Thx Bohemond. I'm looking forward to starting the process and reaping the benefits encouraging information there.

Best advice I can give you, is fit a collector limpet controller on your ships and collect EVERYTHING always. It’s all useful. After a while it’ll become second nature. Also, drop in to as many degraded, encoded, and Hi grade USS sites as you can.

I did pretty much the same as Bo when I bought the DBX. But I hated the D rated thrusters and they were switched out within the hour. Gotta have speed, as well as responsiveness and the ability to handle high-G environments. I think lots of folks (at least at FDev forum) focus too much on jump range or top speed raw numbers and ignore other stuff. Heat for example.

Anyway, one of the most appealing aspects of this game is the way everything is balanced, and results in everyone having a different favorite thing. Very little is a 'must have'. That goes for ships, weapons, engineering. Everyone has their favorites and it makes it a lot more interesting and discussion-worthy than it could be.

Here is Felicity's page at Inara. This shows you what she can do for your ship. A really good start.

https://inara.cz/galaxy-engineer/1/

Click on any mod and it will show you what is required to complete. If you choose to register there and get the API key it will also show you what you have so you can see what you still need. It will be obvious once you start, but each mod requires you to 'roll' it. You choose to install the upgrade and it will complete a certain percentage, meaning some mods require multiple rolls. The upshot is that even though Inara shows you need 1x Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes to complete the G1 Increased Range mod, it may require several rolls (and definitely will for your first one) So be sure to have extra

Yup, starting with an engineer you'll need at least 5 rolls for each level. As you progress G3 or G4 it will take more rolls. Once you get access to a higher grade immediately move on to it. Don't linger completing that lower grade. A waste of your resources. As you max an engineer pin the blueprint you feel is most useful. Then you can use the remote engineering function. You can't choose an experimental using remote engineering though. That you'll have to visit the specific engineer for.


As a example I used remote engineering at Shinrata on thrusters. Dirty Drives from zero to G5. Then I traveled to Felicity and added the experimental to them. Felicity is much closer that traveling to Palin.

Also a note on engineering. FSD experimentals, size 4 and lower use Deep Charge, size 5 and up use Mass Manager. These will provide you the best increase in jump range.

Felicity is definitely your 1st choice to unlock. Followed by Blaster so you get access to Selene Jean. Selene will give you Armor and Hull Reinforcement. Light weight that Military Composite for a big jump range as well.

As always need help just ask.

Since we are sharing our activities, I’ve been working on my Fed rank by running rescue missions at the damaged station in 61 Virginis. It has 6 Fed factions, so there are plenty of missions to help in the cause. I only had a chance to run 2 sorties (in my Conda I can stack about 10 rescue missions) but bounced up 30% in my rank progress.

I spent last weekend doing some engineering. I recommend hitting Dav’s Hope for manufactured mats and the Jameson crash site for the encoded mats. Run the site, exit to the main menu, jump back in, wash r8nse, repeat. I wound up with enough to do most of what I wanted to do. Btw I use an Asp for mat gathering and general running around. I’ve got it right around 50 ly jump range.

JC, now that you’re getting your ships modded up ( not that it’s a prerequisite) I’ll re-extend our standing invite to wing up with us for some cooperative fun and mayhem!

True, and also why I recommend taking as much exploration data with you as possible. If you sell it to Farseer after unlocking but before engineering it will raise the rep and decrease the number of rolls as a result. Can save some mats which are so precious in the early going.



And all those mats I saved were wasted by this. I learned. But not soon enough for me.

Hey JC, are you looking to rank up with a certain Fed boat in mind?

Thanks again for the wing invite! It’s something I’ll take you up on eventually, but to be honest I’m really enjoying just bouncing around from thing to thing in the game right now.

I’d like to get the Corvette to use as a large combat ship. I’ve got a Krait for smaller stuff along with a Fer de Lance. I lean toward the Krait but I want to give the FDL another try just to see the difference. I switched out of the FDL to get a fighter (and I hated that bar down the middle of the canopy). While the fighter is nice, the npc crewman takes some of the exp in kills, so it slows down rank progression. The canopy frame doesn’t look as bad in vr as it does flat too, so that might be less of an annoyance.

The 'Vette is a good choice. You're not far now. Bo was vaporizing targets in his Vette the other night. It's a beast.


I recommended Inara earlier in this thread, but completely failed to say that in order to use it, you need another program. Inara itself pulls nothing from your Elite time, so you need another program to send that data to Inara. There are several to choose from, but I use Elite Dangerous Market Connector, or EDMC. This is the program you leave running like I mentioned to keep Inara updated as to your progress and location.

This is the list of third party programs that work with Inara. I have only used EDMC so far.

https://inara.cz/inara-api/

I went from 3% to 32% towards Post-Captain Sunday night, and from 32% to 80% last night running rescues. I take the rep-paying missions and always take the highest rep payouts, esp if there's a high rep w/engineering map payouts. (It feels to me like engineering mats are the new currency) I figure I'll get to 100% tonight and run back to my home system (Parun) and run the rank mission if it pops up right away. I'll wait until next week to rank up the last notch from Post Captain to Rear Admiral next week, so by the weekend I should be there. I may not buy the vette right away, I want to build a little more bank first. I'm planning on doing some opal mining (which I enjoy) before picking it up. Then I plan on using the vette to get the bounties and bonds I need to unlock a couple of engineers.

Of course before I buy a vette I'll have to get a cool paint job, and more importantly come up with a good name!

I mine in a Python, and I've made a few changes to my build in Orbis I have to do in game, and then I want to do some more engineering on it. I have the mats, but I'll have to fly to Farseer for the blueprints that aren't pinned. I'm also thinking about picking up a DBX to try since they are cheap, and I understand that since they are smaller they are a little easier to find landing spots for in rough planetary terrain. I'll keep my ASP for explo, but I may wind up using the DBX as a taxi/planetary lander/mat gatherer if I like it.

I use Inara too, with EDMC, though sometimes it doesn't seem to update.

I'm also using EDEngineering for my engineering planning, and works great. If you aren't familiar with it, you can create a "shopping list" for a planned list of engineering you want to do, and it will even tell you what you would need to use the material traders to make up anything you are short on. It also has a robust filter you can really shop and sift for what you want.

To buy and A rate a ‘vette ( bought at Jameson) cost me just under 500 million. Just a heads up, JC

He's got it.

I checked out the Vette, which I hadn't in a long time. I am nowhere near one neither rank nor money.

But egads. 8 utitlities and what, 12 optionals?

Is there anything you can't fit on a Vette? Good grief. No wonder you need 500 million.

Yeah that won't break the bank it will put a big dent in it!
That's why I want do do some mining before I buy it, to ease the pain so to speak.

My rebuy is circa 21 million

Not quite any longer guys. INARA recently went from using the API to using the Frontier Authentication Service, which is a much better way of gathering data IMO since it removes the middle man (EDDI, EDMC, etc.) and required updates for them.

So I got my next Fed rank this evening - I had to laugh because the mission itself was a literal BEER RUN!!!

I see a lot of folks discussing Engineering in Elite as well and thought I'd share my thoughts on the matter. I've written a progression guide for the War Hawks to help simplify the process and minimize having to unlock multiple engineers that can do the same thing. For example, I know a lot of people unlock Farseer first, and I did too when I first began. But she is actually not the best choice if you're trying to minimize material costs.

Martuuk in Khun is actually a better choice to start with since you'll need to unlock her and get enough ranking to unlock Qwent ( You'll need the Sirius System Permit to access him) which will lead you to Palin and the almighty Grade 5 Thrusters.

Hopefully the PDF I've attached below is accessible for everyone. If not, let me know and I'll host it up someplace else.

Engineering Progression

While the Engineering path can be quite "grindy" it is very much worth the time and effort it takes as you will see incredible benefits once you're upgraded.

I saw that but didn't know my Frontier ID. Clearly I didn't read the instructions because it says right there it will be generated when you link it.

What advantages does it offer? Aside from needing a separate program? Is there anything that EDMC does that the Frontier one does not?

EDMC can generate data files on your computer that can then be used in other tools such as Trade Dangerous or online shipbuilders like E:D Shipyard or Coriolis which can be handy if you're wanting to see what a specific upgrade might do before actually buying or engineering it.

Thanks Boomer for the info


Last night I was looking through my fleet and seeing what engineering I wished I could do if only I had the mats. So I put together a list of the stuff I had the least of but needed the most.

Chemical Distilleries
Chemical Manipulators
Configurable Components
Improvised Components
Conductive Components
Polymer Capacitors

I then grabbed the Courier and was ready to set off in search of a thousand USSs to hopefully gather a few of the above list. So I Googled it to see what sort of states I needed to concentrate on. But I kept seeing Davs Hope. Now, I knew of it of course. I knew that folks get mats there and swear by it. But I'd never been. I plotted it and saw it was just a few jumps in Dawnbreaker (AspX) and off I went on this new adventure. And Oh My God.

As I said to Wingy last night while I was there "Like a crack addict set free in Crackville". I spent a couple of hours there turning it in to the Davs Hope Grand Prix, turning lap after lap. Got so much stuff I can't believe it. I'll skip the regret about never having done this before, and thinking about how much further along I would be if I had. Stuff on that list that I had zero of, I now have fifty of. Crazy. I felt like I was cheating, but at the same time felt I deserved it haha. Even got stuff I had never seen before. Electromechanical Arrays for instance. New discovery for me, and now have 46 of them

And it kickstarted engineering again for me. Took the FDL to the Dweller and swapped the Burst Lasers for Beams, and changed the Huge MC from Auto Loader to Corrosive at Marco's. All multicannons went to G5. It hits harder now. What a successful session


I also plugged in the values for Wingy's HUD colors. Not sure what's going on, as I double checked that I entered them right. But it's different. The result is pretty good though and I'll keep this for now. It has the color separation I wanted, and green for friend is back. I like it.