Engineering in Beyond - do I have this right?

[Ydiss]

I see a whole load of really good improvements (materials trader, increased storage, crafting at starports, etc) that are, for many players, largely nullified by one outstandingly stupid design decision. That's what really gets me - they are so close to something great, but then they go and ruin it.

For someone like me it's probably even. I like quite good rolls, but I only have a handful of god rolls. So time-wise it's probably going to be about the same. Plus I like spreadsheets, so I'll get myself organised and blast through the new system if I have to. And if you're really in the god-rolling business, the G1-5 takes far less time. But if you just turn up and throw a few rolls and take what you get, the grind is about to get a lot worse. All the other improvements are just mitigating the damage.

Or the g1 to G5 route was necessary to avoid totally trivialising the process

The impact of 100 storage and the trader are largely unknown. If we assume they're slightly positive and g1 to G5 is massively negative, we'll naturally feel disappointed.

If these changes end up being massively positive, though... FD have made it clear they don't want a trivial process. Given all of the changes (no more favours, hand pick your experimental effect at any time, no fluctuating negatives, storage and trader, always improving upgrades and a better end result), I'm not finding it difficult to understand why they opted to change the current system of being able to skip g1 to G4. If that remained the same, it may trivialise the process and render the trader null for the majority of mats.

Seems to me that they want to laterally ease mat collection but still give reason to use a lot of all those mats we'll store.

 

[operant]

Due to the material trader, lack of randomness and improved grades (so grade 4 is equal to current best/avg? G5) you only need to gather as many materials as you did before for the same approximate level of engineering.

Add in that everything is now worth pucking up (as tradeable and per item.limit rather than overall) and you will probably need to do less grinding for mats.

Can you explain this more?
Say I am at Gn for MC with Tod. I turn-up with MCs and need (a minimum) of 1 roll per MC for Gn. 3 materials per MC.
New system I have to go from G1 to Gn for all MC. So (rolls to Gn +1 - 1) per MC extra. So 3 * (rolls to Gn) extra materials per MC, assuming 3 mats per roll and 1 roll once at Gn.
Lets hope as you speculate that we get the materials much, much more easily.

 

[Faybs]

No, it is for all grades.

I will try to buff my Cobra with rails and lazors. I have certain ideas which I will test out.

Will be interesting.

Ditto, only on a Chieftain, AKA Diamondback Zerstörer

 

[Winterwalker]

I see a whole load of really good improvements (materials trader, increased storage, crafting at starports, etc) that are, for many players, largely nullified by one outstandingly stupid design decision. That's what really gets me - they are so close to something great, but then they go and ruin it.

Don't know about that. People have been hating on the RNG ever since Engineers dropped. The other thing that's happened since then is that everyone and their dog has a G5 everything and Engineers in of itself has worked as an Unlock, when what it should ideally be (and I agree with Sandro on this) is a Progression. I think over time we'll see more of some people having G2's, some with G4's and that means every ship is different which is in some ways the point of Engineers, or otherwise why not just put G5's in every shipyard.

There's one suggestion abroad that, if let's say you have an A4 FSD engineered and you take in an identical A4 FSD, then your grade progression should be faster because you've already got 'experience' of engineering that type of module? A good idea I think and probably a couple of ways around it (none of them especially simple in code) but cloning of some upgrades could be one suggestion for the future I think? That's less important on something big like an FSD but if you've got 4 pulse lasers on your ship, cloning the engineered one (at a cost and with a +/- marginal error maybe) would seem like quite a logical 4.0 refinement to me.

On the whole I actually think some of the hurt is quite a good indicator, that Frontier are going the right way on this. The pew-pew crowd has had it too good for too long already imho.

 

[Cliffson]

Umm... they may have already taken the beta snapshot of the galaxy. Just be prepared for possible disappointment.

I mean for when it goes live . Ive done all my urgent engineering so am stocking up on high grades to max out on the new system easily.

My plan for beta is to use everything i have to check the randomness of the rolls per level. (So i can complain with data if its too variant from 3 a level)

Next plan is dump everything, buy a stock pythpn and see how long it takes to G5 everything on it.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Or the g1 to G5 route was necessary to avoid totally trivialising the process

The impact of 100 storage and the trader are largely unknown. If we assume they're slightly positive and g1 to G5 is massively negative, we'll naturally feel disappointed.

If these changes end up being massively positive, though... FD have made it clear they don't want a trivial process. Given all of the changes (no more favours, hand pick your experimental effect at any time, no fluctuating negatives, storage and trader, always improving upgrades and a better end result), I'm not finding it difficult to understand why they opted to change the current system of being able to skip g1 to G4. If that remained the same, it may trivialise the process and render the trader null for the majority of mats.

Seems to me that they want to laterally ease mat collection but still give reason to use a lot of all those mats we'll store.

I personally see being able to skip grades was similar mistake with releasing ED 1.0 with braindead combat AI. It has created perception of the game and mechanics - in result it is very hard to walk back from. Luckly FD doesn't lack balls to do so. It is better for the game. I think many people see it very self-centered. I would personally wouldn't mind lose all Engineering progress and start from scratch.

Also I think feedback will fall into categories - "I want to engineer my whole fleet" vs "I just want to upgrade my ship". First group of people will be disappointed. However I think FD have made strategic decision here - first group is way smaller than second one.

 

[Faybs]

Can you explain this more?
Say I am at Gn for MC with Tod. I turn-up with MCs and need (a minimum) of 1 roll per MC for Gn. 3 materials per MC.
New system I have to go from G1 to Gn for all MC. So (rolls to Gn - 1) per MC extra. So 3 * (rolls to Gn - 1) extra materials per MC, assuming 3 mats per roll.
Lets hope as you speculate that we get the materials much, much more easily.

What you're missing is that with the 2.4 system, any roll you do might set you back to square 1, so it could take you anywhere from 5 to 50 rolls to get to a buff you're happy with. With 3.0, you're only going to go forwards (the RNG is that you may go forwards a lot or a little) so you should get to where you want to be a lot faster. You also don't lose specials when you re-roll, so you can keep the special while you improve.

 

[JonathanBurnage]

Don't know about that. People have been hating on the RNG ever since Engineers dropped. The other thing that's happened since then is that everyone and their dog has a G5 everything and Engineers in of itself has worked as an Unlock, when what it should ideally be (and I agree with Sandro on this) is a Progression. I think over time we'll see more of some people having G2's, some with G4's and that means every ship is different which is in some ways the point of Engineers, or otherwise why not just put G5's in every shipyard.

There's one suggestion abroad that, if let's say you have an A4 FSD engineered and you take in an identical A4 FSD, then your grade progression should be faster because you've already got 'experience' of engineering that type of module? A good idea I think and probably a couple of ways around it (none of them especially simple in code) but cloning of some upgrades could be one suggestion for the future I think? That's less important on something big like an FSD but if you've got 4 pulse lasers on your ship, cloning the engineered one (at a cost and with a +/- marginal error maybe) would seem like quite a logical 4.0 refinement to me.

On the whole I actually think some of the hurt is quite a good indicator, that Frontier are going the right way on this. The pew-pew crowd has had it too good for too long imho.

The god-rolling pew pew crowd is getting it much better in the new system. No more need to grind hundreds of rolls.

Or the g1 to G5 route was necessary to avoid totally trivialising the process

The impact of 100 storage and the trader are largely unknown. If we assume they're slightly positive and g1 to G5 is massively negative, we'll naturally feel disappointed.

If these changes end up being massively positive, though... FD have made it clear they don't want a trivial process. Given all of the changes (no more favours, hand pick your experimental effect at any time, no fluctuating negatives, storage and trader, always improving upgrades and a better end result), I'm not finding it difficult to understand why they opted to change the current system of being able to skip g1 to G4. If that remained the same, it may trivialise the process and render the trader null for the majority of mats.

Seems to me that they want to laterally ease mat collection but still give reason to use a lot of all those mats we'll store.

Here's a simple tweak that would probably keep most happy:
As proposed it takes, say, X rolls per grade 1-4 and then Y rolls to max grade 5. And you have to work through the grades.
Instead, let people jump to whatever grade they like (as it is now), but...
Grade 1 takes X rolls to max
Grade 2 takes 2X rolls to max
Grade 3 takes 3X rolls to max
Grade 4 takes 4X rolls to max
Grade 5 takes 4X + Y rolls to max

Ie each grade will take the same number of rolls to top it out, but you will be starting at the bottom of that grade. So if you just want a basic G5 (or whatever) you can do a couple of rolls and get something good. If you want to max out G5, you've still got to work for it (as you should; I'm not saying it should be easy).

 

[Ydiss]

Can you explain this more?
Say I am at Gn for MC with Tod. I turn-up with MCs and need (a minimum) of 1 roll per MC for Gn. 3 materials per MC.
New system I have to go from G1 to Gn for all MC. So (rolls - 1) per MC extra. So 3 * (rolls - 1) extra materials per MC, assuming 3 mats per roll.
Lets hope as you speculate that we get the materials much, much more easily.

Getting mats via current methods (ie the actual activity we undertake to get them) won't be easier exactly. We'll just be able to store more (1000 currently compared to 100*total distinct mats) and never need to destroy any mats. That has a knock on effect (below).

The trader should enable us to redistribute those ~100 mats to get some mats easier (hopefully). Also, in my experience, when mat hunting for your Gn blueprint (specifically looking for the mats you'll need for that blueprint), you tend to come across a lot of mats you currently wouldn't need and so would ignore or destroy.

These lower grade mats we now keep rather than destroy should make the extra rolls possible without too much extra mat hunting. And all those mats we don't need could be converted to mats we do need. Hence, a much smoother experience. That's the theory, anyway.

Best case scenario, you arrive at the engineers base and just have to click more times than currently. Because you have everything you need without necessarily spending much more time getting it.

Remember, that Gn blueprint should be better than its current equivalent. Certainly once maxed at the grade (excluding fringe cases). And you'll never waste mats on the roulette wheel of doom, either. I don't know about you but the long stares at my screen trying to work out if the new Rng roll was really better than the last, then cursing when the next roll was garbage, really wasn't all that fun.

It's a lot of maybes. We'll see if Sandro was right to be confident after today.

 

[Muetdhiver]

The only important question is :

Is rolling every time from G1 to G5 fun ?

For first timers yeah, probably.
After a few ship, likely not, it'll end up being one of these numerous fun killers of ED, like wake scanning and HGE farming.

 

[Faybs]

I see a whole load of really good improvements (materials trader, increased storage, crafting at starports, etc) that are, for many players, largely nullified by one outstandingly stupid design decision. That's what really gets me - they are so close to something great, but then they go and ruin it.

For someone like me it's probably even. I like quite good rolls, but I only have a handful of god rolls. So time-wise it's probably going to be about the same. Plus I like spreadsheets, so I'll get myself organised and blast through the new system if I have to. And if you're really in the god-rolling business, the G1-5 takes far less time. But if you just turn up and throw a few rolls and take what you get, the grind is about to get a lot worse. All the other improvements are just mitigating the damage.

I think that FDev have changed the way one engineers, and people are seeing it as extra grind. If you look at old streams what they meant engineers to be was something you use when you've accumulated some mats, so you could slowly improve your gear. Unfortunately the early implementations had a few problems that made that style of playing impossible (such as commodity mats). I see the changes they've made (huge boost in mat caps, rolls will never debuff, mat trader) as a way of facilitating that style of play much better than the current one.

 

[operant]

What you're missing is that with the 2.4 system, any roll you do might set you back to square 1, so it could take you anywhere from 5 to 50 rolls to get to a buff you're happy with. With 3.0, you're only going to go forwards (the RNG is that you may go forwards a lot or a little) so you should get to where you want to be a lot faster. You also don't lose specials when you re-roll, so you can keep the special while you improve.

Don't see that. I am already at G5 say + 1 roll is better than G4. New system I have to get to G5 first.
And it is actually rolls times more not rolls -1 because I need to make 1 roll at G5 under either system.

 

[Cliffson]

Can you explain this more?
Say I am at Gn for MC with Tod. I turn-up with MCs and need (a minimum) of 1 roll per MC for Gn. 3 materials per MC.
New system I have to go from G1 to Gn for all MC. So (rolls to Gn - 1) per MC extra. So 3 * (rolls to Gn - 1) extra materials per MC, assuming 3 mats per roll.
Lets hope as you speculate that we get the materials much, much more easily.

Okay.
*Assuming*
In the new system max grade 4 is >= current avg grade 5.
Trader is 6 up 3 down on all trades.
It is reliably 3 rolls per grade.

For max grade 4 you need 3 rolls at Grade4. So 3 G4 mats 3G3 mats 3G3 mats.

With material trader if you gather 2 G5 2G4 2G3 you can trade down for all these mats with change.

Giving you the equivalent of a decent (or best) G5 in the current system.

The same mats in the current system will get you 2 rolls at G5 which should hopefully give you 1 decent roll (but couls give you 2 rubbish rolls or 2 great rolls).

Factor in that when getting the G5 mats yoy would no doubt find other mats which before were pointless but can now be used or traded and the effort should come out about the same if not easier.

A good example for me is recently i did g5 heavy duty hull. It took hours of hgss hoping to find some core dynamic compoaites thanks to rng. However i did find loads of high density composites and propriety compositrs which jn the new system i couls just trade up the excess for G5 CDC

Yes i am making some assumptions but its based on what i've seen in live stream and recent experince gathering mats.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

After a few ship, likely not, it'll end up being one of these numerous fun killers of ED, like wake scanning and HGE farming.

I actually quite like dropping into USSs and seeing what's there, but wake scanning...urgh.

Show of hands: who actually likes​ wake scanning? Even gathering stuff like Classified Scan Databanks is better because at least you can be travelling and not having to hold the trigger down...{moan, moan etc}

 

[Alec Turner]

As I just posted on the Lave Radio thread ...

On the subject of engineering "1 through 5", I'm pretty sure Shan is right and yes, on the face of it, it does indeed appear to suck the sweat off a dead dog's balls. You over complicated your examples tho. Imagine just taking one ship with 2 unengineered multi-canons to an engineer. You engineer the first one, working through each of the levels until you unlock 5 and apply it. Now you pick the 2nd multi-canon. Now you might think, since you've unlocked level 5, you can just apply level 5 rolls straight onto that 2nd canon. WRONG! You will have go to through all 5 levels again on the 2nd canon.

afaik ... we'll see for sure in a few hours time I guess.

 

[Faybs]

The only important question is :

Is rolling every time from G1 to G5 fun ?

For first timers yeah, probably.
After a few ship, likely not, it'll end up being one of these numerous fun killers of ED, like wake scanning and HGE farming.

You don't have to engineer every single module from the moment you buy your ship, you can swap modules between ships for free so you're always using your best modules. Think back to when you were still dirt poor and couldn't afford to A grade everything.

 

[Winterwalker]

Here's a simple tweak that would probably keep most happy:
As proposed it takes, say, X rolls per grade 1-4 and then Y rolls to max grade 5. And you have to work through the grades.
Instead, let people jump to whatever grade they like (as it is now), but...
Grade 1 takes X rolls to max
Grade 2 takes 2X rolls to max
Grade 3 takes 3X rolls to max
Grade 4 takes 4X rolls to max
Grade 5 takes 4X + Y rolls to max

I see what you're saying? Isn't that the same as what we're getting, just reworded to pretend you're aiming at a G5 from the start? I don't know if that's really necessary, people will get over it I think (virgin module has to be upgraded in stages). People are shocked by the change but once you're into that I think it sounds logical.

Also agree with Eagleboy that Frontier have shown some strength of character in reining this is in - not easy to put cats back in bags as a rule. I don't have masses of engineered ships but even now, their engineering grade just doesn't stand out, they're ALL grade 5 lol. Long term, I have two SW's .. one is G1 tweaked, this one has a G4 does seem more characterful. Coming in halfway through, a fleet does look daunting but for the game long term, difficult to argue that FD haven't done the right thing - give or take a little refinement thru beta.

 

[Cliffson]

The only important question is :

Is rolling every time from G1 to G5 fun ?

For first timers yeah, probably.
After a few ship, likely not, it'll end up being one of these numerous fun killers of ED, like wake scanning and HGE farming.

Its just a lot of clicking. But a quick pay mats go straight to grade button would be nice

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

The only important question is :

Is rolling every time from G1 to G5 fun ?

For first timers yeah, probably.
After a few ship, likely not, it'll end up being one of these numerous fun killers of ED, like wake scanning and HGE farming.

All activities start to grind after you do it on regular basis.

Don't rush engineer your whole fleet? I think this moves focus on single ship at the time which is how absolute majority of players play this game.

 

[Winterwalker]

You don't have to engineer every single module from the moment you buy your ship, you can swap modules between ships for free so you're always using your best modules. Think back to when you were still dirt poor and couldn't afford to A grade everything.

I also like that idea and maybe it does put the emphasis on the modules. You might have one ace FSD you swap over every time you change ship? Covered by the C&P system (hot/wanted modules), I like that because I used to - before they all got minds of their own - enjoy tinkering with cars. It really does mimic 'customising' with a chrome exhaust pipe etc. to hot swap modules.