I have not found a black hole yet, but from what I've seen with stars myself and the internet, no. As you get closer to stars, your system heat goes up. If it gets too high, you get knocked out of hyperspace or whatever, alarms start going off, and you take some physical damage to the ship. I'm guessing that happens even with black holes.

As for number of pilots, my Sidewinder had one seat and my Cobra Mk III has two. But I don't think you can have more than one person in a ship, at least not at this point. Looks like it's coming, though. .

Yesterday I finally bought a Type VI transporter for about a mill, and equipped it with mining equipment, then started mining. I'm not doing this optimally... I'm just mining in a gas giant ring a few light seconds away from where my Cobra Mk III is stashed, so the materials aren't amazing. I also refuse to ditch my shield generator, which in turn limits the number of collection limpets I can run to one. Lastly, the type VI can only mount 2 small mining lasers.

The way mining works (or the way I do it) is to go into a mining area, blast an asteroid until a chunk gets dislodged, and then target it. This will tell you the composition. If it's favorable (like 20% gold), then I launch a prospector limpet into the asteroid. This gives you the composition and lets you know when it's out of materials, but more importantly it significantly increases the amount of materials you can harvest. I then launch a collection limpet that fetches the chunks into my hold and start mining. Unfortunately, I can only control 1 collection and 1 prospector limpet at a time. The prospector doesn't matter so much. I really only need 1 of those. But the collector is slow. The small mining lasers create chunks far faster than the limpet can keep up with, so I usually blast off 5-10 chunks, then wait, rinse and repeat.

Limpets also take up cargo space. With my current layout, I can carry 80 units. The first time I went out, I brought 30 limpets, but I was inexperienced and ran out of limpets before I ran out of cargo space. I brought home around 30 units of ore and made around 300k credits. I also wasn't being very selective in what I mined. The second time I brought 35 limpets and ran out of cargo space with about 15 limpets left. BTW, the limpets die if they run out of time (they have a lifetime) or if they blindly run into an asteroid when trying to get a chunk. Anyway, the second round I was more selective with the stuff I mined. I think I got 17 units of gold and various other materials. I haven't cashed in yet, but the gold alone is worth 170k. I estimate I probably pulled in around 500k. In both cases, it's probably after about 1 hour of mining.

So, long story short, this could make good money. I need a better mining ship... ie, something more expensive. I need to be able to field more collection limpets. I also need to find a system with a better mining area. However, given those things, I could probably make a million credits or more per hour, and this is without getting lucky and finding mining missions for materials you already have in your hold. The positives for mining are you don't travel very far, so you can really work on your reputation with specific systems/factions. The negative is it's kinda dull and you're not exploring the greater universe, though I suppose you could if you wanted to.

I'm going to play with mining a bit more, but probably cash in my Type VI and go back to my Cobra. I may also buy a new ship like a Keelback or Asp Scout and go exploring. Not sure yet. I'll keep you posted.

So, I turned in my load from last time and pulled in about 450k. I then did one final round of mining. For once, I got lucky and there was a mission to turn some of the ore I had in.. 70k in ore for a 200k mission isn't too bad. That final run I made about 650k, including that mission.

I then sold off my Type VI and will resume exploring/one way missioning. If I find any pristine mining belts I'll bookmark them, but mainly I'm looking for an upgrade to my Cobra. I now have 3.6mill in cash and a few more mill in Cobra parts. I'm thinking either a Vulture for some combat, or an Explorer of some sort for, well, exploration.

I sold off my Cobra Mk III and picked up an Asp Scout, which is a basic exploration vessel. I also got a detailed surface scanner and an advanced discovery scanner to compliment my build. I'm currently outside human space, scanning system after system. The ship cost me 3 million before upgrades. Since you only get 80% of the ship cost back when you sell the hull, I need to make at least 600k to break even. On my way out of the human habitation bubble, I ended up turning in roughly one page worth of scanned systems for 200k. I'm hopeful that after I finish my jaunt around the galaxy, I'll have several million credits.

Currently I'm just targeting a star out in some direction on the galactic disk and hopping my way out there, scanning every system I pass through. So far, I'm not the first to scan any of them. Once I get into virgin territory, I'll go a couple hops, then just scan every system in proximity. I want "discovered by Satis" to be on a bunch of systems. Plus it's supposedly worth more cash.

If you do scan a system as the first person ever, let us know with coordinates and a screenshot. So that we can go find it later (and defile it).

Btw, what are the "pvp" rules in Elite? If you are in outer space, ie not secure space, is anything fair game? Or are there more specific 'pvp zones'. I'm guessing it's fairly rare to run into other players in the middle of nowhere anyway, but I imagine there must be something like long range trackers for stuff like that?

If you're playing in open play, another player can attack you whenever and wherever they want. They'll get a wanted rating and, if they're in human-colonized space, I think security forces will show up.

However, it doesn't affect me. I've been playing Solo the entire time. I don't know anyone playing this game, so there's no reason for me to play open. I have no desire to be ganked. The game is hard enough for me right now.