Prepare to be (Bulletin) Boarded
Elite Dangerous Tips for Beginners
When starting out and likely for your foreseeable future, one of the most important beginner tips in Elite: Dangerous that we can impart on you is to be aware that Bulletin Boards are your new god now. Elite: Dangerous‘ version of a quest giver, you’ll always find these Bulletin Boards in a port.
They’re not always going to have something worthwhile when visit smaller stations however. Take a trip to the larger hubs that look like the sort of dice you’d throw in a tabletop RPG or the strange vibrating things sold behind black curtains and you’ll find tasks which are more likely to fit.
They come in all sorts of flavors. Anything from taking political data between stations to ferrying bio-waste (read as: space poop) and even blowing up craft to steal their black boxes can be embarked upon along with many more.
Sometimes you’re going to want to go off bounty hunting on your own or engaging in some light commodity speculation, granted. Until you get to that point though, the Bulletin Board is your home.
Even as you progress further into Elite Dangerous, the Bulletin Board is an important place to keep checking in on. Some of the rewards offered for almost no effort are pretty damn good. You can find your way to new bounty hunting grounds or pick up an amazing trade route just by investigating this board.
Like the look of that Federal Dropship or Imperial Cutter? Then you’ve got no choice but to do Bulletin Board missions in order to boost your reputation with that faction.
The better your reputation is with each station the more missions available to you. There’s so much money in these, especially early one, that you can’t pass up the opportunity to get plenty of cash flowing through your coffers.
Take the Blue Pill
Elite Dangerous Tips for Beginners
Missing your exit on the highway is nothing short of universally annoying. That momentary lapse in concentration is always followed by punching the dashboard, blaming kids in the back, and throwing that useless SatNav out of the window because of course none of it was your fault.
In Elite: Dangerous it leads to such fun adventures as realigning your trajectory and playing with the throttle.That is of course unless you become a member of the Blue Man Group and stick to blue like a Smurf on LSD.
By lining up your throttle with the blue segment on the left of your throttle meter, situated to the right of the map readout, you can enjoy something akin to cruise control.
Whatever ship you’re in will accelerate towards the location then decelerate when you’re close. It’s far from perfect though. Even though it does automatically adjust your speed your focus shouldn’t drift too far from it. Resting the throttle in the lower quarter of this bar does bring the speed down closer to the desired point however.
Usually, it’s best to adjust your speed when it is around one tenth of the distance to your location. For example, when you are 20LS (Light Seconds) away from Daedelus station and traveling at 2.00c, start to bring the speed down. This should never ever go to a point where your ETA, displayed at the bottom of your destination when targeted, is less than 0.07s.
As said before though, it’s far from perfect. If you aren’t careful you’ll still zip past your destination at high speed. To get to your intended target as fast as humanly possible, throw the throttle right up to the top of this blue bar then pull it to the bottom when you’re 10 seconds away from your stopping point. More often than not, you’ll come in at a near perfect speed.
The Great Escape… Vector
Elite Dangerous Tips for Beginners
Interdiction is a bitch. There’s no other word for it. You’re flying along doing your bulletin missions or lugging around a Cargo Hold full of Palladium and some son of a goblin decides to pull you out of high speed travel. It might be pirates out to steal your booty.
It might even be the System Authority Service doing a routine spot check. Whatever it is, thanks to the Escape Vector minigame of Elite: Dangerous you can avoid Interdiction.
When some nefarious evil doer or goodie-two-shoes authority figure tries to pull you out of Supercruise, the whole screen goes a little… well fucked up. A blue hue fills your window and the very ship protecting you from the unforgiving vacuum rattles like a barn door in a tornado. If you’re trying to avoid this then whatever you do, make sure that throttle is pushed right to the limit.
On your screen is displayed a circle that looks similar to a target icon. In order to escape Interdiction, you have got to ensure that your own targeting reticle is close or upon this blue circle as much as possible.
Two bars are also displayed to the left and right of your targeting system. The blue bar on the left is the one you need to fill up while the red bar opposite is one you’ll want to see empty. It takes plenty of course correction and maneuvering to fully utilize the Escape Vector but when you do, you’re free and clear.
There are times mind you where suffering an Interdiction is a good thing. Those times are when you’re a bounty hunter. Should an enemy pirate pull you out of Supercruise, this is the perfect opportunity to surprise them with a bucket-load of fire in return for their mistake.
To do this, widely known as submitting to an Interdiction, simply decelerate completely and prepare to do a merry amount of damage to whoever dares to interrupt your Elite: Dangerous time. When you’re in systems that are listed as being in a state of Anarchy, every Interdiction will be a Pirate so be warned.
USS: Elite Dangerous
Elite Dangerous Tips for Beginners
Flying from port to port may be an easy way to make money, but it does lack any sort of adventure. We don’t all want to dig up minerals and ship them across the galaxy all day. Some commanders can’t think of anything more painful than shipping 120 tonnes of biowaste to an agricultural station.
For those commanders, and many others, there is a saving grace in Elite: Dangerous. That grace comes in the shape of Unidentified Signal Sources, shorted to USS by the Elite: Dangerous community.
Visible around star systems during Supercruise, whatever can be found at each Unidentified Signal Source is almost complete randomized. If you’ve got missions in your Transactions tab there’s every possibility that in a USS will be a trader/pirate/samaritan who wants to ask for you to change allegiances.
When you’re just randomly flying around they can contain randomly floating goods or even battles between Wanted characters and security forces. Whatever they’ve got, it’s always worth investigating them if you’re not doing something incredibly important. You never know what you’re going to find.
Investigating these random spots in Elite: Dangerous often leads to a bounty of goodness being bestowed upon you. Most importantly though, they just break up the monotony of wandering through systems on mission after mission.
Except when your objective is time sensitive. While fines are only small, they can add up if you drop into a USS only to be blown into space bits by that guy flying a Python.
They can take a few minutes to show up so don’t expect to leave a station and suddenly be surrounded by random events to fly over to. New ones appear pretty frequently, so much so that you could see multiple opportunities pop up between entering a system and flying towards your destination.
One small additional note here too. For the love of all that is holy (or unholy) check the goods to see if they’re stolen or not. If they are, you’ll have to venture into a dark world of silent running and speedy boosts towards stations if you’d prefer avoid fines to paying them.
Landing Ahoy
Elite Dangerous Tips for Beginners
Elite: Dangerous‘ galaxy is, as the title suggests, a pretty unsafe place to be. Pirates stalk traders to destroy their ships and plunder whatever remains. Authority Vessels shoot ne’er-do-wells on sight just because they were naughty once.
Hell even the stars will try to cook you in a way the domestic microwave can only dream of should you get to close. They pale in comparison to the greatest enemy any pilot faces in Elite: Dangerous. It isn’t wildly spinning asteroids or space junk. Oh no this villain lays in wait for your inevitable arrival.
Landing.
Finished laughing at the suggestion yet? Ok good. Landing has claimed more lives in Elite: Dangerous‘ Milky Way than explosive space diarrhea, choking, loneliness, and piracy combined. When you’ve just been blasting through the stars at many lightyears a second, actually stopping to refuel or rearm is an absolute nightmare. So how do you prolong your life without killing yourself on the side of a space station?
First thing’s first, get lined up properly. The larger space stations have incredibly small entry points which are difficult to fit through for anything bigger than a Cobra.
When you’re about to move through this, always try to do so with the opening horizontal on your screen. A Sidewinder or Viper might be able to squeeze through at a 90 degree angle but that doesn’t mean a Python or Lakon Type-9 ever will. Get into this habit to avoid smashing bigger ships into the side when you forget the size of it.
Secondly you’ll want to get that Landing Gear out double early to help slow you down. The inside of any space station isn’t exactly massive (in relation to your interstellar vessel that is). So tearing around inside at full throttle is bound to end with a few floating bits of a debris and a sloppy red smudge – that’s you – on the station walls.
Move inside at half throttle maximum. Also don’t forget to use your thrusters to adjust your vertical and horizontal position. Using those will make landing 1000 times easier.
Last but by no means least, say please. If you fly into a space station without permission you’ll be warned and then fined. Should you outstay your welcome the place you’re trying to land can and will blow your impolite little backside into the nearest Nebula.
Jump to the Contacts Panel during your approach and Request Docking at your intended destination. Hey it sounds simple but nearly everyone forgets this.
I know I do.
Published: May 5, 2020 11:00 am