Also look at the economic info for the systems. Buy something that's a major or minor export in the system that you're in, then find a nearby system where that commodity is a major or minor import. The more expensive an item is, the higher the profit margin per ton. I suppose I should mention that questions like this should be asked in the 'Pioneer Question Time' thread so they don't clutter up the forum. It's not a big deal, new people often miss this. <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

Economic info? Lol! Did I literally just miss that?

Pioneer is a game you have to take your time with in the beginning. But if your feeling a bit overwhelmed to start with, why not try the game Pioneer was based on, Frontier Elite II. Sure its ancient (1993), but much of the underlining game mechanics are similar (simpler really) to Pioneer. Basically I use Frontier as a "simulator" these days, with Pioneer being the "real thing". I recently updated its archive on here and you will find full manuals for the game plus other goodies. Reading them will help. Here is a link, but bear in mind you might need D-Fend Reloaded to get it to run properly on modern PCs, so I will give you a link to that too <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//curtsey.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':curtsey:' />

Frontier Elite II:

The Main archive with 2 pages of downloads: http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/files/category/156-frontier-elite-ii/

The Game: http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/files/file/874-frontier-v1-01zip/

The Manual: http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/files/file/865-elite-ii-frontier-uk-manualpdf/

D-Fend Reloaded: http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/Download.html

Disclaimer

If installing D-Fend turns you into a retro PC game fan I cant be held accountable! <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//girl_crazy.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':girlcrazy:' />

Finally, don't forget that one of the best things about Pioneer is finding out things for yourself. This is a game about discovery and pushing the limits of what the game can do. The best advice I can give you is to think of the craziest, maddest thing you could do in the game, try it and see the results. Thats how I played Frontier back in the 90s and that's how I play Pioneer today too <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//girl_crazy.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':girlcrazy:' />

Funnily enough, that's how I played the original Elite - I had no manual, no instructions - just the game. So I went out and tried things - can I land on the outside of a station (no), can I land on the sun (no)... etc. That, for me, is what a quality game should be. To quote an Ooliteer - 'there's your ship, there's the universe - off you go!'

Adie123, what is this "warp" of which you speak? (-:

Hyperspace. He watched too much star trek... Like me. Also, Figured it out, Thanks!

Hey Geraldine, I don't suppose you would know why Frontier Elite 2 would run at about 3fps? I use dosbox, is it better to use pure dos? I can run Pioneer on max settings. Apologies for hijacking this thread by the way, just this once...

Overlord, I just set it up with D-Fend running 1024x768 with a perfectly smooth frame rate. D-fend is the current DosBox front end. We've come a long way since space was blue and filled with dust!

Btw, there's already a profile in there for it. Select it then edit, go to graphics, set the resolution and then you may have to change the Render to overlay.

Marcel is correct. D Fend will do most of the work for you, after that, its just a matter of tweaking the graphics settings to your taste. I always go for the original screen modes with scale set to nearest neighbour upscaling with factor 2 and a dynamic CPU. Funny thing is, its not quite as fast as the Amiga version running on my '060 A4000 or on Amiga Forever, but still mighty fine though. <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//girl_crazy.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':girlcrazy:' />