do both, buy a faster hyperdrive to make the mission deadlines, then save up cash for another ship 🙂

Hi Malicar

Firstly welcome to the SSC.

Now the best thing about Pioneer is that you set the pace and the goals. If you want to explore, start working towards a ship with lots of range. A courier? Speed is the key here as well as range. Trader? Big is best. Combat? Your options are more open here in the choice of ships, but make sure you can fit a decent amount of weapons and shields so that you can take, as well as dish out, punishment. The choice is yours!

The best way to make money (without cheating) at the beginning is probably to be a courier within Sol.

Strip everything out of your ship that weighs you down, including the hyperdrive, gun, and atmospheric shielding [-late edit: atmospheric shielding more useful now. That was a bug :-)]. Debatable whether you even need the autopilot. You'll go faster, and soon have enough money to get a better hyperdrive and a passenger cabin, or even go straight to a better ship.

Seriously? the more equipment you have on board the slower you go?

I did not know that

In the interests of science... 🙂

Flight to Pluto research base from Earth start on autopilot, fully loaded, lands;

~ 12:30 6/1

Unloaded, lands;

~ 11:45 4/1

It adds up pretty quickly if you're whizzing around from planet to planet, though personally I don't normally bother going outside Saturn at the start when I'm just trying to make money.

Yup ship & cargo mass both matter. You only have the same amount of thrust to play with so when you carry more things the ships mass goes up by the amount you're carrying.

It affects hyperspace jumps too, try loading a ship up with nothing but fuel and its jump drive and see how far out you can get, then unload some fuel and check again.

If you keep doing that you can find the sweet spot where you have just enough fuel for the furthest jump range... not particularly useful most of the time but worth knowing.

Worth noting as well that the time taken to hyperspace is non-linear with distance.

You can go *much* faster in a series of little jumps.

Was the same true in frontier or is it a Pioneer thing?

just goes to prove that you keep on learning

Frontier? Was that the beta version of Pioneer I keep reading about?

🙂

I can't remember. I didn't play it *all* that long.

Fuel also affects your speed. You get better acceleration when you're down to fumes. Well, water vapour.

Wow thank you for the replies people. I was a bit too young for Elite Frontier when the Amgia floppy disk(s) landed on my desk and never really got into it although I was somewhat aware of it. I'm enjoying this game quite a bit though. Rotation dampners hell yes! I've just been doing courier missions and moving people around Sol. Still a bit green but winging it. Which ship is it that was in Frontier? That hypersonic fighter looks pretty cool. Think that is what it's called. Forgive me I'm a bit out of the loop here. I love how everything is in motion. Are all the planets orbiting around their stars etc complete with gravity? Love how I can see clock etc and space travel is realistic. Took me a while to figure out the side camera wouldn't switch when the ship swings backwards to reverse thrust to slow down with the main boosters. So cool.

I also enabled planet textures but I'm not sure if I should leave that off. This is the first game I've ever actually played that allowed seemless transition from a planet to space and vice versa. I must say that feeling when I first lifted off from LA and fired up the main boosters and smoothly transitioned from planet to space was a memorable one. Again thank you for this game. Hope to see more in the future wether it's Pioneer or something new.

I would also like to say thank you for this amazing game.  I only downloaded it yesterday and have been hooked since. 

Congratulations to developers here! You rock!

Real accelerations through moving planets and moons, eclipses, jumpdrives, working directional rockets in smart ships concept, sideral view ... all you guys involved in this project  rock.