HGE spawn rates are now out of hand. Please can we know what's happening, FD?

[Stealthie]

I get that it was probably only possible to run the beta with the old BGS but, honestly, I feel like we've all been misled as a result of the differences between the way USSs spawned in beta and as they actually do in the live game.

There were those of us who expressed concern about how USSs would be dealt with and the beta seemed to assuage those concerns.
If people had been able to see how things would REALLY work, using the new BGS, I suspect the concerns would have multiplied rather than died down.

In a nutshell (and even without considering any fundamental reduction in USS spawns), the new BGS reducs the likelihood of finding a desired HGE by a factor of however many factions are present in a system.
If you're looking for, say, potato-radios and there's 10 factions in a system - and only one of those factions is in Boom - then only 1 in 10 HGEs are likely to provide you with your potato-radios.

And the galmap provides no tool for quantifying the severity of this issue.
All it can do is show you a system that's in Boom.
You go there and find there's 15 bloody factions and only one is in boom - which means that 14 out of every 15 HGE's that do spawn aren't going to give you what you're looking for.
It's a shambles.

 

[cmdrrdmc]

If you're looking for, say, potato-radios and there's 10 factions in a system - and only one of those factions is in Boom - then only 1 in 10 HGEs are likely to provide you with your potato-radios.

It's potentially even worse, since a faction can be in 3 states simultaneously, giving a worst case probability of (1/10)*(1/3) = 1/30, assuming all factions are in 3 states.

 

[Speedcuffs]

It's potentially even worse, since a faction can be in 3 states simultaneously, giving a worst case probability of (1/10)*(1/3) = 1/30, assuming all factions are in 3 states.

Yep. Said all this before on other threads.
Not to worry, apparently it's supposed to work like this and we're just playing the game 'wrong'. Again.[blah]

 

[Han Zulu]

I've been looking for pharmaceutical isolators for three evenings now. Found plenty of Hg's but no PI's at all. i think they're borked. I don't even need them for anything, I'm just annoyed I can't find them. I think FD decided mat traders made engineering too un-grindy so they decided to *BAM!* kick it up a notch.

Make Grinding Great Again!

 

[Stealthie]

It's potentially even worse, since a faction can be in 3 states simultaneously, giving a worst case probability of (1/10)*(1/3) = 1/30, assuming all factions are in 3 states.

Hmmm...

Hadn't considered that.

When you're mooching around in SC and you target a USS the little info box tells you the faction and their "state" (singilar).
Is the "state" that's shown on the USS simply the predominant one or does a faction have to reach a certain percentage of a given state before they're considered to be "in" it?

As long as it's just the predominant one, I wouldn't have thought it'd have an effect on the odds.

Or, are we saying that a USS can spawn which is tied to any of the states a faction is in?

Currently floating about in Synteini, where the "Sovereign Justice Collective" is in Boom and every HGE that's linked to them has been a "boom" one.
And, when I say "all", I mean the 3 that've spawned in the 3 hours I've been posting on the forum.

 

[Stealthie]

I've been looking for pharmaceutical isolators for three evenings now. Found plenty of Hg's but no PI's at all. i think they're borked. I don't even need them for anything, I'm just annoyed I can't find them. I think FD decided mat traders made engineering too un-grindy so they decided to *BAM!* kick it up a notch.

I get my PI's by doing short-hop passenger missions out of LHS 20.

Got a long-range AspX with a C6 VIP cabin and some collectors.
One job is usually 4 or 5 jumps, I pick up a couple of HGEs along the way and get 5 PIs as the reward.
Not amazing but not terrible.

 

[Chaparral]

Can get cracked MEF and Bio at Robigo with criminal passenger missions. Single Sirius atmospherics scan. Rinse repeat.

 

[Stealthie]

Can get cracked MEF and Bio at Robigo with criminal passenger missions. Single Sirius atmospherics scan. Rinse repeat.

It's boring as hell doing the exact same thing over and over though.

 

[Webgear]

Eravate last night. 4 HGEs found and looted in under 20 minutes. Heres the video but I only bothered to post the first 3 HGEs. I haven't had any issues finding them since the latest patch but I agree that taking away the respawn exploit has made things less productive.

[video=youtube_share;6E6XR7RbEso]https://youtu.be/6E6XR7RbEso[/video]

 

[Aashenfox]

Eravate last night. 4 HGEs found and looted in under 20 minutes. Heres the video but I only bothered to post the first 3 HGEs. I haven't had any issues finding them since the latest patch but I agree that taking away the respawn exploit has made things less productive.

You're the second to post reasonable results that I know of today, I think they may already be tweaking on the backend.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

HIP 2843 - one of the two incursion systems - found and looted several HGE there - though its not the "Core dynamics composites" you want, right?

is it normal to find grade 4 materials in degraded emissions ?

 

[Aashenfox]

HIP 2843 - one of the two incursion systems - found and looted several HGE there - though its not the "Core dynamics composites" you want, right?

is it normal to find grade 4 materials in degraded emissions ?

If it's an investment or expansion or none, yes, it's common to find Proprietary Composites alongside either CDCs, PHRs or PRLs.

 

[Sylow]

You're the second to post reasonable results that I know of today, I think they may already be tweaking on the backend.

.
Yea. Either that, or the rush yesterday was just too much for the system. (I still to some degree suspect that the concept of global generation and local consumption runs a high risk of going south exactly at those times, when the most players are active. Time will tell if I am right there. )
.
I still see enough things to be improved and adjusted here, but generally HGEs seem to be back to operational status.

 

[Aashenfox]

.
Yea. Either that, or the rush yesterday was just too much for the system. (I still to some degree suspect that the concept of global generation and local consumption runs a high risk of going south exactly at those times, when the most players are active. Time will tell if I am right there. )
.
I still see enough things to be improved and adjusted here, but generally HGEs seem to be back to operational status.

Yeh, other squadron members are reporting better results today, but I honestly don't believe it was natural, I think they fixed it without saying a word (at least back to what it was in 3.3.0.0).

Still, this is relatively good news. Fingers crossed for a better balance pass soon.

For anyone else's info, EZ Aquarii is once again a good spot for HGEs according to reports from the squadron.

 

[MDHansen]

It's such a shame because during the beta HGE's were nicely balanced. They weren't everywhere but you could find one or two in most systems, and for the first time since ever it actually felt fun and rewarding to hunt HGE's.


I don't know why they changed it for live, everyone seemed to love how it was in beta and I didn't see anyone request it get nerfed or changed in any way.

I think you answered it yourself Nobody complained so FD assumed it was too many and thus scaled them with their usual 10x multiplier

 

[MDHansen]

Yeh, other squadron members are reporting better results today, but I honestly don't believe it was natural, I think they fixed it without saying a word (at least back to what it was in 3.3.0.0).

Still, this is relatively good news. Fingers crossed for a better balance pass soon.

For anyone else's info, EZ Aquarii is once again a good spot for HGEs according to reports from the squadron.

I dropped in to 2 HGE's today, within half an hour timespan, in my system and I haven't seen an HGE in weeks there. So hopefully they did some behind the scenes voodoo..

 

[Deadly Vindicator]

So we're now down to filling up with G4 and then trade up ? There has been only one patch so far that was worse news for engineering.

Can also fill up with EFC and Biotech Conductors (Robigo is your friend).

I am also hating the spawn rate.
And most of the HGEs I found was on a different galaxy, with 2 minutes remaining to get there.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

The way I gathered materials lately has been more fun. I don't even bother about the SSs. I got my tank corvette, went to a res size. Kill a pirate. Have bunch of limpets out and they scoop up bunches of materials. When one or two of them are stocked up to full, I go to the nearby station where they have mat trader. Trade the full to higher mats. Repeat. Having fun, while getting the mats inventory filled.

I have tried that but the trading rates are just abominable.

 

[MSCowboy]

I did an HGE run right after the update dropped and found one after another at a decent clip. Many systems had multiple. It was disappointing not being able to sit at one and fill up, but there was never a moment where I wasn't finding more.

 

[Han Zulu]

I have tried that but the trading rates are just abominable.

Agree. They're too extreme.