Elite Dangerous Guardians - The Beluga

The new Beluga
This post is about the game Elite Dangerous, the successor to Elite, which was the best space game in the 1990's, imo.

And the new update.

A few things before I address the Passenger aspects. I'm not Elite in any category, though I'm a Tycoon in Trading, so I'm close. Exploring I'm a Ranger, but I don't know where that ranks.  In Combat - well, I need practice, and at least I'm no longer harmless.. In Close-Quarters-Combat (CQC) I need a lot of improvement.

I have Sidewinders scattered throughout the galaxy, since I played before we could bookmark stations - and that's okay because bookmarks get messy pretty quickly. They should let me make bookmark folders - that would be cool.

My favorite trick to earn credits was to take my Asp out to Sothis and Ceos and shuttle back and forth with half a dozen missions for 10-20K credits. When a good cargo mission showed up, I'd grab it and when I had 10-15 MILLION credits of missions back into normal space, off I'd go. Worked pretty well. I amassed enough credits to get the T7 transport and even tried the T9. I didn't take the T9 to Sothis because it flew like a .... well, a huge brick. I almost broke my joystick doing turns.

Those easy days of millions of credits are over. Sothis and Ceos missions are worth almost nothing, which is a little crazy since getting back to civilization is 400+ light-years, but economic times are hard. Even in a game.

So we move on. I thought I'd try the Beluga and do PASSENGER missions.

I outfitted this fine juggernaut with some Luxury Cabins and looked for good bookings. You know, luxury passengers, like in real life, I suppose, just aren't everywhere. I did find one and took her on her personal tour of the galaxy.

The first leg of the journey was about 160 ly, or 10 jumps in my new whale. (The ship is actually pretty responsive, and i should have stripped down more internals to get greater jump range, but I grabbed too many cabins and added an extra fuel tank. No guns though.) I had to go to a Visitor Beacon in a system I didn't know. When I arrived I immediately saw the beacon, after I scanned the system. So I dropped out of space and stared at the Beacon. I even ran into it, at a rather high rate of speed. I don't recommend that, as it took down two of my three shield rings. What was I supposed to do with this thing. My Passenger didn't give me a clue! So I researched and found nothing. It just isn't clear what to do. For those with the same problem:

TARGET THE VISITOR BEACON AND IT SCANS AND YOU GET CREDIT.
There it is. You're welcome.

The next two systems I couldn't find the Visitor's Beacon. Even with the best System Scanner, I still had to fly close to it to discover it. That frustrated me.

During one refueling I clipped another ship exiting the dock. Of course I did! I'm a whale! Not only did I get a fine, but my passenger registered displeasure. At one point she demanded some grain, so I stopped and bought some. To be fair, her personality profile said she was "demanding" and I guess that means you have to make stops and buy things.

Really,during one interdiction I was ready to give them my passenger. Let them deal with her.

Anyway, after the final beacon search and scan I took her back to SOL and it was 29 jumps away.I won's do passengers again, or at least not luxury ones. Honestly, just too much trouble for too little reward. I'll outfit another ship to carry cargo passengers and make some money that way.

So there's the saga. The Visitor Beacons annoyed me. The Passenger annoyed me. The Interdictions annoyed me a little, but I expected those. The Beluga? Nice ship. I'm trading it in and might try an Orca. Or go back to my new Python.

Or go looking for Biological Entities on the Planets! That might be fun.

Cmdr Stonewalker

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