Off to Sothis - Elite Dangerous

Screens & AARs
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Inspired by @fearlessfrog’s desire to become a big time smuggler, I decide to run off and join him. I figure Sothis has a much more exotic-sounding name than Eravate, so he must be far, but it’s just the galaxy. How far away can it be?

Turns out 492.66 lightyears away. Sothis is 496.66 lightyears away from my current location, which happens to be whole heck of a lot of furlongs.

Not daunted at all by the prospect, I hope into my well-outfitted Viper III and begin my journey.

They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. My journey is of 96 hops, and I need to do hop after hop after hop.

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If you’ve never played E:D, that’s a lot of hops. That’s 96 hyperspace jumps towards a star system, FSD cooldown, reorient and then enter hyperspace again. This will take a while.

Naturally, each hyperspace jump, and some amount of fuel, and it’s not like the galaxy is littered with 76 stations. Luckily, I’m equipped with a fuel scoop, so I can just fly near a star, scoop up the surrounding gases into my tanks, and relatively quickly top them off. But, just like America’s Got Talent, it takes the right kind of star - O, B, A, F, G, K, or M type stars have the right kind of “atmosphere” around them to be scooped up into fuel. There have been no Mr. Fusion items in the shipyards I’ve visited. Maybe the black market?

At a couple of points along the trek I ran into a string of non-scoopable stars that would have left me high and dry out in the middle of space had I not used the very powerful galaxy map to scout ahead. The Star Type filter very quickly showed me the vast desert ahead of me and gave me some near-by options to fill up.

Another consideration is sleeping quarters. I’m not sure if E:D will let me just park my ship out in space, so I have to find a station to hangar in for the night. This turned out to be a problem tonight - I couldn’t see ANY stations in my vicinity! I had to make another 11 jumps, just to get to a spot to stay for the night, and I also had to pick my route to go past some scoopable stars. It was like driving across Wyoming!

Anyways, I’ve ended the night a little closer to Sothis, but still feeling very unprepared for whatever lay ahead of me. I was hoping to run across more populated systems, and possibly find some shipyards to get weapons, upgrades, or ships I couldn’t find around Eravate. I’m beginning to feel more and more like the city mouse having just realized how far away I am from everything.

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I’ve still got 199.59 lightyears to go, which is probably another full night of hopping, but imma coming, @fearlessfrog!

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So, when you get there, make sure you are handy at evading interdictions and also depending on the type of smuggling, being scanned could be all that is required to blow your mission.

Some tips if i may (as i am a old time smuggler).

First problem will come through interdiction. If you cant beat the interdictor, always submit before being interdicted, that will stop the disorientating spin and give you a few seconds more to get distance on your attacker.

Stop scan or slow the scan. There are a few tricks you can use aside from a really fast ship with an engine that can cycle boost quickly.
1). I recommend a build with both chaff and heat sink launcher.
Chaff can slow the progression of the scan. Running silent reduces your detection range and can help sometimes (if you are fast enough) in the scan not being performed, and hence the heat sink launcher will dissipate your built up heat while boosting like crazy under run silent configuration.

Finally if the scan is performed, the last trick is to target the attacker and deploy weapons and only deploy after he starts his scan. This will force the attacker to drop the scan and deploy his weapons in defence and reinitiate a scan giving you a few more seconds to get out of scan range before its complete.

Hope this helps and look forward to hearing your smuggling stories. Its time to see if you two can do the sothis run in under 12 parsecs.

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You can definitely exit the game in empty space. Just make sure you’re in realspace, at a dead stop, and far away from any other bodies. I’m +1 everything Bogus said about smuggling successfully, and add that a Cobra is an excellent platform for it- fast, lowish heat signature, good cargo space, and usually a much longer jump range than a Viper.

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Thanks for the tips, guys.

In hindsight, I probably should have built up a few more creds in the more populated areas and upgraded my ship.

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I’m not there yet. Plus I’m useless!

Smuggling looks hard, I think I’m going to try mining for a bit :pick:

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KGB FOAM, as I like to remember it :slight_smile:

FWIW, you can just drop out of supercruise, come to a stop, log off and find your ship where you left it next time you startup.

What y’all are doing sounds kind of like a run I tried a while back. I had to do a smuggling run for a fairly far distance for a big profit. (…may have been slaves. Hey, my ED pilot isn’t perfect.) It ended up being a lot of credits but took too much time and jumps for me to do it again.

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Well, poop. Guess I better rethink my grand road trip. Are you still around the Eravate area?

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To me has always been “Oh Be A Freaky Girl and Kiss Me”. But I suppose my Italian Blood has something to do with it…

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Good points. I am not very good at fighting in ED so I tend to play the explorer/trader/smuggler myself. My ships I tend to fit out with appropriate weapons systems which are primarily defensive in nature while I run like hell. One weapon system you might want to consider are the mine launchers. In lieu of guns, I have some which I used to drop mines into the path of my pursuer while I run like hell to get away. So far so good. Have not been killed.

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I’m at Azaleach, and it’s as nice as it sounds. I’m about 195ly (12 ish jumps in a Cobra thinned down a bit) from Eravate. I’m about 356ly from Sothis and 160ly from Sol (of which I’ve never been, as didn’t do the Federation rank up as yet).

Want to meet up somewhere Eravate ish, I’d like to wing up as I want to play but need an excuse :slight_smile:

Maybe we could wing up and try a T6 mining build? I’ve not done that much yet.

Edit: Played a bit this afternoon. Now at Eravate doing federation missions.

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As I am at Eravate, I thought I might as well grind up some rep at a local major faction ‘Eravate Network’. It’s taking ages though

  • These ‘boom times’ missions for 100k or so seem to not really give much rep, even if saying REP++ on them.

  • I keep getting the 'Deliver this quickly for a bonus! message just before I deliver, with a expiration time of 0h0m and then a message a second later saying ‘too late, you failed!’. I hope this doesn’t harm rep?

  • Got that weird ‘Redirect this delivery to this other base’ message just before delivering. If I tried that with the USPS I would get thrown in jail. I had to google how to complete this one, as the base was missing. Apparently the trick is you have to use an Advanced Discovery Scanner (cost $1.5 million) to find the base to complete the $30k mission. Not good but I do like the sound the scanner makes ‘Booooonnnnngggg!’.

In all about 4 hours spent and only at ‘Cordial’ still. Do I have to do the um ‘cheat/optimization’ of stacking missions by logging off/on again (I’d rather not) to make better progress or is there a trick I’m missing to get rep quicker? One thing might be I just need to spend lots more hours, but while it is fun in VR it makes it harder to watch Netflix or read all the web :slight_smile: :vr:

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Can’t you also scan the nav buoy to get all the station info as well? Also, I seem to remember reading a while back those missions were bugged or something.

I found a quick way to work up reputation is to do a sort of “triangle run” where you run missions concurrently between say three or four systems, since a lot of the minor factions work with each other. Take a mission to system x, complete it, at that station take a mission to system Y, complete it, there should be missions back to original system complete it, get money and rep, rinse and repeat.

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