Many of us are tired with the state of high end manufactured materials gathering.
If you are one of those people that think it's fine now, that it is perfectly ok gameplay to get 150 things you don't want and swap them for 16 things you do want, I respect that, but this thread ain't for you, and I personally disagree vehemently with this position, I think it's made the materials search infinitely more grindy than it was before. At least you were anticipating that endorphin hit you'd et when an HGE popped and you would know it would contain what you were looking for.
A short history lesson...
The process of hunting for High Grade Emissions (hereafter: HGE) used to be painful, I'll be the first to admit that. A couple of times I almost wrote a guide and one time I did, only to have the system change a week later. Anyway, long story short, after a lot of practice, I was able to RELIABLY find what I wanted 9 times out of ten, and that one time, all I had to do was try a different system. In this model, there was one important variable (or rather non-variable), and that was that the HGE always inherited its properties from the state of the controlling faction. Therefore, if the controling faction was in outbreak, you'd get pharmaceutical isolators (or superpower variants if you were unlucky, CDCs and Imp Shielding). If you went to a warring system, you'd get MGAs or MSCs
The problem used to mainly be that you could circle around a system in deep space for hours and never see a single HGE. If you DID see an HGE though, two things were sure...1) You would get what you were looking for, and 2) There would be more HGEs if you exercised some patience. The weight of evidence I have seen (and your experience might be different) indicates that a lot of the negative steam reviews and negative comments on youtube videos about this game, were really centered around high end materials gathering (not just manufactured). This prompted FD to have a rethink, and they came up with what we have in 3.3.
Now...
Nowadays, things have changed around. It is no longer difficult to find an HGE (although it is still more difficult than perhaps it should be), what is now the problem is the fact that the content of an HGE cannot reasonably be predicted, even when you know all the states of the controlling faction and other factions in a system. The mistakes that were made are the following...
1) The spawn rate of HGEs was not increased enough, especially given the following points...
2) The HGE is no longer 'owned' by the controlling faction and no longer inherits that faction's ONE active state. Now there are potentially up to FOUR active states (let's say average 2.7 active states), and the HGE can be owned by any one of the (6 on average) factions in a system. That gives you a 1 in (6*2.7) chance of hitting the HGE you want, if that state is exclusive to only one faction in the system (and that's after the 50-50 chance of having HGEs at all, the other 50-50 chance since 3.3 that they will actually contain what they are supposed to contain, and a final 50-50 chance that the timer has enough time on it for you to reach it).
3) HGEs now seem to have a random chance of containing what you expect them to contain. e.g. Even if you did hit that 1 in (2*2*2*(6*2.7) lucky roll, and you are looking at an HGE with enough time on it to get to and it's in the right state (let's say outbreak), you drop in, expecting Pharma Isos, and you get....boom materials (those materials that you would expect in an HGE in boom or investment state, proto radiolics and proto heat radiators as well as SP specific stuff).
4) Given how nightmarish the new system is to find what you want, the trade ratios should have been adjusted.
So...
What you could do, is adjust any one of those major parameters; either up the spawn rate of HGEs a lot, or make sure an HGE is always owned by the controlling faction, establish a state 'priority' as regards HGE generation, and make them more consistent in what they drop (as per your own flippin' flavour text in the game, FD!!), and you could even reduce the trade-UP ratios at the trader. Most of these would make the system demonstrably more rewarding and better, BUT...
These are all band aids to a bad system. What's the REAL problem? The real problem is that there aren't enough ways to obtain the hard to obtain stuff. G5 manufactured come from only THREE sources in the whole game. Mission completion for 2 of them (Biotech Conductors and Exquisite Focus Crystals, and those are the EXCLUSIVE methods of collecting those...wth, fd?), and HGEs for the rest, except whatever you can get to drop from Deadly and higher big 4 NPCs in combat. So, here are my proposals for fixing this...
1) Make sure HGEs DO inherit the state of the CONTROLLING faction of a system so that their contents can be more easily predicted.
2) Increase the spawn rate of HGEs across the board. EVERY SYSTEM should have at least ONE
3) Fix the bug that causes the wrong materials to spawn. Make sure that an Outbreak HGE ALWAYS contains Pharma Isolators (as per flavour text).
4) Provide more sources, such as:
a) Debris fields...When a system comes out of a war, debris fields should take the place of the conflict zones for a duration of 4 days, or until the next conflict starts. Debris fields will contain 5 different kinds of material nodes; Scrap electronics (G1 materials), Damaged Hardware (G2 materials), Microcomponents (G3 materials), High end scrap (G4 materials), and Salvageable materials (G5)
b) Combat... Currently the G5 mats that drop from combat are laughable. ALL Deadly and Elite ships of any size, should have a decent chance to drop a G5 component and ALL the newly engineered NPC ships (wing assassination, combat zone and pirate activity) should drop copious high end materials.
c) Random luck...these messages to perform a crappy mission for standard pay? Are rubbish. Tip offs are getting there, but need to be expanded. What would be great is if these tip-offs told you a place where a crashed ship would be, but actually had something worth getting! Like at least 10 G5 materials.
5) Fix the trade rates to be far more reasonable, AND....here comes the money shot...
Change the way Material Traders work entirely. I;ve floated this idea before and got the classic, b-b-b-b-but, gold sellers, mkay? I sincerely hope we can all get past that, right now, since the biggest enabler of gold selling was also introduced in 3.3 - core mining. Not only is my proposal which I will detail in just a second UNexploitable, FD have already empowered the gold sellers with these huge void opal transactions. I sincerely hope I won't have to be defending this idea from the 'gold sellers ruin game, mkay?' crowd, cos this proposal does not increase their ability or tools at all.
Materials auction house, player to player materials trading. To be perfectly clear let's put down some bullet points right away...
No credits for materials. Period. Purely a number of one material for a number of another
No trades of higher value than the highest value trade under the current system, nor lower than the lowest.
The game would need to change in the above ways (particularly in the way that there should be more ways to obtain the various materials) to make this work properly.
The Method...
A player goes to the materials trader and creates a transaction...He says to himself...damn, I really need Imperial Shielding, I never get near Imperial space, and I have too many Core Dynamics composites! He creates a trade saying that he is willing to trade up to 40 Core Dynamic Composites for up to 20 Imperial Shielding. Imperial player comes along..."oooh, look at this, I can get double my money for half my Imp shielding and pick up a bunch of CDCs that I see rarely! Awesome!" He trades away at 2 to 1 value for something he can farm easily. Dudey who offered the trade is also happy and thinks to himself, hm, that was easy, maybe I'll try 1 to 1 trade next time...and the story goes on.
Within a few months a material economy will be maintaining itself and a lot of the redesign that;s really needed can wait til 2020.
Quick note on Data since I mentioned it in the subject. Without going into ridiculous detail again, I think we all recognise that data is a real nightmare, especially DWEs. As well as being subject to the trading system proposed (I see no reason why material TYPES cannot be cross-traded; data for manufactured, raw for data, etc, the community will quickly determine the relative values), Data also needs more sources. Increase the drop rate of DWEs by a factor of 10, or at least make it so large ships give better chances or something like that. Even in wake rich areas, it (DWEs) is THE most painful data gathering activity and why I prefer to abuse the Jameson Cobra for all my data needs, despite that being a blatant exploit that I hate doing, and very boring.
If you made it down here, thanks for your patience, I look forward to reading any sensible comments, but more so the less sensible ones.
If you are one of those people that think it's fine now, that it is perfectly ok gameplay to get 150 things you don't want and swap them for 16 things you do want, I respect that, but this thread ain't for you, and I personally disagree vehemently with this position, I think it's made the materials search infinitely more grindy than it was before. At least you were anticipating that endorphin hit you'd et when an HGE popped and you would know it would contain what you were looking for.
A short history lesson...
The process of hunting for High Grade Emissions (hereafter: HGE) used to be painful, I'll be the first to admit that. A couple of times I almost wrote a guide and one time I did, only to have the system change a week later. Anyway, long story short, after a lot of practice, I was able to RELIABLY find what I wanted 9 times out of ten, and that one time, all I had to do was try a different system. In this model, there was one important variable (or rather non-variable), and that was that the HGE always inherited its properties from the state of the controlling faction. Therefore, if the controling faction was in outbreak, you'd get pharmaceutical isolators (or superpower variants if you were unlucky, CDCs and Imp Shielding). If you went to a warring system, you'd get MGAs or MSCs
The problem used to mainly be that you could circle around a system in deep space for hours and never see a single HGE. If you DID see an HGE though, two things were sure...1) You would get what you were looking for, and 2) There would be more HGEs if you exercised some patience. The weight of evidence I have seen (and your experience might be different) indicates that a lot of the negative steam reviews and negative comments on youtube videos about this game, were really centered around high end materials gathering (not just manufactured). This prompted FD to have a rethink, and they came up with what we have in 3.3.
Now...
Nowadays, things have changed around. It is no longer difficult to find an HGE (although it is still more difficult than perhaps it should be), what is now the problem is the fact that the content of an HGE cannot reasonably be predicted, even when you know all the states of the controlling faction and other factions in a system. The mistakes that were made are the following...
1) The spawn rate of HGEs was not increased enough, especially given the following points...
2) The HGE is no longer 'owned' by the controlling faction and no longer inherits that faction's ONE active state. Now there are potentially up to FOUR active states (let's say average 2.7 active states), and the HGE can be owned by any one of the (6 on average) factions in a system. That gives you a 1 in (6*2.7) chance of hitting the HGE you want, if that state is exclusive to only one faction in the system (and that's after the 50-50 chance of having HGEs at all, the other 50-50 chance since 3.3 that they will actually contain what they are supposed to contain, and a final 50-50 chance that the timer has enough time on it for you to reach it).
3) HGEs now seem to have a random chance of containing what you expect them to contain. e.g. Even if you did hit that 1 in (2*2*2*(6*2.7) lucky roll, and you are looking at an HGE with enough time on it to get to and it's in the right state (let's say outbreak), you drop in, expecting Pharma Isos, and you get....boom materials (those materials that you would expect in an HGE in boom or investment state, proto radiolics and proto heat radiators as well as SP specific stuff).
4) Given how nightmarish the new system is to find what you want, the trade ratios should have been adjusted.
So...
What you could do, is adjust any one of those major parameters; either up the spawn rate of HGEs a lot, or make sure an HGE is always owned by the controlling faction, establish a state 'priority' as regards HGE generation, and make them more consistent in what they drop (as per your own flippin' flavour text in the game, FD!!), and you could even reduce the trade-UP ratios at the trader. Most of these would make the system demonstrably more rewarding and better, BUT...
These are all band aids to a bad system. What's the REAL problem? The real problem is that there aren't enough ways to obtain the hard to obtain stuff. G5 manufactured come from only THREE sources in the whole game. Mission completion for 2 of them (Biotech Conductors and Exquisite Focus Crystals, and those are the EXCLUSIVE methods of collecting those...wth, fd?), and HGEs for the rest, except whatever you can get to drop from Deadly and higher big 4 NPCs in combat. So, here are my proposals for fixing this...
1) Make sure HGEs DO inherit the state of the CONTROLLING faction of a system so that their contents can be more easily predicted.
2) Increase the spawn rate of HGEs across the board. EVERY SYSTEM should have at least ONE
3) Fix the bug that causes the wrong materials to spawn. Make sure that an Outbreak HGE ALWAYS contains Pharma Isolators (as per flavour text).
4) Provide more sources, such as:
a) Debris fields...When a system comes out of a war, debris fields should take the place of the conflict zones for a duration of 4 days, or until the next conflict starts. Debris fields will contain 5 different kinds of material nodes; Scrap electronics (G1 materials), Damaged Hardware (G2 materials), Microcomponents (G3 materials), High end scrap (G4 materials), and Salvageable materials (G5)
b) Combat... Currently the G5 mats that drop from combat are laughable. ALL Deadly and Elite ships of any size, should have a decent chance to drop a G5 component and ALL the newly engineered NPC ships (wing assassination, combat zone and pirate activity) should drop copious high end materials.
c) Random luck...these messages to perform a crappy mission for standard pay? Are rubbish. Tip offs are getting there, but need to be expanded. What would be great is if these tip-offs told you a place where a crashed ship would be, but actually had something worth getting! Like at least 10 G5 materials.
5) Fix the trade rates to be far more reasonable, AND....here comes the money shot...
Change the way Material Traders work entirely. I;ve floated this idea before and got the classic, b-b-b-b-but, gold sellers, mkay? I sincerely hope we can all get past that, right now, since the biggest enabler of gold selling was also introduced in 3.3 - core mining. Not only is my proposal which I will detail in just a second UNexploitable, FD have already empowered the gold sellers with these huge void opal transactions. I sincerely hope I won't have to be defending this idea from the 'gold sellers ruin game, mkay?' crowd, cos this proposal does not increase their ability or tools at all.
Materials auction house, player to player materials trading. To be perfectly clear let's put down some bullet points right away...
No credits for materials. Period. Purely a number of one material for a number of another
No trades of higher value than the highest value trade under the current system, nor lower than the lowest.
The game would need to change in the above ways (particularly in the way that there should be more ways to obtain the various materials) to make this work properly.
The Method...
A player goes to the materials trader and creates a transaction...He says to himself...damn, I really need Imperial Shielding, I never get near Imperial space, and I have too many Core Dynamics composites! He creates a trade saying that he is willing to trade up to 40 Core Dynamic Composites for up to 20 Imperial Shielding. Imperial player comes along..."oooh, look at this, I can get double my money for half my Imp shielding and pick up a bunch of CDCs that I see rarely! Awesome!" He trades away at 2 to 1 value for something he can farm easily. Dudey who offered the trade is also happy and thinks to himself, hm, that was easy, maybe I'll try 1 to 1 trade next time...and the story goes on.
Within a few months a material economy will be maintaining itself and a lot of the redesign that;s really needed can wait til 2020.
Quick note on Data since I mentioned it in the subject. Without going into ridiculous detail again, I think we all recognise that data is a real nightmare, especially DWEs. As well as being subject to the trading system proposed (I see no reason why material TYPES cannot be cross-traded; data for manufactured, raw for data, etc, the community will quickly determine the relative values), Data also needs more sources. Increase the drop rate of DWEs by a factor of 10, or at least make it so large ships give better chances or something like that. Even in wake rich areas, it (DWEs) is THE most painful data gathering activity and why I prefer to abuse the Jameson Cobra for all my data needs, despite that being a blatant exploit that I hate doing, and very boring.
If you made it down here, thanks for your patience, I look forward to reading any sensible comments, but more so the less sensible ones.
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