i keep getting blasted by the same damn jerk.
Amazon has a pretty solid return policy, and I donāt think thereās anything wrong with buying that stick and returning it if you donāt like it. Itās not a problem as long as youāre not actually abusing the policy to ārentā equipment.
If itās another player doing it, add their cmdr name to your blocklist. Or do what I do: play 100% in solo because fuck that noise.
Iāll +1 this. If I had an actual wing to fly with the rare times I play the game, Iād play in full multiplayer, but since Iām usually solo Iām always in solo mode so I donāt deal with fuckwits beyond the AI interdictors.
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Correct. I never play in Open because of all the retards out there. Itās either private group or solo. (And the other guys in the private group that Iām a member of all play in open now, so I have a solo-multi-group. 
)
Control-wise, I have a Saitek X52 (not pro), and a Logitech G13 keypad / microjoystick. The X52 is for flight / SRV driving and the G13 is used when mapping systems (to drive the FSS).
If it wasnāt for the insane time zone differences (Iām in UTC+11), we could actually have a CoG Private group and do wing missions and the like together.
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Welp, I jumped back into Elite for a while yesterday evening as part of my testing of my new headset (Steelseries Arctis Pro Wireless).
Remembered how fun it was to blow the hell out of a single NPC pirate that decided to interdict you.
Sighed a little bit at the fact that my XBOX One controller just doesnāt have enough buttons on it. While VoiceAttack somewhat makes up for some of that (being able to control FSD/Supercruise, cargo scoop, landing gear, takeoff, etc. with just voice is fun, plus I have Q as my voicepack), having the ability to roll the ship without it also turning would be nice.
Then I picked up a pair of missions to go shoot down a couple pirates in the next system over. These seem to be confined to a conflict zone. Ok, fine. Fly in, SC over to the zone, get into combatā¦aaaaaaand my graphics driver crashed. And then proceeded to crash almost every time I loaded back in and went back to the combat zone.
Then I learned that apparently E:D has some issues with NVidia 9XX series cards that might require me to underclock my card. That was the point where I gave up for the night.
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Thatās shitty.
Decided to look around for potential other fixes to that. Ended up installing EDFX, which somehow does something with a different shader pack to help the resource usage?
Donāt know exactly all itās doing, but it seemed to run better (enough for me to finish those two missions and get myself a half-million or so credits), plus now my HUD is all blue 
Missile launchers need more ammo, or I need better guns. I keep taking āshoot the dudesā missions to try and build up some funds, and I keep having to go back partway and restock my missile tubes.
Wellā¦Iāve made a little progressā¦
I had built up my Viper MkIV to be kinda beefy. Ended up with dual gimballed burst lasers in the small hardpoints and dual seeker missile racks in the medium hardpoints. Made for an OK little hunter ship, but I wanted somethingā¦more.
So I just traded it in for an Asp Explorer last night. First thought was āHoly hell is this canopy gorgeousā
Second thought was āWow, four small gimballed multi-cannons will chew through small ships like crazy and save me on missile restock costsā
Third thought was āHm. Definitely need to save up some more and replace the bulkheads on this thing. And put on at least one hull reinforcement package. And not fly into a Threat 6 mission node ever again.ā
Upsides:
Beautiful nearly-all-window canopy
Somehow is more maneuverable than the Viper despite being bigger
More hardpoints = more dakka
Obvious ābigger ship = more cargo space and more fuel storageā
I have discovered the glory of a collection limpet controller
Downsides:
Seems like it explodes quicker, but that could solely be because I had dual hull-reinforcement modules on the Viper and a higher-ranked shield generator. The systems Iām near donāt seem to have better 5-slot shield generators, plus I need to rebuild my bank account.
Forgot to store my auto-docking module and none of the stations Iāve been to are selling the damn things
The AspX is not a combat ship. Itās a long-haul exploration ship, or a small-scale mining / cargo ship.
Trying to do combat in one is not recommended.
If you want a decent combat ship, get a Vulture, Fer-de-Lance or Python. Maybe a Dropship or Assault Gunboat. Then A-grade the hell out of it, and pay lots of visits to Engineers to over-charge / max-out the weapons & shields.
If you want to experiment with various build-outs, check coriolis.io and itās cool ship building page.
Got a Python. Got blowed up. Didnāt have enough for rebuy. Whee!
Over the past week I have made (pinky) ONE BILLION CREDITS doing asteroid core mining at the low-temp diamond hotspot on Feige 22 #2. About to crack Trade Elite!!!
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Thatās actually how I saved up enough for the Python. I kitted out the AspX with mining gear and found a low-temp diamonds hotspot in the rings of a planet in a system. āHotspotā apparently means fuckall half the time though, as I tended to barely find any asteroids that actually had diamonds in them most of the time, but I was still able to do that in just a few days.
Maybe once Iām done feeling like Iām a dipshit for flying something I couldnāt rebuy (and playing MK11) Iāll work my way back up to a ship with enough hardpoints to try that again to get back in a decent ship.
If you can find them, Void Opals are worth a lot more - up to 1.7M per ton.
I just fitted a Guardian FSD Booster (Lvl 5) to my AspX (max 57LY jump range now. Woo!) and Iām back out in the black visiting all the Dynasty Bases and the abandoned mega-ship in the Formidine Rift from the big Salome event the other year.
Well, did enough little courier missions to get out of a Sidewinder and into a Diamondback Scout, which is crap, but at least itās not a Sidewinder. Doing more courier missions and ādeliver 10 of these thingsā type missions until I can afford something better again. Might divert and pick up a secondary Type-6 or something to build into a tiny miner once I can afford that.
Side benefit is Iāve pretty well relearned the new keybinds I have set up. I had VoiceAttack build a whole new keybind set so it could have everything, which includes combos, and then I started playing without it so I could learn the keybinds for a little while just in case I get flustered and my voice stops functioning properly
Oddly enough, apparently Iām in a part of known space that happens to contain a neutron star system. I found this out by almost accidentally flying into one of the plasma cones during another jumpā¦>_<
On another note, I love the new āadvanced docking computerā that came with the April update, and the āSupercruise Assistā is kinda fun too.
ADC not only handles auto-docking, but auto-departing as well, so I donāt scrape my paint all over part of the damnable mailslots of the stations.
Supercruise Assist makes automatic course corrections to keep you on path to your locked destination, and auto-drops from SC when youāre in safe drop range.
I skip auto-docking (itās fun!), but SC assist has proven to be pretty useful. It comes in a lot slower than you can do manually, but Iāve been using it for the last bits of frameshift travel. Iāll drop out of witchspace, point my nose at my destination, jam the throttle to 100%, then back off to the blue zone when the ETA timer hits 6 secondsāthatās been the magic number for years and years. Now, though, Iāll flip on SC Assist at that 6-second mark and let it handle the rest. Itās a nice compromise and it still gets you in dock much faster than going blue-zone the whole time.
I saw someone doing the full-throttle thing and dropping to SC Assist right at the bottom of the blue zone right at the end that dropped him out of cruise by shooting him through the station and ending up right on the other side of it.
In progress news, I replaced the DB Scout with a Type 6 that I shoved all kinds of upgraded engines in and a bunch of cargo bays, giving me 96 cargo slots that Iāve been using to haul shit around for missions. Worked my way back up to 7.5 million or so (as of this morning).
Debating the next way I want to go. Iām definitely gonna keep this Type-6 around as the ābackup moneymakerā in case I ever get into the same situation of āgot blowed up and ran out of walletā. Debating picking up another AspX that I can kit out for mining like the last one or if my next one should be a hunter-killer type combat ship.
Yeah, thatās definitely not desirable behavior, lol 
Fortunately, the way supercruise has worked has been pretty much unchanged since the gamma prerelease-release in late 2014. Max throttle until the ETA timer is at 6 seconds, then throttle to blue. The timer will stay pegged at 6 seconds for the entire rest of your run, and you tap the disengage button/switch when it crosses 1Mm. (it used to be 200 meters, which was a lot more complicatedā¦)
But the SC Assist is absolutely a convenienceābeen using it a hell of a lot since release.
Debating picking up another AspX that I can kit out for mining like the last one or if my next one should be a hunter-killer type combat ship.
I loved my time in an AspXāitās a great do-everything ship. Itās got a not-terrible cargo capacity, itās got awesome jump range, and itās got enough hardpoints to have some pretty decent teeth. If you want a jack-of-all trades ship for your midgame, itās a great choice.
See, in the short time I had one, I did like the number of hardpoints, but it definitely seemed rather squishy. The few fights I got into in it seemed like unless I could overwhelm the opponentās shields in just a few shots, I was gonna be toast.
I guess I couldāve ripped out all the cargo bits and whatnot and replaced them with more hull reinforcement modules and slapped on a couple of shield boosters, but that wouldāve seriously hampered its travel abilityā¦
Maybe Iāll go exploring. I havenāt really left much of the same rough region of space that I was in when I restarted playing.