Returned to Barnwell from the sightseeing mission. Added about 6,000 light years and it stands at 197k. This is the Orca I flew on this one

Sunburst

Normally it has a class 3 GFSDB in it to free the biggest slots for cabins, but I swapped in the class 5 for this trip. Good jump, rather fast and as mentioned it it runs cool, Supercruises at 14%. Love cool runners. The Orca is such a great ship, but is right near the bottom of popularity lists. We like it that way.

If you stood out on the embarkation platform and found all of Elite's ships lined up ready to whisk you away to your destination, it would be the Orca you stepped aboard. In the Orca, you have already arrived

Yeah, the numbers sound more impressive than they really are - I made it once slightly beyond SagA* - there are plenty of people that made multiple circumnavigations.

Straightening it out, it would be about one roundtrip.
Another "impressive" number - I still have the grand total of 0 neutron-boosted jumps. despite these long trips. For me exploration is more about vsiting systems than making distance.

Yeah, about 2kly around the bubble it's hard to still find unvisited systems - best chance are K, M and brown dwarf systems, but apart from the Ks, the others mostly just have snowballs in them...

Cool trip, thanks for posting that. Looks like you stopped at a few pubs along the way?

Even though I said your numbers are roughly double mine, that's not true of exploration data. I'm just approaching 1 billion at this point, and 500m+ of that came on that one Colonia trip.

I've been back now for a couple weeks. Dabbling in this and that to boost the Inara ranking. This is an ideal goal, as the posts keep moving and I've a long way to go with progress incremental at best. As of this moment I am the 6622nd-ranked Inara pilot. I've only moved up about 100 spots. But missions like that sightseeing one are really good. The ranking uses your totals to calculate points, and these missions bump the numbers in several categories -- jumps, jump distance, systems visited, level 3 scans and passengers delivered if it's a transport mission.

I farted around last night with the idea of fully engineered railguns for the stability perk, which would eventually net them 50% less heat output... 5 rails and no shields. Might be fun to try. What's the fastest and most efficient way to get components to do the engineering so I don't waste much time?

Also, what's the fastest way to accumulate cash on the scale of 100+ million an hour? I know there are folks doing this. I have 83 million in the bank, so I have something to work with.


I did a bounty hunter mission last night that turned out to be way more than I expected. Something about having to go to a station on a planet and access a listening post? That was bizarre, anyways, on my first attempt I didn't realize what a data scanner was, or that I had to target some grey object when I got close to the post, so I got shot up. I gave it a second shot, and succeeded, but because I was running a railgun boat with no shields, I lost my engines and FSD trying to fly away, and found myself in the uneasy situation of falling to the ground with no control of my ship...

Reboot repair, fingers crossed, dirt coming closer...

Boom! Drives online, let's FSD outta here!

I don't know how close I came to splatting onto the surface, but I reckon I was a hair's gander on a chimp's arse.

Whew.

OK first, I gotta say I am happy to see your post Blastman. For several years now I've hoped you would give Elite another go. And I bet, with the right engineering you can build a ship with fewer rails that hits way harder than your old all-rail boat did, if five rails still proves too toasty. Heat engineering is something I focus on, so I can help you there. The key I think will be to reduce the heat footprint throughout the rest of the ship so that the rails don't cook it.

The fastest way to get mats you need is to trade for them at a material trader. Inara is very useful for finding the closest one. Not sure if you're on Inara, but if not I highly recommend it. Not only does it keep track of where you are so you can find the things you want in closest proximity, but it has all blueprints and keeps track of your mats on board so you see at a glance what you might still be short of.

=1]Inara Mat Trader Finder

The main problem with mat traders is the exchange rate, which is strongly titled toward the house. And then, you need mats to actually trade. Not sure what you might already have. The two main ways I obtain my mats (among some others) is

-- Investigating Unidentified Signal Sources (USS) and in particular, the High Grade Emissions. They have the highest grade mats in them most of the time. And if they aren't useful at the mo, these become your trade currency to get the ones you need.

-- Combat Sweeping. This is my term for the role I have carved out for one of my Kraits, Poison Whiskey. Configured for combat, with a collector limpet and cargo rack. I then fly it in Compromised Nav Beacons and RES sites, pausing now and then to scoop the detritus of battle. I do a little of this just about every time I log on to keep the stocks high. When categories begin to fill up I then stop by a trader and trade up, evening out the stocks and boosting the counts on the highest grade ones.

The fastest way to make dosh right now is platinum mining I do believe. But the market fluctuates, and Frontier throw curveballs at us regularly so it changes. But mining will be the ticket for quick money.

I think the bounty mission you describe is one of the Urgent Kill Order ones? I avoid those. Assassinations, bounty hunting in CNBs and RES, and combat zones (combat bonds, not bounties) are a better way in my view.

I'm currently running Passenger missions in a Python from Robigo Mines to the Sirius Atmospherics Tourist Beacon in Sothis (60 light years/2 jumps for me).

Stuff the passengers in. Make about 13-20 million per round trip. Each trip takes ~10-15 min or less if you push it.

So for me about 60-100 million an hour and you can probably stuff more cabins in than I have done and raise this a little.

Lots of YOUTUBE videos and guides for this "not yet nerfed" Credit Farming Method.

Yep, stacking pax missions is another good way to make coin. Bounty hunting is hot right now, never paid better too. Exploration can pay off handsomely with the right bodies scanned and probed.

Which ship are you wanting to use the rails on Blastman?

Disclaimer, I have not watched this video, but it seems to be a fairly recent guide to Materials farming..

Now that you posted that Rec (I have also not watched it) I see I was remiss in my post above, since I only really gave advice on getting manufactured mats.

For raw mats I do the old school 'shoot rocks with my SRV' type prospecting, although there are better ways to do it now (geological sites)

For encoded I scan every ship I can, no matter what I am doing. And every now and again I do some wake scanning outside busy stations. I built a rocket sled so this is fun. No wake is going to get away from this thing. 835 boost


iEagle Wake Scanner (Zoom zoom)

And because money is not important to me any more, I almost always take G5 mat rewards from the missions I fly, if available. Five Modified Embedded Firmware for example will go a long way at the mat trader.

Eh, I have a lot of ships, but none of the biggest ones.

Most expensive ship I earned through piracy was a fully upgraded Clipper, but that only has two rails on one side, because the ship is so wide, they never converge properly on targets if I run four.

I don't think Elite has a way to adjust convergence these days? They did not in the past.

My five rail boat is my Cobra MKIV

I sometimes run six rails on my ASP Explorer

My Diamondback has three rails

The game seemed to do something with armor--ships don't feel nearly as tough when running shieldless armor boats, not like they used to be.

The Krait looks nifty, and I always wanted a Python but never got the funds to do so. I'd love to do some robberies at CGs again, but I need engineering I gather to even bother with that now. I wouldn't even think of running rails on my Vulture, and think I have around 12 - 15 different ships.

Yeah, Krait II is my favorite ship in Elite. But all have their strengths (even the T-9)

I think this is doable. I just had a bash through EDSY (Elite Dangerous Ship Yard) and mocked up a Cobra IV with five rails. I prefer Coriolis for ship builds, but EDSY is far better for heat analysis. It has a Thermal section that displays heat at full throttle with all weapons firing, so you can run some build theory before spending the mats. The main issue I think might be dissipating the heat, extending the time for follow on volleys. Heat sinks only last so long (although you can synthesize them)

Rails just aren't something I have experience with and I don't even really know the best mods for them. On the mock up I made all long range with a few super pen and a couple feedback cascade. I think sturdy engineering reduces heat.

What I think I would do on the Cobra is put say three rails and two thermal vent beams. The beams can be used to quickly cool the ship either before or after the rail volley.

Another consideration for such a build will be the Power Distributor, which has to support those rails.

Yeah, the Cobra had max equipment from when I built it in 2015. At the time I was using the ship to duel fully kitted human piloted FDLs and win.

Heat is primarily a function of power draw. So with your ships already built, any that are too hot can possibly be made right by reducing the power draw. And of course there are other ways, such as thermal spread and low emissions engineering.

You can drop the power through module and engineering choices and also by shutting down modules that aren't needed in combat, either manually or through module priorities in the right hand panel.

The Orca I posted at the top of this page has this sort of engineering to make it run so cool. The Orca isn't a combat ship really, but the concepts carry over. The main issue is that often heat concerns and combat concerns run counter to one another. Just another reason why ship building in Elite is so much fun.

I have watched mat farming video and can attest to the accuracy and efficiency of it. It entails a little bit of running around for the raws. I think I had to go 30-40 jumps to a few planets, but I maxed out all the G4's and used the mat trader to get the specifics I needed for what I wanted to do.

I didn't need much of the engineering mats, but I maxed out my Imperial Shielding (G5) in almost no time and it gave me enough trade value to get the rest.

EDEngineer is also a great tool to plan out any engineering you wish to do. It will look at your current stock and tell you what you need and what you can trade for. So if you get a ton of Imperial Shielding for example, using EDEngineer you might find you can trade your way to what you need. It's a little clunky and takes a bit of getting used to, but it's a go-to for me.

Yes. ED Engineer is great. INARA can do almost the same stuff as EDENGINEER and is a little easier to use. I was never very good at organizing my blueprints and such but I could always use either tool before making a trip to an Engineer to make sure i had everything.

Is this INARA thing easy to set up?

Can I transfer engineered components between ships?

Also, it says I have access to level 3 blueprints for sturdy mount, but it only lets me select one?

Something about must complete all lower grade blueprints of same type. Does that mean I have to do all the kinds of railgun mods before I can go to level 2 grade in one particular one?

You basically create an INARA account, link it to your FRONTIER account and it automatically transfers all your information, (ships/Cargo/mats etc.) or you can do manual imports of your logs. I also use ED Market Connector and it can be set to send data to INARA in real time as well. Your engineered components can be transferred between ships, (assuming they are in compatible slots) but you need to Transfer them out of one ship into storage then switch ships and Transfer them FROM Storage to the ship.

You don't have to go through all the blueprints to go up to mods, but you do have to step through the various grades in one particular mod to apply the next one. Your TOTAL access to grades of Mods is granted whenever you rank up with any one blueprint.

Rec's got it. I would say it's simple, but not always easy. That's because sometimes I run in to issues linking accounts. Could be my ineptitude, but it happens.

Like Rec, I also use Elite Dangerous Market Connector. This is a handy utility that acts as the bridge between Elite and the third party sites I use. Each time you dock or log it updates your info and sends it to sites like Inara or Elite Dangerous Star Map (which tracks exploration stuff like discoveries). EDMC is also very handy to quickly export my ships to Coriolis or EDSY. And a single click on the EDMC interface takes me to the system I am in on EDSM if I want to learn more about it. Vital tool for me.

When engineering a module one thing that's helpful to know is that when rolling a certain grade, the grade above is locked out until you reach a certain percentage, at which point the next higher grade unlocks. At this point you want to start rolling the higher grade. There is no benefit to 'completing' the lower grade before moving up.


So I logged on last night without much of a plan. I ran an Elite assassination in the FDL, another Deadly 'Vette, and returned to Barnwell. I swapped to Poison Whiskey (Krait II), and brought up the build to look it over. Most of my ships are mostly done, but close inspection reveals many things modified to 97% of G5 or whatever. Not fully done because those tiny little slivers of progress cost precious mats. This is especially true of things like HRPs and shield boosters. As the ship I fly most I reasoned it deserved some attention. Another issue with this ship is the fact I have a class 4 and a class 6 slot with racks. The class 4 used to have a HD HRP in it, but the shields never go down, so I dropped the HRP to shave the mass, you all know how I like 'em light and fast.

And since I don't employ minions, the class 6 slot, which would be very useful for a fighter hangar say, is not being taken full advantage of. So I pondered it and wondered how I could make better use of it. Something I've been meaning to do for a long time is unlock Guardian Shield Reinforcements. I've been carrying a blueprint around since we all did that Guardian site a couple years ago. I had the power cells needed for the unlock, but had zero of Pattern Delta Obelisk Data, Guardian Technology Components and Hardware Diagnostic Sensors. The last one can be purchased, but the others must be found in the wild.

So I looked in to it and soon was off to some Ancient Ruins sites with a couple of SRVs. Spent the next couple of hours relogging a lot, but eventually I had what I need, and a lot more too. Now I am on my way home, and will stop somewhere to pick up those sensors and finally get the GSRs unlocked. This was a nice diversion, mixing up the gameplay. I had forgotten to mount any point defense on the Krait, so I had to be on my toes and quick on the trigger, but sentinels aren't much trouble really.

When I finish it up, this is what it will be

Poison Whiskey

I'm not entirely happy with the shields. These were in storage when I built the ship originally, and have reinforced/fast charge. Thermal resist is lower than I'd like overall, so I may revisit this at some point. But shields like this are never going to go down in PvE unless you've taken on a wing assassination or something. So it's not a pressing issue as what it is is good enough. Eventually I'll probably swap the scoop and GSR around, but class 6 scoops cost a fortune!

Wow good job!! I never did unlock those Guardian Shield Reinforcements... I think I probably have space for them on my larger ships (Anaconda, Vette). Shoot me a link if you have one for grabbing that stuff. I know I don't have all of it, and I will have FOUND PURPOSE in ELITE ONCE AGAIN!! According to INARA, I have some GUARDIAN power cells but nothing else. Looks like i never even got the Blueprint!

1 Guardian Module Blueprint Fragment (0)
17 Guardian Power Cell (39)
20 Guardian Technology Component (0)
24 Pattern Delta Obelisk Data (0)
8 Hardware Diagnostic Sensor (0)

Ah, too bad, we could have done it together. Sure thing Rec, here's the link I used

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...farming_of_pattern_epsilon_for_guardian/

This one has the system I used for the technology components Synuefe NL-N C23-4, planet B 3 . Look for Guardian site POI

I used a different, much closer, system for the obelisk data, but still had to go to the above system for the tech components. So may as well just get it all at one spot?

I just rummaged through my flight log on Inara and this is the system where I got the obeslisk data, but there were no material towers, or whatever they are called, there to get the tech components

Synuefe XR-H d11-102

This one was around 250 light years out, while the first one is more like 750.