Here’s a primer on how to get started, and a list of essential tools that I like to use to make things easier playing the game.

So now that I’m actually sitting at the computer, instead of trying to type a novel on my phone, I wanted to send you a primer on some of the ways to play as well as a list of some of the essential tools that I use which make things easier playing the game.

Setting Up

First things first, if you haven’t done it already, make sure you create an account with https://www.frontierstore.net/

Websites:
Inara – https://inara.cz/ This site is full of interesting information, helps you find that component you need for your ship, as well as provide information on ships, engineers, and news about events in the galaxy.
Coriolis – https://coriolis.io/ this is a ship builder simulator. Want to find out if your powerplant can support beam lasers? This is where you’ll find out before you go out and buy beam lasers and your ship loses all power when you try to deploy them.
EDSM – https://www.edsm.net/ The Elite Dangerous Star Map is an atlas of the galaxy, you can use it as a logbook to track your movements in the galaxy, to join expeditions into the black, or plan them for others to join you.
EDDB – https://eddb.io/ The ED Database/EDDN is fed by many utilities and add-ons, and is a source of information for most other sites and apps. It also allows you to search for nearby stations, specific station services, systems and find trading routes.

Utilities:
EDDiscovery – https://github.com/EDDiscovery/EDDiscovery/releases This utility is the swiss army knife of ED utilities. It pulls information straight out of the game. Essential stuff, like calculating the habitable zone of a star, very useful in exploration, and less critical stuff like planetary composition, estimated scan values and even a cheap little map and route planner. It also connects to EDDB and relays system data, helping to keep it all updated. You can choose to activate an included voice add-on so you don’t even have to look at it to get the information.
Discord – https://discordapp.com/ We all love the sound effects of the built-in voice chat / wing chat that ED offers. But it’s laggy, sucks up bandwidth to the same servers as ED, causing game lag and display issues, and it just does a poor job of filtering out feedback echo and sound clarity. Get Discord.

Optional Utilities, but I love this:
These two work together. You would need both, if you want, and I would suggest you make sure you want to keep playing the game before spending real cash money on utilities and stuff:
Voice Attack ($10.00 USD) The utility uses the Windows Voice Recognition engine to start recognizing voice commands and then translate those into keystrokes. Saves you having to learn literally dozens of key bindings.
HCS Voice Packs (£14.99 each) – https://www.hcsvoicepacks.com/ These voice packs for Voice Attack respond to your voice attack commands with audio recorded by various voice actors (one actor per voice pack) William Shatner, Brent Spiner, tons of different voices available. Astra is mandatory as a first entry into Voice Attack, so you can start with that. The others rely on that functionality to work as add-ons.

Community information:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/elitedangerouscommunity They’re a bit whiny, but all the new stuff gets argued about there.
Forums: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/forum.php
Galactic News: https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet

Gameplay

There are a lot of ways to play the game. This is not an exhaustive list. Just a set of ideas on directions you might take. Keep in mind… I work in Marketing.

Trader
As a trader, your bread and butter is playing the market. You head for the nearest freighter ship and start doing hauling missions, probably in an adder(https://inara.cz/elite/ship/15/), the entry-level freighter. Once you’ve proven reliable, you get better missions, more money. Once you’ve made your first million, you’ll probably want to trade up to a Type 6 Transporter, then Keelback, then Type 7, and finally into a Type 9 Heavy transport. By now you’re no longer really tied to a local planetary regime you’ve ingratiated yourself to. No. You’re an independent, carrying hundreds of tons of cargo
If you strike it rich, and the Empire loves you for your loyalty, you might even trade up to an Imperial Cutter (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/75/). That ship runs smooth like butter, looks slick as hell, and with a potential maximum of 784 tons of cargo in the hold, you’ll be making millions of credits per trip, and live like a duke off the back of the slave trade. (Imperial rank of duke is required for Cutter ownership)

Bounty hunter / System Defender
There are a lot of bad people in the galaxy. Some NPCs, some Players. And when people do bad things, someone needs to blow the shit out of their ships.
You’ll want to get into an Eagle Mk II (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/5/) as soon as you can, and start outfitting it. The big ships get the glory, but the small ships make the sailor. You’ll need to learn to dogfight. You’ll trade up to a Viper Mk III (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/20/) or Mk IV. You’ll also need learn a lot about weapons and shield strength, hull points and reinforcement packages. You’ll upgrade to a Federal Gunship (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/52/), if you have the Federal Rank. The Coriolis simulator will be your best friend, as you try to max out the shields and weapon impact. Then, you will seek out engineers. These guys will push the abilities of your modules, weapons and shields to crazy levels of performance. At the top of your game, you’ll be piloting a Federal Corvette (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/80/) at high Federation rank, a ship half the size of a carrier, guns blazing into a nest of NPC pirates with hardly a scratch.
Or, if PVP is your goal, you’ll be in a Fer de Lance (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/56/) engineered for the biggest possible punch, with railguns and lasers that cut through lesser ships in seconds.

Explorer
The galaxy is huge. So huge that with 2 million players, and 200000 active players playing for the last couple of years, we’ve only explored about 0.005047% of the galaxy. If you want your name written in the stars, then be the first to discover a system, scan it, find new habitable worlds and see sights that most players in the “Bubble” near the Sol system will never experience. You’ll probably trade up to a DiamondBack Explorer as soon as you’re able. The ship has a wicked jump range. And if you land on a high gravity planet, its variable orientation thrusters are the best thing to get airborne, even on 9G worlds that ground most other vessels. For long range exploration where you go thousands of light years away from civilization, you’ll want to get into an ASP Explorer. There a lot more room on this ship for modules, better scanners, cargo, and Surface Recon Vehicles to get out of your ship and stretch your legs, away from the drudgery of “Jump – Scan – Fuel Scoop – FSS – Jump – Scan – Scoop – FSS”. For those legendary expeditions like the Minerva-Centaurus, the Circumnavigation Expedition, and “Distant Worlds” (https://www.edsm.net/en/expeditions) where you are out for months in the black, you’ll want to trade up to the Anaconda (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/70/). A massive ship able to accomodate fighters, multiple SRV bays and capable, with engineering, of reaching 70+ light year jumps, it will support you while you’re out for weeks in the outer reaches of the galaxy. If you want to keep it small, the new Mandalay can jump even farther, well over 80 light years with engineering, getting you where you want to go faster, if you don’t need to bring everything and the kitchen sink with you.

Defend Humanity
There are a lot of things we need to do to fight the Thargoid threat, and ensure the safety of humanity. A Multirole ship means you’re ready for anything, with plenty of module space available. Your first goal will probably be a Cobra Mk III (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/25/) a natural upgrade from the Sidewinder. You’ll need to find out more about the Anti-Thargoid weapons and systems. The rebuy is cheap on these ships, so taking risks and heading into the Pleiades will probably happen early. You’ll take scientific equipment at first, and just get tissue samples. Or maybe rescue escape pods before they are snatched up by Thargoid vessels. Then run. Like, seriously, run, because they will kill you. You’ll probably upgrade to a Python(https://inara.cz/elite/ship/60/), somewhere along the way; the most versatile multirole ship there is. You’ll follow leads left by the INRA(http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Intergalactic_Naval_Reserve_Arm) more than a hundred years ago, find their bases (https://youtu.be/QyrqKfCKcgE?t=3m27s) and rediscover the weapons they used to drive the Thargoids away. By the time you’re in a Type 10 Defender, (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/66/) or an Anaconda with and anti-Thargoid loadout you won’t even be afraid of them anymore. You’ll team up with other defenders and kick these intruders out of our galaxy.

Miner
Someone has to produce all the raw materials which this civilization is built on. That could be you. You’ll head for a cargo ship, like a trader. A multirole ship would do as well. You need space for cargo and mining lasers. You are going to learn a lot about systems and planetary composition, and types of planetary rings and asteroid fields. You’ll quickly get tired of scooping up the minerals with the cargo scoop and invest in a collector system of robots that pick up the minerals and drop them in your ship refinery’s hopper for processing. You’ll get stopped by pirates. Sometimes you’ll fight them off, sometimes you’ll give them a few tons of ore and make them go away. You’ll find friends to run security while you focus on mining. At a Haz-Res (hazardous resource collection site) you’ll need them to fend off the constant stream of pirates that want to get their hands on your cargo. At the top of the game, in a cutter, or Type 9, the hold full of Painite, Low Temperature Diamonds or Void Opals, you’ll have the biggest payday in the game. Seriously. Tens of millions of credits.

Bus driver (Passenger liner pilot)
If you kind of like exploration, but you’re tired of coming up empty trying to find beautiful sights and you’re a people pleaser, you’ll want to have a look at this line of work. It’s a tough market to break into. You’ll have to scrimp and save from missions, or hauling… whatever you can get until you make a million and a half. Then, at last, you’ll get your first passenger liner. The Dolphin (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/58/). No cramped quarters here. This ship is designed for sightseeing (https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/elite-dangerous/images/2/26/Dolphin-Cockpit.png/revision/latest?cb=20170708063404). You’ll find economy cabins pretty lucrative, and you’ll soon find tourism routes that pay well, or troubled systems where refugees are looking for transport away from fighting. Keep in mind, passenger liners are not designed for combat. You may need an escort, especially if you are carrying someone important… or dangerous. After a while, you’ll trade up to a bigger ship, like the Orca (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/55/). Now this is an amazing ship. So much space. Enough to have multiple classes of cabins, some business class, adding versatility, and, of course, bringing higher fares. By the time you trade up to the largest ship in the game, the Beluga Liner (https://inara.cz/elite/ship/57/), with luxury cabins, or carrying up to 176 passengers, or even having your own fighters launching for protection, you’ll be in the top 1% of all liners out there.

There is a lot more
Sooner or later, you’ll read up on the background simulation, or BGS, the intricate system of politics and powers, allegiances and Powers. Should you support the Federation because you believe the propaganda, or because you want a Federal Corvette, or serve the Empire and bend the knee so that maybe you get your hands on their prismatic shields, or endorse Li Yong-Rui’s corporate control just because he cuts you 15% off of ship prices?
You can help expand their territories, or defend from hostile takeovers. Find or mine the right resources, deliver tons of materials, or put their attackers in an early grave. You can make a difference in the galactic political struggle.

Anyway, this novel is done, but I’ve only scratched the surface. I didn’t talk about squadrons, or the Fuel Rats, or the Guardian civilization and its ruins, materials and components, system, data and wake scanners, and we didn’t talk about going on foot and raiding or defending settlements in FPS mode with laser rifles, infiltrating stealthily, or becoming a smuggler. There’s so much more to see and do.

Soon we’ll even be able go out an colonize systems, accelerating the bubble of humanity that grew around Sol. You might even earn a permit to go visit humanity’s old solar system, but I could go on forever.
Grab a coffee, get online, and look me up: Commander DracosAlpha. I’ll give you a tour.