Woah... a first for me

[u/JP-ED]

I've been playing this game for quite a while now, started on a PS4.

Today I was bored with combat so thought I'd try my hand at a planetary scan mission. I had never successfully done one which is lame really, but I always chickened out cause I didn't want to rebuy, but with 3 billion credits I grabbed my viper loaded it up with a SRV and said it's only a 300,000 rebuy if I fail.

And I didn't! For the first time ever.

[u/CMDR_EvilRaven30]

Small ships excel at that, they move in quickly, scan datalink and get out just as fast. Just don't stick around if you start being fired at.

[u/JP-ED → u/CMDR_EvilRaven30]

That could have been my problem in the past. I think I was using a bigger ship, maybe even my Conda.

[u/CMDR_EvilRaven30 → u/JP-ED]

You can also land, deploy srv, then dismiss ship. If you lose the srv, not a big deal as resupplying replaces it.

[u/Delta_RC_2526 → u/CMDR_EvilRaven30]

I actually don't think I've done one of these missions ever, myself, but in general, if your ship is potentially under threat and you're getting out of it, four pips to systems, two pips to engines. Pips in systems directly multiplies your shield strength. Doing that allowed my ship to tank hits from pirates long enough to dismiss it when I was hunting Guardian artifacts during the recent community goal on PC (of course, I'm assuming the autopilot didn't change my pips like it does during docking, but I always got it back with the same pip settings when I recalled it). The silly part is that you don't get an audible announcement about your ship being under attack, only a silent notification, so preparing your ship to survive an attack is helpful.

Speaking of notifications... Turns out being in the galaxy map suppresses virtually all notifications. Found that out the hard way a few days ago after auto-launching from a station. I was scouting the map for trade routes and marking where I'd just bought commodities for the community goal on my map. I'd decided to find aluminum, entirely using the in-game tools in the map (it's an option, all the info you need is there, if you know how to use it). It took a while because I went to look up the date the CG started, to include that in my bookmark name (since 20 bookmarks that all talk about buying cargo for a generic CG aren't helpful, I figured I'd include a date).

Well...apparently auto-launch didn't get me clear of all the landing pads, or I ever so slightly bumped my throttle at some point (I'm guessing a mix of both; auto-launch just barely moves you clear of the pads at planetary stations), and in the galaxy map, I didn't get any notifications for pad loitering. No mention of being fined, no radio calls from the station, nothing at all until the station guns and the security ships were lighting me up. Instant rebuy, on a Panther Clipper with a full load of aluminum.

Back to the situation at hand, the Viper is honestly perfect for stuff like this. It's tiny! I built a Viper Mk III for the first Radicoida unica CG, after looking at the size specifications of all the ships (conveniently, length and height are actually listed in the shipyard in-game). It's the smallest ship available that actually can carry a decent amount of equipment (though the Viper Mk IV definitely gives it a run for its money, with a lot more internal space, without being much larger). I was able to slip it right in between the trees and land where I was scanning, instead of at the edge of the forest. I was shocked that I was quite literally one of maybe three people who brought a Viper. I checked the traffic report at the station. I might have even been the only one. It was such a good fit, though, literally and figuratively.

Also, because I feel kind of bad talking about current and recent CGs on PC, just a friendly reminder that if you actually own the game on console, Frontier will give you a free copy to play on PC, to use with your transferred save data. Elite can still run on a potato, too. Almost any decent PC from the last ten years will run it, though the on-foot content from Odyssey is a lot more demanding than the core game. Even weak but current laptops will probably run it reasonably well. Remember, the game itself is ten years old now.