For me at least the game changer was taking some time to get used to the key layout either remapping or just getting my fingers reaching for the correct place. If you have a HOTAS this can be mostly ignored but ideally when you get to further missions dog fights are going to be common so weapons and/or maneuvers are going to be needed.
I haven’t played since the early VO mining days, but I used to hunt griefers almost exclusively. Tricked out the Mur-der-Lance and cloaked her in the Black Friday paintjob to run deadly dark. It was great fun for a while and even made Elite during that stint (never got the trio, though). Thing is, their numbers just seemed to grow and admins ultimately did fuck all about it. C’est la guerre, I guess.
Well, for one, griefers tend to be stupid easy to bait, and pretty shit at keeping up with new techniques (at the time) for ships they’re not interested in. Generally, they gravitate toward simple min/max and seem to lack the attention span to delve into various overclocking/tuning of modules that advanced (and vastly superior) builds require.
I had been running the ol’ girl in dogfights here and there, but I’d not yet had a compelling reason to train to use the Plasma Cannon as her Huge hardpoint until that moment I decided to answer the call on the Silverback forums and others for griefer/ganker/camper killers. Now, the Fer-de-Lance has always been known for her slippery handling, and her fans adapted their piloting to compensate if not outright benefit from it. Add to this an overclocked engine, bleeding edge cooling system, and a boost with such unbridled power that it could handily outpace any other ship in the ‘verse and warp out before they could regain lock.
Thing is, that was just the bait.
She also, during this eyelid-peeling boost, could yaw like butter and with just the right touch, face fully backwards at that blinding speed. Now, as I’d said before, the average noob-hasslin’ assclown is only interested in quick bullying and even quicker satisfaction, so they’re not the sort to let an easy target go un-exploded and that goes double if you bruise their pride in the process. So. With this in mind, I’d rattle their cage a bit, take some hits and make it look then like I was running scared. Jackrabbit ahead and they’d boost right in behind me, lining up a shot to take me out… when, without warning, the engine tails’d disappear (I’d cut power, drifting on boost momentum) and the all-black ship was silently, invisibly staring right down their barrels as they sped at top-speed after me. In that frozen second, the only way to see my ship was by the stars it occluded behind it, so I was functionally invisible, and previous few of these chucklefucks could fly by instrumentation only. To them, I just blinked out.
That’s when I’d fire a single plasma ball the size of a small bus, fiery purple white and racing toward them faster than thought. Outside of this maneuver, the weapon was known to be extremely inefficient and slow, but that only made its appearance here all the more surprising — and perfect. They didn’t have any idea how to dodge it, or even what it was. Before they could button spam, their ships were absolutely obliterated (a direct hit, nose to tail did some of the highest damage in the game at the time, and could nearly one-shot any similarly-sized ship, and even cripple a Conda), or if they’d planned a little better and kitted or with some armor, etc., then their ships’ systems were at least offline from the blast and I’d mop up as they spun lifeless in the void right in front of me.
Something I realized while on that trip is that if you enjoy the exploration part of this game, you essentially enjoy roleplaying a field researcher with a dash of survival on the side. It’s tedious, boring work and you have to be really into the details of all the stuff you find to keep going.
I keep IRL notes on a lot of my finds. I stay more engaged and I can easily find the location of some interesting thing I passed.
I was out in the black in my Anaconda when they did the event for double engineered 6A FSD. I could have used the hell out of that drive but didn’t get it because I was out exploring.
Now it’s unavailable for some reason, unlike the 5A. So I quit and haven’t been back. It seems like a petty reason to leave a game after so many hours, but I just ran out of reasons to keep playing and that little “fuck you” tipped the scale just enough.
The star forge and galaxy sized flight sim are amazing. Most of everything else feels tacked on. FDev as a company just doesn’t have the inspiration or whatever it took to make ED great, and they have been chasing the dragon for years.
I'm not an AX combat enthusiast, but I've been enjoying the thargoid war lately. There's more to it than just combat, too—the reworked EVAC missions are great, the Scythe really puts C into CSAR and the barnacle matrix sites have interesting implications. I also like Glaives and the way they stir up the meta. Fun to fight them, too.
I think the game is moving into the right direction overall. The thargoid war story is very well done, going beyond simplistic "humans good, aliens bad and attack for no reason because they're alien" we normally see in games, movies etc.
If there's one thing to complain about, it's the fact that thargs haven't ramped up their war effort enough and it's too easy to counter them now that we've figured out what works best. We should be losing more systems to them and they should be sending vanguard forces deeper into the bubble.
I myself is in a similar situation. Here is a few medium/long/very long terms goals that is on my bucket list.
Visit historical sites like the voyager probes in Sol or Jameson crash site on HIP 12099 1 B
Go to hard to reach places just for the bragging right of it. Like Rackham’s Peak in HIP 58832 or Hutton Orbital in Alpha Centauri (warning, Hutton Orbital is even farther than Lunan Holdings).
While you are at Hutton Orbital, grab a few mugs and gins and participate in the 2 Hot 2 Messy event and get a chance to win a real Hutton mug.
Learn how the Background simulation work and participate in it to help your favourite faction.
Help repeal the Thargoids by combating them, help evacuate stations in system at risk of been invaded, help rebuild stations after a system repealed the Thargoids. For the Last one, check Operation Ida.
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