Done with Odyssey. Engineering

[Kira Goto]

I just go with what I think is fun first and foremost.

Odyssey might be grindy, more so than the Horizons engineers in some aspects, but if you actually do the 'grind' instead of naturally following gameplay loops, you'll quickly wear yourself out on it and probably not really enjoy what you get out of it in the end.

The only relog farming I've done is power regulators and manufacturing instructions because I don't bother doing most of the combat stuff unless it's legal and/or doesn't involve a settlement massacre/assassination(so scavenger extermination or conflict zones), and you basically need the MIs to upgrade anything for more engineering spots on the weapons and suits. Though, that being said, I personally don't see myself doing tons of different builds either since the Odyssey content largely feels disjointed from the rest of the game and the FPS, while not terrible, doesn't particularly draw me in either. I'd be much more interested in seeing more extended salvage gameplay loops and the like instead of "Go shoot this or that or try stealthing when the game doesn't feel built around it*".

*In my very limited experience. I doubt if you leave a body somewhere, there won't be an alarm sounded by an NPC. And I'm not really into the "covert" missions because I don't feel that it's built around them too well, but I could be wrong on that.

I also run with an Executioner, Tormentor and whatever the shotgun is called again. Fight me about it. (Don't, it's all just personal preferences.)

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

What I am saying is: You see that every day here. If you grind through any kind of gameplay because you only want to do some other form of gameplay, you will kill your long time enjoyment of the game. Just look at all the "PVPers" who have no interest in anything but pew pew and grind their feet away to get their meta FDLs as fast as possible, some not even shying away from using cheats to skip the grind (or to skip the re-grind after getting banned).

It is not healthy if you thrive for a long time investment of the game. If you are content to put the game aside after 100 hours: Be my guest, but don't complain that the game does not offer you "long term engagement".

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

The only relog farming I've done is power regulators and manufacturing instructions because I don't bother doing most of the combat stuff unless it's legal and/or doesn't involve a settlement massacre/assassination(so scavenger extermination or conflict zones), and you basically need the MIs to upgrade anything for more engineering spots on the weapons and suits.

I did that too. I needed a boatload of MIs and came across a re-logable probe more or less by accident... and I could not resist. Maybe I was blessed by the RNG, but it took me 15 minutes to get all the MIs I needed. That's hardly a grind. I still felt guilty afterwards after ranting so passionately against relog mechanics .

 

[Kira Goto]

I did that too. I needed a boatload of MIs and came across a re-logable probe more or less by accident... and I could not resist. Maybe I was blessed by the RNG, but it took me 15 minutes to get all the MIs I needed. That's hardly a grind. I still felt guilty afterwards after ranting so passionately against relog mechanics .

I wouldn't mind the relogging being gone if there were more viable methods of obtaining those things without them. At least, in regards to certain engineering materials... looking at you, military supercapacitors that spawn in about 10% of signal sources compared to the military grade alloys.

 

[Ryox]

BGS is an ingame reason

I gave up on playing Ground CZ for BGS, even though it was one of the most interesting "end-games" for On-Foot engineering, IMO.

The reason I gave up is that you can do it only in Solo / PG, because Open Play will crash with "Scores Stuck" half of the time, even when you're alone in the instance. It's been like that since OD's release.

It makes On-Foot PvP extremely rare and boring, while it should have been an option, just like it is with ship combat. PvP would have been a great motivation to grind to G5.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I wouldn't mind the relogging being gone if there were more viable methods of obtaining those things without them. At least, in regards to certain engineering materials... looking at you, military supercapacitors that spawn in about 10% of signal sources compared to the military grade alloys.

well there is always crosstrading. I get all my G5 engineering materials from missions that reward Biotech Conductors and Exquisite Focus Crystals. It is not enough to fill all your G5 bins, but that is hardly necessary. I keep a good stock on the two and cross-trade whatever I need. Also, I almost never do more than four or maxbe six G5 rolls, because it is a waste of materials. I almost never collect stuff at HGEs.

As for other hard to obtain on-foot stuff: Reactivation missions in post-Thargoid systems are a good source of Suit Schematics, Power Regulators and Manufacturing Instructions. Yes, they are a little bugged, but with a bit of care they work very well.

 

[Northpin]

I gave up on playing Ground CZ for BGS, even though it was one of the most interesting "end-games" for On-Foot engineering, IMO.

The reason I gave up is that you must do it in Solo / PG only, because Open Play will crash with "Scores Stuck" half of the time, since OD has been released.

It makes On-Foot PvP extremely rare and boring, while it should have been an option, just like it is with ship combat. PvP would have been a great motivation to grind to G5.

Well, BGS and PVP dont really mix.
You do BGS to win wars and flip settlements. It's a filling the bucket activity where PVP is hindering not helping the outcome.

And BGS-ing a war through Ground CZ is an option for CMDRs that are more apt at FPS than at flying ships in a space CZ.
So it's an extra option - maybe not as efficient as a Space CZ, but still, it may suit certain commanders better than a space CZ.

 

[Ryox]

Well, BGS and PVP dont really mix.

You're missing my point, I'm not talking about game-design, I'm talking about the core gameplay being broken and unplayable because of bugs.
Edit: By "core gameplay" I mean "Open Play Ground CZ".

 

[Northpin]

You mean the BGS that was supposed to be... I don't know... in the background? The one that wasn't supposed to be played and players found a way to and did it anyway ? Maybe our definitions don't align here. I would call that out-of-game.

BGS sums the player activities, on a daily basis, that will lead to influence gains for their supported factions, ultimately leading the supported factions to rule their native systems and then expand and rule the nearby systems.
It's not exactly "background"

 

[F4fred]

Well, as long as you keep playing, you'd have materials for engineering.
Especially valid for Odyssey onfoot gameplay. Salvage missions (satellites especially) are a rich source of data, MI specifically, while Restore missions are a rich source of materials generally speaking.

On my Epic account (which is the one i tried most stuff, especially in terms of weapon mods) i have:

• 15 G5 weapons (13 fully modded, 1 with one mod, 1 empty) and 1 G4 weapon with one mod
• 4 G5 suits (2 fully modded, 1 with one mod, 1 empty) and 1 G4 suit with 2 mods

My other 2 accounts are not that far behind, but i've did way less experimentation.

Well I have a lot. 4 fully modded G5 suits, but not quite as many weapons.

 

[Northpin]

You're missing my point, I'm not talking about game-design, I'm talking about the core gameplay being broken and unplayable because of bugs.
Edit: By "core gameplay" I mean "Open Play Ground CZ".

I'm not missing the point, i'm just pointing out that PVP is an optional activity not necessarily related to BGS and when mixed with BGS it may have non-optimal results
That is obviously, BUGS aside

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Well I have a lot. 4 fully modded G5 suits, but not quite as many weapons.

For what is is worth, I have engineered and fully modded three suits to G5 (two Mavericks and one Dominator) and have a G4 Artemis with three mods, and I have five G5 weapons: A Tormentor, an Intimidator, an Executioner and an AR-50.

 

[F4fred]

tbh, like ship engineering it's not too hard to see the turkey modifications right off the mark. Don't really need to try them.

Maybe. With ship engineering it is not always obvious. Had dismissed thermal shock for lasers, but having tried I am sold. For Odyssey there are a few things I would like to try like the Iron Man Artemis combat build, but can’t be bothered to hunt down the stuff needed.

 

[F4fred]

I'm not sure what you meant, but you actually can trade any on-foot materials directly between other Cmdrs ('Assets', 'Goods' but also 'Data').

1) Simply drop them from your backpack to the ground:

Video Guide: On Foot Player-to-Player Material Trading.

I just posted a quick guide to on foot player-to-player material trading.

forums.frontier.co.uk

2) Or use your Fleet Carrier's bartender.

Yes I was aware of that and if you read my posts above I mention getting 5 Weapon Test Data off a friend, but that means finding someone with what you need and having something they need, usually. It is however an advantage over Horizons engineering.

 

[Reggit]

Anyone else remember the old engineers?
Who required commodities...rarer raw mats...and didn't offer a guaranteed outcome...?
But also picking up one mat - was only worth one mat (and there were no material traders/bartenders!)

Fun times!

Current Engineering is a breath of fresh air by comparison.

 

[Rebel Yell]

I gave up on playing Ground CZ for BGS, even though it was one of the most interesting "end-games" for On-Foot engineering, IMO.

The reason I gave up is that you can do it only in Solo / PG, because Open Play will crash with "Scores Stuck" half of the time, even when you're alone in the instance. It's been like that since OD's release.

It makes On-Foot PvP extremely rare and boring, while it should have been an option, just like it is with ship combat. PvP would have been a great motivation to grind to G5.

Same here buddy, I've left all that useless stuff at G4... go figure.

At least my daughter didn't waste any time as she already knew it was worthless.

What a waste of time, indeed... for me

 

[metatheurgist]

Anyone else remember the old engineers?
Who required commodities...rarer raw mats...and didn't offer a guaranteed outcome...?
But also picking up one mat - was only worth one mat (and there were no material traders/bartenders!)
View attachment 351216
Fun times!

Current Engineering is a breath of fresh air by comparison.

Oh man they were "great"! I remember if you wanted to do a whole bunch of ships at once you had to get enough commodes (yeah I meant that) for all of them. Then you had to juggle the cargo allocation from the ship that could carry it all at the start to the ship that would carry the least at the end, and god forbid you forget to install a CR on one of them.

Not to mention the joy of seeing the "Tasty cargo" message just when you were trying to upgrade something on the Hauler. Those things were like pirate catnip.

 

[Pville_Piper]

All this talk of "you get this stuff by playing the game" absolutely falls apart when you want audio masking... Which means Yarden Bond if you're in the bubble. Which means Kit Fowler and opinion polls and smear campaigns. While I have made some progress in finding opinion polls, in all of the missions I've run to settlements I've got a grand total of 1 smear campaign. One. There are a couple of other things that aren't showing up very often at all and there seems to be a couple of non-data items that you can't get from the bartender by trading as well, but I can't remember.

There have been numerous ship-based balancing passes, including at least one major redo of ship-based engineering, a contemplation of yet again another ship-based engineering and the lessons there were completely lost when foot engineering was introduced.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

All this talk of "you get this stuff by playing the game" absolutely falls apart when you want audio masking... Which means Yarden Bond if you're in the bubble. Which means Kit Fowler and opinion polls and smear campaigns. While I have made some progress in finding opinion polls, in all of the missions I've run to settlements I've got a grand total of 1 smear campaign. One. There are a couple of other things that aren't showing up very often at all and there seems to be a couple of non-data items that you can't get from the bartender by trading as well, but I can't remember.

There have been numerous ship-based balancing passes, including at least one major redo of ship-based engineering, a contemplation of yet again another ship-based engineering and the lessons there were completely lost when foot engineering was introduced.

Fun fact: If you own a carrier, you need one opinion poll and one smear campaign plan. You can sell that one unit over and over to your own bartender. If do not have a carrier, you might do that with a trustworthy buddy who buys them and then sells them back to you.

However, I found enough of them by just playing the game that I gave them away to other CMDRs. Not many, but enough. Like, a handful.

 

[Kira Goto]

I have seen a handful of smear campaign plans throughout my Odyssey ventures, but not lately now that I am looking to get certain engineers for upgrades. So guess what I didn’t think to bother picking up.

Opinion polls, I had ten of those before I even had ten digital designs. Whatever that says about my luck with RNGesus.