Elite Dangerous Hunting Pirates in Asteroid Belts Guide

Elite Dangerous Hunting Pirates in Asteroid Belts Guide by KG_Jedi

This guide is for new players, and most of CMDR’s probably already know everything written here

Hello, dear pilots.

First of all, i want to say that i’ve been playing this game for almost 1 month. I’ve earned “Expert” combat rank so far, and made almost 15 million credits by playing ~10 hours a week. This is my first guide, so show some mercy :D

Well, first of all, you need Viper or Cobra ship. If your balance allows, buy best power plant you can get, better shields, Kill Warrant Scanner and Shield Cell Bank. This equipment is STRONGLY suggested, because making big money means killing pirates on big ships, such as Anaconda, Imperial Clipper and Python.

As for weapons, i suggest using 2 x Pulse/Beam on gimballed mount in small weapon slots, and 2 x Multicannons (also gimballed) in big weapon slots.

Now, prepare your ship. Load ammunition, buy cell banks, configre fire groups, so that you can fire pulse/beam and multicannons separately. Also, press ESC, go to Options, then Controls and set key for shield cell bank. Pressing a key on keyboard to use cell bank is much faster than doing so by switching firegroups. And, of course, make sure you have money to rebuy your ship in case of something.

Now, we need to leave station/outpost and look for Resource Extraction Site (RES). Take into account, that for some reason, RES is not shown in your “Navigation” panel if you are inside of station/outpost. If there ain’t any in the system, look for a system with RES in galaxy map. Any system with “Extraction” type of economy will have RES.

Now, since, you made it to RES, you need to switch game to Solo. Exit to main menu and re-enter game in Solo mode. This is needed. Now, when you in game again, NPC ships should start appearing. Look at them. For now, we are looking for any big ship, such as: Anaconda Lakon Type 9 Imperial Clipper Lakon Type 7

If you don’t see any of these, exit to main menu again and re-enter game. Do it, until you see any of these ships around. The reason you do this, is because each time player enters RES (no matter how, via supercruise or exiting to menu) game spawns NPCs around him and sets NPC spawn setting. And this NPC spawn setting can be Small/Medium/Large, it is being set randomly. If it’s set to Small, only small NPC ships will be appearing no matter how many of them you kill. As i said, this setting is set randomly each time player exits to menu and re-enters game.

So, if you finally saw one of the ships above, you are lucky and can start hunting pirates down. Just keep in mind several tips:

1) Pay attention to big ship’s ranks. Taking alone on Anaconda, who’s rank is Expert or Higher is very dangerous, only if you are not flying Vulture.

2) However, the most dangerous situations happens, when pirates come in wings. 3 pirate sidewinders in one wing can be as dangerous as Anaconda. Attacking one of pirate wing will make other wing members attack you. And having 2 pirates on tail constantly shooting you, while you chase 3rd, will get your shields offline faster than you say “Oops”. Better wait for system authority vessels to engage them first and then you can easily finish them off.

3) Be careful, even if your pirate is alone and fighting with 3-5 police ships, they tend to prioritize player’s ships as soon as player starts shoting them. So don’t be surprised, if pirate will ignore all police on his tail and will chase you till he’s blown up.

4) Big ships are your priority, remember? Imperial Clippers, Federal Dropships, Anacondas, Pythons… Make sure, that after you ship auto-scans them, you go to left panel, “Subtargets” and choose “Power plant”. This will make your gimballed weapons aim at chosen subsystem. Getting powerplant’s integrity to 0% will blow up the ship no matter how much HP had it got.

5) You can turn off flight assist by holding “Z” key (earlier i thought i need to press it). As long as you hold it, maneuver thrusters won’t operate automatically. For example, you have Eagle on your tail shooting at you. You fly straight, make sure your speed is in “blue zone” of speed-o-meter, then you hold “Z” and start turning your nose backwards, while ship itself is still flying in same direction. This is hard to explain with my poor english, but this option let’s you use actual space physics in combat. Use it to deal with agile ships like Eagle.

6) Use Kill Warrant Scanner on every big pirate ship you meet. Assign it to firegroup and scan. This will increase amount of money you get.

7) You better clear your cargo hold before entering RES. Because it can be annoying, when you are fighting with one pirate, and other one comes to you asking “Got something for us?”, seeing some cargo and you get 1 more enemy to deal.

8) Use thermal weapons (such as pulse/beam lasers) VS shields, and kinetic (such as cannons, multicannons) VS hull and modules.

9) Don’t forget, that activating Shield Cell Bank will not restore shields immediately. It requires ~3 seconds to start recovering shields.

10) And use power distribution option. Pressing arrow keys on keyboard will remanage energy supply (you can press same arrow several times to direct more energy): Arrow up = more energy to thrusters. Arrow left = more energy to systems (like shields) Arrow right = more energy to weapons (allows you shoot longer without overheat)

11) Rarely, enemies can shoot off your thrusters, leaving you to drift in space. If your thrusters’ integrity is at 0% (check at right panel, “Modules” section), you still can help yourself. First, make sure enemy is not around (or wait till your shields are back online). Then go to right panel, “Functions” and in the most end you can find “Reboot/Repair” function. Use it to repair your broken module to 1-2% percent. It will be enough to get you to closest station.

12) Look at system security ships’ trajectories in combat. This guys tend to fly right into your gunfire, leading to them becoming hostile to you.

Arrow down = balance energy betweeb systems, thrusters and weapons.

Okay, and finally list of ships that can/cannot be pirates: Lakon Type 6 – 100% not pirate Lakon Type 7 – 100% not pirate Lakon Type 9 – 100% not pirate ASP – 100% not pirate Sidewinder – 50% not pirate Adder – 50% pirate, 50% not pirate Viper – 50% pirate, 50% security vessel Cobra – 50% pirate, 50% not pirate Eagle – 50% pirate, 50% security vessel Vulture – not seen in RES Federal Dropship – 100% pirate Imperial Clipper – 100% pirate Python – 50% not pirate, 50% pirate Fer-de-lance – not seen in RES Orca – not seen in RES Anaconda – 75% pirate, 25% security vessel

Hope this guide helps out any new players.