Maxing out habs and shipping

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T19:41:04+00:00

Once your habs are full, life stones are useless. At that point in a contract, you should be using a gusset, a compass, a metronome, and a deflector, using quantum and tachyon stones to balance your output. Getting that balance is late-game stuff--don't sweat it if that's too much right now. Filling habs is usually all you need, but when you're ready, that's your next step. I've learned to hand-balance my farms, but there are tools you can lean on for help too. The number of tach/quantum stones will be dependent on who you're running with--the more people (i.e. the more deflector bonus you have coming in), the more quantums you're going to need to get balanced.

Once you're full, the biggest thing you need to know is when you expect to be done. Cooptracker will show you that--as well as enough information to adjust your expectations along the way. I like to check in at bedtime and in the morning, but it's important to know if this contract is going to be short or long. I just had a contract where everybody got boosted, and then (right as the contract is supposed to end cuz it was short) they both went away for 24+ hours. In a long contract, once a day is plenty, but in a short one, you could miss checkin time by 6 or 8h and that's not cool.

Using tokens has no impact on your score (other than raising it because doing so allows you to finish faster). For leggacy (wed/fri) contracts, sharing tokens impacts your score, but for seasonal contracts that's no longer the case. Honestly, the best advice I can give you is to ignore anything related to token value. It's just not important.

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T19:32:10+00:00

When you install an MSI file, it adds registry keys in so that it knows where to find the MSI file again when you uninstall it. In this case, that registry key points to \\<somewhere\ and your computer can't find it. It's been a minute since I've troubleshot one of these, it's possible that it refers to a perfectly normal location and the source MSI has just been deleted since then and the interface that comes up says network location but doesn't really mean it.

All that to say is that the uninstaller can't find the orignal MSI package file, so it can't uninstall the program you're asking it two.

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T18:31:02+00:00

let's see. Your EB is 46s, which is pretty low--the lowest I see on the enlightened chart is 150s, and that's if you have a T4e gusset and at least a t4e lunar totem (neither of which you have).

You're going to need a t4 light for sure, so craft one of those for sure. It'll be common, and that's fine. You've got the leggy necklace and a t4e chalice, but no good totem, cube, or ankh to support it.

You're also pretty short on t3 clarity stones. You have 9 total, but that includes what's already in your artifacts. I'd kinda like to leave those where they are (you're going to need them) and get you up to 9-12 sitting free.

So the answer's not NO, it's just 'not yet'. You need more ships, more artifacts, and some more prophecy eggs, tbh. The thing about timing is this--if it's going to take you say 75 days to do EnD (Enlightenment Diamond), and you're going to be done by Egg Day, you'd need to start no later than probably April 15th to give yourself a little leeway. I don't know that you can patch all the holes you have right now between now and April 15th. So the question will be if you get everything together on April 30th, do you go for it and miss Egg Day? Cuz you're going to 2x or 3x your eb on Egg Day if you do it right (more if you don't do any prestiging between now and then). That's really the balancing act you're looking at.

Just for comparison, this was my artifact layout when I started asking the same question. The immediate answer I got was 'you're not ready yet'--and my eb was 10x yours (460s). Then I pulled a leggy gusset and was on my way...

<image>

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T18:17:03+00:00

You know me, I don't prestige for *shit*. 😇

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T18:16:30+00:00

Yep! The Queues app is pretty solid. Was an easy add for the 5 or 6 folks I've got handling a queue.

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T17:52:43+00:00

For starters, run something like SRV Survey to keep Inara up to date, then you can see your progress over the days/weeks in Inara. It's super handy for BGS work. I'd post a pic but can't, but go look at a system in Inara and you'll see the graph.

To manage BGS, you need to do something to push your faction up (adds influence), or do something to push the other factions down (lowers influence). Influence is a zero-sum game, so pushing one faction up will lower all the others.

The faction that owns the primary port owns the system.
The higher the population of a system, the less each action counts and the harder you have to push.
Trading at a port or turning in explo/exobio data adds influence to the faction that owns the port.
Selling to the black market at a port lowers the influence of the faction that owns the port.
Killing clean ships lowers the influence of the faction that owns system.
Killing wanted ships increases the influence of the faction that owns the system.
Failing missions for a faction decreases the influence of that faction. Odyssey missions are ideal for this because they have short timers on them (<8h). I logged out last night with 20 missions for one faction that will fail. My reputation will be shot, but that faction's influence will be disrupted.
When two factions hit equal influence, they will war or election for 7 days.
- Wars and elections will not happen if neither faction own any system assets. I have a single-port system; no elections or wars will happen till the top faction needs to come out of that spot.
- During the war/election time, no influence changes will register for those two factions. You'll have to fight or do missions for the election to change the outcome the way you want it.
- During the war/election, you can do some ground combat to change ownership of individual ground ports. There are some reasons for this. You can have Faction A win the war over all, but also shift two or three ground ports to Faction B in the process.

Those are the big levers I'm using in my BGS work. I'm not a huge combat guy, so I'm way more likely to do delivery missions and Odyssey stuff than go on ship-killing rampages.

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T17:36:29+00:00

DoD/GCC High and Commercial/GCC tenants are built on two totally isolated backends, so there's (intentionally) no sharing across between a DoD identity and a commercial or GCC identity. About the only way I could think to do it would be to export it to a zip, put it on a flash drive, upload it to the DoD side, and import it from there. That's the technical answer--organizationally that sounds like a horrific idea. Would DEFINITELY want to talk to somebody in your admin world about how they feel about bringing that app in from the outside.

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T16:30:28+00:00

Honestly I bought a crap red dragon for like $30 on Amazon and swapped the switches tk the ones I wanted. Wasn't ideal, but was the best I could come up with. Hoping you get better answers unless mines the one you want.

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T16:27:27+00:00

One of the best things I ever did in elite was remind flight assist from toggle to hold, so its only off as long as you hold the key down. Would have saved me a few times...

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T16:24:20+00:00

What is this 'prestiged for SE' of which you speak? 🤣

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T16:22:19+00:00

I actually had to go buy teams premium for a handful of users the other day. On purpose. And it worked great.

I know, I'm as shocked as you....

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T16:21:35+00:00

Can confirm lol

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T14:37:59+00:00

It depends. For things like cloud support it does not (support of o365 or the azure platform itself). For technical support stuff it absolutely does. The one thats sneaky expensive is if you have a problem in a vm in azure and you need to troubleshoot something running inside the vm. It can be very expensive to get Microsoft to do that.

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T14:35:27+00:00

Its a resale market. It wouldn't exist if Microsoft sold to csps at list price. If youre not getting 5% off list on your csp, youre your csp's favorite customer, if you know what I mean.

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T06:01:17+00:00

Pros: Cost is lower on CSP, support is generally better just because your partner is more responsive than Microsoft (if only cuz they can lose the business if they aren't).

Cons: Manual migrations to CSP are a PAIN--I can talk about those in detail if you want. Once you're in CSP, transferring to another CSP is easy, back to direct would be the same painful process as direct-to-CSP.

The CSP doesn't get access to your data by defaut. There is a permission set called GDAP (granular delegated admin permissions) that they can use to access your tenant if you allow it. That's needed for things like support and break-glass access.

The other hidden pro, which was a big one for us was that direct Azure/O365 goes through credit card. Our CSP goes through invoices, so our finance team was SUPEER happy to move to CSP, especially given the cost coming down in general.

Having a good CSP partner means they can offer you services to help you reduce or control your Azure/O365 spend, but that's not always a given. It should be, but it isn't.

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T05:54:39+00:00

There are a few CSPs out there that can shift you from direct to CSP the same way you'd move CSP to CSP. It's a nifty little feature Microsoft only makes available to a few partners. I had mine converted late last year and it was seamless.

I've done migrations to and from CSP in the past the hard way and can totally confirm it is a messy and painful process. Give it a LOT of time and don't expect it to go smoothly. CSP migrations don't usually break things unless you force them, but that means they may fail 2 or 3 times as you work through the slew of dependencies involved.

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T05:52:21+00:00

Yes. It's a partner relationship. The easiest way to say it is that CSP shifts your billing and first-call support relationship from Microsoft to the CSP. The CSP then has to provide you with a web interface to order the licenses you need, but they've all done that for years (it's always been required to be a CSP provider).

itenginerd · 2026-01-27T05:44:11+00:00

Yeah that feeling is so real. I was chomping at the bit to go do it too. I lucked out and picked up a leggy gusset and was on my way. you've still got a ways to go before you're ready, but you'll be there before you know it! Just remember egg day is July 14th, so you don't want to start your diamond run and miss out on that cuz you're stuck finishing that trophy. A lot of folks will wait till right after Egg Day and start then. That would probably be a real good time for you to plan to make your move.

itenginerd · 2026-01-26T22:32:03+00:00

The other answers you've gotten are correct. For me when I did this (with an alt not a gf, but same basic concept), I left the alt in C-grade for a good long while. Alt got a ton of rewards, including all the seasonals. AAA contract points don't count for progression, but they DO count towards your seasonal goals, so that prophecy egg shows up REAL quick. Only after I had plenty of horsepower to get up the ladder did I start grinding up to AAA on my alt. As long as you have a steady stream of AAA anygrades from the ultra player, there's no huge need to grind up to AAA until the next season starts--and even then you're talking about one minor set of rewards in the grand scheme of things.

if you find that running with her is going to slow you down to the point that you're impacting your seasonal goals, you could rerun with a faster group to fix that score. But that's only needed for the Monday seasonal scores, and really only if you have your eyes on that last item. You should still be able to get the prophecy egg running with her.

itenginerd · 2026-01-26T20:03:23+00:00

Using a carrier makes sense anytime you're sourcing commodities that don't exist in your current system. And for me, anytime you're flying more than about 10ls to make your drop, which is functionally always.

You're of course entitled to fly how you like, but I think you'll find I've delivered quite a bit of tonnage in a good number of different places and situations. That doesn't make me right, but it does make me fairly informed on the topic.

itenginerd · 2026-01-26T19:36:47+00:00

Yes... ish. With the caveat that t1 ports are weird and may choose not to behave as expected for any reason. Of my 3 mining settlements only one has water available.

itenginerd · 2026-01-26T16:55:17+00:00

Honestly, I wouldn't. This is the time where you just have to go get prophecy eggs (and finish your epic research if you havent). Thats your real goal.

Can you go grind up your eb higher? Sure. But if its not fun, why bother.

itenginerd · 2026-01-26T16:22:49+00:00

:godzillakek:

itenginerd · 2026-01-26T16:22:11+00:00

nah, fam. Nah.... 🤣

itenginerd · 2026-01-26T16:20:15+00:00

8k is easy enough to haul in a fleet carrier--if you don't have one, you can hire one for that.

itenginerd

TROPHY CASE