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The official unofficial subreddit for Elite Dangerous, we even have devs lurking the sub! Elite Dangerous brings gaming’s original open world adventure to the modern generation with a stunning recreation of the entire Milky Way galaxy. Here battles rage, governments fall, and humanity’s frontier expands – and you can impact it all. Welcome to the definitive massively multiplayer space epic.


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[DAILY Q&A] Ask and answer any questions you have about the game here!

Daily Q&A

Greetings, Commanders! This is the Daily Q&A post for r/EliteDangerous


If you have any questions about any topic, whether it be for the moderators, tips and tricks for piloting or general gameplay/development questions please post here!

Please check new comments and help answer to the best of your ability so we can see this community flourish!

Remember to check previous daily Q&A threads and the New Q&A FAQ.


WikiCareer ChartLore (Brief) • ThargoidsSagittarius Eye MagazineThe Elite Squadron

Game Update Summaries: CoreHorizonsBeyond2019-2020Odyssey

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Question about story missions and community goals.

I have been reading the Second Thargoids War wiki page yesterday. Timeline is presented as a really nice story. It felt like often when someone in the story requested help from independent pilots it resulted in some sort of in game event. I am aware of concept of community goals but I never took part in any and I have been plying just for few weeks.

How do you find out about some of those? Are there any events going on right now?

I am aware there are some titans parked outside of the bubble but that feels to me like an endgame activity. Anything for a new player to do to help with the war right now.

I am mostly looking for immersion and not best farming strategies for xyz.

u/NovitiateSage avatar

All CGs are posted at this link, you can sign up to a CG at any ship’s mission board.

https://inara.cz/elite/communitygoals/

Thank you! So nothing is running right now. It looks like there is not a set frequency. Have the frequency decreased over the years?

Any idea what a new player can focus on related to the war?

u/CmdrJonen avatar

CGs come and go, the frequency has decreased somewhat, but OTOH most of the recent CGs have had more tangible impact on the game.

Hell, you could consider the Thargoid war as a whole a massive CG.

New player suggestion for the war: Support recovery efforts, and check in what the AXI are doing, you can probably aim to outfit a scout sampling Conda and sample scouts (since the aim of scout sampling is to avoid interceptors, you can probably do it with minimal to no engineering, tho you risk death to hyperdiction).

Scout sampling uses research limpets (and a universal limpet controller) to farm samples from a thargoid scout. You drop into a target system and drop out of supercruise, wait for a thargoid interceptor to arrive and move far away from it, then kill off all but one scout, which you then sample the hell out of while killing reinforcing scouts. 

You then sell the samples to a designated AXI affiliated carrier which will use the samples for operations to evict the thargoids from the target system.

You can build a dedicated scout killer with just stock modules.

Also, a few modifications and some engineering a scout sampler can be refitted to collect bio pods from a Titan. 

And it is also decently well off for collecting manufactured materials, so it's not terrible for doing engineering unlocks (tho, you will want a medium or small ship for some outpost work).

u/forbiddenlake avatar

They used to be about 3 out of every 4 weeks. However, it seems they don't like to stack them with other galaxy-wide events. So with the Thargoid war and especially the Titans becoming vulnerable, named CGs have significantly tapered off.

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What is the Best HOTAS for Elite Dangerous? I'm looking at the Logitech x56 but not seeing good reviews for it's price.

Logitech X56 Review - Don't buy it, it's not worth it. (youtube.com)

How do these compare to the thrust master?

If you can get 2x VKB Gladiator NXT Evo, OTA for left hand.

Huge quality upgrade.

Bought X56 couple of weeks ago. Works fantastic.

I have the X56, purchased recently. Works great. Get mounts.

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u/ZeroGravitas_Ally avatar

How do the new SCO drives stack up in terms of jump range to the original FSDs when both are fully engineered? Is it worth engineering one for my Jumpaconda? How about my Krait P which currently runs the double engineered 5A FSD?

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u/ZeroGravitas_Ally avatar

Awesome, thanks!

u/forbiddenlake avatar

Except for size 6 V1, though you can't get those these days

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u/NickCharlesYT avatar

Is there a newer meta for grinding federation rank? I've been following this guide but the missions are few and far between. I've been lucky to get 2-3 missions per stop and the last time I docked at Perry's Folly there was nothing going to the two stations listed from federation factions at all.

Edited

I just got my rear admiral 2 night ago. After trial and error below is what I did. (You will need a ship with 700+cargo capacity like a Cutter or Type 9. I use the Cutter because I did the Imperial first.)
Go to Sol (need permission), there are 4 stations, Li Qing Jao, Abraham Licoln, M. Gorbachev, Galileo.
Pick up 4-5 star reputation jobs that are "mine, or source xx amount of xx" This could be mine 45 units of cobalt, source 90 units of tea etc. These are categorized as 'transportation' jobs.
Also jobs with wording 'transport 196 biowaste in the name of democracy". again the quantity and item to transport are not fixed. These are outgoing ones. Usually 5 star. Be careful about destination. Pick on less than 15ly away ones, and the destination starport. Avoid jobs with startport that are more than 3000 light sec away, waste of time. Some will have 25,xxx!! If you pick it up by mistake just abandon the job and clear the inventory which you picked up when you accept the job.
When I was 3 ranks away from rear admiral each 4-5 star job gives me 2% rank up. Therefore, don't donate, don't do courier, don't do assassination, spec op, group transport. Why? the first 2 gives you 2 stars, waste of time and money, the assassination, spec OP may be 5 star but takes WAY too much time, group transport may be 5 star but ship's capacity & destination make this one far from efficient in gaining % of ranks.
2 tips: if you transport some stuff in the name of democracy to near by star system's station, look at it's commodity market, a lot of time there are stuffs you can buy to fill your orders on hand.
Another is source xx amount of xx are mostly categorized into 3 types, raw material like cobalt, rutile, bauxite. These you can check in inara and find a station to buy all in once. Then there are high tech stuffs like advanced medical whatever as a major category, and consumable like tea, wine.
Avoid hydrogen peroxide, bromellite any items you need to buy from fleet carrier, they are super expensive and few. Gold, silver, palladium avoid them too expensive, etc. You will gradually find out.
This is what players call THE Grind, but if you don't grind it, it just is a thing to do. Each game session depends on RNG each round trip could be 1.5-2hour, and I can rank up 20-25% or more. I don't see it as a grind but just a job like trading, mining. I didn't want to make myself stressful. I think I spend more than 2 weeks to complete it and I didn't do it every day.

Lastly, at the abovementioned 4 stations, when you look through and pick jobs and there are no more, you can back out 1-2 times and go in, most of the time you will see 1-2 new jobs that are suitable.
When you achieve a 100% rank, at these federal stations you want to take only the courier jobs (ranks up jobs are yellow colored), if it is not courier, you can keep backing out and go in again until it is.
Edit: If you get interdicted due to you are carrying cargo, just submit (throttle to zero), when out of supercruise just keep boosting while your FSD cools down, about 3-4 seconds. Don't play the mini game it is a waste of time, and if you fail the mini game the FSD cool down time is very long. So you want to have a grade A thruster on your ship with some dirty engineering and drag to allow you to boost to 350-400 so the bandits can't catch up. But I suppose you can still do it without engineering because you have a shield.

Hope this helps.

u/NickCharlesYT avatar

Thanks CMDR! I've taken a similar approach and applied to Wally Bei which was recommended by another player. Works great! With the SCO drive, those distant stations are no longer a problem, as long as you pack enough fuel for the trip!

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u/Luriant avatar

This is the D2EA youtuber page, he don't play anymore.

Take my To-Do list, Point 9 have to Fed guides.

u/NickCharlesYT avatar

Thanks CMDR! I used the alt guide you posted over at Wally Bei with my cutter, much faster than yesterday so far, already to Lt Commander looking for my Corvette hopefully by the end of the weekend.

Appreciate the guides!

u/NickCharlesYT avatar

For anyone that happens upon this later, It seems rescue missions at damaged stations provide a more consistent source of higher reputation missions. Less time spent hunting for markets to buy cargo as well, and there's more money in it too! Just fit a big ship with a bunch of economy and a few business/first class passenger cabins and you'll find that rank grind is much easier.

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Do not have that many engineering mats to spare. How many tons or how many credits worth of items do i have to sell at Lyz Ryder's commodity market in order to get her to tier 3?

Allied is 12-24 million in profit. Tier 3 (which isn't the minimum you need, it's between 3 and 4, might as well take her to allied) is probably under 10 million in profits.

I'm pretty sure Engineers operate like other factions, it's profits not raw item value. Because her market margins are probably low, it might take a lot more than you expect. Unless you have a T9 or Cutter, you might consider mining which is pure profit. Her prices on Platinum and Palladium are pretty terrible, but around 400 tons (~2 hours of mining) should do it.

Oh, really? Where did you get those numbers from?

Yeah, I may just grab my Cutter and do some mining or some commodity hauling.

This is all with the assumption that exploration data value == trade profit, but that's a pretty good assumption based on trade research I've seen for gaining reputation and my own experience.

In 3.8, 12 million got you allied with everyone, but with 4.0 people were saying it changed.

So, I arrived in Colonia for the first time with 400 million exploration data and a spreadsheet to see what it takes to get allied with all factions I'd never seen before. I expected to find a new, single threshold.

It was all over the place, with no correlation based on population or number of systems or anything else that I was able to notice. The average range for most places was 12-24 (with a median of about 16) million. A few were higher. One outlier took 36 million. A few took less (lowest I saw was 8m IIRC).

That 10 million to get you solid into 3-4 is a somewhat conservative estimate. It will hopefully take you less.

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u/goddessloviatar avatar

Hello- do any thrustmaster T flight users have issues with button combinations recently? Old ps4 player that moved to pc some time ago, kept the old hotas and set it up with my old button combos as muscle memory is firmly set. Spent a couple of weeks away from the game just before the python mk2 update, now when I’ve come back I can’t use button combos without problems. Example- circle is boost. Circle + down is toggle landing gear. Previously the combo didn’t trigger the individual assignment, but now it does - meaning if I retract gear in a station I get catapulted at the mail slot… Square is hardpoints. Square+hat switch is look at panels. Now, square+hat right is deploy hardpoints, look at internal panel and one pip to wep. It’s maddening! Anyone else experiencing this or have a solution? I’ve tried rebinding EVERYTHING from scratch and still have the issue…

I’ve seen multiple posts over the past month recounting them same issue. Something with one of the recent updates. I don’t know of any fixes. I haven’t used mine in about a year as it lacks enough buttons which you are well aware, and now quite useless it would seem

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is an all MC mamba good?

u/forbiddenlake avatar

sure can be. all oc/incendiary with a small hi-cap/corrosive

Not terrible. Probably a great place to start if you've already mastered combat in an easier ship. The trick with the Mamba is that its fast but not very maneuverable. Kind of a worse FDL with extra speed, and the FDL already requires skills to make good use of it. It will take some practice to get use to it's rather unique way of flying.

If you haven't flown a Krait, start there and graduate yourself to a Mamba.

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