Hello everyone, brand new commander here.
I have just bought and installed the game yesterday and it is really a pleasure and an eye-candy on my 4K monitor.
Finished the first training and the first mission in Dromi.
I am playing with mouse and keyboard for now. But cannot exclude buying a flight controller for this and other games in the near future.
Please advise in general on anything that may be useful to a newbie, but here are a few questions:
- How much of a campaign is there? I heard the real pleasure is in getting lost, but it would still be interesting to see if any story is there.
- How much of a multiplayer experience is (left) in there? I could see names that sounded "human-given" in the Ext.Comm. screen but didn't really understand.
- Am I ruining my experience significantly by playing without a flight stick? I don't think I will buy a huge HOTAS set, but if I can get an extremely good experience by buying something chill like the Logitech Extreme 3D, please tell me.
Like others have said, there isn't one. There's a storyline delivered via galnet and community goals, but you're free to drop in and out of it as you please. There are various factions you can join and support via powerplay, which will give you weekly goals and a rank-up / reward system. You can also rank up with the federation or empire for access to ships, or pick a minor faction to support informally by doing missions and trade.
Again, you're free to drop in and out. Space is big, though. And with instancing, even in open you may not encounter other CMDRs outside of heavily trafficked systems (stay out of Deciat unless you want to get murdered). There is a dedicated PvP system that's kept in Anarchy state so kills won't get you in trouble. There are plenty of squadrons you can join, check inara (also an invaluable resource generally) to search them. Most people form a private group to do missions or whatever. On the radar, filled dots are NPCs, empty ones are PCs.
You're not missing out. The game is perfectly playable and a lot of fun with mouse and keyboard, stick and keys, HOTAS, HOSAS, controller, whatever. Most of the high ranking PvP players use mouse / keys. I'd suggest finding your feet a bit first before dropping any serious amount of money. But if you do end up going down that route, get something decent. Purely personal opinion but I wouldn't bother with the X3D, although some other people like it just fine. The absolute rock bottom cheapest I'd suggest is an X52, and even then I hesitate to actually recommend it. I have one and don't regret it, but I wish I'd had the patience to save for something better.
And some general advice: Don't forget your limpets, bring a fuel scoop, and don't sell your Cobra. Always take the materials reward (not trade commodities) from missions. Money is tempting in the early game, but you'll get creds as a side effect of playing anyway. Mats will set you up better for the mid - late game when they become a lot more important.
What would be better with a more expensive control system? Just curious - I've got an X52 also, it seems fine, although I haven't found a good way to map the "strafe" axes (i.e. vertically up/down, horizontally left/right).
I put it on the hat on the throttle.
The ergo and mapping is fine. It's the build quality that leaves a bit to be desired IMO.
That's where I've got mine too
Got you, thanks
Thanks for the resources and the tips!