New Engineering system - a factual example

[UseLessUK]

The problem with remote engineering is doing it will not gain you reputation with the engineer, you need to pay a visit for rep to increase.

The other issue is it becomes module based, so you have 4 Class 3 gimballed beam lasers on your ship you have to go through the G1 to 5 process for each laser, using lots of materials and obviously time. Where as in the present system once you have a G5 change available at an engineer you can apply it to the 4 lasers straight away, assuming you have the required materials to do the 4 upgrades.

I for one am considering if the engineers are now worth using.

 

[Philip Coutts]

I think the difference there may be that you can pin an upgrade and work on it remotely? As a casual player, then there's less need to keep revisiting the engineer base so (I think) might see engineer go more in tandem with your regular game and you're less tied geographically. Business as usual then, have been playing three years myself and can't afford Anaconda yet.

Hehe I thought I was the only one who couldn't afford an Anaconda...

Valid point though, it may be the new engineering system actually works better for me and others. Happy to give it a good beta'ing and try to find out.

 

[Muetdhiver]

So how would you include gathering time? Right now for g5 rolls some specific items have to be farmed, sometimes needing specific circumstances to spawn and trip time. But in the new system you can pin your blueprint and sit at a station that has a material trader. Do your engineering while also trading in all the junk mats for the specific rare mats you need without any travel time.

Can we compare grinds? Current system, involving lots of travel/planet srving but fewer rolls. New system, more rolls, but mats on hand at station (where you can also do the engineering).

1) The conversion rate is 6 to 1. So 72 T3 materials will net you a whoping 2 T5 materials. Tada ! Grind solved. Not.
2) Conversion is only for materials for the same category. You can't turn your rhenium into datamined wake scans. Nope Nope, these you still have to get the "hard" (read : time consuming and unfun) way of scanning wakes.
3) The broker will of course not be at the engineers station. Welcome 10 min of traveling each and every time you want to use it, before going to the engineers. Forgot to convert ? whoops...
4) Some materials can only be found in very specific places in very specific circumstances. Pharma insulators are one of those. Just playing the game and wandering around will not net you those.

 

[Winterwalker]

3) The broker will of course not be at the engineers station. Welcome 10 min of traveling each and every time you want to use it, before going to the engineers. Forgot to convert ? whoops...
4) Some materials can only be found in very specific places in very specific circumstances. Pharma insulators are one of those. Just playing the game and wandering around will not net you those.

But you can carry with you, 100 of every material .. that's not a whopper of a improvement? If you've got 100 of everything unlikely you'll be tripping back and forward much I think.

 

[5AmpFuse]

I only visit Engineers once in a while, e.g. when I get a new ship. Then I spend a couple of nights or so engineering the ship before getting back to my regular game play. Sounds like those couple of nights are now going to be a couple of weeks, because I will be grinding each module from the bottom up?

I think I will have to be very selective about buying new ships in the future, because I don't wan't to spend that much time gathering mats and engineering.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Sandro said the new max will likely "not" exceed the highest god rolls out there.
So it's not really fair to compare the new modules to some of those that took 1000s.
People are not doing 1000s of rolls to get a "good" G5 FSD.

 

[Starwolfe]

While I am also not a fan of the multiplicative effect - as owning 46 ships already isn't enough of a headache to engineer - I do like that they addressed some of the major issues with it.

100 per item cap and the material traders will go a long way towards it, however I think the guaranteed improvement will be far better.

FAR too many times do I get stuck re-rolling again because the outcome is worse than what is installed. That change should be gone now at least.

 

[Manticore]

What betas are for I think?

Yeah; good point.

How about actually playing the beta?

I will assess these new mechanics once I've actually had a chance to use them and not go off on some tizzy over something that actually hasn't been play tested yet.

 

[DialBforBiscuit]

1) The conversion rate is 6 to 1. So 72 T3 materials will net you a whoping 2 T5 materials. Tada ! Grind solved. Not.
2) Conversion is only for materials for the same category. You can't turn your rhenium into datamined wake scane. Nope Nope, these you still have to get the "hard" (read : time consuming and unfun) way of scanning wakes.
3) The broker will of course not be at the engineers station. Welcome 10 min of traveling each and every time you want to use it, before going to the engineers. Forgot to convert ? whoops...

1) But with the material inventory changing, and how much random materials you can get from missions (and choosing material rewards), it sounds like it would be very easy to have a thousand t3 mats ready to go, think of how many there are times 100. Dropping into convienent close by ESS can now be super rewarding because even if its a mat you don't want, it helps you get a mat you need.
2) Same as above, every catagory's subtype has a maximum capacity of 100. So scanning people while in supercruise will give you a lot of convienent data. no more needing to run around scanning the data points on planet bases, which was a grind.
3)That's why i said pinned blueprint. Visit engineer, pin the blue print then go to a station that's convienent. HEck while i'm at that station i'll go ahead and g5 every class of FSD. Might even work in shinrata, no shipping modules around and i can increase the range of all my ships and only have to go to the engineer once. That sounds super convenient.

But still what i originally asked for is numbers. So could you tell me how long it takes to get those datamined wake scans on average? Then compare it to trading 300 of the super common data scan you get for just looking at a ship in sc?

 

[Muetdhiver]

But you can carry with you, 100 of every material .. that's not a whopper of a improvement? If you've got 100 of everything unlikely you'll be tripping back and forward much I think.

Yes 100 of everything is nice. But the conversion rate and same category will limit how much you can play arround.
Upgrades requiring firmware stuff will be massive pains given how rare those are.

100 mats of T X-2 is only worth a bit less than 3 T X materials. Not great. A 3 to 1 ratio like in most games would make it a whole story and would make me shut up about the G1 to G5,
because hopping 2 tiers of materials would be somewhat okay. (100 => 11 T+2 materials, that is useable).

Data mined wake scans : Got 12 in one hour. Also got 20 or so excentric and about 40 T3's. 40 tier 3's is a single datamined wake worth. T2's and T1's wake don't need to apply because at 1:216 lol.

Keep in mind that FSD upgrades are playing nice and use the same type of materials across the levels. That's not always hold true.

The way I see it is : If the upgrades share the same materials categories, then it will be a bit longer than what we have now, but not that much. Maybe 30-50% longer*.
If the upgrades do not share the same material categories accross levels, then it'll be much longer. Same hold for anything using CIF's or other firmware stuff. Turning
MEF's into CIF's is going to be painfull, and the other way will also be a pain. (that means that charge focus distros will be anoying to upgrade to G5)

*Count time for gathering what you usually do not collect, plus time to go to the trader then the engineer. Add in time for any extra location you have to visit if you cannot
get all the material categories in 1 or 2 places together.

 

[Manticore]

I do have some major concerns about the new engineering set-up. It worries me greatly that casual players (and selfishly this is me!) are going to give up on Engineers completely because of the perceived "grind". I don't have hours and hours to play to upgrade every module over and over. That said I never had time to go for the "god" roles either! What worries me about is that Engineers skews the ships greatly so in open it really does matter if you have time to go and engineer or not. That said I'm happt to see how the whole thing works in Beta and comment fully on it then. Until we get hands on a lot of the discussion is hypothetical at present.

This is meant with respect but, as a moderator and considering the volatile nature of "opinions" here since the live stream yesterday, I actually question whether moderation should remain a bit more removed from the topic.

Game player? Yes; now worries.

Moderator? You've just shown a lot of bias on a topic that is, at the moment, extremely sensitive for a lot of the players (real players and/or children) around here.

(Now I'll just wait her for the infraction(s) to start rolling in).

 

[Ydiss]

Decent analysis.

Two points:

1) I don't believe the g1 example in the stream took 5 rolls. G2 was unlocked after roll 3, it was Ed who missed this and kept on rolling. Two rolls were unnecessary. So the 2.8 average held true for this example.

2) In comparison, those figures look dramatic. But consider this: 514 mats is now a tiny fraction of our material storage capacity. Assuming the distribution of the mats required follows the rarity of those mats, the vast majority of the 514 will be g1 to g3. Let's say 400 of them. Most of those will be g1 mats, which we can now store 100 of all types. Are we suggesting that we'll actually need to go hunting for those low grade mats to build our second ship? I'd suggest, for the average player, we won't. Particularly given that we'll still need to hunt for g4 and g5 mats in order to do the g5 rolls (something that isn't different between builds). You will gather g1 to g3 mats in that process. Particularly data (can't avoid it).

Yes, the special effects now require mats. But you get it in one roll guaranteed. Currently, you may be very lucky and get the roll you want in one go. But if you don't, you either keep rolling or use a favour (more mid to high end mats used).

There's more to this than raw numbers. In practice, needing to click more times for your second ship might be the only practical difference. I'm just not buying the idea that we'll have to spend tons more time hunting the majority of the additional mats required, not now that we can store 100 of everything.

That's where beta will come in.

 

[DialBforBiscuit]

Data mined wake scans : Got 12 in one hour. Also got 20 or so excentric and about 40 T3's. 40 tier 3's is a single datamined wake worth. T2's and T1's wake don't need to apply because at 1:216 lol.

Keep in mind that FSD upgrades are playing nice and use the same type of materials across the levels. That's not always hold true.

Good, with the new engineering system sitting outside of a station for an hour doing wakescans now gives you a broad range of data tiers that can be converted into ANY data that you need. Still sounds convenient .

 

[Ian Skippy]

2) In comparison, those figures look dramatic. But consider this: 514 mats is now a tiny fraction of our material storage capacity. Assuming the distribution of the mats required follows the rarity of those mats, the vast majority of the 514 will be g1 to g3. Let's say 400 of them. Are we suggesting that we'll actually need to go hunting for those low grade mats to build our second ship? I'd suggest, for the average player, we won't. Particularly given that we'll still need to hunt for g4 and g5 mats in order to do the g5 rolls (something that isn't different between builds). You will gather g1 to g3 mats in that process. Particularly data (can't avoid it).

It also doesnt take quality into account. One lvl5 mat is 3^4 lvl1 mats (81). One lump of a lvl5 mat gets you three of it, or 243 of that material. As you can only get 100, you'll have 143/3=48 left of lvl2. So ONE lvl5 mat lump on a planet will fully stock your lvl1 and half of lvl2. I just checked, I got 30-50 of quite a few lvl5 mats/data. That will fill most stuff quite nicely. --------------

 

[Ian Skippy]

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[Muetdhiver]

Good, with the new engineering system sitting outside of a station for an hour doing wakescans now gives you a broad range of data tiers that can be converted into ANY data that you need. Still sounds convenient .

Not that good say you have 100 of each but T5 : 19 datamined wakes. That's not a whole lot for 400 data...

 

[Ydiss]

It also doesnt take quality into account. One lvl5 mat is 3^5 lvl1 mats (243). One lump of a lvl5 mat gets you three of it, or 729 of that material. As you can only get 100, you'll have 629/3=209 left of lvl2. Which is above stock again. So ONE lvl5 mat lump on a planet will fully stock your lvl1, lvl2 and add 30 of lvl3 mats to your inventory. I just checked, I got 30-50 of quite a few lvl5 mats/data. That will fill most stuff quite nicely.

Indeed. And all those previously "trash" mats we don't need can be scaled up to acquire some higher grade mats that are, currently, very difficult to obtain.

I predict that material acquisition will be much less arduous. This has to be the reason Sandro feels so confident the new system will be less tedious than the current.

I just think they posed these positives far too lightly in the stream (and worse, following the presentation of the new process of rolling).

 

[Ian Skippy]

Indeed. And all those previously "trash" mats we don't need can be scaled up to acquire some higher grade mats that are, currently, very difficult to obtain.

I predict that material acquisition will be much less arduous. This has to be the reason Sandro feels so confident the new system will be less tedious than the current.

I just think they posed these positives far too lightly in the stream (and worse, following the presentation of the new process of rolling).

I messed up the numbers due in part to beer, but the point remains. Yeah, I'll check in beta how far I can fill everything, but I suspect it'll be pretty massive.

 

[sgurr]

What are you basing the mat numbers for the new system on?

The numbers have been stated by Sandro or shown on streams, specifically the one about engineers last year and Tuesday night's one.

So how would you include gathering time? Right now for g5 rolls some specific items have to be farmed, sometimes needing specific circumstances to spawn and trip time. But in the new system you can pin your blueprint and sit at a station that has a material trader. Do your engineering while also trading in all the junk mats for the specific rare mats you need without any travel time.

Can we compare grinds? Current system, involving lots of travel/planet srving but fewer rolls. New system, more rolls, but mats on hand at station (where you can also do the engineering).

Good question, I haven't precisely because we don't know yet.

But you can carry with you, 100 of every material .. that's not a whopper of a improvement? If you've got 100 of everything unlikely you'll be tripping back and forward much I think.

You still have to gather the mats to get your 100 ...

Yeah; good point.

How about actually playing the beta?

I will assess these new mechanics once I've actually had a chance to use them and not go off on some tizzy over something that actually hasn't been play tested yet.

I've presented facts as they've been presented to us, the implication is that casual players (eg. me) will need to spend more time gathering mats

People keep comparing 'number of rolls' and 'number of mats' without taking into account the quality and time needed to do so. Take OC multis. The first grade is 1 nickel. The downgrade ratio at brokers is 3:1. That means one lvl4 mat from that category gives you 3^4=81 nickel. Assuming you need on average five rolls, it means one 'rare' (not very rare, just rare!) material will immediately provide you with enough to get 16 multis passed grade 1. Considering you get three of a mat when you find one, it means every lump of that mat will give you all the nickel to get 16MC through G1-3.

Run the numbers on the other mats. Check your inventory. Realise you will soon have 100 of all stockable.

More complicated than that given that there are mutiple mats needed past G1 but it's a fair point and unknown how well it will work. I have no idea how often I will be able to spare G4 mats to do that trade or how it will balance.
I look forward to testing it out.

Edit, just realised you got the numbers wrong but it's still a valid point

 

[DialBforBiscuit]

Not that good say you have 100 of each but T5 : 19 datamined wakes. That's not a whole lot for 400 data...

I only need 3 though. Cause its only used in the g5 part of the engineering and it'll take an avg of 3 rolls to achieve max. Getting a lot of random mats means i can sell the ones i don't care about and make them meaningful. And the improvements from the engineering are reliable, so i can now PLAN what i need to max g5. This new feature is going to be so forgiving.