Engineers What is your current opinion of Engineers `?

[foebits]

Basically just more foolish RNG garbage, broken missions, broken instancing, and a pass of anything larger than an FDL into obscurity since they can't even deal with eagles anymore due to lack of maneuverability and turrets still being utterly useless against anything.

(I do love that the AI is a lot better, but come on, large ships aren't supposed to be incapable of dealing with them.) Once they're on your      that's it, they stay there while your turrets attempt to tickle them.

 

[Heater]

in it current state, it's just like Power Play and CQC, I would guess that about 20% of the player base will like it and use it, but for me, after playing the beta and the release version for the last few weeks,
to be honest, it's just not worth the time and effort.

I do love the new AI (needs a bit more "balance" ) but for the most part it's perfect.

 

[Thebadmf]

I'm enjoying the more meaty AI, even if the chain interdictions are frustrating (as is dropping into a ring (not a res) and being jumped by NPC's.

The new missions are great, as are the inbox updates (this harks back to the kickstarter video) but their structure haven't really changed.

I love the flight controllers and hope they will add more (I volunteer to record some lines!!)

As for the engineers, I like the idea but I strongly dislike the implementation :-

• There are far too many material types. It could be trimmed by 75% and still be complex enough to give depth.
• I strongly dislike that some materials only have 1 source and that is heavily reliant on RNG with little to no feedback if you're on the right track. - for example I hate the SRV as it inflicts near instant motion sickness. Not good for some planet only mats. - Each material should be available via at least 2 methods.
• This should never have gone live without module and container storage.

It's a decent update but after all this time I'm fed up of foundations being laid.

 

[KING5TON]

Tried giving them a go.
Thought I'd upgrade my FSD first as jumping between Engineers in the FDL is a bit of a pain due to FSD range.
Arrive at Farseer station (or whatever it's called) after 12+ jumps.
See that I require 1 meta alloy to rank up with Felicity.
See how many jumps I've got to make to get 1 meta alloy.
Turn off the game, play something that's actually fun.

 

[Assailer]

Tried giving them a go.
Thought I'd upgrade my FSD first as jumping between Engineers in the FDL is a bit of a pain due to FSD range.
Arrive at Farseer station (or whatever it's called) after 12+ jumps.
See that I require 1 meta alloy to rank up with Felicity.
Turn off the game, play something that's actually fun.

Hehh i got fed up with 2.1 as well...
Luckily there was this gem (Rebel Galaxy) on sale on Steam last weekend, so i grabbed it for fun, and whoa, having a blast since!

 

[bitstorm]

Early days for me but I'm enjoying it.

Tonnes of quality of life changes that I feel really pull Elite together as a whole, stuff is so much much polished and coherent. It kinda feels there's been quite a bit of attention to detail with this update and I'm glad of that.

The increase in AI is awesome, the game was positively tame before, for me I think it's now where it should be. When I first went in it wasn't long before I died, after acclimatising to the new AI I'm finding I'm playing with a lot more care and attention, I'm really glad of that, for me it makes the game much more enjoyable.

I love that materials pop up everywhere, scanning a high wake for anomalous readings from say a military vessel, how cool is that. I'm genuinely hoping Frontier staff leave unusual wake signals.

The Engineers themselves, well I've unlocked all available to me currently and have a few level 1 upgrades that were a easy to get. That was all pretty easy and my Anaconda has something around a +5-10% jump range.

I haven't pushed much further so it's difficult for me to properly comment on the RNG thing but I think I would say that we don't want a situation where everyone just min/maxes to clone builds and I think a level of RNG mitigates that.

I honestly think the big glaring issue with 2.1 is lack of ability to store modules and how that limits players upgrading their ships, but we knew that within days of the beta being released and Frontier have apparently prioritised that so....

I also think complaining about having to go to Maia to fetch meta-alloys on behalf of an exploration engineer is a bit ridiculous to be honest. My honest response to such rubbish would be some people want it on a plate, that if they don't want to engage with the game they should go play something else, but of course I'm sure I'll get pulled up for making such "baseless" assumptions about the poster.

 

[Zenith]

My problem with the Engineers themselves is that your forced into a sequence of events if you want to unlock a particular Engineer or effect. To get to Professor Palin, you need...

1) Say hello to Elvira with Soontill Relics.
2) Get rep with Elvira.
3) Get invite to Qwent.
4) Get Sirius permit.
5) Get 25 Modular Terminals to say hello to Qwent.
6) Get rep with Qwent
7) Get Palin invitation.
8) Get 25 Unknown Fragments to say hello to Palin

And that's just to get access to Corrosion Resistant Cargo Racks. Palin also had a 5000ly from your start system requirement as if the bar wasn't set high already.

The mods from Engineers themselves aren't much to sing praises about. I seem to get min-max almost every time with any module and I really question whether the time spent scrabbling for material resources is worth the mod outcome. In my opinion, Engineer mods aren't much good.

There are other aspects of 2.1 that are great. Bookmarks, new look mission and outfitting boards, multi-stage missions, in-mission real-time updates and performance enhancements. The graphics have had a buff and a nerf. Buff with tyre tracks and general planet appearance. Nerf in that planet surfaces seem smoothed, probably to keep the framerate up.

On balance, I'd say the update is 6/10 and for engineers themselves, is 2/10.

 

[andrak]

Tried giving them a go.
Thought I'd upgrade my FSD first as jumping between Engineers in the FDL is a bit of a pain due to FSD range.
Arrive at Farseer station (or whatever it's called) after 12+ jumps.
See that I require 1 meta alloy to rank up with Felicity.
See how many jumps I've got to make to get 1 meta alloy.
Turn off the game, play something that's actually fun.

Not one is forcing you to use the ship with the worst jump range in the game. You did that by choice.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

On the whole, i'm loving it. Like all the quality of life improvements, the updated missions and the portraits and how it works into the BGS etc. and the updated planetary graphics. I liked the actual engineers in Beta, but haven't visited one yet out of beta. Been doing other stuff, but will drop by one, when I get the chance.

The only problem that I have is that I can't store any of my crafting cargo and get into my vulture that doesn't have any cargo capacity currently. They need to implement some kind of limited cargo storage or be able to store cargo on your stored ships somehow.

 

[bitstorm]

My problem with the Engineers themselves is that your forced into a sequence of events if you want to unlock a particular Engineer or effect. To get to Professor Palin, you need...

1) Say hello to Elvira with Soontill Relics.
2) Get rep with Elvira.
3) Get invite to Qwent.
4) Get Sirius permit.
5) Get 25 Modular Terminals to say hello to Qwent.
6) Get rep with Qwent
7) Get Palin invitation.
8) Get 25 Unknown Fragments to say hello to Palin

And that's just to get access to Corrosion Resistant Cargo Racks. Palin also had a 5000ly from your start system requirement as if the bar wasn't set high already.

I've only just started on the path to Palin but couldn't you do all that over a few weeks though? Sure it's not in a few hours but is that such an issue? I mean presumably Palin is one of the more inaccessible Engineers, is it really that much.

And 5000LY. Honestly I don't think that's a lot for an advanced exploration engineer. Presumably Palin wants to deal with explorers, that would seem a pretty low stat for any explorer. I mean folk on the UA trail think nothing of going for a mooch round Trifid of the North or where ever their nose takes them.

 

[Cosmos]

My opinion. Its the best update Frontier have done to date. My only real issue so far is finding firmware..

 

[Eera]

Frustrating and foolish !

 

[KING5TON]

Not one is forcing you to use the ship with the worst jump range in the game. You did that by choice.

You are correct.
No one is forcing me to do anything.
Did I say that I was forced?

I played the Engineers. I learned what was entailed. I knew I could change ship to a suped up Asp and fly out there I just couldn't be bothered as I wouldn't find it fun so I went and played different games that were fun.

The thread asked for my opinion of Engineers, I gave it.
Why do you have an issue with my opinion? Am I not allowed it?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Frustrating and incense !

Thank the lord for that update. My cockpit was beginning to get a bit whiffy.

 

[bitstorm]

I knew I could change ship to a suped up Asp and fly out there I just couldn't be bothered as I wouldn't find it fun

I think it's this that's a bit silly to be honest.

You want access to an exploration engineer but getting in a ship and flying there is too much trouble?

I mean sure if you don't like flying around that's totally fair enough, but it's a pretty fundamental activity in ED, especially for explorers.

 

[racer1]

I'm happy with it including AI changes. Still the only game I'm playing at the moment.

Although I'm not seeing the supposed focus on quality. I seem to be hitting more bugs than I did in 2.0. The cynic in me says the delay was about Horizons for xbox.

 

[K-Rose]

I was sitting on 70M and had the two ships I wanted, the FGS and iCourier... Engineers had me wanting to do one thing, tweak those ships. I only get limited time to play each week (4-6 hours).
After two sessions I had made literally no progress finding the materials I needed. I've been told on the forums its because it's meant to be a side activity, but most side activities you can focus on to get somewhere. I can't focus on this if I come out of a 2 hour session making literally no progress.

So where I'm at now? This patch has made me reset my save.
I wiped 18 months of data just to give myself the aim of getting my FGS and iCourier again, this time while being able to collect materials. I have to say for me it's been worth it and I'm finding it fun. I've tried a soft reset (sinking all credits into a ship) but it's not the same knowing I can just go back across the bubble to find my ships.

I'm hoping that with my slow limited play time, when I want to start getting reputation with the factions they'll have implemented the military ranking missions properly so I can try that from scratch. I originally did the whole spam charity missions thing so I feel like I kind of cheated the military ranks anyway.

Only issue I see now is the lack of storage/600 material limit. I've only been playing for a couple of hours and I'm at 100 materials already! I've got ages till I find any engineers, what would a new player think to do if he was full of materials??

 

[KING5TON]

The cynic in me says the delay was about Horizons for xbox.

It wasn't for that, it was for bean counter reasons to defer money/news of Horizon's success (or lack of it).

 

[gooddoc]

It's better than i first thought. When I started seeing what was needed to upgrade my Exploration ships i thought 'No chance! it's just FD trying to get me to do some pewpew', going into USSs that normally i just fly past, deliver combat bonds etc.
However, when I actually looked more closely into it, I realised that the stuff needed to do the upgrade that i was looking at, increase FSD range, then that could be got without firing at anything!

Albeit with a bit of grinding, within 7 days of Engineer's launch I have my Explorer Asp with a lvl 5 FSD upgrade & my 'Conda got a lvl 4 upgrade.
Now basically that will do me, I don't really need to do any more Engineers stuff unless Iv gone back in the bubble & waiting for the next expedition to start.

So yeah! it was Ok & it got me what I wanted, decent jump ranges on my Exploration ships, but I doubt that I'll continue to use it to upgrade other modules, that won't effect FSD range & involve pewpew to get them!

 

[Zenith]

I've only just started on the path to Palin but couldn't you do all that over a few weeks though? Sure it's not in a few hours but is that such an issue? I mean presumably Palin is one of the more inaccessible Engineers, is it really that much.

And 5000LY. Honestly I don't think that's a lot for an advanced exploration engineer. Presumably Palin wants to deal with explorers, that would seem a pretty low stat for any explorer. I mean folk on the UA trail think nothing of going for a mooch round Trifid of the North or where ever their nose takes them.

It's not about the 5000ly requirement. I only mention that as another possible obstacle to someone. I've been way to gone and back beyond 5000ly from my starting system.
Yes, the flavour text to Palin says he's looking for people who explore.