Did Engineering Just Become More Painful? My HGE hunting safari results, post patch...

[bootsam]

And, pray tell, what IS this new methodology you speak about ?

Ancillary series of books by Anne Leckie. Very good, but alas I have just finished them. I am now in that twilight zone called 'in-between books'. I now have to navigate a path towards some others. Given that I can read 3 or 4 in a week and I'm in my 50's, it gets harder. I might need to turn to redacted to wear myself out. However, the conclusion to my previous statement is just as true. I may just watch some paint dry instead. That feeling of delight when finding a grot mag in the woods when you were young, is but a distant memory. Think I might just have a sandwich instead.

Did I just say that out loud?

 

[rhiz]

As a counterpoint, the first system I checked for HGEs today contained 3, all with long timers and within reasonable distance (5000 Ls). I only checked 2 of them since I don't need that many imperial shielding units at the moment but there was plenty of time to get the last one too.

Interestingly, all 3 HGEs belonged to the same, not controlling faction in election state.

Yes, but Imperial Shielding has been the only thing that I've been able to consistently find since the BGS reset. It's everything else that's the problem. I've basically been scooping up hundreds of those and trading them at the rip-off ratio of 6:1 to get whatever else I need. I haven't checked since the latest patch, but hopefully that method will still work at least (even though it's insane ).

 

[Speedcuffs]

Yes, but Imperial Shielding has been the only thing that I've been able to consistently find since the BGS reset. It's everything else that's the problem. I've basically been scooping up hundreds of those and trading them at the rip-off ratio of 6:1 to get whatever else I need. I haven't checked since the latest patch, but hopefully that method will still work at least (even though it's insane ).

Nope. Once you leave that instance, it be gone.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Got lucky again.... leaving Alioth (no HGEs in that huge-pop System over a full hour repeatedly traversing it), in the tiny 1.5k Pop System Morgor.

1st HGE came from a Faction at War, 5x Military Grade Alloys
After re-entering SuperCruise, I saw 5 new Signal Sources - one of them another HGE, this time from another Faction (Investment). 5x Proto Heat Radiators I urgently need tons of. Nice!

Really seems to me checking a series of even tiny "flyover Systems" is a good idea, while the old "Huge Population + Faction States" technique now seems a letdown in comparison.
Any secondary Faction having some useful Faction States is apparently enough.

Edit : just arrived in Wyrd... and there's another HGE (Signal Source Faction State : None, unexpected) waiting for me. 15k Ls out, but it's a HGE (got Core Dynamic and Proprietary Composites)
Edit 2 : 2nd Traverse in Wyrd after 10min - another HGE, again 16k Ls but it's there for me

 

[zipline]

This is depressing ... that HGE exploit was no different really than Dav's Hope, crashed Conda, etc ... if they'd have given us improved exhange rates at the mat traders then it may have been bearable ... but this ... it feels like a kicking.

 

[StevieG]

And there was me thinking hmm yeah I'll grind some HGEs and engineer my mamba... whats that? it will take me 7 days to find the G5 mat I need? Ok... back to CQC...

 

[Sylow]

As just also written in another thread here: I just did a very short tour, checking for HGEs. This is how it turned out for me:

Started at LHS2494. System states: investment -> launch, start FSS -> less than 4 minutes in game: one HGE during my scan. 26 minutes remaining.
Content of the HGE 3x core dynamics composites, 2x proprietary composites

Jumped to LHS2541, states: none -> use FSS -> two HGEs. One of them only has 2 minutes left, so no way to get that one. The other has like 15 minutes left, so i visit it. Content of the HGE: 2x core dynamics composites, 3x proprietary composites

Continued to Veneri. State: war -> started the FSS, pirate interdicted me while scanning. So can't tell the complete status at arrival. After destroying the pirate:
1x HGE. state: CIVIL WAR. 38 minutes remaining. Interesting that it's civil war. There is also civil war in the system, but i did not see that state on the galaxy map. Content of the HGE: 5x military grade alloys

So within very limited time, i was able to find 3 HGEs which i was able to reach and enter. This is very different from what was reported here. Possible theories on this:

1. I was extremely lucky.
2. Those who reported the early problems were very unlucky.
3. There were some issues right after server restart, which needed a few hours to sort out.
4. Some of the first reports were heavily biased towards the drama side.
5. I did this late at night, when fewer people play.

Due to how the system now works, that USSes are created by a central instance, but any player entering a USS can "use it up", i would guess that it's actually #5. When there's plenty of players around, the first one to spot the FSS goes for it and uses it up. The next one spawns a while later, but again the first pilot to notice it can quickly get it, the rest have a very slim time window to even just see it. Thus the impression is formed, that they don't exist at all.

It'll be interesting to get more feedback from more active times. If now over daytime also HGEs are being found, it most likely was #3. If they again are not found, then #5 is very likely the reason and FD would be well advised to look into spawn rates and maybe increase them when many players are active.

 

[xxThe_Dice_manxx]

The way you cmdrs are going about getting mats is slow and tedious.

Take massacre missions then when you kill use limpets to hoover up the mats, you sit in a has red any red for that matter.

If you don't like combat do evac missions loads of mats as reward.

Another option is robigo or similar place do the passenger mission again loads of mats.

 

[Camisade]

So within very limited time, i was able to find 3 HGEs which i was able to reach and enter. This is very different from what was reported here.
[Some content 8<]
2. Those who reported the early problems were very unlucky.
3. There were some issues right after server restart, which needed a few hours to sort out.
[Some other content 8< out]

While I didn't find as many as you (none in LHS 2541, for example), this evening I did find two HGE's in LHS 2494, both with sufficient time to fly to and collect the mats. So it does appear that HGEs are now spawning, whereas they were much more rare this morning right after the patch.

As to the OP thread subject -- yes, engineering did just become inarguably more painful* with this latest update, but it's apparently not as painful as things appeared earlier.


* of course, there's a premise in that adjective; whether engineering is painful, enjoyable, or somewhere else on the game play spectrum is obviously going to be unique for each Commander. That's not the topic of this thread. The bottom line is that doing a lot of G5 engineering will now require more HGE hunting than pre-patch (and it's an activity that few seem to enjoy), and finding some specific HGE's is commonly considered more difficult than before 3.3 dropped. That seems to make the use of "painful" not too inappropriate.

 

[cmdrrdmc]

HGEs really are the only problem with mat hunting right now. Plenty of easy ways to get raw and encoded mats. They should just do away with the whole stupid mechanic altogether and find another way to distribute them, like making all manufactured mats possible as mission rewards.

edit: Just realized, you could still correlate mats to faction states this way AND remove a ton of randomness. If some faction is in a certain state, and you have a high rep with them, you can be sure that they'll offer at least a couple missions with that mat as a reward. Simple!

 

[Feros-da-Grundig]

HGEs really are the only problem with mat hunting right now. Plenty of easy ways to get raw and encoded mats. They should just do away with the whole stupid mechanic altogether and find another way to distribute them, like making all manufactured mats possible as mission rewards.

edit: Just realized, you could still correlate mats to faction states this way AND remove a ton of randomness. If some faction is in a certain state, and you have a high rep with them, you can be sure that they'll offer at least a couple missions with that mat as a reward. Simple!

Please don't force us to use the mission board for anything more

 

[cmdrrdmc]

Please don't force us to use the mission board for anything more

Wouldn't you use it if it was possible to gather every type of manufactured mat? It would give them a real purpose.

 

[Feros-da-Grundig]

Wouldn't you use it if it was possible to gather every type of manufactured mat? It would give them a real purpose.

To me it just seems like mindless grinding with more steps. Grind out to get allied and then fly from station to station to station trying to find the right missions. Which I've already done in 3.3 for exq. focus and biotech via passenger missions and it's terrible. Worse than Dav's/barnacles IMO, at least there I get to steer a vroom vroom car. Jameson's is tedious but at least incredibly easy. With the mission board I am slammed with a wall of meaningless RNG text and I just scan for the words I want.

I know I'm not the only CMDR who doesn't bother with mission board. It shouldn't be the only option. Even when I was trying to do BGS and PP I disliked mission board and its useless filters. Now it's worse.

There's barnacles and jameson's for raw and data, it would be nice to have something like that for manu. But now with this feature removed "bug fixed" I might have to pretend to care about the BGS again.

 

[cmdrrdmc]

To me it just seems like mindless grinding with more steps. Grind out to get allied and then fly from station to station to station trying to find the right missions. Which I've already done in 3.3 for exq. focus and biotech via passenger missions and it's terrible. Worse than Dav's/barnacles IMO, at least there I get to steer a vroom vroom car. Jameson's is tedious but at least incredibly easy. With the mission board I am slammed with a wall of meaningless RNG text and I just scan for the words I want.

I know I'm not the only CMDR who doesn't bother with mission board. It shouldn't be the only option. Even when I was trying to do BGS and PP I disliked mission board and its useless filters. Now it's worse.

There's barnacles and jameson's for raw and data, it would be nice to have something like that for manu. But now with this feature removed "bug fixed" I might have to pretend to care about the BGS again.

Didn't say it was a perfect solution, just that it's a hell of a lot better than HGEs and requires little work from FDev. Wouldn't you agree with that? Or would you rather continue with the HGE ?

 

[Feros-da-Grundig]

Didn't say it was a perfect solution, just that it's a hell of a lot better than HGEs and requires little work from FDev. Wouldn't you agree with that? Or would you rather continue with the HGE ?

Well you asked "Wouldn't you use it if...?" and I should have just said a quick "no" instead of my blah blah blah.

As far as "a real purpose", well the actual purpose is to engineer my toys to make zoom zoom faster/more fun, or in order to adjust my interactions with other commanders. HGE/mission/etc all just means to that end.

Re "better than" I'd have preferred yesterday's HGE with the two impossible G5s fixed. But generally I just prefer whatever's quickest. I'll probably wait and watch a few posts over the next week to see what the consensus becomes as to the most efficient way, and if there is nothing better I'll just make do with what I have until the next calvinball adjustment. I really dislike the mission board and don't think it's better than HGE.

If I saw missions as being more efficient I'd use them. I used it in 3.2 for spacebucks and a few manu mats, but it's unusably inefficient in 3.3 for that with the method I previously used (I didn't even board flip in 3.2, just 2 boards per station, b/c board flipping was not reliable/functional for me on PS4, tested extensively).

 

[cmdrrdmc]

Yeah, but I'm trying to work within the parameters of what most people here might find acceptable. You know a significant portion of players would resist anything that makes getting mats trivial.

 

[Feros-da-Grundig]

Yeah, but I'm trying to work within the parameters of what most people here might find acceptable. You know a significant portion of players would resist anything that makes getting mats trivial.

Yes, I fully realize many people care about things in the game I don't at all, and visa versa. I know those things won't change so I'll just grind when I have to.

No one here seemed to be complaining about the HGE spawn on relog though, except for some reasonable complaints about the 2 that were/are impossible to find (I could have overlooked complaints, admittedly). I posted one of the first how-to vids on this and mostly people (at least outside this forum) seemed to love it.

 

[B1rdy]

I suspect a lot of these issues would be fixed if they forced some FDev employees to sit down and collect enough mats to fully engineer a ship.

Not just some employees, but those who approve design decisions.

 

[EternalSorrow]

Not just some employees, but those who approve design decisions.

If you see some of FDev streams, you'll realize that they don't play their game at all. Remember an E-graded engineered Mamba on New Ships Reveal, or that they couldn't land their Asp on a pad for a minute on the DW2.

FDev are incompetent.

I'll leave the game as it was after RNGeneeres were released, because the game was as grindy as some Korean MMOs never could be.

 

[Urbanski101]

Are FD even looking at this?

HGE spawn rates are shot to hell or the system conditions for HGEs spawning have changed....either way some info from FD would be nice.

Players are wasting hours trying to find them in vain....just tell us "yes we are aware of the issue and it's...

a) being looked at
b) a new set of spawn conditions so your old methods won't work
c) BGS conditions and we think it will self adjust so be patient
d) working as intended so suck it up buttercup.

I don't often ask for an FDev response but in this case can we please get some clarification.