Pilots Trade Network Elite: Dangerous

AFK MASSACRE MISSION STACKING

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Introduction

This (in)famous way of mak­ing mon­ey was first intro­duced to the com­mu­ni­ty by CMDR the­Blitz and has since become a reli­able sta­ple for many CMDRs who wish to gen­er­ate cred­its but are short on actu­al play time. The con­cept is sim­i­lar to Wing Min­ing Mis­sions: take Wing mis­sions that you can com­plete solo, then option­al­ly share them with oth­er CMDRs to increase your prof­it when hand­ing in. Like with WMMs, a lot of effort is expend­ed in going to var­i­ous sta­tions and search­ing the mis­sion boards for pre­cise­ly the right kind of mis­sions. Unlike WMMs, how­ev­er, the actu­al mis­sion com­ple­tion can be done entire­ly while AFK.

This guide has been adapt­ed from the one on our Dis­cord serv­er. You will need to be on our Dis­cord serv­er in order to find oth­er CMDRs to share mis­sions with. This guide ref­er­ences sev­er­al chan­nels on our serv­er – they are pre­ced­ed with a # and coloured red.

Ship and build

This strat­e­gy relies on using a Type 10 Defend­er (yes, real­ly), out­fit­ted with as many tur­rets as pos­si­ble and a fight­er bay with NPC pilot. Buy-in is steep at 700m cred­its, and rebuy is 36m cred­its, so this is some­thing you’ll only want to try once you already have a good chunk of sav­ings in-game.

For the build, note that Point Defence must be in util­i­ty slots 3, 4 and 5. For fight­ers, any will work, but a Gelid F Gu-97 is par­tic­u­lar­ly good for high skilled pilots. (For low-skill crew, Aegis F can help with keep them alive and Gelid G helps their DPS.)

For NPC crew, you can either hire a pilot at Expert then fire them before hand­ing in your mis­sions, or you can train a pilot up from Harm­less and keep them on retain­er. Hired pilots take a cut of every sin­gle cred­it you earn in-game, no mat­ter the source, but pilots trained up from Harm­less take a small­er cut when they reach top rank than pilots hired already at top ranks.

Type-10 Defender //

Type-10 Defender

AFK Type 10: No engineering

  • 681m Cr
  • No engi­neer­ing
  • 220 m/s boost
  • 16.11 ly

Overview: It’s pos­si­ble to use a com­plete­ly unengi­neered ship, but expect more babysit­ting and more rebuys.

EDSY
Cori­o­lis

Type-10 Defender //

Type-10 Defender

AFK Type 10: LOW EngineerING

  • 640m Cr
  • Some Engi­neer­ing
  • 312 m/s boost
  • 24.85 ly

Overview: You don’t need a lot of engi­neer­ing to be suc­cess­ful. This build will be more than suf­fi­cient 95% of the time, and you’re extreme­ly unlike­ly to encounter any rebuys. If you don’t have the guardian mod­ules list­ed, no prob­lem – just use Hull Rein­force­ment Pack­ages instead of Shield Rein­force­ments, and a reg­u­lar pow­er plant with enough engi­neer­ing to pow­er every­thing in the build.

Pips: Use 3÷0÷3 for best results.

EDSY
Cori­o­lis

Type-10 Defender //

Type-10 Defender

AFK Type 10: Max Engineering

  • 616m Cr
  • Engi­neered
  • 312 m/s boost
  • 24.34 ly

Overview: Com­plete overkill, but if you want the best… this is it.

EDSY
Cori­o­lis

Horizons or Odyssey?

Use the LIVE ver­sions of Elite Dan­ger­ous: Hori­zons 4.0 or Odyssey 4.0. When get­ting togeth­er for shar­ing we rec­om­mend the use of Elite Dan­ger­ous Hori­zons 4.0 since every­one has access to it.

Mission Gathering

Fly to the systems/stations pinned in #🚢laser-death-barge-dis­co-par­ties in a SMALL ship to gath­er WING MASSACRE mis­sions tar­get­ing pirates (NOT smug­glers). Mis­sions from dif­fer­ent fac­tions can be pro­gressed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly if they tar­get the same ene­my fac­tion, so you want to spread mis­sions out across sev­er­al giv­er fac­tions. You can use the pinned spread­sheet to keep track. You can hold up to 20 mis­sions and board refresh­es hap­pen every 10 minutes.

When start­ing out, pri­ori­tise Rep++++ rewards as this will result in being offered bet­ter mis­sions. You can also receive shares from oth­er CMDRs in #🚣laser-death-shares to help you max out your rep quickly.

Gath­er­ing a com­plete stack of high-pay­out Wing Mis­sions can take a very long time so it’s rec­om­mend­ed you grab the best avail­able and don’t try too hard to get all 20 mis­sions at max pay­out – it’s more cred­its over­all if you get a mix of good, OK and ‘meh’ mis­sions that you can com­plete soon­er rather than wait­ing hours and hours to try and get 20 great missions.

Bounties

(and what to do with them)

Boun­ties gained can add a lit­tle bit to your income but DO NOT redeem them in the mis­sion-giv­ing sys­tems as this will neg­a­tive­ly affect their sta­bil­i­ty and thus the future avail­abil­i­ty of Wing Mas­sacre Mis­sions. Instead, hand them in at a near­by Inter­stel­lar Factor.

Mission sharing

The impor­tant thing to remem­ber is that you do your “wing” mis­sions alone, in SOLO PLAY. After they are com­plete you can share them with oth­er CMDRs to max­imise your col­lec­tive rewards. If you man­age to share a full stack with three oth­er CMDRs who also have full stacks, all of you get the full ben­e­fit of hand­ing in 80 mis­sions, even though each one of you only indi­vid­u­al­ly com­plet­ed 20. (Note: wait­ing to find a full wing of CMDRs who all have 20 mis­sions can reduce your income poten­tial, it’s best to share with who­ev­er’s avail­able as soon as pos­si­ble then get your next stack started.)

When your mis­sions are com­plet­ed, trav­el to the sta­tions you got them from (in a small ship again) and begin hand­ing them in. You must be in the PTN Pri­vate Group (see #join-our-pri­vate-group on the Dis­cord serv­er for details) and in a wing with the oth­er CMDRs you want to share with – use #👀look­ing-to-share and #🚣laser-death-shares to find your wing.

To share, select a mis­sion from your Trans­ac­tions pan­el for your cur­rent sta­tion, click “Share”, and wait for the rest of your wing to accept it (you’ll hear lit­tle audio peeps as each CMDR accepts and can track accep­tance sta­tus by re-open­ing/­clos­ing the mis­sion in the pan­el). When every­one has accept­ed, turn the mis­sion in. Repeat this for all mis­sions across all sta­tions. Receiv­ing shares works sim­i­lar­ly – you’ll get an in-game mes­sage alert­ing you to the share, at which point you have to go to your Trans­ac­tions pan­el and accept the mis­sion. Once the shar­ing CMDR has turned in their mis­sion, it’ll dis­ap­pear from your pan­el but be record­ed in your in-game mail. You then have 30 days to go to the mis­sion giv­er and ‘turn in’ the shared mis­sions to receive your rewards.

How to actually complete your missions

  1. Log into SOLO play and swap to your Type 10.
  2. LOAD YOUR CARGO HOLD WITH A VALUABLE CARGO as bait. Almost any­thing works, Agro­nom­ic Treat­ment, Rare Met­als, even Biowaste.
  3. MAKE SURE YOUR NPC CREW is set to active.
  4. Take your Type 10 to the sys­tem pinned in #🚢laser-death-barge-dis­co-par­ties.
  5. Find a LOW RES site to drop in on and posi­tion your­self ~5km from it (not too close to the asteroids).
  6. Deploy your hard­points and your NPC fight­er. Make sure your tur­rets are in your fire group and set to ‘Fire at Will’. Put your pips 4÷0÷2 or 3÷0÷3.
  7. Check you aren’t about to be over­whelmed with ene­mies (fresh spawns on drop­ping into an instance can some­times be quite heavy) and then – go AFK!
  8. Depend­ing on your stack size and spread, your mis­sions should com­pete with­in 4–6 hours.
  9. (If on con­sole: you can wedge your con­troller against some­thing to induce a slight roll so that you don’t get boot­ed for being AFK.)

Troubleshooting

Prob­lem: Hatch break­er limpets stole your car­go. Pirates will scan you, find no bait and ignore you.

Solu­tion: Pick up more car­go from a near­by sta­tion (or try to pick up one of yours again if they are still float­ing around)

Prob­lem: You get blown up by too many foes or just some unlucky ana­con­da spawns.

Solu­tion: Exit to menu and reen­ter. If you were tru­ly afk: rebuy and fly in again (have enough for anoth­er rebuy)

Prob­lem: Your ship drifts away from the RES marker

Solu­tion: Dis­able your Thrusters in the mod­ules panel

Prob­lem: There are no ene­mies spawn­ing and scan­ning you.

Solu­tion: Exit to the main menu and log into your solo ses­sion again and see if the spawns change. Note: You can actu­al­ly spawn pirates in great num­bers this way if you aren’t cur­rent­ly afk. Kill them all then exit to the main menu and log back in.

Credits

Many thanks to the crew in #🚢laser-death-barge-dis­co-par­ties for col­lab­o­rat­ing on this guide.

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