[deathfun]

The downloader was interesting.
It runs perfectly.  I'm a bit sad I can't FSD anywhere buuuuut it is a demo....

I personally recommend you pick it up. The bundle that is, having Horizons is a good idea at this stage now

[DahBlount]

After lots of engineering and several Sothis runs, I've finally rigged up an ASPlorer for a journey to the Core. I'm starting at Farseer Inc. in Deciat.

I'm hoping to see some interesting things along the way.

[CKid]

Make sure you drop in on a neutron star or 2 once 2.2 goes live.

[DahBlount]

Will do. In the mean time, after traveling a few thousand light years, I've decided to stop at a deep blue gas giant for the night.

[deathfun]

There was some scuttlebutt going on that some Engineer upgrades were being nerf'd in 2.2
Anyone here hear about that? I got the info from someone who was watching my stream. Apparently it's mostly a weapon focused nerf

EDIT: Well here's a ****ing ****ty story
Was landing at a Penal colony only to have a skimmer fly in front of my ship, blow up and piss off the settlement
I die within moments sans being able to get to my task manager and lose the cargo I had been holding onto for my wingman

Seriously. **** skimmers
Suppose it's my fault for ending up on the ground, but sometimes I overshoot speed wise. Still. Skimmer, flying in front of me. That's a first

[Det. Bullock]

Since I got bored with the Colonia Connection CG I did the Federation exploration data CG.
I bought back scanners and Fuel Scoop, set the most economical route and off I went, 102 jumps to get there and 94 reports on the first travel (and quite a lot of money since I also surface-scanned the main star in each system), I also mapped a button to select the next system to make things a bit snappier after about 30/40 jumps.
The intention was to travel back and get on with hauling power generators buuuuut... Since this time I selected the fastest route I ended up traveling to different systems, scanned them as well and got back to Pleiades Sector IH-V C2-5 to deposit another fourty-something reports.
I also hit the 300ly from starting system requirement for one of the engeneers, I think it's the first time I went out of the bubble.

[Sushi]

Some stuff I've been up to in Elite!

Circumnavigating a tiny moon in an SRV:

Winning through superior sneaky tactics in CQC/Arena:

Jumping an SRV over a mountain, complete with epic backdrop and in-game music kicking in perfectly:

I'm not in the 2.2 beta but the new ship-launched fighters look amazing, really looking forward to trying them out.

[General Battuta]

17 Drac is ****ed up by civil war, where can I grind out my last fed rank

[Phantom Hoover]

There's a new bounty hunting CZ going on, and with it an enormous cluster**** of ganking in open:

The dogfights in this game are so, so great.

[The E]

Wait, so, at the end there you were chasing him at 430-450, and he was getting away.

Engineering is OP.

[Colonol Dekker]

Does the horizons season pass get me every other expansion?  Also, I hate the control scheme mouse and keyboard 

(Still only played the combat demo)

[The E]

Horizons gets you access to everything in the Horizons "Season", which consists of the Planetary Landings update (2.0), the Engineers update (2.1), the Guardians update (2.2, currently in beta), the Commanders update (2.3, forthcoming, includes an avatar editor and multicrew gameplay), and an unnamed 4th update. It should be noted that 2.2 is massively behind schedule at this point*, and there's no date yet for 2.3 and 2.4.

Presumably, the 3.x series will again be a season pass purchase.


EDIT: * Massively behind schedule in Elite terms, not SC terms; 2.2 was originally announced for the Summer, and is coming out sometime this month

[Phantom Hoover]

Wait, so, at the end there you were chasing him at 430-450, and he was getting away.

Engineering is OP.

Sort of, but it's a red queen's race. Everyone gets the same statboosts, so even after the grind the balance is barely different to the base: he got away because he was in a Clipper and the Clipper is a fast ship.

Also, I hate the control scheme mouse and keyboard 

(Still only played the combat demo)

So did I until I went into the controls and rebound mouse x axis to yaw and a/d to roll, and after that I loved it.

[Colonol Dekker]

Realistically how much time a week do I need to invest in this to get any worthwhile progression?  (From a married point of view)

[The E]

Progression can be painfully slow when you're soloing it all; I would recommend asking around for other people to help you along a bit until you can get to ships that are actually fun (I think you can get to a Cobra 3, which is the first true multirole ship in the lineup, in two to four hours when you're teaming up with others). After that, it will take a long time to get the ressources together for what would be endgame ships in a traditional MMO; Elite is a game which gets by on the strength of its flightmodel, graphics, sound design and encounter design, and rewards long engagement with the game (which is fancyspeak for there being a lot of stupidly painful grinding in there that everyone seeks to bypass as much as possible).

To directly answer your question: You can progress relatively quickly to a point where you can get a very good allrounder ship, but getting the really awesome stuff (like PH's Fer de Lance up there) will take some doing. I would refer you to my getting (re-)started post here for what to expect.

[deathfun]

There's actually something entirely else that can be considered
Recently, I came across a Penal Colony in LFT 90, Yamazaki or some such. This place pumps out a ridiculous amount of Skimmer missions to complete and do (This will naturally require Horizons)

You can have the crappiest ship in the game but still make decent cash (when allied with any of these factions, you can net anywhere between 2-5 million per skimmer massacre mission. Just make sure you don't accidentally accept a Goliath Massacre one. You won't have fun)

Few hours at a time can get you about thirty million, no need to team up with anyone as it's purely solo, and you don't need a fancy ship since it's entirely SRV.

It might take a while to get all the factions to be buddy buddy, but it's worth it.

[Colonol Dekker]

Thanks for the quick feedback. It's greatly appreciated,  if the hard light brigade is frequent enough I'd be inclined to get the full horizons set.

[deathfun]

If you're looking to having some stupidly hilarious combinations of ships, I highly recommend it
Engineers are awesome
Specially when they make my gunship a better turning gun platform of death

[Colonol Dekker]

I've an affinity for combat specific engineers wait out for a few days and I may well be flying with you all soon.

Standard elite beginnings right?
Cheap fighter with no jump drive?

[The E]

You get a basic Sidewinder for free. It has 2 pulse lasers, an FTL drive, 4 tons of cargo space, and a tendency to evaporate if something with weapons looks at it funny.