Which synthetic (Engineers) Materials are too hard to collect?

[fieval]

I think, at least where it comes to the FSD upgrade, that Frontier forgot who the 'audience' is. Almost every explorer I know is salivating over that one specific upgrade and hoping to minimize time spent 'in the bubble' finding the required components.

Yep! Managed to get an upgrade for my ExplorerConda now..."A" Rated Shields + 2 Boosters (For the new unknown risks out there...). "A" Rated Thrusters and still jump 39 LY, that will do for me!
Of course now I am itching to take off into the black, but the SEPP are due to take part in the Games very soon...and I want to help with that too!!

 

[The Tick]

It's less the type of material, it's rather the dependence on RNG

Firstly, thanks to Dr. Kaii for bringing this up so that we can improve this game in a constructive manner!

Then, to your question: after 200+ hrs with The Engineers, after unlocking 12 of the 15 so far, and after trying to determine reliable sources of all the components (see this doc from the team around Qohen Leth), let me summarize my opinion here:

1) Basically, all spawn mechanics rely on RNG. You can increase your odds significantly at times (right planet, right SC place, right system state), but it all boils down to winning in the RNG lottery. In some cases, the odds are really low, so that some CMDRs can do the right activity for hours (see surface mining example below), and are still not successful.

2) Some activities that can increase the odds are against the preferred gameplay of some CMDRs, like fighting in CZs, killing innocent traders, raiding surface bases, shooting barnacles. These CMDRs will feel excluded from key The Engineers features.

3) There are too many different materials/components. The maths is very simple: the more different materials there are, the less likely it is that the one you are searching for is spawning.

How can this be improved (which is basically the TL;DR ):
- reduce the number of different materials/components in game
- introduce some likelyhood, that even when focussing on only a few types of gameplay, you can still get all materials
- material mission rewards should follow the same rules as spawn mechanics, so we can improve the odds of finding the right missions by picking the right system
- reduce the reliance on specific USS/POI spawns


Here are some very personal examples of frustrating gameplay:
a) Surface prospecting = searching for Polonium: I had cases where even with 2 hours on a planet, I was out of luck. And yes, I searched specifically for metallic meteorites, and yes, I had found Polonium on this planet before, as confirmed in the community resources. Here's a little mathematical emulation I did. This is based on many assumptions, but the numbers feel quite right to me. TL;DR: as the spawns are based on RNG (mostly), you still are facing significant odds of NOT finding Polonium within the first hour on a planet
b) USS scanning = searching for Pharmaceutical Isolators. They spawn in outbreak systems (which are very few in the first place!), in encoded emission signals. But USS only spawn every few minutes, and then only a few are encoded, and then they not only spawn debris, but also private data beacons and such, and then the spawns for Imperial or Federation rares (Imperial Shielding, Cor Dynamics Composites and such) overrule ... please do the maths for this case yourself
c) Mining for Painite: the last time, it took me 2.5 hours and 300 limpets to collect 10 tons of Painite for Selene Jean! Yes, I have done a lot of mining before, and this was a pristine metallic ring which has yielded a lot of Painite for me before, but the introduction of Praesodynium and Samarium has (by pure maths!) significantly decreased the odds of finding this one specific material. I'm not sure if this was intended by FDev

Happy to discuss with you or with FDev. I find it a bit unfortunate that this key feature was NOT part of the beta testing (remember the fish?)

 

[Jaiotu]

... reduce the number of different materials/components in game ...

Or ... make it possible to craft rare materials from more common materials. This would require a fairly massive overhaul of the current crafting system though and isn't something I would expect during the current season as they still have to focus on shipboard fighters, commander creator and multicrew.

 

[Eisen]

- Polonium. Spent 90 mins over the weekend on Wonneriti 2. Just none

While Polonium is still hard to find there is a method to increase chances: Wonneriti 2 has "low" reserves, which usually decreases your chances to find Po. Go to a planet within the bubble with "major" or even "pristine" reserves and it will become easier. Or go to known Polonium-bearing planets outside the bubble, they are supposedly always pristine.
I concur with all the mentioned materials, an increased spawn rate is definitely needed to keep frustration levels bearable. I spent a large part of last week to collect mats for grade 5 FSD rolls just to get 3 really unlucky ones that were even worse than the grade 4 that was already applied.

 

[Traveller_GG]

While Polonium is still hard to find there is a method to increase chances: Wonneriti 2 has "low" reserves, which usually decreases your chances to find Po. Go to a planet within the bubble with "major" or even "pristine" reserves and it will become easier. Or go to known Polonium-bearing planets outside the bubble, they are supposedly always pristine.
I concur with all the mentioned materials, an increased spawn rate is definitely needed to keep frustration levels bearable. I spent a large part of last week to collect mats for grade 5 FSD rolls just to get 3 really unlucky ones that were even worse than the grade 4 that was already applied.

Now I'm glad you've mentioned that as this has been something I've noticed before... not all HMC / metal rich worlds I've scanned have returned "pristine" on their description; in fact it's quite rare. Are you saying that you should only really go prospecting for the very rare materials on those worlds that do scan as pristine?

I can try this out on a few systems and see what happens... it might be worth seeing if this mechanic is consistent.

 

[Eisen]

It seems that only planets in the bubble have been classified regarding their resources. Plantes outside the bubble don't show that classification. I was in the fine ring sector on an unclassified planet that has Polonium and needed "only" 3 hours to collect 7 of them. Compared with Wonneriti 2, where I needed 6 hours to find 1(!) Polonium that was much better. And yes, I reset instances quite often, every 15-30 minutes.

 

[Traveller_GG]

I'm pretty sure I have seen planets on the way to BP that have been classified as pristine, but I guess that may have changed since the series of patches recently

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

It seems that only planets in the bubble have been classified regarding their resources. Plantes outside the bubble don't show that classification. I was in the fine ring sector on an unclassified planet that has Polonium and needed "only" 3 hours to collect 7 of them. Compared with Wonneriti 2, where I needed 6 hours to find 1(!) Polonium that was much better. And yes, I reset instances quite often, every 15-30 minutes.

Resetting instances in another thing to add to the list of things against the play style of some players. I would very much prefer that FD changed their algorithms so that resetting did not change things.

 

[Eisen]

I'm pretty sure I have seen planets on the way to BP that have been classified as pristine, but I guess that may have changed since the series of patches recently

No, you may be right. I just looked up some of the planets from DWE, that we found Yttrium and Polonium on and none of it was classified as pristine. If you've found some the classification may be different than I thought. The Rock Rats just realized, that a classification is in place in the bubble, we didn't notice before because most of our work was done on DWE.

 

[Allitnil]

Outside of the bubble you'll see "pristine reserves" for ringed planets.

 

[fieval]

It seems that only planets in the bubble have been classified regarding their resources. Plantes outside the bubble don't show that classification. I was in the fine ring sector on an unclassified planet that has Polonium and needed "only" 3 hours to collect 7 of them. Compared with Wonneriti 2, where I needed 6 hours to find 1(!) Polonium that was much better. And yes, I reset instances quite often, every 15-30 minutes.

Of course life would be much easier if Traveller_GG would teach all of us the "Polonium" Song! (What tune is it sung to by the way?)

 

[Traveller_GG]

Pop into Discord - prospecting channel

Leave your sanity and good taste at the door

 

[fieval]

Pop into Discord - prospecting channel

Leave your sanity and good taste at the door

Well, They are the two things I have never been accused of having...

 

[newman1702]

Add Military grade alloys and core dynamics composites to the list. The RNG gods must be in a good mood indeed for on of these to drop. I'd vote to just remove them altogether, too many mat types anyway.

 

[Inodoro Pereyra]

Chemical Manipulators (Rare) & Mechanical Components (Common??!) for Level 5 FSD upgrades!

 

[Mengy]

Resetting instances in another thing to add to the list of things against the play style of some players. I would very much prefer that FD changed their algorithms so that resetting did not change things.

Or better yet, the game itself should reset instances every 15 minutes. That way if you just happen to get into a bad one you could just ride it out for 15 minutes and hope that the next "instance" change was a better one.

I've done the "log out, log in" thing too many times, I hate doing it but you kind of have to if you really want to make any headway in prospecting mats.

 

[Telico]

Exactly!

How can this be improved (which is basically the TL;DR ):
- reduce the number of different materials/components in game
- introduce some likelyhood, that even when focussing on only a few types of gameplay, you can still get all materials
- material mission rewards should follow the same rules as spawn mechanics, so we can improve the odds of finding the right missions by picking the right system
- reduce the reliance on specific USS/POI spawns

Exactly, these are all perfect ways to help balance the game and allow the players access to the mod's without forcing them into a specific style of gameplay. Using keyboard and mouse myself, I have found the combat can sometimes be rather....challenging, so I tend to choose the other thing, passive leggin'it!. However any RP would have had to go out of the picture as I found myself murdering poor traders, they would give me their cargo in the hopes of surviving, but alas it was their Chemical Manipulators I wanted!!!!, that was what I told their families at their funerals anyway!. I jk, but in seriousness why do the dev's want us to murder people for a few upgrades?....... doesn't sit well with the explorer types out there.

On a personal note I have done 3 lvl5 fsd upgrades.....none came out very well, but I found most of the manipulators on the surface of planets being protected by canisters and skimmers. While I was on said surface I found 15 Arsenic so have found it strange that people can't get it. Having legged it out to the rift (in a passive protest to the ram rodding of other storylines in favor of interesting ones) I have prospected several systems. one of those systems had 4 planets which had Yittrium and I was falling over the stuff, another system had all the mats except Arsenic. It seems some people are finding some mats harder to get than others (one of our crew couldn't find shield emitters )...... Personally when I was grinding (which was how it felt) for the mat's I felt there were too many materials to keep track of, the lvl3 mods had stupid requirements which meant I just used explorer data to get to lvl 5, the weapon mods are very cool but are too hard to get equipped on all of your guns.
This last one has been fixed by being able to buy the effect, but the way in which this costs rank is a joke. The costs are too high and the amount of "grinding" required to rep back up every time is the stupidest fix that could have been implemented.... "lets make it easier with tons more grindin.....hey where is everybody?..." It should cost an extra component (maybe a rare one) at the most, not drop you down a level or two in rep. This might be a coincidence but when Grinding for the manipulators I had only one drop when in a wing and 5 drop when out of wing, I know some games use increase difficulty when in group but I dont know if ED does, but if it does then stop it, there should be at least some point in grouping up, if the drop rates drop when in groups then what is the point in playing in wings when grinding?

oh and one more thing, why not let us prospect planets and have that data as something else we can add to existing exploration data. It isn't for everyone, I know people who hate driving around shooting rocks, learning the scanner and how to read it helps prospect so much faster, I did most of the planets in under 20mins on my own, some took an hour or so, but I love it, it's discovery and I think there's a little Rock Rat in the making. I dont like the pew pew tho, but others do, why not let us use each other rather than battle over who gets the most attention..... what I mean is give us somewhere or some way of sharing our data with others, either a ship to ship link where we share the data we have scanned (not sharing data given to us) or give us a Universal Cartographic Station (maybe in the founders world) where we can buy that data and maybe have a new type of map to plan out our journeys from, it would give us an in game hub to gather around..... just a thought.

Fly Safe Commanders o7

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Or better yet, the game itself should reset instances every 15 minutes. That way if you just happen to get into a bad one you could just ride it out for 15 minutes and hope that the next "instance" change was a better one.

I've done the "log out, log in" thing too many times, I hate doing it but you kind of have to if you really want to make any headway in prospecting mats.

That works.

I had the worst of all worlds just now. After an hour or so in a single instance, I was approaching a non-natural signal (I think it was a crashed beacon) when I got the failed to connect message. When I went back in, of course, it was not there any more.

 

[newman1702]

One more that definitely deserves to be on the top of this list: Improvised Components. These spawn only in systems with civil unrest - and they're a nightmare to get, as I found none in local signal sources so far and just 1 on the mission boards after checking for 2 days. It's ridiculous; knowing to go to a system in civil unrest should be half the job done, flying around it for days so you have enough for more than one roll is not exactly fun gameplay there.

 

[drkaii]

Thanks for all your replies guys. I've passed it on and pointed to some of the analysis posts on the thread. Again, no promises as to what will be done, but I'm sure it's all very useful