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It was only a matter of time, but the Thargoids are back!

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/em6m2p/emergency_broadcast_the_thargoids_have_returned/

 

Six systems are under Thargoid incursion:

 

Pleiades Nebula

- Celaeno

- Asterope

- Atlas

 

Witch Head Nebula

- Witch Head Sector DL-Y d17

- Witch Head Sector HW-W c1-9

- Witch Head Sector FB-X c1-11

 

All of them have a damaged station that you can help evacuate, which is good for navy rank (if the factions are Fed or Imp), as well as Anti-Xeno combat zones in the affected systems.

20200109194118_1.jpg

20200109194131_1.jpg

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So tonight, @TheLaw & I did some rescue trips at one of the damaged stations. After he logged off for the night, but before he left, I was Hyperdicted by the Thargoids enroute to another system to get my other ship. Two of them dropped in & disabled my ship, while they did a scan for their "contraband". They found nothing and flew off, and I made it to my destination. After all this time since they first appeared, I finally experienced this event for myself, and well damn son, that was some freaky stuff!

20200109230612_1.jpg

Edited by Predz

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I've seen lots of alien movies before....so we kill Predz before he infects all of us, right? :P

 

I heard some mentions that the new patch is bringing in a "resource limit" on the amount of void opals you can sell to a station? Lots of fear this is a nerf to opal mining :(

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Haha *shows abnormal alien growth on back* "Kill me..."

 

And, full patch notes have dropped - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/january-update-patch-notes.535051/

 

And here is the particular one that stands out,

 

Added supply and demand volumes for certain, high-end minerals. Now, trading goods such as Void Opals is more realistic; markets can still offer a high buy price, but they will offer less as the demand is met. As part of this change, these high-end minerals will now be demanded more by specific economy types. This change will affect the following commodities:

- Alexandrite

- Benitoite

- Grandidierite

- Low Temperature Diamond

- Monazite

- Musgravite

- Painite

- Rhodplumsite

- Serendibite

- Void Opal

 

Way I see it, is yes, we probably won't be able to sell all of our mining hauls at one station if their demand isn't high enough, so station hopping to sell full cargo holds could become a thing. Sell prices are supposed to be able to reach the levels they do now (eg. 1.7mil per Void Opal at certain stations). It will be interesting to see if the demand of those "specific economy types" is high enough to not need to station hop.

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Welp, I've been playing since the update & the subsequent patch (the original update added stuttering issues)

 

And of course, one of the things that was a concern, was the changes to high-end material mining. Last night, I started doing some mining for LT Diamonds, as Void Opals have dropped in value (from around 1.6-1.7mil/unit pre-update to around 770k/unit post-update), while the diamonds are still reaching values of 1.1mil/unit.

 

I managed to find a triple LT Diamond hotspot, which was pretty good for finding them. After gathering 400t, I travelled to a station about 170ly away from the hotspot system to sell them. Here's the results,

 

Spoiler

20200120145734_1.thumb.jpg.f7c195ae56ece4743a3ed42edef53945.jpg20200120145806_1.thumb.jpg.d83e8733721e32acc36760817d69e6e1.jpg20200120145821_1.thumb.jpg.71e0402ae9110a36d4092c66e4f0353d.jpg

 

So yeah, unless things change, some mining has dropped in value. Some reasons point to bringing it more in line with other in-game money making activities, some think the nerf was justified because it was paying out too much. Whatever it may be, those Fleet Carriers better not be some exorbitant amount, or else the grind for creds will be one for the ages.

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On 1/20/2020 at 4:25 PM, Predz said:

Void Opals have dropped in value (from around 1.6-1.7mil/unit pre-update to around 770k/unit post-update)

 

 

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Lol, perfect.

 

So it is a big rip to void opal mining :( I don't understand the devs goal, it isn't an MMO so they don't need to have a high retention on players by making them grind. The game feels like it should be somewhat accessible with a small grind for most parts. 

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Yeah, tis the end of an era for Void Opals, now they're hovering around 650k/unit since I last posted about them, and the one instance there was a station selling for over 1mil, it only lasted about 2 hours, so unless you had some ready to sell right away, yeah nah, the regular payouts now are shite! Low Temp Diamonds are pretty much the only one above 1mil/unit now, and it does have the advantage of being both surface & deep core mining.

 

But yeah, I don't get what Frontier is trying to achieve with these sort of changes either. It's bad enough they reduced the value of the high end minerals, but then they don't make any of the other money making activities more appealing. Like, if they wanted players to do more missions like cargo/combat/passenger etc., I don't see why they couldn't have given them some higher payouts, to compensate for the mining taking a hit.

 

Some days before this patch, I'd rather spend hours mining for Opals to get a nice chunk of change, than engage with the missions that sometimes require more work to complete. It's like when I used to do those wing cargo missions a while back (sometimes solo). It was only later that I realised that they some of them had some abysmal payouts for the amount that needed to be delivered (sometimes in the thousands of tons), and it was worse if the destination was further away & threat of pirates as a secondary objective, constantly interdicting you when you entered the destination system. While pirates were a thing in mining, it was nowhere near as intrusive & didn't become a crutch.

 

And it doesn't help when the Wing system is constantly been ignored by FDev, and are still not working as they should. Doing the pirate massacre missions while in them is a nightmare, when the nav lock still likes to drop you out hundreds of km away from your wing mates, each member of a wing sees a different mission target, so we pretty much can't all converge on the same point and drop in at the same time, which is what it should have been when they first introduced it. But nah, let's not fix that, let's nerf stuff that didn't need to be, or at the very least, not to the extent like it has.

 

While I still jump on and play every couple of days or so, if the Fleet Carriers & the 2020 update don't have anything substantial to add & mix up the gameplay (especially being a paid update), the game will either not progress any further and be stuck in a grindy stalemate, or just keep getting nerfed without something else being buffed to compensate.

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It's been some time since anything worthwhile was released by FDev, but the next update has been confirmed for June, which will include the release of the Fleet Carriers

 

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-content-reveal-announcement.539505/

 

Just going to highlight some key points from the announcement,

 

- One of your most frequent questions about Fleet Carriers was: How much do they cost? Fleet Carriers will be a lucrative investment, costing 5,000,000,000cr at launch.

- Fleet Carriers are individually owned and feature 16 landing pads (of varying sizes) for other players to dock at.

- Fleet Carriers use a new fuel, Tritium, to jump from system to system.

- Fleet Carriers have a max jump range of 500LY at one time, with the ability to jump whenever the owner wants, however, they will have a build up and cool down period between jumps.

- You can manage your carrier's finances by setting tariffs and adjusting the buying and selling prices for commodities traded in it's market.

- Frontier will be doing a livestream on April 2, which will reveal the carriers in-game, the customisation options & more.

- There will be two betas to test out the carriers, with the first one starting on April 7 (PC) & another in May (PC/Console)

 

I'm currently at 3.5 billion credits, so I'm gonna need to do some serious mining again, especially with it not paying out as much as before... Hooray!

Edited by Predz

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Alrighty, the Fleet Carrier reveal stream was dropped early this morning,

 

 

And here's the recap on the forums - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-content-reveal-recap.540062/

 

The recap highlights the majority of the details, but here's a couple of things...

 

- On top of the initial 5 billion credits to buy the carrier, it will have weekly upkeep costs, which is deducted from the Fleet Carrier's bank (this is separate from your personal credits, which you can deposit money to the carrier bank to cover costs) every week during maintenance (every Thursday afternoon our time). The stream shows a basic upkeep cost of 10 million credits for the basic setup, with increases when more modules and crew are added. If the upkeep costs are not paid, it starts building up 'debt', and eventually will lead to the carrier being decommissioned and scrapped. FDev points out that the amount to cause the worse case scenario is 'substantial', but who knows for sure. The amounts may end up changing between now and the live release in June.

- The originally planned support ships that were revealed in the Gamescom trailer last year have been removed in favour of being able to customise the carrier's available facilities to personal preference. At the moment, there is no Universal Cartographics available for carriers, so their usefulness for exploration is questionable, especially with the fuel required to jump, on top of the 1 hour warm-up for every jump, followed by a 1 hour cooldown on arrival at it's destination. They might change it to possibly include the ability to sell exploration data during the beta, but knowing them, probably not.

 

I do intend to try out the first beta next week (scheduled to start April 7), while also mining on the live server leading up to the June release.

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So, I did jump into the first Fleet Carrier beta a few weeks ago, and since the beta was it's own thing, I sold off most of my ships to afford the carrier to take a look at it's inner workings. Here's a picture of the carrier.

 

Spoiler

20200407230106_1.thumb.jpg.320a2033445d2e6253dc90a2e2c8f893.jpg

 

They have changed a few things since the first beta (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-beta-1-feedback-changes.542193/),

 

- Tritium, the fuel resource, is 2x more effective (Old: 1t per LY, New: 0.5t per LY. So with the full 1000t fuel tank, it can do 2000LY before requiring a refuel, and you can store more Tritium in the carrier's storage, useful for long trips)

- Cooldowns for jumping have been reduced (Old: 1 hour spin-up/1 hour cooldown = 2 hours per jump, New: 15mins spin-up/5mins cooldown = 20mins per jump. The old numbers I found as way too high, and kinda defeated the purpose of using it to travel long distances. With the changes, it opens it up to being useful to jump to places like Pleiades Nebula, Witch Head Nebula, Guardian sites etc., maybe taking up to 40mins one-way, rather than 4 hours.)

- Upkeep costs have been reduced (This was something that was also a major crutch, as fully kitted out, the costs were 147 million/week... Yeah nah mate, that's a bit much! Fortunately, they have seen fit to reduce the core costs by 50% = 10mil to 5mil/week & additional services costs by 80-90%. While it's something that shouldn't be a thing, I can at least be thankful that they reduced the upkeep. Rather have it at least reduced than still be at original levels)

- Originally, Universal Cartographics were not available for carriers, but they have since added it as part of the Redemption Office add on, so bounties, combat bonds & exploration data can be sold on a carrier, hence making a carrier better for exploration)

 

The 2nd beta has been confirmed to run from May 11 - 26 (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-update-beta-2-date-announcement.543972/). Your CMDR in the beta will be as they were on the 30th of April. I'll be jumping in this one as well, to check out the changes they've made, because I do want to get one when they go live in June (unless they get delayed), as I know of a few trips these could be useful for. And with the delay of the 'New Era' paid update into 2021, this is pretty much the only content we'll be getting this year it seems (there might be other patches, but they'll be more than likely be bug fixes and stuff like that).

Edited by Predz

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https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-update-beta-blowout.545392/

 

There will be a 'Beta Blowout' from the 21st to the end of the current Fleet Carrier Beta (May 26). Fleet Carriers will cost 1 million credits, with all optional internals/services for 100 credits each. It's for those who wanted to take a look at carriers and didn't have the full 5 billion credits (plus 1 billion+ for extras) to buy one & fully kit it out. I've jumped into the current beta, and the improvements are a step in the right direction (especially the reduced FSD jump spin up/cool down times), but there might be some more changes between the end of the beta & planned live release in June. I'll be sure to relay any updates post-beta.

 

Also, I've graduated to playing the game with a HOTAS (http://www.thrustmaster.com/en_US/products/t16000m-fcs-hotas). It is a very different experience from the KB+M, that's for sure.

Edited by Predz

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On 22/05/2020 at 5:00 PM, MiniSanders said:

I really need to test the VR setup and this game... but I think I would require a HOTAS to be able to control it

 

Yeah, the few players I've seen playing with VR have HOTAS setups. The set I've got have a good amount of buttons, there's still one or two things I need to use a keyboard for, but with Voice Attack & the HCS Voice Packs, even those functions can be activated with the voice commands instead.

 

Also, the Fleet Carrier update drops on the 9th of June (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-update-beta-2-has-now-ended.545961/).

 

I'm sitting at about 3.7 billion credits, so I'll be doing some 'pre-update' mining next week to try and get the money to buy a carrier without having to sell almost my entire fleet (like in the betas). I thought about getting the carrier for all of us in the clan who play, as it would give us a mobile base of sorts. Plus, it will be handy for trips to damaged stations for Search & Rescue (or Anti-Xeno, it all happens in the same place), Guardian sites to get those tasty FSD boosters & other modules, mining asteroids etc. (and with the carrier storage, we could store more than our ships can hold as well if we do mining)

 

I'm also planning on filling up the carrier storage with enough Tritium to head out to Colonia & back at some point (wanna get me them engineer upgrades only they have, plus I do wanna check out Sagittarius A 'the centre of the galaxy' and the supermassive black hole of DOOM!).

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I need to find some time and get myself back into it... 

Problem is that it just eats time, and I feel like I am always trying to figure out what to do next

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Oooo... that looks very nice.


I actually jumped on last night and attempted to set a ship up for mining...

I failed and now need to modify it... and then learn how to mine again

 

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Yeah, it feels like that. With next week's update including Tritium being added & thus changing all the existing hotspots, I'm gonna do one more trip to the Low Temp Diamonds triple hotspot in Borann for some Fleet Carrier money (probably either tomorrow or Sunday, since the C&C Remaster drops on Saturday).

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Yeah, I need to look into mining properly, as last time I ever mined it was a couple of years back when it was just a mining laser and manual collection... 

Now there are multiple mining weapons and limpets... so much new stuff to learn

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Servers will be down at 5:30pm AEST (7:30am UTC) today for approx. 7 hours for the Fleet Carrier update. (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-update-downtime.546853/)

 

I'll post a link to the patch notes when they're available.

 

Did one last round of LT Diamond mining at the triple hotspot in Borann yesterday, ended up with just over 400 million. Also sold a few unused ships & modules I barely use, and managed to get the 5 billion to buy a carrier when the game is live again after the patch.

 

Edit: Patch notes are live! (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/fleet-carriers-update-patch-notes.546958/)

Edited by Predz
Added link to patch notes.

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Nice Predz, grats on hitting that 5B!

 

Curious to see the upkeep cost when you get it. So, LTDs are the way forward for mining now?

 

I watched an Obsidian Ant video last night on carriers, started to get that ED itch again. My head tracker has been getting cold :(

Edited by Phobos

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2 hours ago, Phobos said:

Nice Predz, grats on hitting that 5B!

 

Curious to see the upkeep cost when you get it. So, LTDs are the way forward for mining now?

 

I watched an Obsidian Ant video last night on carriers, started to get that ED itch again. My head tracker has been getting cold :(

Cheers mate!

 

LTD's have pretty much superseded Void Opals in value, but with the update, means the loss of the triple hotspot in Borann (because of the introduction of Tritium, the mining hotspots re-generated). There have been some rumours of a quad spot about 800LY from the bubble, though it's not confirmed. But if something like that is confirmed, the carrier will make it easier to head out there, get some & ferry our riches back to a system selling at a good price.

 

Here's a few pics of the carrier in the spoiler. I've bought cosmetics for it, hence it's different look compared to the stock carrier.

Spoiler

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With all but the Shipyard & Outfitting modules installed (I plan to install them at a later date, they cost 500 million to install both, more mining might be in order), the current upkeep is sitting at 13.2 million credits/week (5 mil core modules/8.2mil additional modules), plus 100,000 credits per jump in hull maintenance. I've transferred all of my stored ships & modules to the carrier, effectively 'moving out' of Jameson Memorial. The payment comes out every Thursday during the weekly server maintenance. I've got some money in the carrier's bank to cover costs for a bit. I'm currently finding systems selling Tritium cheaper than the average to store in the carrier for extra fuel. As I mentioned before release, I've got a few trips in mind in the near future. For now, I'll be parking the carrier in LHS 215 (near Spring Gateway).

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Been reading that Tritium trading to stations is the current craze, about 100M credit per 30mins or so. Might need to look into a T-9 and fill that sucker with cargo racks, hmmmmm...

 

https://eddb.io/trade/loops shows me close to a 5,322cr buy to 54,852cr sell in a 45 ly loop. Yummy!

Edited by Phobos

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