EDCombat

This page contains information related to various combat topics in Elite: Dangerous.

Bounty Hunting

Summary

Bounty hunting is one of the major occupations in Elite Dangerous. The game loop looks like this:

• Navigate to a place where many NPC ships spawn.
• Scan NPC ships to see whether the ship (or rather: its pilot) has a bounty.
  • If there is a bounty, the navigation panel will show the status "Wanted" in the target information area.
  • The built-in ship scanner only reveals a bounty if it was issued by jurisdiction that you are currently in.
  • A Kill Warant Scanner is needed to also reveal bounties that were issued by other jurisdictions.
• If so, destroy the ship to gain a bounty voucher.
• When finished, navigate to a station and hand in your accumulated bounty vouchers.

Preparation

• Equip a Kill Warrant Scanner (KWS).
• Create a Fire Group where you assign the KWS to the primary button.

Locations

Good locations for bounty hunting are Resource Extraction Sites (RES) and Navigation Beacons.

• RES
  • These are persistent mining locations within asteroid fields that occur on planetary rings.
  • Upon entering a RES, it is randomly populated with a variety of NPC ships, including mining ships, pirates, and system authority vessels, depending on the RES type and security level in the system.
  • You find RES by looking at the navigation panel.
  • Some RES are marked with "[High]" or "[Hazardous]". This indicates that the difficulty of the encounters is higher than in normal RES, i.e. the NPC ships will be more adept at combat. Correspondingly the payout is also higher.
  • For more details see the [[edwiki:Resource_Extraction_Site|ED Wiki].
• Navigation Beacon
  • Navigation Beacons are places in orbit around the primary star of an inhabited system.
  • For more details see the [[edwiki:Nav_Beacon|ED Wiki].

Combat

Once you enter a RES or other location, combat works like this:

• In order to be able to use the KWS
  • You have to deploy your hardpoints: Open the "SAFE" protection on the HOTAS, then press the red button.
    • There is an option that firing deploys hardpoints, but I have that disabled because I'm too stupid and would probably start firing a mining laser at the most awkward moments.
  • You have to target a ship.
  • You have to be in range of the KWS.
  • Scanning is possible both in combat and in analysis mode.
• Reveal bounties
  • Before you can attack you need to make sure that a potential target has a bounty on their head. If you attack and the target does not have a bounty on their head, YOU will get a bounty on YOUR head instead and everybody will turn hostile against you.
  • Target a ship. As mentioned above, if there is a bounty in the current jurisdiction the built-in ship scanner will detect this immediately and the navigation panel will display the "Wanted" status in the target information area.
  • If that happens you are free to attack immediately. However, you still want to use your KWS to reveal any additional bounties from other jurisdictions, to increase the payout you get for the kill.
  • If there is no bounty from the local jurisdiction, then you must use your KWS to check for additional bounties from other jurisdictions.
  • If the KWS finds bounties, then you are free to attack, otherwise you need to find a different target.
• Optimising the use of the KWS
  • The procedure above uses a cautionary approach where you first scan a target with the KWS before you attack.
  • I have seen tutorials, though, that recommend assinging the KWS to the primary button of the same fire group where you have have also assigned weapons to the primary button.
  • The idea is that every ship will have a bounty from the local jurisdiction, so you will always be able to start combat more or less immediately after you target a ship. The time-consuming KWS scan can thus be made in parallel to firing your wepons, which will save you a bit of time.
  • Whether or not this is a safe optimisation is up to every player.
• Targeting
  • To quickly switch between targets, use left/right on Hat switch 2 (upper-left of the joystick).
  • The main target in the navigation compass does not change - this still shows the RES.
  • The ship target is merely marked up in the 3D scanner display.
• Combat
  • Assign 4 pips to WEP.
  • The secondary weapon can be fired with the "C" button on the HOTAS stick.
  • Make sure you select only single targets that are not in a team.
  • Only fight if there are security ships around - these will help you get the enemy down relatively quickly and securely.
  • Sometimes a fight is already ongoing and you can simply join in and get credits for the kill as well.
• When you're in the shadows, use Night Vision and External Lights (if you forgot the shortcuts, these can be turned on via panel "2" on the "Ship" tab).
• Upon destroying a wanted ship you gain a bounty voucher. This needs to be handed in at a suitable location / contact to gain the bounty rewards.

Handing in bounty vouchers

Suitable locations / contacts to hand in bounty vouchers are:

• Administrative contact at a starport controlled by the faction that issued the bounty.
• Interstellar Factors. Without the Odyssey update, these are present only in certain stations, and they subtract a 25% fee from the reward. After the Odyssey update these are present on all stations and impose no fee.

Q&A

This section contains old information from the time when I started playing the game. The section needs cleanup, or even better it needs to be merged with the content above.

How can I earn a bounty voucher?

You must see the bounty before you kill the other ship.

How do I claim a bounty voucher?

Go to a station under the control of the jurisdiction that issued the bounty. Hand in the bounty voucher in the "Contacts" section of the Station Services menu.

Is there a pattern to what bounties a kill warrant scanner will reveal? For instance, will the bounties be from neighbouring systems? Or are those bounties issued by completely random systems that I then have to tediously find and travel to in order to collect my bounty claims?

???

How can I discard a bounty voucher if I don't intend to collect it (e.g. because it's a small amount of credits in a far away system)?

Self-destructing (or getting killed in any other way) is the only way that I know of.

How do I know in advance who the bounty issuer will be?

• For bounties revealed by a kill warrant scanner, according to my current knowledge the bounty issuers cannot be known in advance, i.e. before the KWS has revealed the bounties.
• For the bounty that is in effect due to a ship's WANTED status, the bounty issuer is the current jurisdiction. I have not been able to find out what the "current jurisdiction" is in an authorative source such as the ED Wiki, or the BGS Guide. According to information received in the Buur Pit Discord channel, the "current jurisdiction" in any given star system always is the minor faction that is the System Controlling Faction. So it does not matter which faction the security ships belong to that are flying around at a given location - when you shoot down a WANTED ship the bounty voucher will be issued by the System Controlling Faction.

HOWTO

This section contains old information from the time when I started playing the game. The section needs cleanup, or even better it needs to be merged with the content above.

An excellent video that explains everything is Dejan Kober's beginner tutorial part 6. Here is what I took away from watching it:

• Basically you can do bounty hunting everywhere where you find a wanted ship, but it's easiest around resource extraction sites (RES) because there a lot of wanted ships will spawn so your credits-per-hour rate will increase dramatically.
• RES can be found almost everywhere, but the highest chance of getting a good spot is if you search with the following pattern
  • First, find a system whose primary economy is extraction. Industrial and refinery systems may also work but are secondary choices.
  • The lower the security in the system, the better, for two reasons:
    1. Lower security means more wanted ships will be in that system
    2. Lower security means that there are less security ships around that might get into your way when you start shooting at wanted ships, i.e. there is less risk for accidentally getting a bounty on your own head.
  • Within the system, find a planet that has rocky or metal rings (i.e. not icy) because this means there are likely RES in that ring
  • Preferrably the planet should have a station so that you can easily return to repair, rearm, refuel and collect the bounties you have earned
• Before you start shooting, you need to equip your ship. You need...
  • A kill warrant scanner (this is not required, but it will substantially increase your profits)
  • Weapons that are mounted on gimbals. Although these do less damage than weapons that are mounted fixedly, it is MUCH easier to hit targets because the gimballed weapon will hit even if the target is not directly in your weapon sights.
  • At least one energy weapon so that you can lower the target's shields
  • At least one kinetic weapon so that you can damage the target's hull once the shields are down. In practice, I have found that a kinetic weapon is not required, you can destroy the other ship with energy weapons alone, although it will take a bit longer. I found it difficult to hit an enemy ship with a kinetic weapon, which is why in the end I resorted to energy weapons only.
• Once the modules are equipped, configure the ship like this:
  • Fire group 1: Weapons. Laser weapon on primary fire button, kinetic weapon on secondary fire button
  • Fire group 2: Kill warrant scanner. Put the scanner on the secondary fire button because then, if you want to scan a target and are accidentally on fire group 1, you will trigger the kinetic weapon instead of the laser weapon. Since kinetic weapons have a short warm-up period before they actually start shooting, you will get a warning and have a chance to abort shooting, whereas with lasers the shooting starts immediately.
• So now that you are properly set up and have gone to a suitable RES, here's how to proceed:
  • Target the ship
  • As soon as the ship is reasonably in front of you, it will be passively scanned. The scan result will show the ship to be either clean or wanted. TODO: I have also seen "lawless" - what's this?
  • If the ship is clean, the current jurisdiction has issued no bounties for the pilot. If you attack the ship you commit a crime in the current jurisdiction, which results in a bounty on your own head being issued.
  • If the ship is wanted, the current jurisdiction has issued at least one bounty for the pilot. If you attack the ship you don't commit a crime in the current jurisdiction. If you destroy the ship you will get the bounty issued by the current jurisdiction.
  • Additionally, you should use the kill warrant scanner against the ship. The scan result is that you can see whether other jurisdictions have issued bounties for the pilot. This is visible only in the "Contact" tab. If you destroy the ship you will get all those extra bounties, too.
  • If the ship is clean in the current jurisdiction, but has bounties from other jurisdictions, attacking the ship is still illegal.
  • In anarchy systems there is no jurisdiction, so a ship always shows up as clean after the initial scan. You don't commit a crime even if you destroy a clean ship because there is no jurisdiction. So in anarchy systems, to get any bounty at all, you must' use the kill warrant scanner.

Interdictions

During an interdiction attempt, how do I find the escape vector if it is currently not visible on the screen?

???

Combat around stations

What happens if I join a fight going on in the no-fire zone of a station and fire on the ship that is under attack?

???

What happens if I am attacked in the no-fire zone of a station and fire back?

???