Elite Dangerous: How To Raid/Stealth Settlements On-foot Solo (Odyssey)

So you might ask….how do you prepare yourself to pay your fellow man a visit to their assets. Technically one way is through the Apex. Still the key to success is having a good setup of keys first. Follow these simple steps! Unless you have a good keymap already try this.

1. Go to On-Foot Controls
2.Setup the keys like an fps

Move Forward = W
Move Backwards = S
Strafe Left = A
Strafe Right = D
Sprint = L Shift
Crouch = L Ctrl
Jump = Space
Interact = E
Secondary Interact = F
Open Item Wheel = I use mouse 3 for this then use mouse input to choose items
Fire Weapon/Use Tool = Mouse 1
Aim Down Sights = Mouse 2
Throw Grenade = G
Melee Attack = Q (Melee attack is useless so feel free to use Q for something else)
Reload = R
Switch Weapon = X
Select Primary = 1
Select Secondary = 2
Holster Weapon = H (Really..use this a lot as guards don’t like weapons drawn)
Select Next Grenade Type = J
Toggle FlashLight = L
Toggle Nightvision = N
Toggle Shields = V
Select EnergyLink = 5
Select Suit Specific Tool = 4
Select Profile Analyser = 6
Toggle Tool Mode = O

And finally the most important key (And how you taxi yourself if you are alone on a planet)

On foot Mode Switches

Open Access Panel = C

Now the first thing you shouldn’t do is go to a settlement by a taxi with your pistol and expect to get anything done. You could but you probably won’t want to.

I’m going to assume you might not know how to get to planetary stations, which usually contain the real nice stuff. As most CMDRs visit the orbital stations, and if the rare items are limited and obtainable by all CMDR, you might want to try hunting on planetary outposts for grade 2-3. For simple players who don’t like doing atmospheric landings, the APEX service makes this trivial. Just visit any station and look for their counter then select a planet and look in landings for an orange station or landmark thats circular.

The Tools for the Job

Suits and Tools

A Maverick Suit is the first and only suit you’ll need for this. The Maverick has some extra inventory space. Good for keeping lots of goods.

Dominator Suit makes short work of small settlements, if you don’t want to deal with stealth or can handle the alarms then carrying both kinetic and laser weapons will down most targets. Unfortunately, does not come with the arc cutter which can slow down raiding.

Arc Cutter comes with the maverick suit. This slices and dices almost any red box or maintenance panel and cuts through mag lock containers. Kind of want to try using this as a melee weapon.

E-Breach Are optional but depending on the job these are not required. First Guards who scan you will go hostile if they see these so if you have them avoid guards. E-Breach are good for getting into containers but why would you waste them there? However if on missions, it saves time to breach the container a mission item is located.

E-Cells are very important. Keeping shields and walking around outside drains your energy really fast. It also helps you keep alive when you decide to make a run for the Power Regulator and turn it off.

Health Kits are self explanatory. If things go south or you cant afford to use shields due to low power, these kits keep you alive. You’ll find a lot in the settlement though so you can pick one up regardless.

Weapons

Just one weapon is needed for stealthy attacks

Power Transfer ironically i played around with this, because it seems there was no way to silently take down targets and no explanation. Until I poked around a worker with this and…viola, unfortunately it kills them. It is a silent kill though, so if you plan to kill targets, overloading them will work. I’ve yet to try this with a guard though.This is your best friend in covert operations

Remember to set it to overload before sharing your power with a guard. Don’t do this in front

Remember that taking out targets besides using the power transfer will alert nearby people, so….yep if you take the stealth approach, use that overloader.

Engineering

TBD. Since I haven’t really bothered to go that deep into it yet.

However for suits I recommend finding one with inventory space.

There are quite a lot of settlement types.

Factions and Reputation

It may be best to avoid Factions under Federation or other jurisdictions. You may take reputation hits, I’m unsure if this happens, but when doing Conflict Zones, you usually do take reputation hits.

The best targets are independent small minor factions with many locations in a system.

Locations in a Settlement

STO: Storage type. STO have a lot of workers and no restricted areas. Basically you can walk through here without any problem.

RES/AGRI: Usually are great locations to loot. A RES building means you’ll find some restricted areas and a few scientists. AGRI is the same as a RES, but without restricted areas.

CMD: You’ll find two sub-rooms OPR and SEC. SEC is where the alarms are disabled while OPR is where turrets, anti-air and sometimes scans are disables.

IND: are buildings with sample units. Like EXT, these can be defined by tall tanks with a console to open. When it comes to loot, normally an IND may come with an attached LAB, which has a few things to open.

EXT: are buildings who have sample units too. They have small loot but are generally smaller and easier to deal with than IND buildings. EXT usually have one or two processing units here.

HAB: are buildings which are used for residency. In most cases if you don’t have an E-breach, you usually want to visit this building then. DORM areas have lots of goods and assets, but mostly documents and personal computers or insight.

PWR: are buildings which power the entire facility. PWR comes with a console you can use to turn off the site power. In most cases the PWR building is the first place to go if you want to raid an empty settlement or evacuated one.

A word of caution

If a CMD cannot be found, the Alarms may be located in the EXT building, the PWR building may also hold these controls. If infiltrating, the first target to disable is the Alarms for obvious reasons.

PWR have alarms when dealing with mining settlements
IND have alarms when dealing with industrial

Be aware bigger settlements usually have two or more buildings, but they often have CMD in that case.

Alarms are always security level 1, so thats the minimum to access it.

Where to find specific sites

Mining and Industrial named sites tend to have STO, EXT and IND buildings.
Military or Command named sites tend to have a STO, CMD and heavy security
Research or Analytics, Biochemistry named sites tend to have RES or AGRI buildings
Hotels and similar usually have HAB, although I’ve just run into one.

Almost all settlements will have a HAB building. I’ve run into some however which HAB buildings are nearly tiny.

APEX

You might find that driving to each location on your ship is great, but if you want to bounce between systems the best way is APEX. Simply access it through the Access key i mentioned earlier and navigate left, then use your keys to choose APEX.

You automatically store your loot when you enter a shuttle. If you trigger alarms you cannot call APEX until you reach 400m away from the area, however you can call APEX after looting if the alarms were not triggered and it’ll land on the landing pad none the wiser.

Types of Enemies

There are four types of enemies you will deal with.

Drones: From small ones to the big Goliath type. There are two drones I’ve run into. The smaller drone and the Goliath Drone. Goliaths are a pain to kill, and should be avoided.

Guards: Guards come in all shapes and sizes. Guards can scan you and will, if they try to scan you, its best to stand still. If you carry E-Breach, are wanted or generally have illegal stuff they will go hostile after the scan, giving you time to shotgun them before they complete it.

Worker: These employees can easily be killed with a shotgun or a rifle. Its the problem of how many they are in a building and how many you need to kill though.

Turrets: I never really had much trouble with turrets. They have a fixed angle and can be avoided by not getting in front of them. They can be annoying though if you are fleeing from other enemies. Anti-Air turrets may pose threats for ships.

Tactics

Entering a Settlement for the First time

1. Look for a Goliath, turrets and Anti-Air. If you see a Goliath, best to see where it is and where it goes.
2. If you see turrets and Anti-Air, try to locate the CMD center. If you did not bring E-Breach, locate the HAB building. If you are using a Maverick suit, you can Arc Cutter any panel to access a building. If you cannot see a CMD center, find the building that alarms may be located related to the type it is.
3. Plan your approach, where to go shopping and which lucky person will meet the end of your stun stick.

Obtaining Security level

A word of caution When you share rounds with a worker, that worker will alert other workers and guards even if there isn’t an alarm state. That means, even if you kill that worker or administrator with a shotgun, others will investigate in the nearby area.

Unless you use your power transfer to overload the target, which silently kills the target

To remove cloned data, simply use the item wheel and select the bottom option.

Behaviors

Guard Behaviors

1. Guards will scan you every so often, usually every 5-20 minutes. They do this almost all the time when you arrive. Guards can be avoided simply by not getting in their range.

2. Guards will investigate panels, workers tend to do this as well. If you plan to overload a panel, when a guard gets to it first they will stop the panel from being overloaded. They can disengage sample processing units and investigate if the power stops running.

3. Guards tend to patrol IND, EXT, and RES buildings. They rarely patrol through STO, CMD, HAB buildings. If killing a worker, there is a chance that a guard will idle there when they investigate and not move, or barely move. They only patrol these areas when the alarm state goes off or when hostile.

4. Guards when in hostile state, stay in hostile state, however they will lower shields if the alarms are turned off after a while.

Worker behaviors

1. Workers follow a route and some go to different buildings. You’ll rarely see a Rank 3 worker go into the HAB building, so there is no point in waiting for an administrator to go there.

2. Workers will always investigate fighting if its nearby, so be ready to dispatch multiple and flee if a guard comes by. They don’t carry anything higher than pistols.

3. Workers tend not to care if you arc cutter a container nearby, unless they directly see you do crazy stuff, or see broken panels they often mind their own business. If they see a dead body, they will go into yellow state. They won’t go hostile though if you aren’t directly near the body.

So….you’ve dealt with the guards, massacred workers and even shut down the facility. Wait that might be a bad idea….read this first!

Never turn off power when you need to download data

Never turn off power unless you want to overload doors to loot buildings

Profitability

You usually settlement raid for upgrade parts. Profitwise its not any better and actually worse than mining painite. But one key difference between these two is being on-foot is more enjoyable to me than piloting a Krait and scanning asteroids with a pulse scanner.

Loot in settlements vary, but I would consider the site has some factor in determining what type of items you get. I run into more Californium in Mining sites than Hotel sites. While Manufacturing and Chemicals often are found in Industrial and RES sites.