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Elite Dangerous > Guides > AeRoStAtIc's Guides
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Unexplained things that you might find useful
By AeRoStAtIc
Hidden things in the game that are not explained that will improve your life immensely if you get to know them.
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Created by
AeRoStAtIc
Offline
Category: Gameplay Basics, Secrets
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
28 May, 2015 @ 4:30pm
18 Oct, 2015 @ 11:47am
27,446 Unique Visitors
813 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
Around and In Stations 
Supercruise 
Flight and Normal Space 
Combat and Weapons 
Comments
Around and In Stations
  • Mother*****, you pressed launch again right after docking. Quickly press Return to Hangar to override

  • Can't find the entrance of the Coriolis (the dodecahedron thing) stations? Target the station and look at the hologram left of your radar, there will be arrows pointing towards the entrance. Additionally, Coriolis entrances are found on the face rotating counter-clockwise.

  • Returning to hangar when you dock will make you launch faster.

  • Switching between solo, private, and open will refresh the bulletin board.

  • To drop out facing the station entrance, direct the back of your ship towards the planet the station is orbiting in Supercruise, then drop out.

  • Turn off rotational correction in the right hand panel under functions for some fun times docking.

  • Outposts that are full can be bypassed by switching to Solo.

  • Your landing pad on both stations and outposts will be in the direction you are facing when the dot on your GPS to the left of the main radar is in the center.

  • Landing pad 1 is always a bit** to stop for.

  • Outposts cannot carry Large ships.

  • If you are wanted and get scanned by the authorities at a station, your docking will be revoked.

  • Don't shoot any clean person around or in the station lest you want to get destroyed.

  • NPC scans can be bypassed by going fast. Player scans can be bypassed by going silent running or chaffing.

  • The Lakon 7, 9, and Orca have huge foreheads. Scrape the bottom of the mailslot.

  • The Anaconda has a huge belly. Scrape the top of the mailslot.

  • The Clipper and Type 9 are fat. Hog the center of the mailslot.

  • The way your ship is supposed to face is indicated by the landing hologram's arrows.

  • The default request docking sequence for keyboards is 1 E E Space S Space.





Supercruise
  • Facing your ship's behind relatively close (<.30 ls) to a star will make you near impossible to interdict. NPC's and players who manage it will often crash into the star.

  • Hunting for Signal Sources? Throttle to 0 (30 km/s) and wait for them to pop right in front and close to

  • The key to winning interdictions on both sides is to roll your ship constantly one way while pinning the Escape Vector.

  • Low energy wake means a ship dropped out of Supercruise, or went into Supercruise. High energy means the ship jumped to another system.

  • To counter wake scanners, jump to another system, drop out of Supercruise, and jump to another system.

  • If you encounter counter wake scanners, or don't have a wake scanner, and want to follow a ship, target the High energy wake, align the hologram on the left of the radar so that the circles are concentric, with the smallest circle pointing "away" from the pilot. Look just far enough to engage the left panel, navigation tab, and select systems, glancing at the dot on the GPS every time you lock onto a system. When that dot is dead center, chances are your target jumped to that system.

  • Want to see if you have players in your instance? Press CTRL+B to bring up bandwidth. If both send and receive are high (>2000), there are players in your instance.

  • Alternatively, bring up your comms panel, tab over to your friends list, and keep checking here for local contacts. Any contacts that pop up there are nearby players.

  • Keeping your throttle in the blue, or keeping the ETA timer to 0:07 on your destination will prevent you from doing the loop of shame/overshoot the target.

  • You can interdict people with your hardpoints stowed. Bind you interdictor to a firegroup, line up behind a target, and press fire.

  • Use wide barrel rolls (not normal rolling...) and loops to throw off potential interdictors.

  • You can press your throttle zero in witchspace to start in system supercruise at 30 km/s. (X by default)

  • Throttle down to zero (30 km/s) when being interdicted to submit. Submitting allows you to charge your FSD faster than if you were interdicted, and you will take no damage upon coming out of SC.

Flight and Normal Space
  • The higher your SYS pips, the stronger your shields are, and the more capacitor you have to recharge shields.

  • The higher your WEP pips, the faster you recharge weapon capacitor, and mitigate overheating.

  • The higher your ENG pips, the faster you can go, the tighter you can turn, and you can boost more often.

  • Turning flight assist off right after a boost will perform a boost turn, allowing you to turn faster

  • Keep throttle in the blue for optimal turning.

  • Ships can Mass Disrupt your FSD (Inhibition by factor of X), causing longer charge times. 1.3 will bring new values. Get to know them inside and out.

  • You can bypass Mass Disrupt entirely by jumping to another system (15 seconds time).

  • The Clipper has no longer FSD cooldown when successfully interdicted or emergency dropped.

  • An A thrustered lightweight Cobra with a competent pilot will always outrun anything that is not a Cobra.
Combat and Weapons
  • Beams, Railguns, and Plasma Accelerators do the most damage to shields, but drain capacitor very fast.

  • The order of damage across weapon types is sorted by highest to lowest, Fixed>Gimbal>Turret.

  • You receive damage penalities when engaging large ships with medium and small weapons, medium ships with small weapons, etc.

  • Fixed weapons have small amounts of gimballing. Use them in long range sniping.

  • Weapons do the most damage sub ~700m.

  • Dual chaffing (staggering 2 chaff releases) will counter gimbals and soon to be turrets indefinitely.

  • If you are being chaffed, unlock your target and use your gimbals as fixed. Turrets can be set to forward fire to counter chaff.

  • Silent running prevents player scanning, and from gimbals locking on. With lower heat signature, you will become an anomaly on the scanner, and untargetable.

  • Aim for the drives if you don't want a target escaping.

  • Reboot/Repair in the right hand panel under functions allows you to repair destroyed modules by cannibalizing other healthy ones.






69 Comments
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lprice 12 Sep, 2023 @ 3:27pm 
One thing you missed: If your shields are down, using reboot/repair will bring them back to 50%. and is normally faster without bi-weave.
wogzilla87 15 Aug, 2023 @ 12:30pm 
id probably add something about scanning planets and systems just for those budding explorers, i was daft and didnt realise how to properly scan a system for a while
synchronized churro ensemble 4 Jan, 2023 @ 9:35am 
Something I picked up while surface prospecting around some brain trees- if you knock a chunk loose, but it gets stuck in the branches, just target the chunk w/ the SRV cargo scoop open and use the jump jets to hover up to it. The hitbox on the cargo scoop is WIDE lol
Domminance 7 Aug, 2022 @ 3:29am 
"Weapons do the most damage sub ~700m."
I'm assuming this was to be " Turret weapons do the most damage sub ~700m."
Alpha-methyl 27 Jun, 2022 @ 5:14pm 
I've also found, especially since the new supercruise assist module (...well, it's new to me, but I suppose it's not exactly "new" by now), that the "loop of shame" can intentionally be used to avoid interdiction entirely when you're approaching whatever instance you're aiming for. If I know one is about to happen, and I'm using the assist (manual throttle control) I'll throttle up to overshoot it on purpose or speed up and start my "loop of shame" early, and a lot of the time it's enough to keep them chasing your tail right up until you drop out... or in... or ...whatever you're doing.
Alpha-methyl 27 Jun, 2022 @ 5:13pm 
Quite a good bit of useful advice for new players -even some stuff an ED vet may not have thought of.

With that out of the way... two things.

An EXPERT parking a Beluga in the mail slot need not concern themselves with traffic and the like... it's the most fun to fit through a starport mail slot.. Just max your shields and force your way through! what's a little fine anyway? You don't have the space to play with to concern yourself with other "lesser" ships anyway... which is pretty much all ships. What's a little fine anyway?
Danino ABI 14 Mar, 2022 @ 2:38am 
One thing I have found with 'small' ships (others feel like a personal yacth or a fast attack boat) i.e. Anaconda Type-9, 10 etc. is that if you decelerate as you approach the entrance the whole thing will go much more smoothly. Just line yourself up at range and once aligned approach at 70% max speed and hit the retro thrusters once you can make out the metal frames that extend from the bay entrance. What it feels like to me is that you 'load' the ship with some Gs so it is more responsive when compared to a 1k plus ton chunk of metal adrift in space.
Captain Cosmo 13 Feb, 2022 @ 4:15am 
This is a great guide. Good job, I even learned something new from it!
WTF is Namek 22 Jan, 2022 @ 1:28am 
If you have an annoying AI trying to interdict you. Get really close to a body, kill throttle and turn away from it. The AI will try to get behind and clip into the No-Go zone.
Ad Hominem 14 Nov, 2021 @ 2:51pm 
Additionally, the entrance to Coriolis stations is usually pointed towards or near the body it is orbiting. Like the planet or star or whatever.