Elite : Dangerous

[Ttaskmaster]

My point was more that the bounty on a typical wanted ship is significantly more than the combat bond, and they're much easier to kill with much lower risk.

Yeah, that's what I meant - Combat Bonds used to be around 300Cr and you were mostly fighting Cobras or less, whereas recently there have been bigger ships up to Anaconda and you get 30-60K and above on almost all of them. The added advantage is that you can simply hang around on the periphery, watching your NPC faction buddies drop them down to 20% hull, then nip in to score the kill in a one-pass burst of heavy fire and nick the payout.

But as you say, they seem to have massively bumped the RES payouts lately.
Used to take ages of scanning everyone before I even found one ship with more than 10k on its head.

[outwar6010]

This python caught me off guard as I was using the debug but I destroyed it for a nice bounty

[Kanoe]

Seems like vultures are waaaaayyyy OP at the moment, kind of makes me not want to keep the python and drop to a vulture for fighting and get a type 7 or type 9 for trading on the side.

Anyone planning on being around over the weekend for a bit of a wing ding?

[outwar6010]

Vultures are insanely manoeuvrable. There are drawbacks like the hull not being that strong etc. To me it flies like the eagle etc you can position yourself very easily and target what you want. Also I don't see myself trading(baring some new seeking luxuries location) as the profits from bounty hunting have been improved to a nice level. Yeah I should be on the weekend.

[Lowe]

I'll hopefully be around tonight. Found that Plasma Accelerators now are extremely viable on the Viper. Running a pair alongside some weak pulse lasers. I use the lasers to annoy and harass small ships (also does enough damage to ensure you collect the bounty should the security ships come along), and then for anything Cobra or above sized the PA's smash them to bits in a couple of shots. They remind me of my old quad cannon Viper - only it also works against bigger ships. Ammo is now affordable since the pay out for killing ships is so much better. Master rated Anaconda's are paying about 150k and are very frequent in the RES I'm currently at. I'm having way too much fun at the moment!

[outwar6010]

Thanks to the lugh war, me of all people are friendly with the federation lol

[Kanoe]

Yeah it was good to get some wing action in at the weekend in the Lugh War, much credits and working towards the community rewards which was nice. Was still a major hassle on friday night trying to get 3 and then 4 people into the same wing but was smoother on saturday afternoon.

I know a guy working on wings and he reckons he has a fix for most of the issues we were seeing (and he was seeing) but it needs internal review / testing before making it to a patch. The sooner the better.

This is however starting to bring my interest back to ED so I will be a bit more active.

[outwar6010]

Thats good to hear. So far I've done around 300-400k worth of bonds in the lugh war so I'm in the top 70. Hopefully I can make to to top 40.

[Ttaskmaster]

Indeed, I made over 220k in bounties at a RES myself and only quit the area because I ran out of ammo.
Shame, as I was getting quite smooth at flying the space-cow freighters, but killing Wanteds just earns more money now.

Also shocked at how the top bounties on Cmdrs is now up to 60-something MILLION credits!!!

[DanceswithUnix]

Thats good to hear. So far I've done around 300-400k worth of bonds in the lugh war so I'm in the top 70. Hopefully I can make to to top 40.

I am in top 40, at about 1M cr (on CSG side). I don't know where the boundary is though, I was handing in about 300K cr per sortie, popping back when the Vulture got cornered and shot up a bit.

Bought my Vulture in LHS 3447, I guess there must be better places as they don't sell an upgraded FSD for it so I had to go find somewhere to get it upgraded. Limping out of the shop it had a fuel scoop thanks to it being so range restricted and powering that meant I had to drop one of the weapons down to a size 2 multi cannon.

Annoying that the "deliver us weapons" task is complete already. I left the Vulture in Lugh, bought a sidewinder to go get the ASP and this morning over breakfast was going to fly the Asp back to do a first delivery to see the task is complete

[outwar6010]

Once you hit top whatever are you guaranteed the money or do you need to keep up with the requirement? I bought managed to find a a5 distributor and its sooo worth it. I think Im going to buy an asp with my bonus thing and deck it out for exploration.

[DanceswithUnix]

Once you hit top whatever are you guaranteed the money or do you need to keep up with the requirement? I bought managed to find a a5 distributor and its sooo worth it. I think Im going to buy an asp with my bonus thing and deck it out for exploration.

I think the task says "Guaranteed reward" and then the top 100% amount, as having contributed something you aren't going to drop back to nothing. That implied to me that it depends on your final ranking, not what you have now.

In reality, I notice there is a steady trickle of people joining up. Hopefully the fact it took them this long means they won't put much time in, claim very little reward and generally make us lot look good

My Asp needs a few tweaks too, I had do downgrade a few bits to get the Vulture. With things like A rated FSD costing 5M a 10M payout would be very nice in getting that back up to spec

OFC then I would probably want a Type 7 as well. My Asp is currently kitted for multi purpose trading/exploring with an 80T cargo hold, so properly specced for exploring I will have to lose some of that to a repair module I gather. So many toys, so few credits

[DanceswithUnix]

Indeed, I made over 220k in bounties at a RES myself and only quit the area because I ran out of ammo.
Shame, as I was getting quite smooth at flying the space-cow freighters, but killing Wanteds just earns more money now.

Also shocked at how the top bounties on Cmdrs is now up to 60-something MILLION credits!!!

Just saw a "top bounties" mention someone at Lugh of 90M. Might keep my eye out for them when in the Vulture

I also see that Crimson State Group have a new community task in Lugh for buying weapons with good prices, you can make 1K/tonne as well as whatever the reward comes in at.

[Lowe]

Picked myself a Vulture up last night. Only got enough coin to give it a basic outfitting:

3D/F Burst Laser
3D/F Burst Laser
0I Chaff Launcher
0B Shield Booster
1I Lightweight Alloy
4C Power Plant
5D Thrusters
4D Frame Shift Drive
3D Life Support
5D Power Distributor
4D Sensors
3C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 8)
5D Shield Generator

This ship is going to get the nerf bat, or at least get put back at 20mill. Even with a basic load out like that I'm tearing NPC's apart left right and centre. Even Anaconda's are dropping like flies. I'm having the time of my (Elite) life, but I can't see this being sustainable. I wonder what twin PA's would be like on it?

[DanceswithUnix]

Picked myself a Vulture up last night. Only got enough coin to give it a basic outfitting:

3D/F Burst Laser
3D/F Burst Laser
0I Chaff Launcher
0B Shield Booster
1I Lightweight Alloy
4C Power Plant
5D Thrusters
4D Frame Shift Drive
3D Life Support
5D Power Distributor
4D Sensors
3C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 8)
5D Shield Generator

This ship is going to get the nerf bat, or at least get put back at 20mill. Even with a basic load out like that I'm tearing NPC's apart left right and centre. Even Anaconda's are dropping like flies. I'm having the time of my (Elite) life, but I can't see this being sustainable. I wonder what twin PA's would be like on it?

Mine has a 4A power plant, but the power is used on beffer FSD, shields and thrusters. I still only have burst lasers, though as you have found I think that is enough. I also don't want something that requires reloading so I can stay out a long time in the conflict zones.

I don't think the price reduction makes so much difference long term tbh, with the price of A class FSD, shields etc a fully equipped vessel is going to be pretty expensive overall. I got a "point of defense"? unit I think it was called on mine, the little turret that shoots down incoming missiles. Not seen it fire a single shot so far, just watch those missiles go whizzing around in my direction, so wonder if there is a bug there.

Now off to Lugh with you to fight for the Crimson State Group

Edit to add: I don't have 51M (yet), but would love to know how hard the huge weapon point in the Fer de Lance hits.

Another edit: I swapped the cargo rack in mine for a really big fuel scoop to get me around with the small range the ship had when I bought it. Might swap that for shield cells now.

I think my current loadout is: http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=60N,5T...A,7Su4-EmpU2Uc

[Lowe]

I'm not a fan of the burst lasers tbh, think I'll probably swap back to pulse until I can get beams in comfortably.