Elite: Dangerous and Elite Dangerous: Horizons

Briefly I'll note the existence of the other thread mentioning this game but with the new "expansion pack" and knowing how many "little details" there are in this game it seems more fitting to elaborate on some things.

Second note:
Elite Dangerous: Horizons can be purchased as a standalone game. However it is much more demanding on your hardware than Elite: Dangerous. I would recommend buying ED when its on sale then getting Horizons which will then have 25% off effectively making it 2 for the price of one.
Ok they simplified life now and made things make more sense. They changed Horizons into DLC for ED instead of a standalone, therefore meaning ED is the base game and Horizons just adds functions. Because of this you no longer have to worry about getting one or the other.

Third note: currently Horizons only adds planetary landings so you wouldn't be missing much by just getting ED. However later they'll add to Horizons multicrew ships, pilot customization, and ships docking in bigger ships that are player controlled.

Final note: because of the lack of differences I'll only mention the mechanics currently available in ED only. With that said, lets get to the fun stuff.

P.S. Play through the tutorials. Some even train you in combat. They teach you how to use your ship and how to do alot of the basics like navigation and docking. Best do them and use what I mention as additional information.

P.S.S. This started as a summary. It ended up as a guide.

ELITE: DANGEROUS

At its core it is a space flight sim sandbox. To elaborate you can almost do anything you could think of that can be done with a "small" ship. And by small I mean less than or equal to the size of a modern aircraft carrier.

Now the sandbox everyone gets to play in is a 1:1 scale replica of our own Galaxy. When they say you can travel to over 400 billion star systems, they are not exaggerating.

To make it even more interesting, there is some power play going on in the region of populated space. 3 factions to join, oppose, or remain neutral towards. Of course there's certain benefits, like ships that are only available in certain factions.

Now things you do cost money. Fuel costs money (unless you outfit your ship with a fuel scoop), repairs cost money, bullets cost money, ships cost money, upgrades cost money. Well there's a few ways to make money, which all fall into three categories: combat, trade, and exploration. How you do it is up to you.

With Combat there's a few basic ways of getting money: bounty hunting, pirating, and mercenary work.

With trading there's being the respectable merchant or freighter, or you can be a smuggler working in the black market.

Exploration is to boldly go where no man has gone before. You slap some sensors in your ship and set her up to be very self sustaining cause you're going outside the bubble of populated space. You go out, scan and discover new celestial bodies, then come back to sell the data.

Now with all that in mind, you have a plethora of choices when it comes to ships. There's the combat ships, the trader and transporters, the explorers, and the multirole. You have the big, the medium, and the small.

You start off with the Sidewinder, a small multirole ship that can help you get your feet wet. It has two small weapon hardpoints and a few optional internal slots that are loaded with a cargo rack, shield generator, and a basic discovery scanner.

Something I should recommend is to immediately ditch the basic discovery scanner for a fuel scoop. It'll help prevent you from getting stuck somewhere should you run low on fuel, provided you don't wind up at a cold star that you can't fuel scoop from. I'll go into detail later if someone asks.

Now to start getting credits for either upgrading the Sidewinder or immediately getting a different ship you got 2 main choices that you can do in whatever system you start in: bounty hunting and trading.
Now bounty hunting is dangerous, not the most recommended thing until you get an Eagle, the cheapest and one of the most combat capable small class ships you would ever own. You would effectively go into the system's navigation beacon and lurk around internal security forces until they start shooting at something, check what they're shooting and then tagging it when its almost dead and you'll get something out of it. Once you get comfortable with controlling your ship and handling the weapons and power management of it, then you can start being aggressive and start taking on bigger prey. Just be careful of targets that are in wings. 1v1 is easy. 1v2 or more is suicidal for small ships.

Now true trading initially is a bit more complicated than I can explain right now. Instead there's delivery missions that you can do that are posted in a station's bulletin board. Some of those missions are... Well... Smuggling missions which are more high risk high reward. They're easy if you have confidence in your ability to dock quickly at a station without being scanned by internal security forces. Once you fly through the "mail slot" of stations, you're safe from a scan. Of course there's a few other ways such as using silent running to slip in, but that's for another time.

Now the ultimate challenge is finding things and finding a good place to be. The galaxy map can initially be overwhelming with all the stars. Your first task is to find out what else is in your current system and neighboring systems. You'll want to be in a system with a station that has a shipyard and outfitting. How to do this? First off you lock to the console to your left of the cockpit. The first tab is navigation which allows you to see what is in the system in terms of points of interest and then at the bottom it lists nearby systems you can go to. Take note of the names of nearby systems and look them up in the galaxy map and check if they have system maps. No system maps mean nothing is really in them. Bad to get stuck in those. Once you find a system with something check for stations and what those stations have. Sometimes delivery missions will help you find places so they have additional benefits in that regards.

Hopefully by the time you do some of the above you'll have credits and have found a decent station to be at. I know I went slight guide-mode there but i figured mentioning what one would be doing right out the gate would be worth while. Anyway you would then be in a position where you would be able to get a new ship or... Should you want to... Keep the little Sidewinder and upgrade it.
Personally I would recommend the Eagle as an alternative. Far more combat capable and much faster in the long run if you get the imperial version. However if you don't see yourself being in combat all that often, the Hauler might be your next ship, and the Hauler can be used as your first exploration ship if you outfit it right.

That is up to you.
And that is the beauty of this game.
There's nothing telling you to be a hero or anything. No epic narrative where you have to play out certain roles. It's just you, your ship, and whatever friends you bring with you.
You write your own narrative.

Now that I got that poetic bit off my chest, I'll mention this other mode: CQC Championships. Essentially your classic competitive game modes. You fly small fighters in combat against other players. Short and fast paced matches that reward you with some credits and ranks. For the slight bit I've played, I don't see it as being a good source of credits. But its fun and easy to get into.

Final thing I'll mention: this game is great when it comes to controls. You can play it with keyboard and mouse, game pad, or joystick. Now as much as I would love to say all modes of control are equal for this game, unfortunately joystick is the better way to play only because it makes it "smoother" to play. It's not like war thunder where you would have to be insane to play arcade mode without mouse aim or playing simulator without a joystick. It just makes controlling your ship smoother. Thats it. It's not some incredibly significant difference. It's not game breaking. It just is smoother to play with a joystick. Or I could say it helps with the immersion since this game is best played if you get in that mindset.

PLAYER LIST
Now I'll use this space to list off players and important info on them.

Cucoo5
CMDR Aion Rixtravius
Allegiance: Empire - Aisling Duval
Profession: Bounty Hunter/Imperial Soldier
Ship(s):
- Imperial Courier (A-Rated)
- Type 6 (Robigo mod)
- Python
Location(s): Kou Hua and Robigo

Mima
CMDR Koishi K0meigi
Allegiance: Empire - Arissa Lavigny-Duval
Profession: Bounty Hunter (RP Internal Security Service)
Ship(s):
- Vulture
Location(s): Kou Hua

S121
CMDR Ethan Ambers
Allegiance: Empire - Arissa Lavigny-Duval
Profession: Bounty Hunter
Ship(s):
- Viper MkIV
Location(s): Kou Hua

SUSTIC
CMDR Sustic
Allegiance: TBD
Profession: TBD
Ship(s):
- Sidewinder
Location(s): LHS 3447

SHIP STATS

Cobra Mk III

Mima's Cobra

5,038,020 CR

1,460

99.59 MJ

285 m/s

406 m/s

18.76 LY

18.01 LY

103.47 LY

0 T

Type-6 Transporter

CC5's Robigo T-6

7,598,660 CR

162

147.76 MJ

252 m/s

401 m/s

28.47 LY

25.81 LY

19.02 LY

216.81 LY

157.71 LY

80 T

Viper Mk IV

S1's Viper

6,737,430 CR

1,115

217.61 MJ

282 m/s

355 m/s

19.64 LY

18.57 LY

18.45 LY

130.74 LY

129.88 LY

2 T

Imperial Courier

CC5's Courier

7,482,850 CR

144

551.6 MJ

289 m/s

392 m/s

16.25 LY

14.96 LY

13.88 LY

90.03 LY

83.28 LY

8 T

Python

CC5's Python

76,125,730 CR

2,288

573.99 MJ

240 m/s

313 m/s

20.03 LY

17.45 LY

365.09 LY

0 T

Interactive Comparison at Coriolis.io

TOOLS/RESOURCES/DATABASES

This is where I'll list some things I find that help with some tasks in E: D.
The first two I found have a bunch of database stuff that list location of ships, modules, and commodities as well as powerplay info.
Edit: Found a thread that details how naval ascension works and I can confirm it still works.
Also found a nice ship build tool that helps with optimizing a ship's stats before purchasing.

http://inara.cz/
Notable Feature: Detailed market database

https://eddb.io/
Notable Feature: Trade Route tool

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=164309
Naval Ascension info

http://coriolis.io/
Ship Build tool

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Elite: Dangerous and Elite Dangerous: Horizons

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Elite: Dangerous and Elite Dangerous: Horizons