Engineers Will the prospecting RNG be getting a balance pass anytime soon?

Cmdr Starwind here,

FD, there are some supposedly common materials that have proven to be extremely difficult or time consuming to obtain. Specialized legacy firmware is labeled as being very common. Try as I may, I've found maybe 2 from at least 100 different encoded/ degraded emission sources at this point. I've only been able to obtain around 4 I think through random mission rewards. Why is this? Also with the sheer number of materials, data, and components why have any mission give out very common grade items like iron, nickel or mechanical scrap? I can go anywhere and shoot the very first rock or ship I find to obtain those. I'm managing with the material collection process, but it's frustatingly slow and tedious and when the rare metallic meteorite does finally appear and I get yet more iron or nickel it feels like a slap to the face Frontier.

So, back to the title of this post. Will the RNG for prospecting drop rates be getting any kind of balance pass or tweaking anytime soon? If not, at the very least, very common grade items should be removed from mission rewards. They can quite literally be found anywhere and drastically decrease the chance of generating decent mission rewards. I don't usually post due to how polarizing and controversial everything becomes, but I'm at my wits end here. Thank you in advance if you read this.
 
Same here. The materials I need and hope to 'spawn' on missions never seem to be there as a reward. Me too gets nickel or other stuff in abundance. Waste of time ...
 
The difficulty of obtaining many items doesn't seem to fit the description very well.

Vanadium is listed as a tier 2 material yet I find bucketloads of Manganese and Phosphorous before I get a decent amount of Vanadium. I get more Very Rare scan materials than I get Specialized Legacy Firmware.

/boggle
 
Cmdr Starwind here,

FD, there are some supposedly common materials that have proven to be extremely difficult or time consuming to obtain. Specialized legacy firmware is labeled as being very common. Try as I may, I've found maybe 2 from at least 100 different encoded/ degraded emission sources at this point. I've only been able to obtain around 4 I think through random mission rewards. Why is this? Also with the sheer number of materials, data, and components why have any mission give out very common grade items like iron, nickel or mechanical scrap? I can go anywhere and shoot the very first rock or ship I find to obtain those. I'm managing with the material collection process, but it's frustatingly slow and tedious and when the rare metallic meteorite does finally appear and I get yet more iron or nickel it feels like a slap to the face Frontier.

So, back to the title of this post. Will the RNG for prospecting drop rates be getting any kind of balance pass or tweaking anytime soon? If not, at the very least, very common grade items should be removed from mission rewards. They can quite literally be found anywhere and drastically decrease the chance of generating decent mission rewards. I don't usually post due to how polarizing and controversial everything becomes, but I'm at my wits end here. Thank you in advance if you read this.

Only FD can say and they're not really very talkative at the moment. :(
 
In my opinion it's all about location. If you really want vanadium you find plenty on Alrai 1. Also yttrium, personally i find a lot of vanadium searching for yttrium.
 
In my opinion it's all about location. If you really want vanadium you find plenty on Alrai 1. Also yttrium, personally i find a lot of vanadium searching for yttrium.

I find the most efficient way to find Vanadium is pristine metallic rings. I get about 20 per run in a T9 (200+ other mostly useless materials) but I also get some money as well.

Better than driving around in circles for hours looking for Mesosiderites and stuff.
 
Soon? No, the update is already a month old and they have had plenty of time to changes it put no changes have been made. Also they aid that they would do something to power play and year later we haven't got any changes to that. So they haven't even said that we will get any changes to looting.
 
Just got three metallic meteorites in a row.

All three dropped three pieces of Iron.

F#$% this game.

I just spent 30 minutes doing data points at a +++ medium settlement and was rewarded with 5 pieces of data that all have absolutely no use currently, not a single recipe uses any of them.

I can only agree right now
 
Just got three metallic meteorites in a row.

All three dropped three pieces of Iron.

F#$% this game.

I found there is a very efficient way to find them, some portion will still yield trash, but you'll find lots of meteorites.

Try using this method
  • Find a planet, it helps to pick one that has something else you need (niobium in my case).
  • Look for a relatively large expanse of flat-ish terrain and land.
  • Do a slow circle around your ship looking for meteorites. It sometimes takes 15 to 20 seconds for things to spawn in so if you just spin around and take off you might miss something.
  • If there are no meteorites take off.
  • Pick a target like a nebula and fly toward it to avoid covering the same territory. Wave scanner range is in a few Km. At 400M/s in my Asp flying for 25 seconds boosting gets me about 10Km further along so when I land I'm looking at completely fresh territory.
  • Land and look around again.
  • Once you spot a meteorite take your time and make sure you don't miss any, there are frequently 3 in close proximity.
Which is from this thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/261466-How-to-effeciently-approach-engineering

I used something of this method last night while hunting skimmers and found 3-5 metallic meteorites each time I landed (I was on a tin, mercury, tellurium yielding planet apparently) in just a couple hours play.
 
I find the most efficient way to find Vanadium is pristine metallic rings. I get about 20 per run in a T9 (200+ other mostly useless materials) but I also get some money as well..

.......hahahaha.....you're kidding right?

I've been mining in my Cutter a few times now in pristine rings, I've only found 2 amounts of Vanadium.
 
So, back to the title of this post. Will the RNG for prospecting drop rates be getting any kind of balance pass or tweaking anytime soon? If not, at the very least, very common grade items should be removed from mission rewards. They can quite literally be found anywhere and drastically decrease the chance of generating decent mission rewards. I don't usually post due to how polarizing and controversial everything becomes, but I'm at my wits end here. Thank you in advance if you read this.

Yes, as per official communication from FD as of today: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/268658-The-Engineers-(2-1)-feedback-and-planned-updates

In what fashion and how soon? Your guess is as good as theirs. ;)
 
.......hahahaha.....you're kidding right?

I've been mining in my Cutter a few times now in pristine rings, I've only found 2 amounts of Vanadium.

That's just been my experience so far. YMMV.

My mining system is HIP 21991 for reference sake.
 
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