Elite: Dangerous

[8bit]

jains15 said:

Pulse lasers are always going to be the best balance between shield dmg, hull dmg, heat & energy usage. Beams are good if you want high 'alpha' but the damage per second soon drops off. Bursts are pulse lasers but with 3x dmg per trigger pull but heat up your ship badly.

So for the Cob3, a full pulse setup might work, you could try fixed on the mediums and gimbals on the smalls to get all 4 lasers to bear with max dmg.

The best approach is a 'mixed' setup where especially for 1.4 releasing today you will need better ability to chew through hulls. This is because they are altering the way powerplant damage results in an instakill - it is now far less likely and ships will more often die when hull is at 0%.

So a possible setup might be 2x medium multicannons for the hull & 2 small lasers to take down shields. Or Vice Versa depending on whether you want to prioritise shield over hull dmg. Always gimbal the small weapons on a cobra because they are in an awful place on the ship.

Or you could take my suggestion from above and go for an 'assymetric' loadout. So go for 1 fixed medium pulse, and a gimballed small pulse for shields. Then go for a medium gimballed and small gimballed Multi for hull dmg.

OK, thanks. Further question though - why not have gimballed medium weapons too? I have gimballed pulse lasers just now.

[jains15]

8bit said:

OK, thanks. Further question though - why not have gimballed medium weapons too? I have gimballed pulse lasers just now.

Firstly, the position of the mediums is good on the Cobra, close together below the cockpit. Then you get more damage from fixed vs gimball, the Cobra is just nippy enough to make it worth it and a good extra benefit on mediums. You are less vulnerable to chaff with fixed weapons. You have to be careful mixing weapons with different lead characteristic on the same ship, you can imagine how hard it is to have fixed lasers AND fixed multis and make all your weapons hit at the same time. So it's important to have them seperated across fire groups and have one set gimbal and the other fixed.

By all means run a full gimball setup but it has less alpha damage and you can defeated by chaff which is a disadvantage against other human players. YMMV

[MissChief]

I have both my multi cannons and my Beam Lasers on Gimball mounts. Yes you can be 'defeated' by Chaff but that doesn't last very long. You need a ship with great manoeuvrability and good thrusters as well as a very good understanding of flight assist off to keep fixed weapons on target, especially on a close range encounter. As said, YMMV. Weapon damage tends to be highest with fixed, lower with Gimballed and lower still with turreted.

[jains15]

Yep against npc's gimbals are great and you can use he downtime by recharging some shield and weapon energy. Against human players though a lot will run 2 or more chaff launchers which means a permanent screen which can be frustrating in the Clipper LOL. So many variables in this game and everyone's opponent, ship loadout and play style differs to a ridiculous degree.

Gimbals are great tech overall

[PhilboSE]

Well, that's that. On the same day that 1.4 dropped as well. Last bit of trading I'll be doing for a while, it was by far the hardest of the 3 to get (in terms of grind).

[grenpayne]

Many congrats Phil, that's an amazing achievement! I think it will take me another 18 months to get anywhere close. Just the CQC rating to do now

[castex]

Massive props.

[Chuck328]

Well done Phil

Now you just have to make Elite CQC

Edit:

BTW, I felt a bit bad when we couldn't get rid of that massive fine you had picked up and subsequently got nailed for, but on seeing how much credits you have....

Edited by Chuck328 on Wednesday 7th October 00:38

[8bit]

Thanks for the advice on weapons, folks. I'll have a play with fixed vs. gimballed and see how I get on.

Was doing a little trading last night, nothing major, just funding some more upgrades for the Cobra. Twice I got interdicted by identical Diamond Back Explorers. Both seemed to use quite a bit of chaff, which was irritating. Both also seemed to have beam lasers which both did a lot of damage and never seemed to need to recharge/cool down. Not sure if there's a bug here or I just managed to get jumped by two well-equipped NPCs?

[jains15]

Version 1.4 NPCs appear to use a lot more chaff, I noticed it too in a HazRES earlier. You can de-target and your gimbals will obediently face forwards so you can get some shots in the meantime.

Regarding NPC weapons, I always felt like they don't recharge but it's hard to get evidence.

Elite feels a lot more... Dangerous since yesterday's upgrade and all the better for it

EDIT: Congrats Phil - Good show

[Chuck328]

jains15 said:

Elite feels a lot more... Dangerous since yesterday's upgrade and all the better for it

Agree with this, wanted Anacondas are back in which is good. I went to a HazRes last night, basically there are no cops there and nearly lost my Python taking on an NPC conda. Much harder now which is a good thing!

[grenpayne]

Had a good go of CQC tonight for the first time. I'm OK at it, but certainly need some practice! Overall I like it, it's great if you just want a quick blast and the maps and gameplay seem well thought out. I think we should have a PH deathmatch

[motorizer]

grenpayne said:

Had a good go of CQC tonight for the first time. I'm OK at it, but certainly need some practice! Overall I like it, it's great if you just want a quick blast and the maps and gameplay seem well thought out. I think we should have a PH deathmatch

Just had a go myself, I'm not really a multiplayer shooter type of gamer, but I found this fun...

Planetary landing video peek

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=553mTYXSGPU&fe...

[8bit]

So having been interdicted (well, I submitted to it for a bit of combat practice) a few times since the update, and almost having my arse handed to me, I find I'm only getting a few hundred credits bounty for the kills.

Starting to get bored with the game again. Wanted to try PowerPlay so there was something to work towards but having to keep putting the time in just to maintain the progress I've made killed that idea because my free time to play games is limited. Bounty hunting looks to have become a lot less profitable. Trading is dullsville. Open to other ideas?

[FourWheelDrift]

Thread: Please postpone your exploration activity - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=189...

[Chuck328]

8bit said:

So having been interdicted (well, I submitted to it for a bit of combat practice) a few times since the update, and almost having my arse handed to me, I find I'm only getting a few hundred credits bounty for the kills.

Starting to get bored with the game again. Wanted to try PowerPlay so there was something to work towards but having to keep putting the time in just to maintain the progress I've made killed that idea because my free time to play games is limited. Bounty hunting looks to have become a lot less profitable. Trading is dullsville. Open to other ideas?

Forget about interdiction, waste of time and as you say no money.

What ship are you in? Have you tried High int. RES sites? The money there has gone through the roof since the update. In the last week I have made 25 million there (5 million last night in 90 minutes play). Wanted Elite FDL are the best to go for, fairly easy to kill, 320k has been my largest bounty on one. And they keep coming. Plenty of the larger ships including Anacondas to. It's paid for my 50 million credit power supply.

The other bonus is in the RES there are usually plenty of Anaconda cops to help take the heat off you, useful when you try to take on a wing of 3 pythons etc as on your own that can be risky.

[FLK]

I'm liking the new missions, if you have good reputation and ratings you can make over 1 million plus for long haul missions and smuggling is more interesting now as the system authority are much more persistant and I've been caught a couple of times. I've seen some missions giving over 6 million on the frontier forums if you have high ratings and allied faction reputation.

I sold my Python and now using a Cobra as I can make more money bounty hunting in my FDL or from doing missions in the Cobra. Bought an Anaconda as well and I'm working on raising enough credits to kit it out adequately before going back to exploring (that bug was fixed yesterday) to get to the Elite rating.

Edited by FLK on Sunday 11th October 11:44

[8bit]

Chuck328 said:

Forget about interdiction, waste of time and as you say no money.

What ship are you in? Have you tried High int. RES sites? The money there has gone through the roof since the update. In the last week I have made 25 million there (5 million last night in 90 minutes play). Wanted Elite FDL are the best to go for, fairly easy to kill, 320k has been my largest bounty on one. And they keep coming. Plenty of the larger ships including Anacondas to. It's paid for my 50 million credit power supply.

The other bonus is in the RES there are usually plenty of Anaconda cops to help take the heat off you, useful when you try to take on a wing of 3 pythons etc as on your own that can be risky.

This may be the issue; a Cobra Mk.III. Can't see me lasting long against an Elite rated pilot in a FdL or similar.

Noticed something else the other night. I went to a high-intensity conflict zone and picked a side. The ships all then showed either green or red on the scanner, but on the HUD they all showed orange. Nobody was attacking anyone else though, all the ships in the zone just flying in one big, random formation in the same direction at the same speed...

[Chuck328]

8bit said:

This may be the issue; a Cobra Mk.III. Can't see me lasting long against an Elite rated pilot in a FdL or similar.

No need to, plenty of other Cobra/Adder sized targets with decent value. Up to 50K for a Cobra, grinding it out!

It can take for ever but in the RES you might be able to wait for the cops to do most of the work on the larger stuff then charge in when the target is much lower down in health. I did that in my Cobra a few times against bigger stuff, massive reward for little work , the only down side being it can take the cops forever to get stuck in to the larger ships.

Good luck what ever you do.

[8bit]

OK thanks. I got my arse handed to me the other night against a much more capable ship and the (admittedly modest) rebuy cost wiped out most of my (admittedly meagre) remaining funds. I think I'll go on for a bit tonight and look for some RES' around the area I'm in now.

Is it the case that a system with Extraction listed under the economy field, a planet or two with asteroid rings and a reasonably high population will be likely to have a RES or two?