My blog post from Dec 6th, I was just getting into ED. I was going to do so many things…
Well, I joined a Power Play faction. LYR, to be specific. I wanted their fancy doodad drunk missile launcher.
And the game went from fun to a time-sucking soul-less grind.
Here’s the problem:
- I am not particularly good at combat. Even worse when I don’t have my HOTAS, just mouse and keyboard.
- I tried a bit to get better. Reddit thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3xnj1d/how_to_train_up_my_combat_skills/
- I did get better at it. But not enough.
- As a member of a faction, there’s these NPC’s who spawn specifically to kill you.
- Thanks to _AlliN_, I got clued in that these NPC’s are.. pretty hard.
- I don’t have a good cargo+fighting ship – haven’t earned enough yet.
- Every hour became “I could do this other thing, or I could grab my next allotment and deliver it”.
- I calculated I’d have to play for minimum 2.5 hours a day to make my goal, doing nothing other than grinding.
- 750 merits => 400 per week to maintain; assume 60 merits per day
- with a 40t hold, that’s GET wait 30 GET deliver return wait 8 GET wait 30 GET deliver return.
After getting blown up in my T6, loosing about 33% of my assets.. in my power’s home system, no loess.. things became sober, and somber. I tried making a go of it with a Cobra MK3, but with only 40T of cargo space, my favorite way of making cash was handicapped. If I let go of shielding and a docking computer, I could get 60T..
I made a decision 2 days ago to quit my faction after grinding it out with them for two weeks. I’ve already recovered an additional million (because now I can use a T6).. I intend to get up to about 25 million, then get an ASP (fully kitted out), and then MAYBE join a faction again.
Listening to Lave Radio (Podcast) episode 92, they talk about the grindyness of Power Play. Glad I was not the only one.
Things I’m interested in next:
- Looks like folks are reporting being able to play Horizons with low settings on graphics cards on laptops. This is good; I might get Horizons – then I’ll have more places to land.
- There was a new mining guide released, I’ll have to try that in my Type 6. I found some pristine metal-rich rings.
- I have 2 ships now. I might try to do some smuggling in my Cobra – something small, that I could afford to fail.
I am, however, going on Christmas/Winter break (I’m on it now!) and this involves Florida and no HOTAS .. so, yeah. Don’t know for sure what might happen. Definitely won’t involve combat.
