Engineers I don’t know how you all survive this grinding

[thebatfink]

I’m saving up to start doing dirty drives and beam laser efficiency on my vulture, it’s taken days and days of raw mat grinding driving around on planets.. In the end I thought, it’s not supposed to be easy else the benefits won’t feel so valuable and I plodded on.

Now I am on to manufactured materials and it’s getting me to the point I don’t want to play anymore I haven’t even started looking at data. I really, really don’t want to resort to going to a crash site and logging in and out 50 times. That just doesn’t feel right.

Have no idea how you all cope with it. I’m looking at 2 lvls on 2 modules - the thought of doing this fully kitting out mutiple ships.. Maybe I’m just doing it wrong. At least it’s off my chest now.

 

[o'moylan]

I have 2 ships. One for my Taxi and Trade and 1 for the legwork.
The legwork I use a DBX for its jump range. I do some legwork, park it, switch ships, do some relaxing trade/taxi missions, rinse and repeat.
I just don't do it all at once, its too boring.

Fly dangerous

 

[C4R1TON]

I'm not a fan of the grind either, but when it's something really worth it, you just get after it. Now you have to get creative sometimes. The grind for the FSD is almost necessary but at least there are multiple avenues to obtain the materials. That keeps it from being boring. Now going after a Corvette is a different story and a grind I won't do again on my second Commander . Lol

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

By not doing it all at once. You're creating a grind. Make a trip to pick up a raw material but the moment it's boring, go do something else. Go bounty hunt in a CZ with collector limpets. You'll get scan data and manufactured Mats. Then go visit some abandoned settlements, crashed ships, etc. Then make a trip to Dav's hope, do a few relogs to gather, and the second you're tired of it, leave. Then go run missions for mat rewards. If you are allied with the faction, you get better rewards/missions, so do this in where ever you call home. When you are traveling between systems take a second to stop and look for a HGE. After a bit see what you got in conjunction and you maybe able to trade for those. If you go bounty hunt, run missions, pirate, etc. you'll naturally collect what you need. There's no need to grind if you take part in all the different things the game has to offer, while not rushing to XXX point to do XXX.

 

[ZeroAi]

I’m saving up to start doing dirty drives and beam laser efficiency on my vulture, it’s taken days and days of raw mat grinding driving around on planets.. In the end I thought, it’s not supposed to be easy else the benefits won’t feel so valuable and I plodded on.

Now I am on to manufactured materials and it’s getting me to the point I don’t want to play anymore I haven’t even started looking at data. I really, really don’t want to resort to going to a crash site and logging in and out 50 times. That just doesn’t feel right.

Have no idea how you all cope with it. I’m looking at 2 lvls on 2 modules - the thought of doing this fully kitting out mutiple ships.. Maybe I’m just doing it wrong. At least it’s off my chest now.

I've actually can't bring myself to do it.

 

[Morbad]

Wait until you have the materials, then worry about what to do with them.

 

[thebatfink]

I think one of the issues I have is how to find what I want. With raws, very easy. Search eddb find a planet and go drive around. Rinse and repeat. But with the manufactured, it’s like where are they? I’ve tried hours in res sites, high res sites, compromised beacons, flying around looking for high grade emissions (not found a single one yet) so instead dipping in others.. Still not finding any of the mats I want.

I just flew 200ly to a outbreak independant system with large population hoping to find the pharmacutical isolators, nothing so far. Its just really frustrating and annoying. Then I know after this if it ever starts / finishes got firmwares etc. to try find that have been even more elusive thus far. Maybe I am just being high maintenance.

When you say look for HGE when travelling, you mean station to station or with when jumping into new systems?

 

[Speedcuffs]

I think one of the issues I have is how to find what I want. With raws, very easy. Search eddb find a planet and go drive around. Rinse and repeat. But with the manufactured, it’s like where are they? I’ve tried hours in res sites, high res sites, compromised beacons, flying around looking for high grade emissions (not found a single one yet) so instead dipping in others.. Still not finding any of the mats I want.

I just flew 200ly to a outbreak independant system with large population hoping to find the pharmacutical isolators, nothing so far. Its just really frustrating and annoying. Then I know after this if it ever starts / finishes got firmwares etc. to try find that have been even more elusive thus far. Maybe I am just being high maintenance.

When you say look for HGE when travelling, you mean station to station or with when jumping into new systems?

HGEs. Drop in and scan Nav Beacon. Go back to supercruise. Enter FSS scanner screen. Scan all HGEs (far left on signal bar).
No HGEs? Jump to next system.(I wouldn't advise waiting for HGEs to respawn).

 

[thebatfink]

Thanks, any particular systems or?

 

[Hell Razor5543]

I survive by NOT treating it as a grind, but as a great game that is to be enjoyed. While there may be times Players have to work for things, the buzz when they achieve a major goal is worth the effort.

 

[m0rl0ck]

You take long, long breaks. You hope while on a break to find THE game that will prevent you from ever playing ED again. Then you come back for a while because its the only multiplayer space sim out there.

The grind and the RNGineers have pretty much guaranteed that ANY other contender in this niche market would get the majority of ED players if it were halfway decent. Im holding my breath for Star Citizen

I have not touched ED for as long as six months, i usually come back after patches, get confronted with the grind and the monotony and then play something else.

I cant honestly see how Frontier or their QA dept thought the grind in this game would do anything but seriously -i-s people off, but maybe they just dont know about fun.

 

[Old Duck]

I find unlocking some of these engineers a much more tedious grind than gathering materials. This is probably the biggest thing holding me back from clearing my save and starting fresh.

 

[Knispels]

Well the grind for materials to engineer your ship is only part of the overall experience. There is also learning about the engineering specifics and experimental effects. Which one is best to choose to put on my modules for the intended purpose of what I will be doing with my ship. And it really falls down to the individual personality of the you as a person. Some people don't mind the grind because they get a lot of satisfaction from engineering their ships to the max and using them in game to challenge themselves to do whatever that excites them. Others like to do a bit of the grind and engineer their ships some, but for the most part just want to play the game. And then still others would just rather play the game, but understand their ship could be better with some engineering so they start the grind and get totally turned off by doing all the things that engineering requires.

There are some easy ways to gather materials in the game but it does require you to gather, log out to main menu, and then log back in again multiple times. Places that represent this are Dav's hope for manufactured materials, Jameson crash site for data, and crashed Anaconda sites for high grade raw material. Personally I prefer to do the surface mining for raw materials because I find it relaxing. Then you can take this material and go to a material trader and just trade for what you need. I work on one ship at a time and continue to gather all the materials I need for engineering plus experimental effects until it is complete. It usually takes me about 6-7 hours of game play to complete one ship to grade 5 engineering. I also make heavy use of the third party software EDEngineer and plan out my entire engineering on this software and build out a shopping list of all the materials that I need to complete the job. Also using Inara and EDDB.IO to find things and plan out my route to each engineer to save time.

Once I am finished with the build I get a great since of accomplishment and enjoy flying the spec'd out ship. But that is my personality. I then proceed to go and just play the game for a while and enjoy myself. Effort and then reward from what is accomplished. It is up to you to find out how you want to play.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

I have 18 fully engineered ships. I did not survive the grind. I died and am now undead.

 

[Captain Willard]

I have 18 fully engineered ships. I did not survive the grind. I died and am now undead.

KOOLNESS

 

[metatheurgist]

I find the issue is people only focus on doing one thing at a time in elite, then they get tired of it. You get so much data and materials just from making small side trips while trading or running around on planets and scanning the bejesus out of everything in SC and around stations that you will soon be up to your eyeballs in engineer stuff. The grind only comes in at G5.

 

[varonica]

Using exisitng resources is good as well. The other day I mined 90+ Polonium from one planetary location, that's all you really need to do, fill up with grade 5's from a Crystal Spike forest which always seem to drop only the highest level mat for that body and trade for the rest. With manufactured I basically loaded up with limpets and dropped into all emission levels not just HGE's (with zero danger since I don't carry weapons) and it didn't take me long to get enough medium mats to trade up and across for what I wanted. For data I set out on a tour of abandoned settlements and stations I have never visited, it added some interest and sent me places I had never been, like the crashed conda and SRV in the HIP area, there's a handy guide for that, and I soon had enough to finish engineering my Phantom and didn't get bored once.

If you go into the game with the intention of grinding that's exactly what you will end up doing, and that's true of any MMO type game I have played.

 

[Melanthes]

Another easy way is using your ship to run missions. You will regularly get G5 materials as rewards. And it's usually not boring, since there are a lot of different things to do. With these rewards you can go to a material trader and exchange them for the lower quality materials you need.
The material traders remove much of the grind, because you can collect the materials which are dropped by the parts of the game you enjoy and exchange them later. I've never hunted for HGEs and still had everything I've wanted either through trading or missions and a few planetary explorations of geological or biological locations.

 

[thebatfink]

Well the grind for materials to engineer your ship is only part of the overall experience. There is also learning about the engineering specifics and experimental effects. Which one is best to choose to put on my modules for the intended purpose of what I will be doing with my ship. And it really falls down to the individual personality of the you as a person. Some people don't mind the grind because they get a lot of satisfaction from engineering their ships to the max and using them in game to challenge themselves to do whatever that excites them. Others like to do a bit of the grind and engineer their ships some, but for the most part just want to play the game. And then still others would just rather play the game, but understand their ship could be better with some engineering so they start the grind and get totally turned off by doing all the things that engineering requires.

There are some easy ways to gather materials in the game but it does require you to gather, log out to main menu, and then log back in again multiple times. Places that represent this are Dav's hope for manufactured materials, Jameson crash site for data, and crashed Anaconda sites for high grade raw material. Personally I prefer to do the surface mining for raw materials because I find it relaxing. Then you can take this material and go to a material trader and just trade for what you need. I work on one ship at a time and continue to gather all the materials I need for engineering plus experimental effects until it is complete. It usually takes me about 6-7 hours of game play to complete one ship to grade 5 engineering. I also make heavy use of the third party software EDEngineer and plan out my entire engineering on this software and build out a shopping list of all the materials that I need to complete the job. Also using Inara and EDDB.IO to find things and plan out my route to each engineer to save time.

Once I am finished with the build I get a great since of accomplishment and enjoy flying the spec'd out ship. But that is my personality. I then proceed to go and just play the game for a while and enjoy myself. Effort and then reward from what is accomplished. It is up to you to find out how you want to play.

I think this is one of the things that turned me sour though. Raw mats I have no issue with, I did say in OP I appreciate it is ‘supposed to not be easy’ and I am happy to put in time when I see the path I need to take and where the end is located. But when I move on to the manufactured and look forward to the data by doing the obligatory google research into how and where to collect the materials, I feel like the fast majority point you towards Davs Hope or a crashed Annaconda and tell you to soend several hours logging in an out collecting 6 drops. Even then (and this could be me as I don’t want to resort to that so have not been there yet) it’s to gather resources you don’t want so you can trade them for what you do want. Really? When that’s the best way to gather materials is that a good thing?

According to inara these are the items I am struggling most for. By that I mean I am missing them so I know they are not dropping during what I’ve already been doing. Using the missing components functionality of the website I can also see that I have no other materials that are tradable anywhere close to the levels I need - this is a shopping list to roll 1 beam laser and thruster both to lvl 2. So what I am doing is also not going to get me in a position to trade either.

Configurable Components (to a lesser degree)
Heat Exchangers
Heat Vanes
Proto Heat Radiators
Pharmacutical Isolators

I just took a look at my mising data lists and actually that looks like its tradable with just output from wake scanning and ship scanning so OK there. Of the last two manufactured I need I have only 1 other material which is tradable and it takes my whole stocks to get one of each of these materials. I need 48 and 18. At this rate, doing just the activities to collect things like I have been doing I reckon 6 months at my current play rate. I must be doing it wrong.

I don’t want to board log :/ and I don’t want to be a pirate killing the innocent and I feel lost on how to achieve the goal, for me that is why its a grind and not elbow grease and hard work. I feel like I’m being whiny too now

 

[TopCat160]

By not doing it all at once. You're creating a grind. Make a trip to pick up a raw material but the moment it's boring, go do something else. Go bounty hunt in a CZ with collector limpets. You'll get scan data and manufactured Mats. Then go visit some abandoned settlements, crashed ships, etc. Then make a trip to Dav's hope, do a few relogs to gather, and the second you're tired of it, leave. Then go run missions for mat rewards. If you are allied with the faction, you get better rewards/missions, so do this in where ever you call home. When you are traveling between systems take a second to stop and look for a HGE. After a bit see what you got in conjunction and you maybe able to trade for those. If you go bounty hunt, run missions, pirate, etc. you'll naturally collect what you need. There's no need to grind if you take part in all the different things the game has to offer, while not rushing to XXX point to do XXX.

^^ All excellent suggestions.

Wait until you have the materials, then worry about what to do with them.

Yes. The Zen of Elite. I hadn't seen it put as succinctly as that before.

I am happy to put in time when I see the path I need to take and where the end is located.

You're not listening, mate.

There is no path you need to take, and there is no end. Until you 'get' that, you will continue to make the game into a grind.