In Elite: Dangerous 1.3, two new ship statuses were added in addition to "clean" and "wanted": "enemy" and "lawless". Obviously one has a green light to shoot down enemy ships, but what about lawless ships? Can I shoot them too without getting fined? Do I get anything out of shooting them?
Shoot down lawless ships
elite-dangerous
Related Solutions
First and foremost you should learn how to navigate your cockpit. This is done using the following (default and customised) control bindings:
- 1 - Navigation and enemy subsystem view
- 2 - Communications
- 3 - Targeting and ship health view
- 4 - Modules and fire groups view
If you press the corresponding key for the cockpit section you're currently viewing, it will take you back to the default/straight ahead view. While on a subsystem view with multiple tabs, you can press Q and E to navigate between the tabs, Space to make a section, and W, A, S and D to navigate the menus (up, down, left and right, respectively).
The cockpit of the ship in alpha build 1 is made up of four sections;
Straight ahead view/main window
This is the default view and shows you directly in front of the ship... pretty much used for flying but there are a variety of control bindings available to target ships and cycle through targets etc. You'll be using this view in general when flying the ship. You do have an overview of several important systems in this view;
From left to right, you can see the following;
- Current system name and location (I'm in the Zelada 2 Asteroid Belt in the Zelada system)
- Visualisation of your target including health and shield strength (currently targeting a planet)
- Radar containing all active targets using white for objects, red for enemies, yellow for neutrals
- Visualisation of your ship including health and shield strength
- Power distribution (more details below)
- Your ships current signature (lower means it's harder for other ships to detect you)
Your ships signature is a visual representation of how detectable you are in space. Toggling silent flying mode will dramatically reduce your signature at the expense of storing all of the heat generated by your ships systems in the ship. While this reduces your signature, running hot for too long will burn out your ship.
Power distribution is controlled using the arrow keys by default and allows you to assign power to various subsystems presented by a power bar (indicating current power level) with up to four dots below it (indicating current power distribution).
- SYS - System power, controls things like shield recharge speed, also deals with Life Support, Power Distribution and Sensors
- ENG - Engine power, providing more power to the engines will increase your maximum speed
- WEP - Weapon power, allows your weapons to fire longer
- RST - Resets power distribution to 2/2/2
To redistribute power, press LEFT to provide more power to system, UP to provide more power to the engines, RIGHT to provide more power to the weapons, and DOWN to reset to default settings. Since there are up to four blocks per system, it is possible to divert all of the power away from any of the systems to provide more power to the other two. This will not discharge a system if it already has power. For example;
- diverting power from the shields will not make your current shield go away, but it will prevent your shields from fully recharging
- diverting power from the weapons will not prevent you from firing your weapons, but also won't discharge the heat generated by your weapons (causing them to overheat, which will stop them from firing)
- diverting power from the engines will not prevent you from using your engines but will cripple your maximum speed and reduce your manoeuvrability
Navigation and enemy subsystems view
This is the view to the left of the cockpit. This view shows a contact list (list of available targets/objects in space) for the near vicinity/scanner range. Also gives an overview of how much health the targets in the list currently have.
To select a target using the Contacts list, use W and S to move up and down the list, and then press Space to select the target.
Once you've got a target, the subsystem tab will show you information regarding your target's subsystems and their current status.
Targeting and ship health view
This section shows many of the cockpit sections visible when looking straight ahead;
- Visualisation of your target including health and shield strength (currently targeting a planet)
- Radar containing all active targets using white for objects, red for enemies, yellow for neutrals
- Visualisation of your ship including health and shield strength
Visualisation of both you and your target is shown as multiple blue circles around your ship showing your current shield straight, and a "HULL" indicator below the ship visualisation showing the current state of your hull. Once the shield has been depleted, you get a recharging indicator in its place:
Modules and fire groups view
This is the view to the right of the cockpit. The modules group shows the current health of each of your subsystems and allows you far greater control over the configuration of your power systems. From here you have control over the following;
- Drives (Engines)
- Shield Generation
- Life Support
- An entry for each of your weapons
- Power distribution
- Sensors
Each module can be switched off, or have its priority changed. Changing priorities means that in the event you start running low on power, certain systems will take a priority in terms of power draw over those set at a lower priority.
Again, to change settings on this screen, use W and S to move up and down the list, press Space to toggle the power state of the module, and use A and D to change the priority of a module.
This is especially useful to limit the amount of heat being generated when you fly silent as flying silent prevents heat from being radiated out into space, resulting in your ship overheating. By customising the systems that are on and generating less heat you can fly silent for longer, and thus, fly undetected for longer.
Note: switching off life support in space is a bad idea.
The Fire groups tab allows you to bind your weapons to fire in groups, and also bind weapons to primary fire and secondary fire. This allows you to fire all of your laser beams at once by pressing primary fire, in the instance that you placed all of your laser beams into the primary fire category.
You'll be using W, S, A and D to navigate this screen again, like the others, but Space on this screen toggles between "Not grouped" (off), "Primary group" (yellow square) and "Secondary group" (blue square).
Your upgrades made your power demands exceed your available power when you deployed your hardpoints. When you're equipping a ship you can see what the power draw will be with hardpoints deployed and without hardpoints deployed. If your power utilization goes over the available power from your power plant, then the ship will shut down the lowest priority systems.
The first thing you can do is pay attention to your power when you're equipping your ship.
When outfitting, the lower right of the screen shows various stats. The "Retracted" power use is when your hardpoints aren't in use, the "deployed" power use is when your hardpoints are deployed, and the "available" is what your power plant can give you.
This particular screenshot shows me evaluating a weapons upgrade that would raise my hardpoints deployed power utilization just over my total available power. Note that the red color is just what's used when that stat goes up; you have to actually read the numbers to know that it's gone over the available power.
But that laser is awesome and I still want to use it! Can I still do that?
Yes. You need to pick some things to shut down when you deploy hardpoints. You'll still get a dire warning, but only things you decided were non-essential will get shut down.
In fact, even if you don't want to equip more stuff than you can fully power, it's a good idea to set your module priorities, since it's possible to take damage in combat that reduces your power capacity.
Use the 4 to switch to the Systems panel of your cockpit, use Q/E to switch to Modules, W/S to select a particular module, and A/D to change the priorities. I suggest putting your thrusters in the highest priority (1), and putting the Cargo Hatch, Frame Shift Drive, Discovery Scanner and anything else you only want to use while docked or in frame shift into the lowest priority.
In this example, you can see that I have the Cargo Hatch at the lowest priority (4), thrusters and a low-power-draw weapon at the highest priority (1), other things essential during combat (shields, power distribution, another weapon) at the second priority (2), and things that would be really nice to have, but I can do without for a while (kill warrant scanner and life support) at priority 3.
Note that the list is sorted by how much power each module draws (the percentage), and that there's a graph on the bottom that gives you a good idea how much power utilization is assigned to each priority level.
A note on life support: If your life support goes out, you have an emergency oxygen supply that you can use for a while. It's possible to buy a life support upgrade that gets you a longer emergency oxygen supply.
After a lot more practice with running too much stuff on too little power plant, here's how I'm setting my module priorities:
- Anything required when running from a fight. Thrusters, shields, sensors, chaff launcher, heat sink launcher, shield booster, etc.
- Anything required for engaging in combat: weapons, power distributor, etc.
- Anything nice to have in combat: life support, kill warrant scanner, etc.
- Frame Shift Drive. If I have to, I'll put shield cells here, too.
- Anything that's only useful in supercruise or with hardpoints retracted: FSD interdictor, fuel scoop, cargo hatch, docking computer.
As long as my power plant can power the first 3 priorities, I'm fine. If it can't power down to priority 4, it just means I have to retract my hardpoints and wait an extra second before I can frameshift away. If I don't have power for shield cells and put them into priority 4, that's not too bad, since when I need shield cells I'm usually fleeing not shooting. If my power plant is damaged, the 1,2,3 ordering still helps. If I can't power priority 3 with hardpoints deployed, I can always go into the modules panel and shut down my most power hungry weapons while doing a warrant scan, and then turn the weapon back on once I've finished scanning.
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- How to tell what ships are pirates
- How to get faction ships
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Best Answer
You can shoot anything with a red name without being fined by the pilot's federation. Lawless, for example, appears in Arrissa's expansion system areas and it is similar to a conflict zone.
Depending on the situation these statuses appear in, you could acquire Merit Points and/or PowerPlay Points(for expansion, control, undermining, and some Powers may even offer prep).
But! If the ship you are attacking is in a different power than you but still in the same major faction (Arissa and Aisling are both Empire), you will lose Merit points for attacking an ally.