That throttle looks badass, JC.


DBond: Toe brakes for boost!

Thanks Mr B - the Virpil is nice piece of gear! I highly recommend it if you are in the market....

Sorrow bout that, D. Didn’t notice any comments from ya bout ‘em. Regarding the cost, I can’t really answer that as I was a tester. Think I sent him $15 to cover shipping from Croatia last spring. Since then, he has sent me 3 different sets of which I actually received 2. Shipping snafus due to pandemic and me moving 2k miles across country. Now, apparently he has an in States person to do the printing for us Amis. The damper cost $30 from Amazon. I know there is another DCS forum member also printing a set, think he’s charging $50 per set without the damper mount. I can’t imagine hegykc is charging more.

It’s funny, I used to do the same as you with putting my feet on the floor and just using my toes to use the pedals
Toe brakes I use as parking brake in SRV

No worries, I think it got snowed under during the BuffU memory lane walk (snowed under, see what I did there?)

Handbrake on SRV would make re-boarding a little easier eh? How long did you guys play before you realized there is a 'board ship' light on the HUD?

Boost on toe brakes? Hmmm, that could wo... crash!

Not that anyone would care or be impressed in any way, but I am gunning for the career record-low fines total for someone triple elite. I'm in with a shout! Suddenly finding myself boosting over the pad could derail me

I'm more John Spartan as far as fines are concerned.

Yes indeed.

And I made it up anyway, There's no such record, but my lifetime fines as of now total 11k I think. 22k in bounties. Been a while since I looked. Been a while since I got one. Last one was for limpeting a limpet, then ejecting it. Fines all around.

Logged in last night for a short session. Another HGE/bounty run in my home system in the combat Krait. Again I stayed until I ran out of ammo for the autoloaders, and raised combat rank one more point. Now at 56% Deadly. I've picked up about 16% since returning a month a go. About 1,320 to go. On average it's been one point for every 30 kills.

No one besides myself and Rec posted up their play time. And that's cool, no obligation to reveal. I wonder how many hours Wingnuts has? We should start a pool, and then one day while we are debating it, Wingnuts reveals it like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan telling the squad he was a school teacher back home

My guess: 8,800 hours.

So roughly 5673hrs and 27min! Nah, I'm not addicted! HA

Have had the game 2 years 3 months. Took a 8 month hiatus also after that long trip to TIR!!

Thanks Ram, that's impressive indeed, and you'll hit triple Elite before me no doubt. Thanks for posting that shot, it is interesting to me to compare the statistics. It gives good insight in to how others spend their time.

And since you posted up your crimes, I must be honest, and show mine.

Here's my rap sheet!!



To be honest, most of my infractions came early on in the game. Lot's of them, a crap load of fines for speeding and bumping into other ships in stations. Yep, I've killed a few Cops, but hey, them fuggers shot at me first......I thinkt!! Oh, and then there's the fines for illegal or illicit cargo, I'm sure a couple million right there!! HAHA

Who else loves to boost through the slot?

Every time I take off!! I take the incoming lane to avoid the outgoing ships!! Hit a few T10's that were incoming, never killed a ship that way, lucky me!!

I'll offer up mine for comparison's sake

It's interesting to compare. Ram has driven the SRV much more distance. That seems like a heck of a lot. I've got 15k more hyperspace distance in less than half the jumps. Our level 3 scans are close, but my efficiency total is pathetic. So much so that I wonder if it is accurate, but there it is. My explo profits are much higher, reflecting the Colonia trip after the big update that boosted explo payouts. I pulled in over 500m on that trip alone. Looks like we both made Colonia our max distance from start

I've played about 1/4 as long, 1,409 hours and counting





And here's my crime page. It's 12k in fines, been a bad boy

25m in fines seems excessive haha!

Yes it is cool to see the comparisons! Bad Boy................WHAT DOES THAT MAKE ME............Oh yeah, Excessive.

You've played in game 1/4 of the time. But how long have you had ED? Probably a few years more than I, like I said I've only had it for 2yrs and 3 months and took a 8 month hiatus. LMAO!!!

It's all cool. But now, after this CG I've got to get to modding my Conda with Guardian stuff for sure!!

Thanks for posting that up!!

I think I started in April of 2017.

I love the fact that people enjoy it so much that they put that sort of time in to it. Only a handful of games I've played have more time in to them than Elite. There are several sims that I sunk insane time in to, but before Steam and no way to know a total. Falcon 4 for sure, I bet 5000+ easy. Who knows? Grand Prix Legends would have a couple thousand. Total War Medieval 2 probably. Maybe a couple more? If it breaks out in to series, instead of titles, then sims like Silent Hunter, and games like Combat Mission shoot up in to this list.


Since Steam, my most-played game is Europa Universalis IV, with about 3,500 on the clock.

Falcon 4 I have thousands of hours in. I think the other games I have the most time in are...

Team Fortress 2 - 1600+ hours
Team Fortress Quake (original and TFC) - probably thousands
StarCraft 1 - Thousands (world champion titles require dedication)
Supreme Commander - Who knows?

Elite Dangers - 500ish?

Outside of of video games and computers:

Martial Arts - thousands of hours

There's a theme here, if you haven't discovered, already: I enjoy outwitting other humans.

There's no way I could even comprehend the time I spent in Falcon.

Lets see, original 3.0, then 4.0, then the RP series, the SP series, the original BMS, DarkFalcon/GlobalFalcon, whatever it was called, FreeFalcon for several years and then a developer on the FF team for almost 5 years. Then BMS. All the testing I did. I definitely flew more hours testing then I did flying for fun in our Squadron, the 420th in MP. I still continue to dev on BMS, but not much, it's on the back burner when it comes to ED!

So for the past 20 some years, Falcon was the Sim I played, and ED for the last couple. I've dabbled in a few others but nothing significant.

I'm one of the types that when I find something I like, like Falcon and ED, I just do that. Don't want to be distracted from other games, so I stick to mainly one at a time....for YEARS! LOL

I have played Total War Medieval and Silent Hunter, Diablo and Oblivion(finished both), but not much, for a few months.

A number of F4 vets have found a lot to like in Elite. I have

Logged on yesterday to catch up with Ram on voice comms. I sent him a PM, telling him I was on comms if he wanted to chant. Haha! Surprised he didn't turn and run right there! Meant chat of course and we did so.

Those pirate threat activity instances are no joke, the ships in there are jacked to the nines. Arriving first, I bounced a Deadly Chieftain solo, and it was soon evident I had grabbed a tiger by the tail. I hadn't lost my shields to NPC fire in nearly three years, but in this single engagement, the Chieftain not only shot my fancy shields away, he chewed the hull down to 61%. I was at the point where I was thinking I might have to wake out. But even though my shields collapsed, they were stout enough to outlast his by quite a bit so I won the race to zero hull. Whew!! I had no idea what I was getting in to, but even though I got shot up I felt like all the engineering I've done to this ship really paid off. A lesser ship would have been lost.

While all this was going on Wingnuts and Ram were having a leisurely chat while I am hanging by my fingernails.

My previous best bounty was 390k. I added 200k to that in this instance. The ships were paying out very well, and hell yeah they should. But it would have been a much harder if I hadn't teamed up with Wingnuts after he arrived. Once were were in our Rotte, the combination of his frags and my beams and autoloaders made -- well not short work exactly -- but they died all the same. That was fun and the most challenging NPC opponents I have come across in Elite.

We killed enough for me to get in the top 50% of the CG for now.

I saw a number of those Pirate Threat instances in SOTHIS when I was doing the ROBIGO-->Sirius Atmospherics Passenger runs and meant to go back there in the Vette for some Bounty Hunting. Never did and I am sure there are some of those closer to home. Had no idea there was a COMBAT CG going on!! Been distracted by Mass Effect Andromeda and haven't been back in Elite for a week or so. I'll have to jump on for some Bounty Hunting fun.

Yep, come on and join the fun Rec. The boys cleaned up last night, but I was out on patrol near Truk in USS Bowfin. Kinda lost track of the time, but a spectacular patrol it was!

If you drop in a pirate threat solo, bring your best ship.