Elite Dangerous Session 8

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here.  Silent running in a ship that uses lasers extensively is not terribly effective. I had the opportunity to test it out for a short time in my latest visit to the RES. My shields had been wiped out in a combat against a python when a Federal Drop Ship dropped in. Ducking and weaving seemed to avoid most damage long enough for me to finish off the python but once I turned on the FDS my ship was unfortunately directly in the line of fire.  With shields gone anyway there was little lost in activating silent running mode.  I am not sure if it helped to avoid incoming fire initially, since we were basically head on to each other but I feel it broke his tracking once I got around to his flanks. As soon as I opened fire myself however I rapidly overheated. An all multicannon loadout would probably have fewer issues.

Somewhere along the line I managed to pick up a wanted flag so I eventually had to run when a couple of police ships joined in. The FDS was almost dead before I made the jump.  That was basically the end for this session as I docked up, repaired and waited out the bounty timer before returning to LTT 15574 and Haxel Port ready for next time.

I have sold off the Viper and re-invested the surplus back into the DBS. I now have a “golden” A-rated ship  that flies pretty nicely! With the weekend ahead of me I can look forward to finishing off with this ship and probably switching to a Vulture. 

A quick look at my statistics says I’ve amassed 284 confirmed kills at an average of a bit over 28,600 credits per bounty. Smaller ships are just a lot easier to kill!

Until next time,

CMDR Maya Ulniian, 29/30th April 3302

Elite Dangerous Session 7

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here. I spent the last session alternately flying the Viper and the Diamondback Scout. There is little to pick between them as a RES grinding ship.  The DBS’s weaker shields are more than compensated by higher armour and better agility. Both ships are fast enough in raw speed and boost that they can run from most enemies.  Weapon loadout is the same on either ship, being 2 small and 2 medium hard points. The larger powerplant of the DBS allows for more flexibility but both ships are capable of running all-laser configurations without too much heat trouble. 

 

One thing I did note with either ship is that gimballed pulse lasers seem to do more damage to subsystems than gimballed beams. I had less luck with multicannons but also flew fewer sorties with them active. My half-baked theory on pulse being better than beam is that each shot has a chance to penetrate armour into the module below. The beam laser’s continuous fire is treated as only one shot but the pulse laser gets half a dozen shots in over a similar time period. Burst lasers generate lots more heat than pulse, so I haven’t been flying with them.

 

Since I am still a pretty poor marksman I’ve not really tried rail guns or plasma accelerators.  They generate high heat so are more likely suited on the DBS than the viper. Missiles and cannons/frag cannons I passed over due to ammo limits. 

One interesting thing I saw when checking out GalNet articles for the DBS was a commander who flew with no shield, maximum armour and 4 multicannons. He made use of the DBS’s excellent heat management to fly in silent running mode, which makes the ship extremely hard to target. I am not sure that this is a viable configuration for RES hunting but repairs are relatively cheap so I may try it out.

Anyway, time to get back out in the black!

CMDR Maya Ulniian, 28 April 3302

Elite Dangerous Session 6

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here. So much for plans!  On a whim, I picked up a shiny new Diamondback Scout after watching some online combat footage. I had only a little over 2 million in cash so plenty of compromises had to be made. My original fit was something like this:

http://coriolis.io/outfit/diamondback/14C4C4D2D3A2D4C1b1b18180m04--B4292927.Iw1-kA==.Aw1-kA==

That configuration is a joy to fly. The shield is pretty weak but with very high agility and weapons that fire almost continuously it barely mattered. The existing Viper with mostly A-rated modules should outclass this midrange DBS but I was having so much fun I didn’t care! I ended my first run of bounty hunting with just under 1 million in bounties and barely 5% hull damage.

Four pulse lasers, backed by the A rated distributor and 3 or 4 pips in weapons are capable of almost continuous fire.  I feel that the larger powerplant manages heat a lot better even though it’s only C class. Speed, boost, total shield and armour are fairly similar but the agility of the DBS at 8/10 is amongst the best available.

Time to get back out there!
CMDR Maya Ulniian, 27 April 3302

Elite Dangerous Session 5

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here. Not a whole lot of interest to report. I’ve continued making trips to the Hi RES in my Viper Mk III and picking off worthwhile bounties. There have been no close calls or particularly challenging fights, mostly because I’ve been cautious with target selection. I only fight against enemy wings if they are either weak or there are plenty of police ships nearby. My small agile viper makes short work of most any ship.

I have tried several different weapon loadouts. I initially flew with 2 * small beam and 2 * medium multicannons. This was pretty effective, but didn’t seem greatly faster at killing the big ships. I’ve also tried various combinations of beam and pulse lasers, some of which cause heat and power management issues. My current laser loadout is 1 small beam, one medium beam on the left side and a small and medium pulse on the right side. The smaller class 1 weapons get the most use because they are top mounted – the class 2 gear has to wait until I pull up to get line of sight on a target.

My next move will probably be either a top of the line Diamondback Scout for a little over 7 million (ship plus insurance)

http://coriolis.io/outfit/diamondback/24A4A4D2D3A2D4C0s0s0p0p0m040404B4292927.Iw1-kA==.EwBhEYy6bI==

or a mid range Vulture something like

http://coriolis.io/outfit/vulture/04C5C4D3D5A4D3C1e1e0m04--B2----.Iw19kA==.EwBhEYy6ZI==

for about 8.5 mil.

Both of these are pretty fun to fly.  The Vulture is better at killing big high value ships but is a little more vulnerable than I am used to in that configuration. I’d need about 18 million for my preferred loadout.  I really should go back and try a Viper Mk IV with money no longer the limiting factor and see if I can fly it any better this time round. The Cobra Mk III is also an option, but since I’m purely a combat pilot at this stage a fighter ship is probably the better choice. 

Until next time!

CMDR Maya Ulniian, 26 April 3302

Elite Dangerous Session 4

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here. Today I lost another ship and came very close to financial ruin. As mentioned at the end of my last message, I swapped out my A-fit Eagle fighter for what should have been an upgrade, the very solid Viper Mk IV.  Not quite having the funds to equip it the way I would like, I had to compromise with mostly Class C modules. It is still a formidable craft but has certain shortcomings that were soon made apparent.

Full of optimism I launched out from Haxel Port again headed to the Hi RES. As I approached the rings I was interdicted and decided to fight it off. During the dodging and weaving trying to break the interdiction attempt my ship flew too close to the surface of the ring and forced an emergency frameshift exit. The viper shuddered its way out of supercruise and dropped back to normal space taking a small amount of hull damage and triggering a bunch of module failure warnings. On scanner were two ships, a Federal Drop Ship and a smaller craft that was just out of identification range.
The FDS was listed as wanted and immediately opened fire as soon as I was in range of its weapons. Deploying weapons and switching to combat mode I returned fire. After the first pass, my shield was almost half gone, but worse, the Viper is just not as agile as my previous ships, nor were the c-class thrusters up to the task. The FDS soon managed to pull range and turn its weapons to face me and my ship was too slow to get clear.  We exchanged fire for several passes and I had managed to drop his shield but was taking too much damage in return. I switched to a defensive configuration, stowed weapons and attempted to boost past him and make the jump back to supercruise but just couldn’t get far enough out of his range to make it. I dodged most of the incoming fire but eventually a lucky shot knocked out my engines and I was a sitting duck for the next volley.

The resulting insurance bill wiped out nearly all my cash reserves and I also temporarily lost access to all my control interfaces (OOC: elite D crashed!). When functionality was restored, I found myself back in Haxel Port with a new Viper Mk IV.

My cash reserves were very low, such that if I lost another ship I could not afford the full insurance and risked losing everything.  As one of my favourite holo-dramas says, “Fear is the mind killer”. I will face my fear and conquer it. As such I took yet another trip out to the High RES to hunt bounties.

Only a few small ships offered themselves up before a tempting Python arrived on the scene. In my Eagle, I’d killed a number of such ships fairly easily but that was not to be the case this time. The lack of speed and agility meant I found myself inside the enemy guns too often and I retreated back to Haxel Port with significant hull damage and not many bounty vouchers to show for it.

Slightly later, I took a trip to the Low RES and shot at the lesser pirates for a while to recoup some losses. The Viper Mk IV was just too slow for my liking so I decided to sell it off and buy a Mk III instead.  The difference was astonishing!  The Mk III is fast and agile enough that I barely ever get shot. In a little over an hour in the Mk III I had gathered a heap of bounties, including a Fer De Lance that was worth almost 360k credits. I’ve now got a much healthier bank balance – almost enough to consider an exploration build Hauler.
Onward to the next adventure!
CMDR Maya Ulniian 25 April 3302

Elite Dangerous Interlude 1

Real Life got in the way of game time so Maya’s adventures took a pause last night. Once I finish this and get it posted I will hopefully log in and try out the new Viper Mk IV.

My plans for both my second ED account, and a return to blogging after a very long absence are somewhat vague and unformed.  I had wanted the second account so I can set off exploring yet still have access to the activities back in the bubble. CMDR Cryptography, my first account, has a lifetime subscription to Elite Dangerous so gets access to all the new expansions for as long as Frontier keep making them. CMDR Maya Ulniian has only the deluxe edition, so thats the base game plus the horizons season. If my enthusiasm for the game is still high I’ll likely extend beyond that.

For now I’ll document each and every play session where I log in as Maya in a first person diary narrative. At some point progress will slow down so a blog post about her adventures may well cover several play sessions. 
I had a loose goal of grinding a modest 4 to 8 million budget, buying a DiamondBack Explorer then launching off on a 10k LY exploration trip in the local galactic neighbourhood.
A build like this:

http://coriolis.io/outfit/diamondback_explorer/03A4D5A3D3D3D5C---0202020232v4B42i2f.Iw1-kA==.Aw1-kA==

adds up to nearly  13 million but some cost cutting could be made to drop it closer to 8 mil. A 4 mil budget might be better suited for a Hauler without an SRV hangar.
There are plenty of exploration builds listed out on the internet but a lot are pre- Horizons. Also at this price point I’m likely to forgo an Auto Field Repair Unit so extra long trips may be an issue.

CMDR Cryptography has close to 100m at this time so I could sell some ships and head off into the black in a decent ASP Explorer – or I can knuckle down, get some faction grinding done and experience more of what the bubble has to offer.  Decisions decisions! Which CMDR stays and which goes into the void?  At the moment it’s still likely Maya who travels, at least for my first decent length trip.

The choice of Commander may also influence my blogging. I think I need the discipline of a daily post to overcome inertia and I’m not sure that an exploration trip would provide enough fodder for a regular posting schedule. After a time every system starts to blur into one another and the routine of jump, scoop, scan doesn’t make for compelling reading.

I also have other games to play, so Elite Dangerous will not be the only thing competing for fairly limited gaming time. The blogging too takes time away from, well, generating content.

In order to balance all these competing interests here is a loose plan:

• 2-3 posts from “Maya” describing a noob’s rise to an experienced pilot both as guide and in-character fiction.
• 1 post from either pilot, or just a general Elite Dangerous informational post.
• 1-2 posts of general gaming – probably SWTOR mostly at the moment, though perhaps WoW as we get closer to Legion release date.

No posts on the weekend, unless I miss one mid week.  Hopefully that keeps me focussed on task as I am a notorious altaholic and routinely jump between 2-3 different games in an evening’s play session. My kids, though usually asleep by the time I hit the keyboard, are a frequent distraction as well.
Time to finish a couple of chores then get back to Maya’s adventure!

Elite Dangerous Session 3

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here. My adventures continued in another quite short session the next day. I actually spent a fair bit of my available time searching GalNet or gossiping with the pilots of Mobius on voice comms instead of flying ships.  When I did get out into space there was plenty of action to be had!
All my available money was spent upgrading my Eagle. While not every component was A rated, all the core systems were.  My first trip for the session had a fit something like this:

http://coriolis.io/outfit/eagle/22A3A3D1D2A2D2C0p120p0mB42725-.Iw1-EA==.IwBhrSrI

A gimballed beam on the top mounted hardpoint and two burst lasers on the underside, powered by A rated power plant and distributor sure dish out the damage.  Heat started to become a problem in longer combats but was still manageable. 

The Eagle, even with a top tier fit out is still a tiny fragile ship. Taking it out to a High intensity RES site rather than the Low RES I had previously visited was possibly misguided. Initially things were going great – my first kill was an Anaconda with just under 200k bounty, quickly followed by a Python at about 130k. After that things got a little hairy as I hunted a Fer De Lance and his wingman.
 The FDL was reasonably easy to take down with the assistance of a couple of police fighters, but I was so focussed on staying out of his firing arc that I  didn’t notice his wingman had finished off his police target and was firing on my flank. I thought I had just caught a couple of stray shots from the FDL but was actually taking withering fire from the wingman.  The shields vanished quickly and hull plating was boiling away before I managed to pop the Fer De Lance and bring guns to bear on the wingman – who was flying a Vulture! No wonder he hit hard!

Vulture class ships are a heavy space superiority fighter. Not quite as agile as Eagles or Vipers they still manage to duck and weave pretty well and are very heavily armed for their size, with two Class 3 weapons. They also generally are heavily shielded and can have heavy armour as well – certainly a lot tougher than a half-dead Eagle! This one however was substantially damaged by the battles with police craft and I managed to out-fly him long enough to secure the victory.

Back in Haxel port after repair and refuel I revisited the outfitters to swap out the burst lasers for the pair of gimballed pulse I had used previously. They do slightly less damage but are a lot easier to manage the heat buildup. I also remembered to change my paint job for the Tactical Crimson instead of the Cobalt.

After a bit of R&R in the station I headed back out to the High RES. This time the pickings were fairly slim. I don’t even remember what ships I killed, but it was under 150k worth for several ships. The police group I was following engaged a pair of Imperial Clippers in a wing while I was chasing down a pirate Cobra Mk III.  Once I had the Cobra down I assisted a pair of police on what looked to be the weaker Clipper. He was down to about 25% hull when I started taking shots from his turreted weapon but my shield regeneration was coping ok. By the time we had him down to the low teens however, his friend had finished off the three police ships that had kept the wingman busy and suddenly I was the focus of two Imperial Clippers.

Turreted weapons do a bit less damage than gimballed or fixed weapons of the same size and type but it was still more than enough to shred my remaining shields and start boiling hull plates.  Four pips assigned to engines and two to system plus spamming the boost button just barely got me out of there in time. I made a very cautious landing at Haxel Port with 1% hull remaining!

After repairs and refuel, on the advice of CMDR Wife_Aggro from Mobius, I sold off my modules and exchanged my eagle for a Viper Mk IV with a mid-range fit-out of mostly C class equipment. My current net worth is just under 2 Million credits which I hope to expand more once I get this message posted. (No pictures this time. I've managed to delete the entire camera roll while tidying up previous shots!)
-    CMDR Maya Ulniian 21st  April 3302

Elite Dangerous Session 2

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here.
At the end of my last report, I had just purchased an Eagle class light fighter and given it some minimal upgrades after trading in my Sidewinder. A brief shakedown cruise out to the Low RES netted a few hundred thousand in bounties before I ended the day. This report is about my second fairly short session behind the flight stick. 

The first thing I did was visit the outfitters to upgrade a few items and apply a new paint job. I have a selection of different paint jobs for some of the cheaper ships as part of my pilot's graduation package, so I may as well show them off! I had also earned the first of hopefully many rank commendations from the Pilot’s Federation – a “Mostly Harmless” rating for combat. I applied the permitted decal to my ship as well.

Once done with the outfitters, I launched again for my favourite Low RES looking for more bounties. Very quickly I was in luck with an Anaconda on scan and fairly soon after, a bounty claim on record. This was followed by a pair of Pythons, who for some reason were fighting each other, and their Imperial Eagle wingman. The IEagle popped almost immediately – I think I got in a lucky shot that disabled their drives so they couldn’t manoeuvre properly – but the pythons took quite a while even with them shooting each other.

For a time there bounties dried up and the only ships available were innocent miners or several waves of police ships. Thankfully I’ve now killed enough pirates that the local police faction considers me friendly and their ships now display in green on my radar. Eventually some miners left and some new ships arrived. I hunted down quite a few smaller ships – Sidewinders, Adders and a few IEagles as well as a pair of rogue Viper Mk III’s for mostly small bounties. A hostile Asp showed up with a pair of eagles as wingmen. They engaged one of the mining ships which then attracted police attention and I gleefully picked off the weakest ships. 

A neutral Python was under attack by two separate wings of small ships and I barely managed to save him by killing four of the hostiles and driving off the other two into jumping out. Unfortunately the Python was severely damaged and his shield was disabled. A reckless police ship collided with the lumbering Python and that was sufficient to explode his power plant. So much for my rescue!

I had taken a little damage in that last fight and was running out of time anyway so I stowed weapons and cruised on back to the station. Bounties claimed and ship repaired, my status looks like this at the end of session 2:

Elite Dangerous Session 1

So there I was: Maya Ulniian, a freshly graduated and newly minted member of the Pilot's Federation with no money and few prospects. Unlike most of my fellow graduates, I was not to be drafted into the Navy, or take up a position with one of the corporate interests. A top one percent finish was not enough to make up for the lack of family connections. My inheritance from my parents was all gone, eaten up by tuition fees and living expenses. Whilst there were jobs available with the second and third tier mining or freight companies, most wanted more experience or reputation than I had, or the offered pay was so low that it wouldn’t cover basic expenses. Things were beginning to look fairly desperate.
Perhaps this was why the dodgy looking communication from J. Sneer, of Sue, Cripple & Sneer, Solicitors stood out from all the usual scams. A free ship with comprehensive insurance as well as a small credit transfer from an unknown benefactor. The attached message was intriguing as well:

ATTACHMENT-01
You may be puzzled right now as to why you’ve just received this little windfall. Nothing wrong with that – I’d be worried if you weren’t.
But now get ready for lesson number one. When a golden opportunity comes your way – and trust me, they’re few and far between, my friend – reach out and grab it with both hands. Sometimes it’s clever to ask questions, and sometimes it’s not. This time it’s not.
All you need to know is that my organisation has a very specific remit: to seek out those who have the potential to become real movers and shakers, those precious few with the talent to mould and shape the galaxy around them, to create change on a grand scale.
We find them, and then we test them. Consider this your test.
Take the ship. Take the money. No strings, no hidden clauses. Do with them what you will.
Blaze your own trail.
Impress me, perhaps you’ll learn more.
A Friend

The ship turned out to be a Sidewinder class starship equipped with a pair of gimballed pulse lasers, a discovery scanner and a small cargo bay. All I had to do was appear at Trevithick Dock, LHS 3447, present my access code and the ship was mine. With nothing better on the horizon, that’s what I did.

LHS 3447 was in a state of civil war when I arrived. Trevithick Dock itself was directly affected, and its commodities market was shut off. This severely limited my options as a brand new Commander. Trade insystem may have been possible at the various other settlements but the high number of conflict sites put me off even attempting anything. Plus, the very limited cargo space and funds available make trading a slow option at best.

There was plenty of work for a combat pilot by picking one of the opposing factions and fighting at a conflict zone but this is not a likely option for me in a very fragile Sidewinder.
LHS 3447 also suffers very long distances between its stations so there is a lot of wasted travel time.
I had heard that there was decent money to be made collecting bounties at the Resource Extraction Sites in the nearby system LTT 15574 so I fired up my nav computer and plotted a route.

First I jumped to Eravate, then to Kini. In Kini, my discovery scanner found both stars listed as undiscovered so I took the time to scan them both. Just before jumping out after scanning Kini B star, I was interdicted by a Dangerous rated Adder pilot. Adrenalin flowing, I deployed weapons and engaged. He had the initial advantage and managed to knock out my shields on the first pass but I was then able to sit on his tail out of his field of fire and plink away at him. It took a while but his shield failed under my lasers, then his hull slowly boiled away. Since Kini is an anarchy system and I had no kill warrant scanner, there was no applicable bounty.

After another uneventful jump I arrived in LTT 15574 and immediately set course for Haxel Port. This station was to be my base of operations for some time to come since it was relatively close to the RES sites on the nearby rings. After a quick supercruise trip insystem I arrived at Haxel port. Docking permission requested and then granted, I flew on in and landed my ship at the relevant docking bay.

A quick refuel and repair set me back nearly 300 credits. This would further reduce my chances of making a living as a trader. I was desperate to get a good start Bounty Hunting. RES sites come in 4 varieties, helpfully noted on your ship’s nav computer. Low intensity RES sites tend to have lower ranked enemies and more regular patrols by the local security forces. High intensity RES sites are more challenging, with higher ranked enemies often in the larger ship types and less frequent security patrols.  Hazardous RES sites are tougher again and are so hostile the local cops avoid the place. A RES site without one of these labels is a middling affair, somewhere between Low and High RES in difficulty.  For me in my low powered beginner ship, one of the two local Low RES sites was looking good.
After a brief systems check I launched my trusty sidewinder out the letterbox gateway of Haxel Port, boosted away from the mass-lock zone and made the shift to supercruise. Haxel Port is a little over 90 light-seconds away from the ring system of LTT 15575 5– a muddy brown class II gas planet. As I flew closer I noticed that the Low RES I had chosen was right on the edge of the ring within the shadow of the planet. On dropping from supercruise at the site it was clearly well within the “night” time and visibility of the asteroids was a problem. Still, I checked my scanners for any likely bounties. There was nothing but a few miners and a lonely System Defence boat so I flew out of the rocks and back into supercruise headed for the other low RES.

Of course, this other RES site was located on the opposite side of the planet. My path took me over the northern pole which gave a spectacular view but also severely interfered with the frame shift drive, slowing progress dramatically. Eventually I arrived back at the ring and dropped out of supercruise about 15km from the beacon.  Almost immediately ships started appearing on scanner.
Oh joy! The first “wanted” ship on scan in my career was a “Dangerous” Anaconda with an 80k bounty – and he was already heavily engaged with the local police! I quickly deployed my guns and raced over towards the conflict. By the time I was in range, the ‘conda’s shield was gone and hull was down to about 60%. I added my feeble firepower to the fray while staying well out of the firing arc of his guns and soon he was down! Almost immediately, a somewhat smaller Python craft opened fire on the police and I was able to join in on that as well. Another 50k bounty! At this point I was considering jumping back to station to hand in and had retracted hardpoints when I saw a damaged Fer De Lance on scan. His health was going down fast, so I charged over and fired as soon as in range. That was a terrible mistake!

The Pilot’s Federation only credits kills if your scanner has completed at least a basic scan on a target. However, if you don’t wait long enough and attack before that wanted status is confirmed, you are treated as having attacked an innocent party and your own computer flags you as “Wanted” to all in the system. This is the case even if your target is under attack by the local cops – as I found out to my horror. I needed to get away, let the heat die down and pay any fines from somewhere nice and quiet. I stowed weapons, put all power to engines and started spamming the emergency boost button to get out of there all to no avail. The 5 or so police ships finished off the Fer De Lance then focussed fire on me. My shield lasted about 2 seconds. The Sidewinder hull melted almost instantly and I was forcefully ejected into space.

When next I opened my eyes, I was being presented with the insurance paperwork to replace my ship and forcing me to take out a loan.  After all that excitement I was pretty much back to where I started. No bounties to claim, no cartographic information to sell but at least I was alive.

I admit I considered trying trading as a slower but safer option given my near death experience but decided to risk it all again. This time, I arrived at the RES site with a lot more caution. My first few targets were Asp Explorers with 30k bounties, then a couple of smaller ships worth only a few thousand, but this soon built up to over  100k. The contacts office at Haxel Port was glad to trade in the kill vouchers for cold hard credits which I promptly spent at the outfitters.

I upgraded most modules from the standard E rated stuff to the lightweight and usually more powerful D rated gear. I splashed out and upgraded my power distributor to the best A rated module available – a very significant boost to ship performance. 
The upgraded Sidewinder performed brilliantly on my next trip to the RES. There were a couple more Pythons and an Anaconda menacing the local miners but the local police and my upgraded ship made short work of them. With a much healthier credit balance I hit the shipyard and outfitters again.

My current ship is an Eagle – a wonderful light fighter. So far I’ve only made a single brief run out to the RES but it is clearly a vast improvement over the Sidewinder. I’ll be back working on it once I get this message posted!

-    CMDR Maya Ulniian 19th April 3302

Coriolis link to current Eagle fit
http://coriolis.io/outfit/eagle/02C3C3D1D2A2D2C1818180mB400--.Iw1-EA==.IwBhrSrI

Checking out Elite Dangerous

I've been playing a fair bit of Elite: Dangerous lately after years of MMOs. I still play some WOW, quite a bit of SWTOR and dabble in RIFT and some others but am looking a bit further afield more recently.

Elite: Dangerous is a space flight sim that attempts to model the entire Milky Way galaxy. They seem to have included most known stars fairly accurately as well as bringing in key systems (Lave, Diso etc) from earlier game versions. The rest of the galaxy is generated procedurally based on real information. Like previous games in the series, you are free to trade, fight or explore pretty much wherever you want.

Progression in the game is primarily by getting money and then upgrading your ship or buying new ones. There are about 30 different ships to choose from. They have a certain level of specialisation amongst them, some being optimized for combat, others big cargo ships. Several are designed for long exploration trips and others are generalist designs. Upgraded modules and weapons as well as limitations in fitting allow for a fair variety of builds. No ship has room for every desired module meaning that no one build will be perfect for everything.

The price of ships and modules in each category means it will take a reasonably long time to get the best of everything. Money gathering at each stage seems to match fairly well the requirements for the next meaning that there is a constant rate of progression despite things being monumentally expensive at the top end. There is also a certain incentive to revisit earlier ships at times for fun, even if money gathering suffers somewhat.

One limitation with the game is that you are restricted to one Commander at a time. You can delete it if you want but you lose all progress and the long grind for money you may have already performed. This means it’s hard to go back to the start and experiment with other options, or to have one commander specialise in combat and another off exploring for months on end.

This limitation is why I've just recently bought a second account and may document my adventures here.