A little help starting out ....

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Stickguey (8)

Posted 9 years ago.

Hi there, as Roguey has said elsewhere, i gave him a few hints on how to start making money, so i thought, why not write something on the forums to help out EVERYONE .....

1) I know a lot of people "just want to play the game" but it is really helpful to do the tutorials, including the battle ones, this means you can use this time to sort out your controls to how you want them.

2)Always Keep a pad of paper and a pen near you, you will need to take notes, before you leave the station for the first time, visit commodities, check what is being bought by the station at ABOVE galactic average, and not those down, better ones that say they are in HIGH demand. do this at all nearby stations that you visit, you only have small cargo hold to start out, but any money profit helps your trade rankings.

3)Start out small, do runs to nearby stations from bulletin missions, and also use the ingame map and routing with this site http://www.elitetradingtool.co.uk/ ,and also http://eliteraretrader.co.uk/ check for rare locations that are near to where you are and try to take missions to where the nearest rare location is. Note ... try to stay in Federation or Empire space to start out, there you have some form of law, it might mean the difference between keeping your money and having to restart in the starter ship ..... rares normally seem to sell for about 500 credits, the further you fly away from the point of purchase, the more you make with them, i buy some at 450ish and do a round trip that means i can sell them for 15k, which means 14500 profit per ton, you can only carry 2 tons to start out (i think ...) but soon you will be able to afford upgrades, giving you more cargo room ....

4)The more dangerous approach, find an anarchy station, fly out to a local Unidentified Signal Source (USS from now on) enter it, sometimes its free cargo, all of the stuff found floating free is illegal, so picking it up in any space other than anarchy and flying about with it will run high chances of you being scanned and becoming wanted .... soon as you are wanted, npc's and players will hunt you down ..... best idea, stay close to the station (make sure there is a black market there) visit USS's, pick up cargo, and leave if there are ships in there ... quickly till you are ready to have 2 or more on 1 battles, you might want to wait to do this till you have an eagle, they have 3 guns and are fairly fast.

5)Use your discovery scanners - this is essentially bonus money if you go to a system that is unknown, point your ship at the sun and you will slowly scan it and find out information, including what type of star it is etc. There are 2 planetary scanners, and the detailed surface scanner, Basic discovery scanner has a 500ls range, intermediate discovery scanner has a 1000ls range and advanced scanner uncovers all planetary bodies in the system, with each discovered body you can scan it to find out information, adding to the amount you make from the systems information, with the detailed surface scanner you get more information about the composition of the planetary bodies (asteroid belts dont add to the amount you make but you might just find the unknown annoying like i do). Once you have scanned a few systems you will need to sell the information at 20+ly distance from the scanned system, you do this in the universal cartography section of the station services .....

6)Always remember to check your insurance cost, and cover the buyback cost, this is what stops you from having to start over ......

7) Always remember that Elite Dangerous is a lot cheaper now than it was for Alpha and Beta backers, they played the testing stage, and payed for it with time and money, what you are getting now if the cut price version of the end product, but unlike X where the sandbox was based on a rubics cube buildup of small areas, this is 400 billion star systems with a dynamic economy, effected by players that you may never see because you play solo, online - group - solo all your actions effect what happens in the galaxy, you run some missions to get you some reputation with a faction, thier influence in the system also grows, you may use this mechanic to overthrow the systems government alignment, cause wars, all that affect all other players in elite ..... There may be Expanions that you have to pay for, and rumour has it the first is coming soon, but think of this, X3 took a fair sized chunk of hard drive to install, in Elite Dangerous its a 3Gb download.... Hats off to them for even making a simulated galaxy of 400 000 000 000 star systems replicating the milky way galaxy, each system with thier own orbital movements, all in a 3gb package .... nevermind making a game, with npc's, a trading system, mining (never done it but been told its boring ...) and a faction system that is influenced by players wether theyre online or solo. The reason i say this is the fact that the official forums are full of people complaining about bugs etc .... since release there have been 3 main patches, and some daily bugfixes implemented directly to the servers without client update downloads .....and the game is still less than a month since release .....

i will more than likely come back later with some more hints and tips, but maybe other players want to give some tips they have found out too ....

Cmdr Gomorragh - Stares at players, just waiting ......

Gomorragh

Stickguey (8)

Posted 9 years ago.

I have added a tool that ive just found that helps you out with choosing a route, the best thing to remember is that the ingame route finder only works up to 100ly, so try to find a system that is closer than that sort of distance.

Oh, the main thing i forgot, Fuel scoops, you dont take damage until you get to 100% heat, so as you start out using them, wade in slowly up to around 97% on your heat, that way the scoop will be near its maximum refueling potential without barbecuing you

Cmdr Gomorragh - Stares at players, just waiting ......

Sinxar

Cruguey (18)

Posted 9 years ago.

Oh, the main thing i forgot, Fuel scoops, you dont take damage until you get to 100% heat, so as you start out using them, wade in slowly up to around 97% on your heat, that way the scoop will be near its maximum refueling potential without barbecuing you
- Gomorragh

You don't take damage until 150%

Gomorragh

Stickguey (8)

Posted 9 years ago.

you take minor amounts of damage over 100%, do a long run and you will be looking at large repairs, going higher than 150% gives you fast noticable damage. i know this from doing some testing, i was wondering why i was getting 5k repair bill after 10 jumps when i could jump about like a loon and not get much damage over 50 jumps, realised i was letting the ship get to over 100% when i was getting more repair bills, or should i say upkeep bills ....

Cmdr Gomorragh - Stares at players, just waiting ......

Kablooie

Tropguey (5)

Posted 9 years ago.

I haven't yet found Rares, but I still rake in about 20-30K (minimum)
per trade run.

1. Find a sector of space with the "Four Aces" - a High Tech system,
a Wealthy Industrial, a Wealthy Agriculture, and a Wealthy Extraction/Refinery.
Find the top sellers (for the one I'm in,Wonneriti - Valda - Yembo,
it's Progenitor Cells, Marine Equipment, Consumer Goods, and Palladium)
and just the exploit the heck out of them.

2. Upgrade to a Hauler, then to a Cobra for trade runs. If you're going
Master Trader, of course, you'll want to upgrade beyond that. Me, I just
want to make enough of trading to finance a nicely kitted-out Viper for
Bounty Hunting & military missions, so the Cobra works just fine for me.
The Hauler is useful early on, but it wallows like a Space Pig and it's
defense sucks, so get into the Cobra as quick as you can (make sure to
budget for kitting it out nice, though, as well as cover insurance)

I kit out the Cobra with two Pulse Lasers and a Beam Laser, all gimbaled,
with a Missile Launcher (Smart Missiles or Seekers) to finish 'em off
when I've knocked their shields out.

3. A "Pro Tip" for early play - get rid of the Basic Discovery Scanner,
and replace it with a Cargo Hold. This is, of course, if you're going to
be a Trader early on, and not explore or otherwise cover a lot of space.
Sure you'll miss out on a few hundred credits, but you'll make far more
than that with the extra cargo capacity. Once you get to the Cobra or
beyond you'll then have space for the BDS.

4. Try to neverdo "dead head" runs, that is, leaving a station
without a full haul. There's almost always something you can make
at a small profit on, at least pay for your fuel.

5. When pulling into a station with trade goods, if you have some goods
that aren't misson-related or "spoken for", check out the Bulletin board
BEFORE you trade. Someone might be waiting to pay a lot more for that 10 tons of
gold you just happen to be hauling!

6. Always check out the Galactic Map for mission-related systems
first, before taking the mission. Make sure you can plot a course there.
It may *say* it's only 8Lyr away, but the star-lanes to reach it may be
30Lyr or more!
Don't ask me why,I still don't understand why if it's only 8Lyr away,
the map won't plot a course there.

Be aware that the amount you're hauling will also limit your jumps, too.

7. I was keeping notes until I found Roguey's site here Wink

8. If you appreciate this site, upload system info!

9. A nice tool to get is EliteOCR, which can take screenshots of Commodity
screens & translate it into a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file, which you
can upload here using the CSV upload tool. Very handy.

rivasilvercrown

Fightguey (6)

Posted 9 years ago.

In addition to what has been already said, if you have 2 screens, it is good practice of having an excel open on the second screen so you can update the trading information and, therefore, calculate potentially good routes.

Also, if you want to go bounty hunting/mission running (avoiding missions that are dependant on big cargo volumes), try to get a kill warrant scanner, so you can get the maximum benefict of the pirates you kill.

DHLF

Conqoguey (21)

Posted 9 years ago.

6. Always check out the Galactic Map for mission-related systems
first, before taking the mission. Make sure you can plot a course there.
It may *say* it's only 8Lyr away, but the star-lanes to reach it may be
30Lyr or more!
Don't ask me why,I still don't understand why if it's only 8Lyr away,
the map won't plot a course there.

- Kablooie

You will already get it on your own but..
the "use trade lanes" field will be automatically tagged every time you start the game.
Just hit the other field named fastest route will help to make a direct jump.
Is is also necessary to recalculate the route after changing this.
Stupid route planner Nod

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