it's a good addition.

I'm sitting on an awkward amount of money, but I'm not that anxious to progress up now that I have two really cool boats c:

Upgrade them to A-class across the board - that's a useful way to remove all your money

I have to say, passenger hauling was giving pretty good payouts even before the patch, I'm looking forward to playing it again now

Finished a long-range exploration trip. I went a little past the Eagle Nebula because my passenger wanted to go there, and scanned a beacon next to an Earth-like that he wanted. I then turned about and headed home, but detoured to the Eagle Nebula since I'd never seen one before. Turns out there's a prominent system almost dead center of the thing, so I aimed for that. When I got there, I was astounded to find NPC ships roaming about. I quickly checked the nav panel, and it turns out there's one of those new asteroid bases here. I docked to repair a few scratches and resupply the AFMU, and check my exploration scan data (without selling it yet, as I want to sell it where it'll give me rep with factions who matter.)

They buffed scan data values in 2.3. Heavily. Earthlikes used to be worth 50,000-80,000 credits on full scan. Now they're well over 600,000. I used the so-called "Neutron Highway" to get there and back, so every neutron star I scanned was a magic 50,000 credits as well. I took me time on this trip after a fashion. Every time I saw an Earth-like or a Water World in the system map, I promptly turned aside to scan it.

So when I finally got back, my very contented passenger paid me 18.6 million credits, and I earned over 20 million credits just on the exploration data. Some systems were worth over a million credits on their own. So I earned a hair under 40 million credits for what was around 15 hours of flying. Not bad! Especially since the passenger mission reward counted to exploration rank.

The farthest I went was about 1,200 light years past Eagle Nebula, totaling 7,622 light years from my spawn. The engineer named Professor Palin is now unlocked and I can bring him some alien junk to unlock his services and upgrade my engines to grade 5. By the way, this trip was in the Dolphin with a 35ly jump range, which got boosted to 140ly for one jump at every Neutron Star. Still, next time I'm taking a ship with a real jump range of at least 50. Even the boosted ranges often weren't enough to reach the next Neutron Star, since they're so scattered and sparse this far out from the core of the galaxy.

I actually enjoyed that trip a ton. There were some interesting sights; there's a whopping huge cluster of over a hundred class B stars packed into a 20ly box in the Eagle Nebula, which looked really purty, and another even larger cluster near the Omega Nebula that I passed on me way home. That cluster filled my canopy view. Neutron Stars are stunning looking and a little creepy, with those helixical jet cones spraying from the poles, but once I got used to seeing them, they never stopped being eye candy. I saw binaries several times, even almost plowing into a star in a trinary when I jumped in. The asteroid base was a real looker as well, especially since it was situated right in the ring of a gas giant. You could leave the base and fly 10km to the side and start mining without ever having to enter supercruise. Heck, a miner situated there wouldn't even need a frameshift drive. There were a bunch of interesting looking planets, especially the blue ones. I brought an SRV, but never used it, so next time I'll likely leave it to gain an extra 4ly on the jump range.

What was also fun was the navigational aspect. I used this tool to calculate a route prioritizing Neutron Stars, which meant that at every Neutron Star I opened the galaxy map and manually selected a star as far as I could jump on the path to the next Neutron. I also had to keep an eye on me fuel levels, and several times adjusted the jump route to a scoopable star. I want to give a shoutout here to whoever at Frontier implemented the automatic replotting of a route just by opening the galaxy map if you deviate. It made my life so much easier.

When I got back, I was certainly relieved to be home and ready to spend hours doing pewpew, but I did enjoy that trip very much, enough that one day I'll make another, longer one in a better ship.



--IronDuke

Gah, Joshdamn all you guys, making me want to fly again!
Could ya wait a few weeks till I have my PC?!