Shards or brain trees?

[Stealthie]

Okay, it's been a while so I'm probably out of the loop...

Been trying to finish some engineering on some of my ships but I'm seriously low on raw mat's.
Back in the day, it was all about taking a road-trip to the shard sites and hoovering up G4 mat's with an SRV.
These days it seems like all the cool kids are blasting brain trees in their ships and using limpets to collect mat's.

I watched a few video's so I understand what I'm supposed to do but the results are... disappointing.
Seems like the key to it is to blast away at the brain trees from a distance where the brain trees are just about to despawn and then reverse so they do despawn and your collectors can do their thing.
Trouble is, they don't.
They head out and then just hover near the surface.
If I move forward again, it looks like the mat's are all stuck IN the trees (which they also do when I try to harvest brain trees with my SRV).

Am I doing something wrong?
I've read that it's a good idea to reduce the draw-distance to help with this (which seems a bit "cheaty" to me) so I tried that but it doesn't help.
Is there something I can do differently to help or should I just pack up and clear off to the shard sites for a few days (and try to re-learn how to drive the SRV)?

 

[rootsrat]

Okay, it's been a while so I'm probably out of the loop...

Been trying to finish some engineering on some of my ships but I'm seriously low on raw mat's.
Back in the day, it was all about taking a road-trip to the shard sites and hoovering up G4 mat's with an SRV.
These days it seems like all the cool kids are blasting brain trees in their ships and using limpets to collect mat's.

I watched a few video's so I understand what I'm supposed to do but the results are... disappointing.
Seems like the key to it is to blast away at the brain trees from a distance where the brain trees are just about to despawn and then reverse so they do despawn and your collectors can do their thing.
Trouble is, they don't.
They head out and then just hover near the surface.
If I move forward again, it looks like the mat's are all stuck IN the trees (which they also do when I try to harvest brain trees with my SRV).

Am I doing something wrong?
I've read that it's a good idea to reduce the draw-distance to help with this (which seems a bit "cheaty" to me) so I tried that but it doesn't help.
Is there something I can do differently to help or should I just pack up and clear off to the shard sites for a few days (and try to re-learn how to drive the SRV)?

I would suggest going to crashed Anaconda sites. There are many Cargo Racks that you can shoot. They all drop G4 raw materials. There one in Orrere for example, but also a few other locations.

I find this the quickest way. I don't relog, so I just cruise around the systems, but if you relog it's even faster.

 

[Stealthie]

I would suggest going to crashed Anaconda sites. There are many Cargo Racks that you can shoot. They all drop G4 raw materials. There one in Orrere for example, but also a few other locations.

I find this the quickest way. I don't relog, so I just cruise around the systems, but if you relog it's even faster.

That seems like a decent way to spend some time.

S'funny, I always put off the trips to the shard sites because it always seemed like a "chore" although I always enjoyed scooting around in the SRV once I was there.
Being able to make a quick detour to a crashed Annie would be less daunting.

 

[Shadowsnog]

there also seems to be a carrier going to the shards on the 18th if you would like to commit to those afterall...

Spoiler: img

* ^ times are adjusted to my timezone

source: fcoc discord
thread

 

[Factabulous]

Just do missions for raws now.

 

[Fixitman]

Spires and trees are no longer as necessary as they once were. Check out the engineering changes here:

Elite Dangerous | Type-8 Update (18.08) | Wednesday 7th August

Greetings Commanders, A new update will be available for Elite Dangerous Live/4.0 on Wednesday 7th August. Release Schedule (All times are in BST) 6AM - In game messages commence 8AM - Elite Dangerous Live/4.0 servers offline to deploy changes 2PM - Elite Dangerous Live/4.0 servers back online...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Stealthie]

Just do missions for raws now.

Hmmm...

I've been doing a few missions, just to get back into the game, but the mat' rewards haven't seemed especially enticing.

I seem to recall that, back when passenger missions were the thing to do, Faction Rep' made a BIG difference to how useful the missions were.
Is there, perhaps, a similar thing going on here, whereby a player only gets offered high quality mat' rewards if they're allied to the issuing faction?

 

[aRJay]

Choose the method you find most fun at the time.

But beware of following “what the kool kids do” guides after all you wouldn’t want to be mistaken for one of them.

 

[Stealthie]

But beware of following “what the kool kids do” guides after all you wouldn’t want to be mistaken for one of them.

Not much danger of that happening.

Soon as we got collectors I wished they could be used to fetch stuff from planet surfaces so I kind of like the idea of that but messing around with draw-distance settings to do it seems like an exploit to me.

I recall, back in the day, we were using the cargo scoops of flat-bottomed ships to hoover up Thargoid stuff directly off planet surfaces.
I wonder if that might work for mat-gathering too?

 

[Jack Winter]

Seems like the key to it is to blast away at the brain trees from a distance where the brain trees are just about to despawn and then reverse so they do despawn and your collectors can do their thing.
Trouble is, they don't.
They head out and then just hover near the surface.
If I move forward again, it looks like the mat's are all stuck IN the trees (which they also do when I try to harvest brain trees with my SRV).

I haven't seen that, but I haven't used this method much. What kind of weapons do you use?

 

[Stealthie]

I haven't seen that, but I haven't used this method much. What kind of weapons do you use?

Guardian flak cannons, dumbfire missiles or even mines.

Basically, anything with big splash damage and then send down collectors to hoover up whatever got shaken loose.

 

[Jack Winter]

What I meant is what kind of weapon did it fail with for you?

I know someone who tried it with the festive flak launchers and failed..

 

[aRJay]

Not much danger of that happening.

Soon as we got collectors I wished they could be used to fetch stuff from planet surfaces so I kind of like the idea of that but messing around with draw-distance settings to do it seems like an exploit to me.

I recall, back in the day, we were using the cargo scoops of flat-bottomed ships to hoover up Thargoid stuff directly off planet surfaces.
I wonder if that might work for mat-gathering too?

I never did that with Thargoid stuff but I do remember trying it for something else, it also needed a scoop near the front of the ship and fairly flat terrain.

I have used collectors from less than despawn range to get stuff at a guardian site, carefull positioning was required.

 

[Stealthie]

What I meant is what kind of weapon did it fail with for you?

I know someone who tried it with the festive flak launchers and failed..

Sorry, I fitted flak launchers on the advice of various videos but I also found dumbfire missiles work too.

I realise that the key to this is to find the trees, shake the mat's loose and then retreat to a distance where the trees despawn so they don't interfere with the collectors but that part just doesn't seem to work for me.
I find th trees, fire the flak launchers/missiles and I KNOW I've shook some mat's loose because they show up on my Contacts HUD but, after retreating and launching collectors, they just head down to the surface and sit there.
If I descend to the surface again, I can see the mat's still wedged in the trees... and the collectors die.

FWIW, I have 2x 3A collectors in my mat' gathering ship and 5D sensors.
I wonder if, perhaps, fitting D-rated collectors or A-rated sensors would work better?

 

[rootsrat]

Hmmm...

I've been doing a few missions, just to get back into the game, but the mat' rewards haven't seemed especially enticing.

I seem to recall that, back when passenger missions were the thing to do, Faction Rep' made a BIG difference to how useful the missions were.
Is there, perhaps, a similar thing going on here, whereby a player only gets offered high quality mat' rewards if they're allied to the issuing faction?

Faction rep means a bigger (better) total pool of rewards, but does not affect RNG as such.

 

[Willyum-71]

I dedicated last weekend as my Raw mats trip for all 4 of my accounts, 6 Shard planets and 1 Brain tree planet... 28 planets to farm! I traded down all my G4's to fill the lower grades until all G4's were completely empty.
I have used the collector limpets several times, but I find it frustrating messing with the settings to find the right balance and distance, it seemed like the different gravity's affected the settings each time. So I personally found it much easier and more fun to just get in the SRV shoot and scoop. However, I am using a head tracking app, so that does make targeting and scooping much, much faster...

Also, I'm not sure if this is just my imagination, but it seems like Shards and trees spawn more often when I dismiss my ship and begin driving.
2 planets consistently give me a difficult time, the Ruthenium planet rarely spawns 'forest groups' and the Brain trees spawn the entire planet in about 3-4 different ways and seems to take a while for the spawn type to change... What I mean is you can arrive and have an entire planet of Polyporous Growth (G2's Selenium, mag and stuff), but it can also spawn giving everything except Tiny amounts of selenium, but will give Technetium G4, Tin G3 and a bunch of other stuff. And no matter if I supercruise out and back... high wake out of system and back, or re-log. it seems like the only thing that works is if I wait an hour or so for the spawn type to change if I get a bad spawn. For my last account I couldn't get selenium to spawn with about 3 hours of jumping on and off the planet, came back next morning and completely filled up in about 10 minutes!

I did this 'Final fill up' work because from now on I plan to just top-off what's needed by doing missions, crashed Anaconda and A.X. system work. Just sharing my recent experience.

 

[Koma Pahu]

I tried the dumb-fire method, and while it might technically be more efficient I found it boring and finicky. Dropped down in my SRV and had far more fun.

I still think picking them up from missions is better but if you’re filling up…

 

[pFVD]

I'll echo others here and say do what you enjoy.
But I'll also say I can usually fill up on raws g4 at the various brain trees following this -

I take a T8 with a 7 and a 5 D collectors, flak the trees, retreat to 600+ so the trees despawn than fire off as many limpets as I can. I think half the battle with the trees is finding a good area, and those coords should take you straight to them. I think one of them (Yttrium maybe?) sometimes requires a relog but the rest usually get me to 100% from about 20% without. I do take an SRV with me, just in case, but I can't remember the last time I used it for this.

 

[Kzak]

I mainly visit the crashed Anacondas and stock up on the high-grade raw elements, might take a couple of visits (go to supercruise and back) to fill up the bins, visit a trader to fill the other bins up. Pretty reliable method.

 

[Willyum-71]

I'll echo others here and say do what you enjoy.
But I'll also say I can usually fill up on raws g4 at the various brain trees following this -

I take a T8 with a 7 and a 5 D collectors, flak the trees, retreat to 600+ so the trees despawn than fire off as many limpets as I can. I think half the battle with the trees is finding a good area, and those coords should take you straight to them. I think one of them (Yttrium maybe?) sometimes requires a relog but the rest usually get me to 100% from about 20% without. I do take an SRV with me, just in case, but I can't remember the last time I used it for this.

Whoa... this is fantastic. As soon as I saw this I had to fly right out to check it out. I went to the Tellurium planet first cause it was the closest, and instantly hit multiple forest with all grades of mats. Then went to the Polonium planet but so far only found the Polypourus G2's. So I called for my Fleet Carrier cause I'm guessing these planets are same as Selenium where they can Spawn in different ways. I will also try directly going to the co-ordinates as well in case things have changed...

The Spawning I'm talking about is from 2 years ago when I wrote this...
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/get-raw-engineering-materials-fast-now.610747/

It wasn't intended to mean 'a faster way'... I was meaning 'get your mats fast... now!' because 'Live' and 'Legacy' was about to split into 2 separate accounts, trying to save people from doing twice the work.
Anyway, the point was I was testing to see if the same exact forest would spawn in multiple ways, by charging supercruise then throttle down and flip on top of myself 17Km's up. Back then when I wrote that, the Spawn type was very random, now it seems to have longer cycles before re-spawn.
I want to check out all these planets to see what happens... I will likely never travel back out to the Shards. Thank you very much for sharing this.

EDIT---
Also it looks like the Flechette doesn't quite have the spread in the forest it used to have. Ust to be Flechette was the favorite choice for dropping mats.