I spent pretty much all of yesterday farming HGEs.
I was initially looking for easy things that spawn in a number of states, such as CDCs, MGAs, PLAs, PHRs etc. But then I started looking for the more specialised stuff, that I HAD NO PROBLEM FINDING BEFORE 3.3.
I went looking for Pharmaceutical Isolators. I'm a pretty experienced gatherer, I know how to find these. You need a faction (any faction will do now, in a system, it doesn't need to be the controlling one) that is in outbreak state, combined with an HGE spawn (which now also needs to belong to the outbreak faction and be in the outbreak state) in that state. So, I went to eddb.io, and I listed up all the systems where the controlling faction was in Outbreak state. There were some obviously better candidates including one with 25m pop and high tech economy! Jackpot, I'm thinking. I go to the system, I scan the USSes with my FSS, I've become SUPER fast at that now. The last two USSes were both HGEs, that is already EXCELLENT going in the current state of the game, but imagine my glee when one was in Outbreak state and had 33 minutes left!! It wasn't even that far away. Off I went. A few minutes later I arrive in the USS. There hanging in space in front of me, are...12 Proto Heat Radiators. That's odd. I think to myself.
I relogged (current exploit) to get another pop at the HGE, logged in, SC, turn around, drop back in. Again, PHRs. I look at the system map and the states of the factions. Sure enough, this factoin is in boom (which produces HGEs containing PHRs) AS WELL AS outbreak. This would be fine if the HGE I was in was marked 'Boom'. But it wasn't. It was marked outbreak. And did not contain pharma isolators.
Never mind I thought, with that kind of luck, I might find more in another system. I checked all the remaining 4 systems within 100ly of my position that were in outbreak. Not a single one had any HGEs of any kind.
I gave up on Pharma Isos at that point and thought I'd try some improvised components. Again I head to eddb and I list up all the systems that are currently experiencing Civil Unrest, it was 4, and of those, only 2 had Civil Unrest as primary state. Not looking hopeful. Anyway, I dropped into all 4 of those systems. Only one had an HGE, and of course it wasn't civil unrest state.
Pretty annoyed at this point, I started really abusing the exploit. I farmed until disappearance every single HGE I found until I was completely full of CDCs, PHRs, MGAs, PCs, PLAs, I then went to Sirius to trade them. Each 100% FULL other grade 5 (100 materials), when ALL are traded for the OTHER grade 5 you want, give you conversion rate of 100 to 16.
100 to 16.
16.
That's ONE HGE (one usually contains 15 materials on average) if it contained what it should (maybe two at a stretch), in exchange for an hour of using an exploit. Even with the exploit in place, this is cruel and unusual. Without the exploit, there will be no method of farming decent quantities of materials that spawn in secondary and tertiary system states.
We are now 1 month into this. I realise that still isn't long enough for the BGS to do what it needs to do to generate more varied states across the bubble, but that's not my fault. I have ships to engineer.
What concerns me greatly, is that the exploit (the only method to get some of these materials in any quantity) is about to be closed and as yet, we have not heard anything about a solution to the underlying problem...
There are not enough HGEs being spawned and their state cannot be predicted, removing any skill that there was before.
At this point, even with the exploit in place, I'd rather see HGE gathering go back to how it was before. Please, please, FD, hear me, this is the most important thing in the game right now, as it was supposed to be addressed and made better and has been made much, much worse.
Even if you believe that we need another month for the BGS states to sort themselves out, please say that, please at least acknowledge that this isn't what was intended and that you are looking at improving at least HGE spawn rates to beta-like levels (5 to 10 in a system).
Thanks in advance.
