Engineers You're in for a cruel awakening

[Valence]

The people that keep telling me I'm supposed to just play the game and acquire engineering components randomly so I can stop by and casually get upgrades (because that's how you say I'm supposed to play)....you're in for a cruel surprise when you realize that they require commodities as well.

I feel for the guys who only like to fly small fighter ships like the viper having to sacrifice internals for cargo space to hold onto these commodities. Never mind holding multiple sets of recipe ingredients to play the slot machine for your high level upgrades. And good luck with the npc pirates as well while you have them in your hold.

Well thought out.

Glad I bought the lifetime pass. Can't wait to see the next half complete features that are planned. Maybe my deployed fighters will blow my own ship up.
Then someone can tell me that I'm not playing right. Again.

 

[Devlin-Darkside]

lol...

 

[xXR34P3RXx]

Release a bunch of new content for the game, but then lock all of it away behind a massive RNG grindwall.

that basically sums up this update.

Lifetime pass? we'll see if this game even survives the next couple of months....

 

[S~P]

I have to agree, I'm not jumping through hoops for FD and flatly refuse to play the grind game FD wants me to play.

 

[[wilb]]

so are those mission rewards commodities? I don't see how this will work out, without a player storage ^^ This is such a waste of time, I want a constructive solution and not be forced to buy a massive ship *cough* flying one *cough*

 

[Valence]

so are those mission rewards commodities? I don't see how this will work out, without a player storage ^^ This is such a waste of time, I want a constructive solution and not be forced to buy a massive ship *cough* flying one *cough*

I'm flying an Anaconda but can't switch to one of my smaller ships now. It has to be somehow my fault though.

 

[Noddie]

I have to admit I was looking at the higher-tiered upgrades earlier today. One problem is that you need to earn the lowered tiered upgrades to get access to them. So whilst it might require 10 units of unobtainium to get the tier 4 upgrade you want, you actually need 1 lot for tier 1... some "Wherethehellisit assemblies" for Tier 2... Some paladium and 5 units of unobtainium for tier 3... So eventually you need a LOT of Materials. Which are largely randomly dropped by exploding ships. To be honest, I would probably head to a RES or Nav beacon with an empty hold (most, but not all, pirates will leave you alone) and wait for people to come a cropper due to police action, and then plunder their wreckage. Signed Commander "Full of morals" Noddie. What I don't know is what determines what drops from each ship. If (for example) a Hauler will always drop Heat Dissipation plate , then you know what you have to do to get it...


They do, fortunately, go with your ejector seat (I believe). So if you get blown up, you keep them. But even so - could take you a while to get enough for all the levels of upgrade. OF course a canny man might get the simplest tier 1 upgrade... Then the simplest tier 2.... Tier 3... And then the one you actually WANT at 4, having used other mods at lower tiers to gain trust.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The people that keep telling me I'm supposed to just play the game and acquire engineering components randomly so I can stop by and casually get upgrades (because that's how you say I'm supposed to play)....you're in for a cruel surprise when you realize that they require commodities as well.

I feel for the guys who only like to fly small fighter ships like the viper having to sacrifice internals for cargo space to hold onto these commodities. Never mind holding multiple sets of recipe ingredients to play the slot machine for your high level upgrades. And good luck with the npc pirates as well while you have them in your hold.

Well thought out.

Glad I bought the lifetime pass. Can't wait to see the next half complete features that are planned. Maybe my deployed fighters will blow my own ship up.
Then someone can tell me that I'm not playing right. Again.

I always have a small cargo hold on all my fighter builds including my eagle. You never now what may come along to scoop.

 

[sndle9]

I'm flying an Anaconda but can't switch to one of my smaller ships now. It has to be somehow my fault though.

Then sell the crap you don't need yet.
When you find an engineer mod you want, pin the recipe so you can refer to it like a shopping list and keep an eye out for those things as you do other stuff.
I don't believe they expect us to all fly clippers to hoard 700 tonnes of random stuff just in case we may need it some day. But I can see a lot of players are trying to do exactly this.

 

[Perseus]

I always have a small cargo hold on all my fighter builds including my eagle. You never now what may come along to scoop.

I like your style.
I'm absolutely having a blast with the engineers and I'm going to take my time finding stuff while I get on with the game I was playing before. It's a brilliant improvement (except for the bugs, of course).

 

[digitalscream]

It's actually worse than that - if you take a mission which has 4 x commodities as its reward (because you need the materials or one/two of the commodities for a mod) but you only have 2T cargo space, you can't actually cash in the mission; it doesn't appear in the mission boards at all. You then have to buy a bigger cargo rack just to get paid for having completed the mission.

In a Vulture like mine, for example...shield generator, hull reinforcement, planetary vehicle hangar, FSD interdictor, 2T cargo rack...I have to sacrifice the hull reinforcement to put enough cargo space in, so the ship is practically made of paper. In combination with the lack of bi-weaves, the whole ship is massively weakened relative to the new upgraded NPCs.

Normally, I'd be running shield gen, FSD interdictor and the rest of it as hull reinforcements. As it is, my canopy goes as soon as my shields drop (which is often now) just like it did pre-hull-reinforcements because I literally have no space to make the ship into a proper combat-spec any more.

It's ridiculous. My ship has effectively been downgraded because of the Engineers, which is kind of the opposite of what I was expecting.

 

[Sans Daring]

The people that keep telling me I'm supposed to just play the game and acquire engineering components randomly so I can stop by and casually get upgrades (because that's how you say I'm supposed to play)....you're in for a cruel surprise when you realize that they require commodities as well.

I feel for the guys who only like to fly small fighter ships like the viper having to sacrifice internals for cargo space to hold onto these commodities. Never mind holding multiple sets of recipe ingredients to play the slot machine for your high level upgrades. And good luck with the npc pirates as well while you have them in your hold.

Well thought out.

Glad I bought the lifetime pass. Can't wait to see the next half complete features that are planned. Maybe my deployed fighters will blow my own ship up.
Then someone can tell me that I'm not playing right. Again.

It depends how you are playing. Many people come up and say "this is a grind, why can't I just stack all the components and materials I need safe, so I can make big changes at getting the biggest most weaponist weapon ever?" - if that's how you're playing, I would say, yes, the way the game has been mapped out, that's not really how its meant to be played. It has a whiff of min-maxxing as you're storing to stack on the awareness of the high end potentials.

If you're not playing like that, or advocating that the game is broken or half complete because it doesn't suit such an agenda, I certainly wouldn't comment on how you're playing. I come from the 8-bit generation, this sort of risk was part and parcel - a balance between holding what you need, being cautious while you have it, ensuring you take every precaution. It is tough, but people seem to like tough. Tough AI apparently is needed to make the game playable, and by that logic, if players want an unforgiving universe, there it is.

I think they will balance it out. Modules will probably pop up soon enough. It's a learning curve. Back-seat driving how badly thought out a development is doesn't really help. If this is a genuine issue for you, and you think there are clear resolutions, you should mark out feedback without the judgement. Explain how they could make it more balanced to FDev. Right now it's tough, but manageable. Should it be more balanced? Possibly. I'm personally keen that getting good upgrades doesn't become easier, but maybe ways to store a limited amount of retrieved items (so not to Robigo and stack in favour of quick successes) would seem a good medium.

 

[Valence]

Then sell the crap you don't need yet.
When you find an engineer mod you want, pin the recipe so you can refer to it like a shopping list and keep an eye out for those things as you do other stuff.
I don't believe they expect us to all fly clippers to hoard 700 tonnes of random stuff just in case we may need it some day. But I can see a lot of players are trying to do exactly this.

Forgive me, I guess I am a moron for trying to work towards several upgrades from the same engineer at one time. It seems us people who really looked forward to tinkering and customizing our ships aren't playing right.

 

[RoninCahill]

thanks all way way to complicated for me to ever think I could hire and engineer. guess I just use my A rated ships as they are. which thus far iv lost 27.5 mil in insurance claims as interdictions from eagles and vipers have killed EVERY SINGLE SHIP I have tried to pit against them. from fed corvette to viper. I have not won a single engagement as of yet. all of the pip adjusting, scb use, reverse to put them into sights, chaffing has not saved me.. though I did get one eagle close to death 20% hull then out of the blue his shields turned on, and well, I couldn't get them back down. I figured engineers (which I was hoping to be a real human as I wanted my son who has autism to take the co pilot chair) would only give a 10-20% boost to things like shields or speed, not 800%.
very disappointing.

ps. and yes I suck at combat, no need to post insults.already self insulted to the max.
Ronin

 

[Sans Daring]

thanks all way way to complicated for me to ever think I could hire and engineer. guess I just use my A rated ships as they are. which thus far iv lost 27.5 mil in insurance claims as interdictions from eagles and vipers have killed EVERY SINGLE SHIP I have tried to pit against them. from fed corvette to viper. I have not won a single engagement as of yet. all of the pip adjusting, scb use, reverse to put them into sights, chaffing has not saved me.. though I did get one eagle close to death 20% hull then out of the blue his shields turned on, and well, I couldn't get them back down. I figured engineers (which I was hoping to be a real human as I wanted my son who has autism to take the co pilot chair) would only give a 10-20% boost to things like shields or speed, not 800%.
very disappointing.

ps. and yes I suck at combat, no need to post insults.already self insulted to the max.
Ronin

Rep for the last comment, that's brutally honest! What level are you for combat out of interest? It could be the old system had us ranking up too quickly/easily and now the new AI on the corresponding ranks actually, well, outrank many people, and thus you're constantly getting hit by ships that are relative to rank but not to skillset. This is not a git gud comment, I think it probably could be an issue for many pilots and explain why many feel overwhelmed by attacks while others aren't so phased.

 

[Valence]

It depends how you are playing. Many people come up and say "this is a grind, why can't I just stack all the components and materials I need safe, so I can make big changes at getting the biggest most weaponist weapon ever?" - if that's how you're playing, I would say, yes, the way the game has been mapped out, that's not really how its meant to be played. It has a whiff of min-maxxing as you're storing to stack on the awareness of the high end potentials.

If you're not playing like that, or advocating that the game is broken or half complete because it doesn't suit such an agenda, I certainly wouldn't comment on how you're playing. I come from the 8-bit generation, this sort of risk was part and parcel - a balance between holding what you need, being cautious while you have it, ensuring you take every precaution. It is tough, but people seem to like tough. Tough AI apparently is needed to make the game playable, and by that logic, if players want an unforgiving universe, there it is.

I think they will balance it out. Modules will probably pop up soon enough. It's a learning curve. Back-seat driving how badly thought out a development is doesn't really help. If this is a genuine issue for you, and you think there are clear resolutions, you should mark out feedback without the judgement. Explain how they could make it more balanced to FDev. Right now it's tough, but manageable. Should it be more balanced? Possibly. I'm personally keen that getting good upgrades doesn't become easier, but maybe ways to store a limited amount of retrieved items (so not to Robigo and stack in favour of quick successes) would seem a good medium.

This game is supposed to be a sandbox, there is no way it was meant to be played.
I came from the 8 bit generation as well. Games with difficulty are fun yes. This isn't a question of difficulty, it is a question of adding in a system without the basic functions to support it. I agree that a way to store a certain amount of crafting commodities is a good idea, but that seems like such a blatantly obvious thing a game designer would add prior to adding an item collection system. It's hard for me to understand how this was overlooked. I thought that the magic material storage was the work around for this issue anyways.

 

[sndle9]

Forgive me, I guess I am a moron for trying to work towards several upgrades from the same engineer at one time. It seems us people who really looked forward to tinkering and customizing our ships aren't playing right.

Not trying to insult you, or anyone else. So, not moronic, just optimistic where I consider myself a realist.
I also think we really need some station based storage and that it can't come soon enough.
However, we don't have it yet and trying to chase multiple upgrades at once isn't working out for you so I believe what I suggest is the only practical approach if you want to fly small fighters.
Not ideal, but it's the best we can do today.
I wasn't too happy about having to fit a a cargo rack to my FDL to pickup drops at all, but it's something I have no choice in if I want to upgrade its weapons so I did.

 

[Sans Daring]

This game is supposed to be a sandbox, there is no way it was meant to be played.
I came from the 8 bit generation as well. Games with difficulty are fun yes. This isn't a question of difficulty, it is a question of adding in a system without the basic functions to support it. I agree that a way to store a certain amount of crafting commodities is a good idea, but that seems like such a blatantly obvious thing a game designer would add prior to adding an item collection system. It's hard for me to understand how this was overlooked. I thought that the magic material storage was the work around for this issue anyways.

That's the beauty of an ongoing development. I have no doubt that feedback will bring slight tweaks to this system. I doubt they'll be massive, but I suspect they'll make the management a little more forgiving.

I do think that the system was built on the assumption that players would pin a couple of blueprints from different Engineers and work towards one of them (depending which proves fruitful), more one at a time than a load together. So in that sense, I feel you're probably at odds with how they expected the game to be played.

Doesn't mean that anyone is wrong - I suspect many do as you are doing. I imagine they're trying to find ways at keeping people from becoming Engineer powerful too quickly, at the same time they'll be wary that people don't get frustrated and walk. So yes, a middleground I suspect is yet to come.

 

[Valence]

Not trying to insult you, or anyone else. So, not moronic, just optimistic where I consider myself a realist.
I also think we really need some station based storage and that it can't come soon enough.
However, we don't have it yet and trying to chase multiple upgrades at once isn't working out for you so I believe what I suggest is the only practical approach if you want to fly small fighters.
Not ideal, but it's the best we can do today.
I wasn't too happy about having to fit a a cargo rack to my FDL to pickup drops at all, but it's something I have no choice in if I want to upgrade its weapons so I did.

That comment was appreciated and I agree. Hopefully my sarcasm in this thread is working to make my point and not being interpreted as hostility towards players. +rep

 

[RooksBailey]

It's actually worse than that - if you take a mission which has 4 x commodities as its reward (because you need the materials or one/two of the commodities for a mod) but you only have 2T cargo space, you can't actually cash in the mission; it doesn't appear in the mission boards at all. You then have to buy a bigger cargo rack just to get paid for having completed the mission.

Unfortunately, you are spot on here. This happened to me the other night. I suspected there was going to be a problem when I took the mission because of the 4x rewards vs 2T cargo limit of my Sidewinder and, sure enough!, impossible to complete the missions. Annoying, to say the least. Really, it is bizarre that we have yet to receive any station storage space by this point. :S