Engineers Pharma Isolators Again! :(

[Von Shadow]

Went to about 4 systems in outbreak state, usual thing 1200-2000Ls out from main orbit... supercruising around .... wasn't getting ANYTHING other than Degraded / Encoded signal sources.... was relogging to get fresh instances, jumping between systems.... spent couple hours easily and didn't get a single High-Grade

This isn't fun ... this isn't 'gaming' ... its just tedious now

Anyone found anywhere in the past 24 hours that they have scored Pharma Isolators in?

 

[fus roh potato]

The sweet spot is 750ls, outbreak system, 75% throttle.

You won't get anything within 500ls or beyond 1000ls.

 

[CMDR Crumpeteer]

The sweet spot is 750ls, outbreak system, 75% throttle.

You won't get anything within 500ls or beyond 1000ls.

Not really true as far as distance goes. I usually sit between 100-500ls below the main star, and find plenty of SS. Deep space is only 100ls from the star, as long as you're not in a trading lane.

The number of signals I find varies greatly, but it doesn't seem to be based on my distance from the star. Sometimes I'll sit at 200ls and not find anything for a few minutes at a time, and other times I'll get a signal every 20 seconds or so. I get similar experiences at 200ls, 500ls, and even 1000ls or more.

I don't know if there's an optimal speed, but I usually just go full throttle and fly in a large circle below the star.

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

The sweet spot is 750ls, outbreak system, 75% throttle.

You won't get anything within 500ls or beyond 1000ls.

Completely untrue, I won't be asking you for directions in a hurry lol

@OP : Yes I found some yesterday in a High Grade Emissions USS in a Outbreak system approximately 8000ls from the main star. I don't think rejoining an instance will increase your chances you just need to accept that HGE is a rare event and to stop and search them every chance you get rather than seeking them out just-in-time for your engineer materials. I also got a ton of Imperial Shielding yesterday purely by chance I wasn't looking for it but I grabbed it while I could.

Make yourself a list of all the rare and awkward stuff that way when you see it (as a mission reward or a collectable item) you know to get it and build up some reserves over time. Also check your inventory regularly to keep stock of what you are short on and plan ahead. If for example you are working on Drive Tuning, ask yourself what might you want next and go look up the blueprints to see the materials. The sooner you do this the easier your time with Engineers becomes if you try to do Engineers in a serial fashion you'll go crazy [wacky]

 

[Mystweaver]

I've also found that Just heading up or down from orbital plane helps. Whenever looking for HGE's I just do that and burn away. Distance seems irrelevant beyond 200ls for me (probably 100ls as previous poster mentioned). Just don't go above 50ls/s or any SS that pop up on comms wont appear on contacts (too far away and you can miss them). This usually means that when further than 1000ls or so; keeping throttle under the blue.

Head straight and be patient. HGE's will pop.

 

[YinYin]

Go for the highest population independent system in outbreak and park in super cruise deep space.
That gets you high grade emission signal sources the fastest.
(lower population makes for lower signal source frequency and other allegiances add other rare materials like imperial shielding to the mix - which makes the process slower)

https://eddb.io/system?u=1&a=4&t=72

 

[fus roh potato]

Completely untrue, I won't be asking you for directions in a hurry lol

@OP : Yes I found some yesterday in a High Grade Emissions USS in a Outbreak system approximately 8000ly (yes ly not ls) from the main star. I don't think rejoining an instance will increase your chances you just need to accept that HGE is a rare event and to stop and search them every chance you get rather than seeking them out just-in-time for your engineer materials. I also got a ton of Imperial Shielding yesterday purely by chance I wasn't looking for it but I grabbed it while I could.

Make yourself a list of all the rare and awkward stuff that way when you see it (as a mission reward or a collectable item) you know to get it and build up some reserves over time. Also check your inventory regularly to keep stock of what you are short on and plan ahead. If for example you are working on Drive Tuning, ask yourself what might you want next and go look up the blueprints to see the materials. The sooner you do this the easier your time with Engineers becomes if you try to do Engineers in a serial fashion you'll go crazy [wacky]

You can listen to this guy lather in his frothy ego, or you can just go circle a star at 750ls and pop enough HGE's in 20 minutes to never have to bother with it again.

You only get these mats when you specifically look for them. They won't casually fall in your lap once in a while. He's literally suggesting you just do it later. LOL [rolleyes]

 

[Von Shadow]

I swear the game was trolling me yesterday .... after 5 systems and maybe 4 hours i got ONE single HGE and in it were 3 drops (so 9 in total)....

Before that .... 100's Degraded/Encoded.... i've been doing this stuff since it came out and knew they're hard but it just felt like i was being trolled by the game.... i even got the Palin unlock within 20m when i went for it a couple months ago ... but the game just didn't see fit to furnish me with PI's

In terms of other mats.... You can only build up so much stock.... there's so many items ... i use some heavy MC builds so use about 130 slot space for Synthesis (1x nickel/2x iron/2x sulphur)

 

[[VR] Deggial]

Sorry guys, I've used up all the fortunate RNG rolls!

Recently, I jumped into a (high population! I realy think YinYin's advice is worth it's weigth in Pharma Isolators!) system, flew outwards for one ore two minutes, entered the first appearing USS (it was in fact a HGE one!) thinkng "This truely can't be it!".
Well, it was!
Scooped up 3 isolators (hence 9 in total).
Left the system grinning.

Maybe its's just a mysterious feedback between player and game?
Maybe my generally positive attitude towards engineers (I love them!) influences the RNG and rewards me with elusive materials? (Also found some needed Technetium in mere minutes driving around as well.)

OR I am not that special at all and "unlucky" people tend to create more threads about not finding stuff than "lucky" commanders about finding what is needed.
Maybe this sort of distorted forum-feedback creates a general negative perception of the RNG-based gameplay related to engineers.

Who knows ...

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

You can listen to this guy lather in his frothy ego, or you can just go circle a star at 750ls and pop enough HGE's in 20 minutes to never have to bother with it again.

You only get these mats when you specifically look for them. They won't casually fall in your lap once in a while. He's literally suggesting you just do it later. LOL [rolleyes]

I was suggesting you do it in advance for those struggling with comprehension and lets not forget 'you won't get anything beyond 1000ls' that was your credibility flat lining right there [cry]

 

[fus roh potato]

I was suggesting you do it in advance for those struggling with comprehension and lets not forget 'you won't get anything beyond 1000ls' that was your credibility flat lining right there [cry]

Nobody struggled with comprehending your post, it was just pointlessly arrogant.

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

Nobody struggled with comprehending your post, it was just pointlessly arrogant.

You did it seems otherwise you deliberately misinterpreted my post, its either one or the other neither of which speaks very highly. Maybe I was a little arrogant but lets go back and remind ourselves of your comments "You won't get anything within 500ls or beyond 1000ls" not only is that wrong it is arrogantly wrong to the point of misinformation. HGE USS's do casually appear on your travels so you're wrong on that point too, basically a whole lot of wrong and salty sour grapes. In my case I actually got 6 Pharm Isolators drops (18 materials) from a single HGE that according to you doesn't exist, and the same in Imperial Shielding casually whilst travelling to a distant station. You're not interested in that though you just want to argue for the sake of argument so I'm done here, glad the OP got what they wanted and hopefully learnt a few tips in the process.

 

[sgurr]

<snipped for brevity> (Also found some needed Technetium in mere minutes driving around as well.)

OR I am not that special at all and "unlucky" people tend to create more threads about not finding stuff than "lucky" commanders about finding what is needed.
Maybe this sort of distorted forum-feedback creates a general negative perception of the RNG-based gameplay related to engineers.

Who knows ...

Last night I spent 1-1.5 hours looking for technetium in a place other cmdrs had found it and got nothing. Wasted time.

Any game system that can give such poor results for even a small part of the player base when they are doing nothing wrong or different is fundamentally flawed.
Having stuff be hard to get is one thing, but hidden behind gambling mechanics is just .....

If I have agency in a game world I'm willing to spend the effort with it, but ED's rng design is incredibly disrespectful of a player's time.

 

[[VR] Deggial]

- How high was the planet's technetium percentage? My lucky find was on one with 1,3%.
- Did you search in or outside the bubble? AFAIK, further away from human settlements is better (more finds).
- Which rocks were you looking for? While I did find my technetium also in 'standard' rocks, my highest yield was in a metallic asteroid. (You know how to read the scanner, I guess?)
- Where did you land? Locations with different (usually darker) color are supposed to be superior.
- Did you consider to launch your ship and search a different place in a new instance (= reset the seed)?
(- I roamed the planet closest to the sun in a system with an orange giant. Beside the searching, it was visually impressive as well (I play in VR) and a great gaming experience. I believe, this makes everything more enjoyable, too. Don't hunt at boring places! )

While I agree that RNG does play its role, it is not everything!

 

[sgurr]

- How high was the planet's technetium percentage? My lucky find was on one with 1,3%. 0.9% I think
- Did you search in or outside the bubble? AFAIK, further away from human settlements is better (more finds). Inside, is that a really thing? Other cmdrs had reported quick finds although I know that doesn't mean anything
- Which rocks were you looking for? While I did find my technetium also in 'standard' rocks, my highest yield was in a metallic asteroid. (You know how to read the scanner, I guess?) I do, even with the current bugged scanner and no visual indicator. 4 metallics over the hour
- Where did you land? Locations with different (usually darker) color are supposed to be superior. I used to think that, eventually decided I was looking for patterns and it was just rng, willing to be proven wrong
- Did you consider to launch your ship and search a different place in a new instance (= reset the seed)? Twice so 3 different instances
(- I roamed the planet closest to the sun in a system with an orange giant. Beside the searching, it was visually impressive as well (I play in VR) and a great gaming experience. I believe, this makes everything more enjoyable, too. Don't hunt at boring places! ) It was an ok location, and I do love driving the srv, but after a while it's just driving waiting for the right roll

While I agree that RNG does play its role, it is not everything!

I'm not convinced there's any pattern in the searching other than the 3, 2, 1 concentrations, (and possibly planet makeup?). We humans see patterns where there aren't any. Until I hear a dev say there is, (which I haven't, have I missed it?) I'm assuming it's random.

The trouble with the current rng is that there's always going to be the lucky and the unlucky, and in a game like this the unlucky are going to think the system sucks and they'd be right. It's ok for some to have a lucky experience, it's not ok for some to do the same thing and have a poor one.
(For balance I've also been lucky, 27 polonium under an hour whilst hunting for arsenic)

I appreciate the suggestions [up]

 

[ocflyer]

The sweet spot is 750ls, outbreak system, 75% throttle.

You won't get anything within 500ls or beyond 1000ls.

I don't believe that SS generation is dependent on speed. I throttle back to 0 (i.e. 30km/s) and get SS popping in front me, including High Grade Emissions.

 

[fus roh potato]

I don't believe that SS generation is dependent on speed. I throttle back to 0 (i.e. 30km/s) and get SS popping in front me, including High Grade Emissions.

Their generation rate is slightly affected by speed. Not a big deal, but at 30km/s signals take longer to generate. This was patched in not long ago and does more than make up for the instant drop advantage. They've been slowly trying to flush out unattractive gameplay and considered the 30km/s instant drop advantage to be one of those issues. They've also altered the drop in speed and distance to give further advantage to higher speed flight.

 

[ExoForce]

Go for the highest population independent system in outbreak and park in super cruise deep space.
That gets you high grade emission signal sources the fastest.
(lower population makes for lower signal source frequency and other allegiances add other rare materials like imperial shielding to the mix - which makes the process slower)

https://eddb.io/system?u=1&a=4&t=72

Thanks CMDR! After so many hours in different outbreak systems...

Keywords: major faction outbreak, INDEPENDENT system, high population, near the sun in deep space, lower blue zone, high grade emissions.
Picked bunch of those in no-time at HIP 19925 few minute ago!

o7

 

[ocflyer]

Their generation rate is slightly affected by speed. Not a big deal, but at 30km/s signals take longer to generate. This was patched in not long ago and does more than make up for the instant drop advantage. They've been slowly trying to flush out unattractive gameplay and considered the 30km/s instant drop advantage to be one of those issues. They've also altered the drop in speed and distance to give further advantage to higher speed flight.

For grins, before I read your post, I tried increasing my speed above 30km and it did seem to make a difference in the USS drop rate!

 

[Mazelinho]

I looked for isolators today as well but unlike you I was eventually lucky. System was HIP 19925.

After about one hour of unsuccessful cruising I got bored and traded basic medicines from a nearby system. My standing was cordial when I finally hit a high grade SS. I don't know whether that helped, probably not. The SS was not too far off from the stations.

What might have contributed to my luck it was a highly populated system and the controlling faction was in outbreak state.