Tag: E:D H

Founders Home World Permit Issued

I have access to Shinrarta Dezra/Jameson Memorial, finally. Having gotten my Exploration rank to Pioneer (20% ish), mostly through the Quince passenger mission exploit (if I’m honest), I was struggling to get it to go much further in what I consider to be a timely way. So I did the only sensible thing… hit up the Elite: Dangerous Exploration Reddit. I’ve long wanted to do “The Big One” – Sag A*, but I haven’t done anything to prep for it, so I went looking for an Exploration Primer and hit what turned out (for me) to be gold dust – the Road to Riches. It’s a bit like an exploration self-test; a series of over 200 systems (557 planets, to be exact) that are all within easy distance of the bubble, all count as unexplored if you’ve not yet scanned them, and all (for the most part) within 40LY of each other, so you can get away with an exploration ship that doesn’t have great jump range (I’d recommend you have no less than 20LY jump range, but if you don’t mind the odd very circuitous jump, you could probably do it with less). It’s a nice way to practice your exploration skills (scan the A star, refuel and honk all at the same time…) in relative safety since populated star systems are reasonably close, and it gets you a huge payday when you finish, in both credits and exploration rank. I gained over 300M credits (which given I’ve been under 100M for a few months now is most welcome), and Elite Explorer.

I know I can (mostly) do a long exploration trip without dying now. Yes, I had my fair share of “too close” drops, and I had to loop of shame far too often (after 4+ hours of exploring, I get tired), but my Exploraconda did its job admirably, and I didn’t run out of AFMU charges; it was somewhat close, but not too close. Now I can start planning to go to Sag A*.

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Rank Grind; That’s Duke PantsManUK to you…

Long time coming, but thanks to the Quince passenger mission loophole I was able to rank grind myself up to Duke for the Empire. I have a shiny new Cutter to go along with it (and a Beluga for the passenger missions).

I’ve also been (somewhat in parallel) grinding Federation rank. Made it to Warrant Officer so far, but I’m not buying the Fed ships until I can get a Corvette.

It’s a real shame there’s nowhere to grind Fed (anymore) that’s quite as good as Quince has been for Empire. I’m plodding backward and forward in a combat-rigged ‘Conda between Sothis and Ceos doing anything I can (mostly data transport and eliminating pirate lords), but there’s only one local power that’s Fed aligned, and even now that I’m allied with them I’m lucky to get more than a couple of missions off of them. Board logging gets me a few more, but once round the board log only takes a couple minutes (open, a couple of private, and solo), then you’re stuck waiting for the board to naturally refresh.

Oh well. Once I get my computer running again – Windows Update borked it overnight, so tonight will be a fresh install of 1607 to try to fix some other problems I’ve been having of late – I’ll continue plodding Fed rank, really need the credits…

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Progress, of a kind

Well, I’m out of the Python and onto the space brick – I can see why Masark hates the Type-9.

A weekend of trading in the Python got me close enough to the quoted 110 million credits (I made it to 105 million) that he advises for purchasing the Type-9, so I figured I’d make the change for the purposes of the much greater profits that the Type-9 let you grind, but the massive downside is that it’s like a container ship and has close to zero maneuverability. I had to stop playing early yesterday as it was beginning to get to me…

… but I’ll knuckle down and see if I can’t get back out of it by the end of the week – the ‘conda is a goal worth fighting the negative feelings for (and then the Imperial Cutter beyond that, but that will mean returning to Imperial Rank grind for a while). I also triggered Imperial Ally (100% too) this weekend, what with the endless trading in Imperial Space.

I’m going to try to trade to a half billion (500 million) in “liquid” cash, then see about getting Federation Ranks and ships (might as well). Then I suppose I will be in a position to do pretty much anything with a fair degree of safety. Might throw some mining (in the ‘conda) in between the rank hunts, it seems like the kind of dull “busy work” that you should try once…

On a side issue/note, I’ve been watching a fair few of CMDR Rusty Dog’s videos recently. He’s using a thing called “Voice Attack” to give voice control in E:DH. Seems interesting, so I’ve downloaded the trial and think I’ll give it a go. While I don’t need fast switching of power at present (2/4/0 is my go-to while trade grinding), I’m going to be in a position to stop the trade grind reasonably soon, and then I can do more adventurous stuff…

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Website news and rank grind update

I’ve updated the underlying OS on the website to latest Ubuntu Server LTS, so WordPress is now running on PHP 7.0 (and may indeed be a little bit faster than it was before). Otherwise, same nginx and mysql, so we’ll see.

And the rank grind goes very well, I’m sitting at 89% and don’t intend to go any further tonight. The remaining 11% and a rank mission should be easy to achieve tomorrow, and I should still have time to sell the Asp Explorer and get an Imperial Clipper (and probably an Imperial Courier as well, but that’ll just sit in the station I buy it until the 2.2 update goes live)

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Imperial rank grind update

Quick update: Long day at work reduced me to a single 2-hour play session, at the end of which I was basically falling asleep in my headset 🙂

Long story short; 25% Lord (mostly thanks to a metric tonne of data transport missions, and a 200 ly smuggling mission I didn’t realise I had picked up; that netted me 2 million credits though)

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Fed up with trade grind? Try rank grind…

Having (finally) made it to step 7 of Masark’s Guide, and run a good few hours of loops, the trade grind was getting to me. I decided to switch over to Imperial Rank grind instead: what’s the point in having enough cash to buy all the Imperial ships if you can’t because you don’t have enough rank to buy/fly them?

Purchased the required Asp Explorer, and have been plugging away at the missions enough to have risen from Serf to (currently) Squire. My intention is to stop when I get to Baron (enough to purchase/pilot the Imperial Clipper), then I’ll look to return to the Trade grind in a Clipper at step 7 (faster, far more maneuverable ship with better cargo capacity. What’s not to like?)

Imperial Clipper
Mmmm… Imperial Clipper

FYI/BTW if you are a novice pilot in open play, for goodness’ sake don’t loiter on the pads in the Imperial rank grind systems. It becomes impossible to hand in missions sometimes due to pilots lingering in port, to the extent that I’m running to Baron in solo play… It may be a very solitary galaxy in solo, but you waste far less time waiting for the one medium pad in van Royen Vision to become available.

Update: Just emerged from a hellish long session but I’m Lord 7%! Only 93% (and a rank mission) to Baron and the Clipper… Doubt I’ll be able to do that in the two sessions I get of an evening after work (certainly not tomorrow), but I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

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The (trade) grind is real

Ugh… So, my goals for E:D H were (I thought) quite simple: get all the Imperial ships. There were (I thought) only three (turns out there are four, the Eagle has an Imperial variant, which I do now own), and while I knew full well that you needed particular Imperial ranks to get them, I didn’t really think beyond that point.

imperial_courier_bodyshot_01

Problem #1 really is that they need Imperial ranks. Grinding rank is easy enough, as long as you have a suitable ship to grind ranks in, which I didn’t. Well, OK, that brings us to Problem #2; getting ships means cash, and when it gets down to the core, Problem #3 is that getting cash means trading and running missions.

And the trade grind is real… I’m following Masark’s Trading Guide from Reddit (first one I found), and I’m in the mid-tier hell that is step 6 – shuttling Imperial Slaves about in a Type-6 Transporter for just enough profit to make doing it worthwhile. The real killer here is the jump in costs. Getting to the Type-6 was somewhat logical and easy. Given my existing fleet/cash reserves, I just traded in a Viper Mk IV for a Cobra Mk III, then ran the rares circuit until I could trade in the Cobra for the Type-6 – only took me an evening or two of a few hours; easy, I thought.

Ha! “Grind a million credits” to grind 25+ million is worlds apart (pun intended). The rares circuit had “multiple worlds” going for it (even if you were visiting the same ports over and over). Looping slaves is the most deathly dull thing I’ve had to do in a game (and I made it to Elite in the original game on the Spectrum)…

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BUT

I’m currently sitting on a pot of just over 15 million after looping mostly the whole weekend (eye strain while in the Rift is what stops me from doing it longer than I currently can), so it’s 3/5 down, 2/5 to go… I will get out of the Type-6 as soon as I possibly can (and jump in a Type-7 for double the profits per trip). And I do get missions occasionally, which helps break the monotony (and means I’m a Serf with the Empire, so yay! Go me!).

All this for some pretty ship models…

clipper3

FYI, I’ve noticed that while I’m playing in VR, the image in the “desktop monitor” is atrociously small and I’d not inflict it on a Twitch audience. It’s been said before by others able to express it far better than me, but you really can’t explain what VR is like, you need to experience it for yourself.

(All images were taken from a Google Images search and I suspect/hope they are “official” FD images. If not, I thank the “photographers” but cannot easily name you. Copyrights will be respected throughout though, so a “please don’t use my image” with suitable provenance will result in the image being removed)

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