Stations, pirating, trade, factions.

Hello, I hope someone still reads this and gives me some pointers, I started playing yesterday and I'm a bit puzzled about some things.

1. The stations, are they supposed to be so dead? I mean, I pick a random station, dock with it and nothing happens. No trade screens, no gossips, nothing. I just sit docked

2. Where are good places to pirate? I've tried L points but with little luck, they either outgun me or I never even see a transport, just armed tugs. Help?

3. The only trade screen on game is the one in my base? No trading on stations out there?

4. I've read somewhere that you shouldn't plunder indies (independent?), and then I shouldn't plunder the stepsons (I guess) and they also hint they use Touchdown L point, so I shouldn't try there?. What about the independent? Can I plunder them freely? League? Kong? I'm getting confused at being allied with Stepsons, but still I'm a pirate, who's to tell me who I can and can't plunder? Any faction I really should avoid taking on?


Just getting familiarized with the flight model, as always the default keymapping is horrible (is it so HARD to actually do something working instead the old shitty ASDW..) and I'm at the point of figuring the keys I need to remap.

Oh btw, missile countermeasures, I d/l a mod to manually launch them, but do they still DO anything? Seems I still got to dodge every frigging tailer I get no matter how many countermeasures I launch. Stupid


Thnx for help
-Shire

1) Sadly, yes. There are a few mods that add interactivity to stations, but its still just a trading menu or what have you. Nothing like the bars you find in Privateer or anything like that.

2) L-points are usualy OK. But early in the game you are either very good, or very dead. Evading missiles reliably in the starting tug is difficult. And you cant take a pounding with those crappy shields. So its a case of picking your targets very, very carefuly. I generaly load up with seekers, find a convoy with up to 3 interceptors in escort, follow it and LDSi it. Then, park behind the interceptors flying as a pair, and missile them. Then, engage the remaining interceptor. Beyond 3 interceptors, you wont be able to reduce all but one this way, so its more risky and more time consuming. Tugs are also a problem, since you cant just blow them away with a pair of missiles and move on, by the time you take out the first one the others have responded and are attacking you. I wouldn't take a convoy with more than 2 tugs in escort early on. You only have limited time before the convoy gets LDS drive back online and escapes, so however you pirate it, do it quickly.

Or, you could lurk around a station. Inbound convoys are just as tough as convoys at L-points, with the added bonus of the stations defences, who will join in if you pirate convoys at the station. However, convoy ecorts are allocated when the convoy is first spawned, according to the value of the convoys cargo at that time. So, if you wait long enough, an empty convy will spawn, dock with the station, and load up. You now have up to 3 loaded freghters , and no escort. Follow them out of the station and LDSi them when theyve gone a few hundred klicks. Like taking candy from a baby.

3) Yup. The FutureTrader mod fixes this, but its still pretty limited. I'm not sure if it generates pirces acording to station type, so you could profit by buying ore at a mine and selling at a processor.

4) Well, the player is supposed to play this noble pirate type, who winds up saving the day. So your supposed to steal from the bad guys, the corporations. However, you can steal from the independents with no penalty. I dont think theres any real faction reputation system in place, so pirating allied vessels shouldn't hurt anything.

I find the WASD keys OK for flight. I keep meaning to get round to mapping it like in JJFFE, with all my thrusters on the numpad. I got quite good at that at one point. But the only keys missing from the default are the up/down laterals.

Countermeasures do have an effect. But, the basic ones are virtualy useless. The later models you will get later in the game do a better job, and the point defense turret makes a real difference as well. But to begin with, your in a slightly upgraded civilian tug. Its missile bait. (From looking through the resource files, it seems that the decoys chance to succeed is dependent on your emisions level. So, a stealth loadout might help here. But then again, you dont have the stealth gear to begine with either.) I wouldn't bother with manual countermeasures. Automatic has always worked fine for me.

K, well I got around somewhat. I also found some of the mods, I just refuse to play this game without that trader mod, I plain hate the empty stations.

A couple of things still bothering me...

1. Can I turn off the director mode once and for all? I can't even count how many times I've blown up because of it, stupid thing pops up every docking

2. Anyway I can set a different default hud view? I like the inside the ship without the garbage of the cockpit in it, but it seems to reset to it after every director mode.

3. What does the alt key do? It's supposed to be held and you would gain lateral thrusters.. with keyboard? Well kb already has lateral left right, so what's the use for that bind? Also, anyway to get up/down lateral?

4. Heat, now since the starting ship takes off with gamma sinks, I never even noticed heat. Which is the heat indicator on screen, and can you even overheat? Seems to me I run out of weapon power rather than overheating.

5. Stealth, I read something about it and the general view seems to be that it doesn't really work, so do I need to bother with it, or just go guns blazing?

Well, nothing more comes to mind now, gonna see if I can catch a few megatransports for some cargo.

thnx for help, again
-Shire

1) Nope. Anyway, realisticaly, would you let an auto-dock sequence run while your under fire?

2) Not easily. But I've seen some of the modders talk about replacing the cockpit, so in theory you could just replace it with a cockpit that isn't there.

3) Alt lets you get the lateral thrusters on the directional keys. So you can use up and down. But since the laterals are most useful in conjunction with rotation, this is a little pointless.

4) Your still using low-powered weaponry. Stick 2 cutting beams on, and you'll overheat fast enough. It also does your emissions no good.

5) Having high emissions makes missiles harder to decoy, and it should increase the range at which you will appear on enemy scanners. But the enemy dont fight fair and see you anyway. There are a few stealth missions, but even there, the enemy detect you based on a simple range check no matter your emissions. Fit stealth when you get it (other than the heat sink, which is pointless), but dont expect to actualy be stealthy.

1. Well, I've had that in 2 missions so far, fuel rods and gunstars... being tossed into director mode sure doesn't help a fast leave from the dock..


Man, this game looks nice (hey, I'm "ok" with elite graphs, anything beyond is nice to me), the gameplay is ok, but the universe is just...boring?

I mean, you got lot of stations, it should not have been that hard to code some random missions found from them, a trademarket (items would depend on the station type, high tech from high tech places..), bounty hunting would have been nice, just normal trading goods to goods to get more goods, not just goods to weapons. Asteroid mining?
Yes, I'm talking about Elite conversion with better graphs, any modder on the job yet? )

Now in vanilla EoC, all the stations are just a) a mission item, you dock to get info or somethings, b) a camping place for cargo pods. Your objective is to plunder cargo to trade weapons to survive missions. Kinda linear to me.

Meh, the trader mod helps a bit, but IMO it's way overpowered.
Storyline might be nice, but as in all storylines, it makes the game linear, and I frankly hate that. God I loved Elite for the freedom...why can't anyone make a good conversion to modern graphs and stuff..

[/whine] EoC is a nice game, I admit that, I'm sure I'll be playing a few days (weeks?) more, but still...No chance for an Elite mod there? The Gold Rush mod seemed a good idea (from the readme), I still have to try it out.


Oh btw I did saw countermeasures do actually something (the first you get), yeah, I was 50k from the enemies and my flare launcher deployed, 10 secs later I saw a missile incoming and it went past me. Not too useful in a dogfight though I'm just waiting to get off this missile bait of mine, I want manouverability, not a bulk hulk of armor that gets scrapped in few missiles because I can't dodge them (well, at least not in an LDSi field).

Man, what a ramble, but I do hope someone answers positively to my question about the Elite conversion mod ) though I didn't find it myself

Director mode might not help when making a speedy departure, but its not that much of a problem. The ship will respond to the controls before you get back in the cockpit, so as long as you have a decent idea of what the surrounding area of space is like and which way you want to go, your fine.

I think the epic mod has some of what your looking for in terms of interactivity in stations, but you'd have to ask one of the Epic team members about that. Whatever they do finaly release should be good though.

A faster ship? Not for a wee while yet I'm afraid. As in, act 2. And they wont just hand it out to you either. No, your going to work for this one. But you will get your tug up to the point where missiles are not as much of a problem. It helps to divert power to the engines.