So far when I have been to space I've only made use of official services or flown with friends. But I would like to at least try to fly from space stations to planet in the future. But I have basically no idea how to. I know I need thrusters, but how many? When flying from space station to planet I have to leave the SS, go into space... and then what? What to aim for? Lastly, is it safe to travel between SS and planet? Or do pirates camp SS's to get those who do not want to use the teleport service? A friend also told me when we were flying that we have to enter Arkadia from a specific angle at a specific location or else it doesn't work. Is this still the case? I found this video but it's 4 years old. Is it accurate?
The instructions in the video are still accurate, although I haven't watched it entirely. My toeneails are curling every time I have to listen to a fellow German trying to speak English (glad I'm not hearing myself doing it). You need one space thruster attached to your vehicle, either a quad or vtol. The thruster will decay by 0.1 ped every time you enter space from planet or vice versa, i.e. 0.2 ped for a trip from one planet to another. Better carry a spare one in time when it's running low. In case you get shot down by a pirate, you need a repair kit and enough welding wire. Aiming for the planet as soon as you're out of the space station is pretty easy, it fills the whole screen and can't be missed. You may need to turn your ship around first. Just move the mouse to the side and/or up/down (you are now in 3D space), displacing the crosshairs from the center towards where you want to go, and the ship's nose will follow. Takes a bit getting used to. When you're satisfied with the direction, just hit R and off you go. You can zoom out and use the 'Rotate camera' action (I have set this conveniently to the 'Home' key) to look back at yourself and the space behind you. If you want to travel to a distant target, it is best to set a waypoint on the map. You can prepare this before starting either from planet or space station to save oil you'd otherwise waste hovering. Make the map medium or big size for getting the drop-down menu, select 'Space' and set your waypoint. Needless to say, of course double check you have enough oil. I usually refuel when it gets under 5 ped, although this is more than enough for a trip to anywhere. But you never know if you get held up somewhere. Upon approaching planet, a dialog box will open and tell you that 2 ped will be deducted from your balance if you want to land. Therefore also make sure you always have these left on your ped card, otherwise you're stuck up there. You will see other ships nearby indicated by arrows of different colours, blue or green are friendly and red are the bad ones (there can be circumstances when a friendly ship gets a red arrow, but this is too complicated for now). Ideally have the friends list open and deselect everything except "nearby". This way you can also see if there are bad guys around. Some names are well known, or you can check if they belong to a pirate society. If that happens, you need to decide what to do. Go back to space station and wait or pay the teleporter, or wing it and most likely get shot down. At least usually you get a few skill points when they attack you, just like mob. The first few times it's a real thrill, until you've been shot a few times and learn you can't do anything about it. Pirates who do this all the time acquire skills a normal traveller can never match, and MA wants it that way. Don't make a fool of yourself by taking to the Space Travel chat channel to complain. You see some folks even announcing, "Please don't shoot me, I don't carry any loot". Makes one cringe every time. You don't talk to a mob that spawns on your back and attacks you, and seeing it this way is the best method to shrug off the anger. Best is to be totally silent. Also don't announce in #arkadia or other public channels that you're about to travel into space, pirates are watching them. Good luck! It's a cold place out there. Edit: Corrections re. space thruster decay applied as per the hints below. Thanks.
Don't forget to not carry any "stacks" of loot into space... because if you DO get shot down, they're probably gonna go into the pirate's pockets.
Actually the decay is 0.1 ped per use, and it is taken when you leave space to enter a planet and when you enter space from a planet. This makes a one-way trip, say, from Caly to Ark, 0.2 ped decay total, and a round trip from one planet to another 0.4 ped total. Last time I checked, a thruster does not need to be attached in order to enter or leave space stations. In addition to San's good tips for navigation, there's a command in your action library called "Align Horizontal", which is used in space to turn your ship "right side up" in relation to your map. Directions in space can be confusing at times even for space veterans, so make this a hotkey on your keyboard. Don't trust the triangle color, instead go by who the pilot is and their behavior. As a new pilot in space you will probably see good ships as red until you kill your first space mob or shoot down a pirate. In any case, you should never take lootables in a quad and double check your inventory (use the compact button). Sometimes items can disappear from your inventory and require a relog for them to be visible again. They are, however, still lootable even when invisible. So if you've been online for a while or used the auction or storage for stackables, relog and recheck before going into lootable PVP. Again, you don't use your thruster when getting shot down, the only things you lose when getting shot down are time, ship TT value, and RK-5/ww. Considering the good skills you get from repairing, the only thing you really lose is ship TT value and your ship has enough TT value for several hundred destructions, so it's minimal. On the other hand, the pirate spends 40 pec each weapon shot, so being pirate bait and dodging shots when they chase you is a great way to exact your revenge on those time wasters!
I thought it does and it would decay, but I could be wrong of course. Will pay attention to it next time, thanks for the heads-up.
I found an old thread about space travel tips which I think is still up to date. http://arkadiaforum.com/threads/only-you-can-make-space-travel-fun.2789/ Oh, and to land on a planet, just head toward the planet. The entry area is a square 8192m x 8192m oriented vertically, so you can't miss it
Thanks for all the tips and info. I appreciate it! One thing that I wasn't very clear on was the SS to planet part. Say, if I'm on Ark SS and want to get down to Ark, will I enter PvP space or is it a safe zone? The video implied it was safe.
In the first days of space travel, you could go directly from the station safe zone to the planet, but they have since separated them. You must go through PVP now to get to the planet. How's that for progress! Edit: I just watched that video and remembered how much cooler the original asteroid space stations were... it's a shame they removed them for the boring steel boxes they have now.
To add to the advice above. If you are flying to another planet, you do not need to go to that planets space station first. Place your waypoint off to one side of the station - all that you need t do is to hit the planet server boundary and it does not matter where you do that. It takes about 45 minutes to fly from Ark to Caly in a quad, and about an hour in a sliep/VTOL
I have to say, I have done about 5 runs between caly, cyrene and ark loaded with loot, I have found some good routes which avoid SS which is where a lot of the pirates seem to hang out plus there are certain times of day when space is pretty quiet. The last time I flew into Ark I had the arktrade channel open and somebody was offering a taxi ride leaving ark at a specific time. Good way to attract pirates. Definitely don't announce yourself.
You just did. If not outright, but still dropped enough hints what to look out for. If you need to transport loot, take a sufficiently upgraded mothership. It costs you maybe 10 ped more on a scheduled flight, tp fees included. For that price it's just not worth winging it.
Sigh... If you like the thrill, that's your prerogative. Statistics will get you in the end, it always does since it's a law of nature. If everbody played it safe instead, then piracy would simply starve and MA would eventually get the message that how they set things up is not liked by the community. This is why such behaviour is reckless, because it keeps the bad guys' hopes up and they won't go away so everybody else has to put up with them. Simple as if you leave food in the kitchen, you'll attract cockroaches. So many people complain to MA about this and that, while it would be in their own hands to make decisions. You may of course decide to serve the "dark side", whether actively or not, but with full consciousness in any case.
Isn't that way of thinking allowing the owners of motherships cream ped off people who don't want to take the risk? not forgetting the 2 or 6 ped the AH charges for shipping goods from planet to planet.
There is a lot of good info here but also some that is out-of-date and apparently conflicting/unclear advice I suggest you take a look at the space guidance at http://kronan-ms.info/how-to-get-started/ which apart from three very minor changes is as complete as I can make it. The 3 errors I have noted caused by updates to the game and which will update soon are: How do I get to space? Section 1. replace 'dynamic content' with 'Planet Data' Section 2 the note in blue in regard to space thrusters. You will now be unable to fly into space unless you have sufficient thruster usage left to also allow you to land at your destination. However if summoned to space by a Mothership or Privateer this warning is by-passed, so it is possible to arrive in space with either No thruster or a broken thruster. Section 3 ' Please be aware a few other items are also lootable as MA have very inconsistent rules' 'Replace currently H-DNA and loot pills can also be looted' with 'as a general rule if it is in the tabs for materials or mined resources and is tradeable (some skill pills are non-tradeable) then it is lootable also' I have also realised that we have not yet updated the space vehicles to include the Red Quad - The Equus. I hope to remedy this omission soon. I hope this helps, without overwhelming you with info. Space in EU can be a lot of fun once you get used to it.
Yes they created the opportunity for someone to earn money this way, these dirty capitalists. Not a perfect virtual world but better than pirates creaming it off, isn't it?
I'm not so sure it is, it depends why people are here, for me it's about playing the game and part of that is dodging pirates etc. Same as mining in PVP areas. And I have been caught out doing that once but that is part of the game. If I was here to make money then I'd have quit within a few weeks of starting. How about a team pirate hunt?
I appreciate this may have been said in jest, and the following is not meant in any way to be an attack on any individual, but it did raise a point that has bugged me for some time, and considering my questions may I hope, make people think more carefully about their expectations of space. Why is it that people find it 'immoral' of MS and other warp ship owners to charge for safe passage across the Entropian Universe ? Yet we don't see threads where people complain that fappers are profiteering off the hunters they assist, or about shop-keepers daring to expect to make a profit. They are all providing a service you can use or not as you choose, and rightly expect to make a few ped in return for their investment and their time. Should pirates be wiped out by hunting them ? Good luck with that, they have been hunted since their inception, for everyone that quits space another fills the gap. Should MA remove the pirates Well the warp ships would become largely irrelevant, other than for speed. Ignoring for a moment the huge loss of ped to the owners and any compensation from MA, what would you then have MA do with space ? Think of an activity that would not tempt pirates to come and try to profit from it. Would you then be wanting larger ships to protect you ? Move you safely ? Remove space..lets not waste time going from planet to planet, let's have interplanetary TP's. Really...you reckon MA would do that for free...heads up, they already have TP from Monria or asteroids to Calypso, cost broadly similar to current scheduled warps. In the past before space as we know it they had interplanetary TP's.. but the costs was I believe 30 ped (as much or more than most VIP services) So be careful what you ask for.. MA charged 30ped for near instant (boring) travel between planets 6 years ago.. they already charge 7 ped just to get you from SS to nearest planet. One can only imagine what they would charge if they re-introduced TP between planets. Many people in EU enjoy space and would like to see far more activity there, mining, improved hunting, maybe a reduced cost battle zone event area, some missions and some relevance to captaincy skills etc. So instead of looking at the things that inconvenience you, let's look at the game as a whole and see how space can be made more relevant. Entropia Universe would hardly be living up to it's name if it were instead just a few different play areas connected by tp's
I think when I made that comment it was a little bit flippant and I was meaning it in the sense of transports are making money out of weaker players as are pirates, just in a more honest fashion. I didn't realise how much bad feeling there was on the subject! But MA must like the way things are, as I was thinking today it is a bit odd that PED aren't looted, so you get shot down and lose stackables but still have PED left to go out and make more stackables that can be looted. To be honest I like space as it is but I can see why people don't
