Been playing since alpha and have done the mine/bounty hunting/ exploring but the most fun part is landing the ship with no flight assist on a rotating base 
all in all the game is as it is learn to fly with in the design of the game and all is good and smooth . the fuel scoop is a good concept as there is a lot of systems with no bases to top them tanks up 
Hmm. Slowly I master the 3D mouse ā¦ managed to kill a Cobra MkIII with starting gear.
Although it is really irritating that yaw has such less thrust.
3D Mouse to maneouver. Normal Mouse to look around and use the UI panels. I like the setup.
Debris above the rings.
Killing pirates in the rings with a lot of help ā¦ and yes I was to eager to shoot and got myself a small bounty.
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Just thought Iād give an update on what I was doing.
I finally moved out of LSH something or other, and settled down for a while in Ngolibardu. From there, I made countless mining trips back and forth. This is a nice place because the metal rich ring was fairly consistent in pumping out metals around the 2kc mark and was very close to a station that paid a pretty good price. I upgraded from my sidewinder to my adder that way. I was able to hit right about 40kc per load. Which was nice, but I quickly realized that I was getting much more money on average fending of pirates. Sometimes, I would come home with 100-150kc by the time my cargo was full. So right about the time I hit 500kc, I purchased my Cobra MK III. As a side note, I decided to do a little internet research before making the purchase, which led me discovering the heated Cobra vs Viper debates. I chose the cobra primarily because of the extra cargo space, because my original plan was to keep on mining. However, I decided to go with a full weapon outfit and bounty hunt instead.
Since then, Iāve done almost nothing except bounty hunting in resource extraction sites. Which is why Iāve moved to Wolf 865. While the previous system had 2 resource extraction sites, this system has at least 7. The mining here is terrible, but the NPCs chug away at it, followed by an infinite stream of pirates. Iāve found that, if the pickings are not good (nearly all sidewinders, which only give ~2k), once can either save and exit to menu, reload, and refresh the system that way, or leave and go to another site to find those cobras (~20k) or the rare anacondas (60-180k!!!). Another nice thing about this neighborhood is that it is quite close to an imperial system, which allows me to cash in on their bounties. Too bad there isnāt any alliance space nearby. Iām sitting on almost a quarter mil in bounties, but the nearest system is hundreds of light years away (please correct me if Iām wrong).
EDIT: I forgot to mention why having multiple sites is good: Fighting in the dark in an asteroid field is not fun. If itās dark, just go to another system or another planet.
Iāve tried re-outfitting my cobra to do some mining after bounty hunting was getting a little stale, and I went on a very long journey to a system called coerlind, where supposedly one could mine platinum, gold, and palladium in one of the belts. However, the system was not explored, so I had to find a station, and purchase a discovery scanner, which I pitched as soon as I got my cobra. I thoroughly explored the system, but even after i finally discovered the mythical belts, it did nothing except spit out leopeldite. What a waste of time. I traveled back to ābaseā, sold my worthless refinery, re-equipped my dual cannons, and headed out to the rings.
After much grinding, Iāve eventually nearly fully upgraded my cobra. It has A-grade components on everything except thrusters and FSD, dual rail guns, dual burst lasers, and military composite armour. Roughly 5 mil into it right now. My favorite tactic, however, involves setting four pips to shields, two to engine, lining up behind a fleeing ship, and tapping that boost button. I crack up every time I see the ship go twirling around before exploding. 
However, I would really like to get back into trading. Which is why Iām considering purchasing a Type 6 transporter. It has a relatively large cargo hold of 48 default, and although I would like a type 7 or 9, I would probably burn myself out of the game by if I waited until I had 20mil or 100mil in bounties. I have roughly 1.2 mil in the bank right now, and Iām going to hold off until I reach about 2-2.5mil until I make the purchase. Then itās off to space-trucking.
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Ha! Had pretty similar experience. Done mostly the same bounty hunting in the rings and also aim at a Cobra MkIII set-up similar to yours. 
Whatās made you choose burst over pulse?
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Thatās still under consideration. I read some discussion over beam vs burst vs pulse, and as a result I decided to try them myself. My previous set up was dual cannons/beams, which worked out well damage-wise, because I am able to keep the bead on the target. However, beam was constantly earning myself bounty on my own head because of some genius NPC security eagle charging across my line of fire. So NO MORE BEAMS.
I chose burst initially because I initially thought that it would have the more damage per shot, even if the shots were more spaced out, which might reduce the chance of the friendly fire. Iāve still managed to hit an NPC or two, but generally, the key is to have extreme finger discipline.
At first, firing the rail guns were very underwhelming (I missed). I was like āA charge up? Really?!?!ā 
Then I landed a hit. 
Yes, I really like my Cobra. I really like the tanky feel.
Iāve. . . done a whole lot less. 
Since I logged in post-launch, I have puttered about in the space near the my starting system, gotten a 700 credit fine for littering, nearly had to self destruct when I ran out of fuel, made a teeny-tiny fortune selling military plans on the black market, pirated an NPC for its. . . household. . . . . . appliances. . . . . . . . . and found out that Eliteās mining is somehow even more tedious than EVEās.
Iām planning on grinding up to a cobra and figuring out what to do from there.
Probably explore or something.
My commander is named Hendar Attor. Look for me if youāre ever logged in.
Itās very lonely out in the black.
I traded my way to a Hauler, thinking āIām terrible at combat so Iāll stick to shipping and see if I can pick up some new locations on the way.ā
Then an NPC attempted to direct piracy up my exhaust. Somehow I survived (and won), immediately reverted back to the starter ship and upgraded a few components. Now Iām setting out on a bloodthirsty rampage even though I donāt quite understand how to find bounties.
Oh and I upgraded my jump drive enough to bounce all the way to Sol. Yaaaay.
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This is very useful list:
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To collect bounties, all you need is to point your ship at another ship and wait until it gives a status of either clean or wanted. UNTIL it says wanted, donāt shoot. Donāt even shoot at it if the entire local police force is shooting at it. Because those police know if you knew that was a wanted ship or not, and if you do so much as chip the paint off their shields without your ship knowing with 100% certainty that the target is a wanted criminal, then you will get a 400c bounty on your head and you will be killed for 400c. Because space lawyers.
Yeah, this annoys me, and it has gotten me in a few close scrapes.
You should see the wanted status below the target hologram thingy on the left. To see the bounty, you need to go to contacts, and find the ship. Toward the bottom, it will give you the price that somebody wants to give you if you kill that random dude.
To maximize your profits, get a K-Warrant Scanner. Scan the ship before shooting at it. What this will do is see if the ship has a bounty in other empires, not just the one you happen to be in. Technically, I think that even if a ship is clean within the system, but it says wanted when you scan it, it is okay to shoot it.
The easiest place to get bounties is to find a planet with some rings around it, see if it has any resource extraction sites, and just cruise around scanning ships. Because ships spawn whenever you enter a system, if you donāt see any wanted ships, you can always exit to menu, and start back up again, and that will refresh the local area. Or you can super cruise out and turn around, but exiting to menu is a lot faster, even with loading times (which are a lot shorter if you just exited).
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I recently got enough money to buy my viper and fit it out with basic stuff. Iāve been doing basic pirating and bounty hunting on npcs. I havenāt found with any real people yet. After upgrading from my Eagle the viper feels very sluggish though. Iām tempted to move back to my Eagle only because Iāve always been a fan of mobility. On my viper Iāve been running with 2 pulse lasers and 2 gatling gunsā¦but thatās because I canāt afford anything else 
When I have the cash I want to try out a pair of railguns and see how they work out. Currently I also have a heatsink, interdiction mojiggy, and a waketrail scanner installed but I havenāt been able to use it yet 
The damn Npc always jump to a system out of range for me. I need to upgrade thrusters.
Iāve also been recording it and putting it up on a youtube channel my friend and I have started.
If anyone is interested itās here(shameless self promotion, but hey if youāre bored! Weāre doing it for fun):
The first episode was the first time Iād recorded anything so I was really trying too hard. If you do watch itā¦ignore everything I say but donāt forget to laugh at my mistakes.
Not to boast, but Iāve just gotten off from my most insane bounty hunting expedition yet.
I literally could not go 30 seconds without seeing another target.
Hereās a number: 700kc/h. For an hour and a half. I walked away from that ludicrous scene with over 1.2 mil in bounties. I ran out of rail gun ammo at around the 350k mark. The only reason I stopped was because I was hungry lol. I basically quintupled what I usually make in that time.
The game kept throwing cobras with 15k bounty on them. I would destroy one, and during that time, either 1-2 other pirate cobras would scan me, would attack me, or I would spot one almost immediately after destroying my previous target. At one point, I had 4 hostile pirate cobras after me. There was a lot of police support, but still. Sometimes, there were so many pirate cobras, it wasnāt uncommon to see them fighting each other!
Yes, so Iām all done bounty hunting for now. Iām going to purchase my type 6 and do some space trucking.
EDIT: I did some math (gasp), and that roughly works out to 70 cobra kills.
EDIT 2: Just bought my type 6, and upgraded the cargo capacity to max: 104.
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I canāt like the post again so thatās the purpose of this reply. Nice work though! Thatās awesome.
I want to play Elite but here I am having to work on E&M and Thermal 
I could have played last night but I spent too many hours playing shogun 2ā¦
What system/area have you been hanging out in Ark?
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Iām (was) hanging out Wolf 865. It has at least 7 resource extraction sites, so itās good hunting.
Iām still in the general area, since Iām a trader now, though not exclusively bound there.
Iām still doing solo play, so youāll probably wonāt see me.
Update: Iām currently trouncing my crazy bounty hunting credits per hour by several hundred thousands. Iām close to hitting 2mil/h just trading back and forth between two stations.
Hereās how to do it:
First, go to this website: http://elitetradingtool.co.uk/
Click on Find Trades, enter in your data, make sure that route type is set to bidirectional, and start hauling credits. It calculates the best trade route based on real-time commodity prices, and calculates the total profit per cargo unit.
And I just realized I sound like those trolling āMake money on the Internetā advert posts.
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I was thinking of getting a hauler to add to my fleet, though in the long term Iād quite like to fight in the Imperial Navy 
I just find trading a bit tedious thoughā¦
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It really is. Once you find a route, you literally spend hours and hours visiting the same two stations over and over again. My philosophy is to do the tedious stuff over with as soon as possible to be able to afford the fun stuff more quickly.
I have 5.5mil, 16mil left to go before my type 7.
The tragedy of modern gaming summed up in one sentence.
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The tragedy of humanity, you are never over with the tedious stuff, because when you get to the fun stuff and have what you want there is something better and bigger that requires more tedious stuff.
When there is nothing else to grind for you are likely to stop playing @Arkenbrien
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Lol I know, I know, I sold my soul to the devil for this game. Originally I was taking my time, but then Homeworld Remastered was announced TBR on Feb 25th . Then I decided to speed things up a bit.
You got very lucky with that 15k cr pirate Cobra spawn and System Authority assistance, I would even go as far as claiming that you have discovered an exploit and suggest that you ticket it
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