Trying to upgrade thrusters. Argh, this is why I hate engineers

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

Some general tips that helped me with the material gathering:

• Leverage Dav's Hope for manufactured materials
• Leverage the Jameson Crash site and/or Bugkiller for Encoded materials
• Use a site like EDDB to do targeted planetary landing/gathering for the Raw materials you need. Go after planets that have decent % of the material in question AND volcanic activity, then gather only at the Geological signal locations. Density of materials is much higher that way.
• Specifically target gathering the G4 Raws in the 'rows' that you need materials from rather than worrying about gathering all of the G1-3 of them, then just trade at material traders for any of those G1's to G3's that you did not just get while working on the G4's.

Doing the above, I gathered all raw materials i needed to do my planned upgrades for all of the engineers in a single afternoon.

Ok, I'll do some Dav's Hope and Jameson Crash site and Anaconda crash site relogging. Sounds like fun.

I would be so much happier if raw materials were also mission rewards.

This would be so much better if they made sure that you could get what you need just following whatever career path you've chosen.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

This would be so much better if they made sure that you could get what you need just following whatever career path you've chosen.

totally agree with you there.

Or even better, keep it how it is, but allow players to trade materials with each other on a 1 for 1 basis by grade across types.
Some players enjoy surface prospecting, others enjoy combat. If the first could trade raw materials with the 2nd, I think that'd be a pretty nice game addition with nothing lost..."players" as a whole would still have to spend the same amount of time doing the material gathering, but each would be able to do it in a way that they enjoy.

 

[Vedmo]

When you are blowing up ships do you collect the materials they drop? You aquire data simply from having them targeted. I think you posted earlier of doing some mining, which will get you raw materials.

If Dav's Hope, etc. doesn't sound fun, don't do it. You absolutely do not have to repeat relog farm those places to fill up on mats.

The way I look at it, I'm always going to need more materials, so I implement their acquisition into my gameplay. When I blow up a ship, I loot the remnants. When I'm traveling through the bubble, I stop at each system and check out the USS's. Deep core mining, toss on some lasers too, filter out what you don't want taking up cargo space, and sap the rocks for basic raw mats before blowing them up. I also never take credits over materials for any mission rewards.

I visit material traders frequently to dump mats that are maxed, and fill in what I don't have a lot of on such occassions.

I won't argue gathering surface mats of higher grade can come through normal gameplay when you don't normally drive an SRV around, but they are by far the easiest materials to quickly find and fill up on demand.

When you treat materials as the valuable loot they are, they tend to build up pretty quickly in my experience.

 

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

It's FOMO* that causes commanders to chase their tails to reach the top of Level 5 immediately.

The Level 5 will still be there later and, if you follow Jaggid's advice, you will enjoy a more pleasant game.

*Fear Of Missing Out

No, it's a necessity. For example, people chase G5 FSD's to make the travel grind more bearable. I'm chasing Thrusters to make the Krait more maneuverable so I have a better chance of survival in combat zones. And some players chase G5 just so they can have a fighting chance if ganked in open or with PvP.

Many games have a process for upgrading or crafting. You usually just find the items you need as you play the game.

A fix would be to just have a single materials trader at every station with outfitting and allow trading across material types. I should be able to trade a G5 raw for any G5 data or manufactured material.

As it is the system doesn't feel like a simulator. It feels like a game. I would be happy if they made it such that things you do in the game feel natural for your role. It's hard to feel like Han Solo when you're shooting rocks on a planet or scanning wakes at a distribution center. The upgrade process shouldn't be so intrusive.

Anyway, I know it's not going to change. I just hope they consider consolidating all the material traders into one and allowing trades across material type.

 

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

totally agree with you there.

Or even better, keep it how it is, but allow players to trade materials with each other on a 1 for 1 basis by grade across types.
Some players enjoy surface prospecting, others enjoy combat. If the first could trade raw materials with the 2nd, I think that'd be a pretty nice game addition with nothing lost..."players" as a whole would still have to spend the same amount of time doing the material gathering, but each would be able to do it in a way that they enjoy.

Trading by grade across types would be great. Just have one material trader that deals with all materials.

 

[cmdr milesred]

FYI for rare surface mats, there have been numerous discoveries lately regarding Biological sites.....so if you need to, besides exploring and trying to find some yourself, which I am sure you will after you've seen these places...check out this thread, you will not regret it..

SRV prospecting in 3.3

I was low on some mats such as selenium (as always), so last night I decided to go to my bookmarked planet for selenium and see how this works with the new tools. I read something on these forums about geological features as a source of raw materials, but when I get to my selenium planet, I dont...

forums.frontier.co.uk

there are a bunch of places listed in that thread.
If you are after something that's not at the biological sites, as long as its listed in the bodies info and there are also geological sites there, try them and you might be able to get more than 1 boatload of mats from one body.
The big diff between the bio and the geo sites, is that the geo sites are very limited for quantity, whereas the bio sites are sooooo full of mats....as an example if you go to say HIP 36601 C 1 a 0.09 G 154,099 Polonium (from Ashenfox)...you will get 100% full on polonium in well under an hour.

 

[Lightspeed]

No, it's a necessity. For example, people chase G5 FSD's to make the travel grind more bearable. I'm chasing Thrusters to make the Krait more maneuverable so I have a better chance of survival in combat zones. And some players chase G5 just so they can have a fighting chance if ganked in open or with PvP.

Many games have a process for upgrading or crafting. You usually just find the items you need as you play the game.

A fix would be to just have a single materials trader at every station with outfitting and allow trading across material types. I should be able to trade a G5 raw for any G5 data or manufactured material.

As it is the system doesn't feel like a simulator. It feels like a game. I would be happy if they made it such that things you do in the game feel natural for your role. It's hard to feel like Han Solo when you're shooting rocks on a planet or scanning wakes at a distribution center. The upgrade process shouldn't be so intrusive.

Anyway, I know it's not going to change. I just hope they consider consolidating all the material traders into one and allowing trades across material type.

Have you tried the Guardian upgrades for Shields and FSD yet? The "mini-games" which they involve feel less gamey and challenge your memory, spatial awareness and SRV skill.

 

[Lightspeed]

Trading by grade across types would be great. Just have one material trader that deals with all materials.

We received the three types of material trader as a concession. Before that, you had to visit each Engineer. One material trader for everything might be seen by FD as going too far in that direction and a reason not to give concessions in the first place.

 

[Vardaugas]

If you don't like the SRV for raw materials, you could go to small Thargoid barnacles with a small ship, shoot the spikes and collect the materials they drop. All rarities drop from them and a small ship can pick them up from the ground without getting stuck on debris. Bonus are meta alloys you can sell off or throw at a technology broker.

 

[NecasekO]

Some general tips that helped me with the material gathering:

• Leverage Dav's Hope for manufactured materials
• Leverage the Jameson Crash site and/or Bugkiller for Encoded materials
• Use a site like EDDB to do targeted planetary landing/gathering for the Raw materials you need. Go after planets that have decent % of the material in question AND volcanic activity, then gather only at the Geological signal locations. Density of materials is much higher that way.
• Specifically target gathering the G4 Raws in the 'rows' that you need materials from rather than worrying about gathering all of the G1-3 of them, then just trade at material traders for any of those G1's to G3's that you did not just get while working on the G4's.

So you're saying that material gathering is not too bad IF you do research on 3rd party sites AND use multiple exploits (relogging at specific locations).

I disagree - this is proof that material gathering in ED is terrible game design, as are material traders and several other parts of engineering.

 

[cmdr milesred]

for manufactured mats, I have been to dav's hope...I still prefer going to an anarchy outbreak system and finding the convoy beacons, kill all the sick people and take the goodies they leave behind. roleplay, these folks are sick and being ferried into the local star, might as well help them out.

for the data needed for some things..there was always the famine systems for scanning...now that everyone is full of thargoid meat and no more starving around....I just go to a busy place, usually in front of a very busy station and get all the data I need. finding a station that npc's are delivering mined stuff too that is very busy, is fairly easy to do...places like this are very common...boom state seems best as the payout is better so it becomes very busy

 

[Exeider]

Unlock your engineers and pin blueprints. Engineering suddenly becomes much more convenient. Your fault was in avoiding it and now you have to chase the unlocks. This grind is of your own creation.

That's a bit of a harsh reply. I mean I know Engineers are about a progression, not only of each engineer but also the "tree" they are connected to. But the progression isn't made very clear as what leads to what. and Honestly I find the whole pinning of blueprints just silly, being able to access only a SINGLE unlock per engineer. Either you should be able to access all the unlocks you have remotely or do away with the whole thing and force people to visit the engineer. I could live with it either way because since I like using experimentals, you HAVE to go to the engineer anyway to get it anyway.

personally though I'd like to see Engineers expanded into a full crafting system where YOU can train in the disciplines yourself and become an engineer, something like Primary Discipline allows you train up to grade 5, secondary to grade 4, tertiary grade 3. Then again, a full crafting system is only needed if a game allows P2P trading, but whatever, that's another conversation.

 

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

FYI for rare surface mats, there have been numerous discoveries lately regarding Biological sites.....so if you need to, besides exploring and trying to find some yourself, which I am sure you will after you've seen these places...check out this thread, you will not regret it..

Thanks. That's good advice. I've done that once before. It's better than just driving around a planet shooting random rocks but the slopes and low G made it really painful tbh. It's still not a fun engaging activity. It's a chore.

I hope they are hard at work eliminating tedious chores from the game or giving people plenty of options to get what they need while playing their career.

 

[Vedmo]

We received the three types of material trader as a concession. Before that, you had to visit each Engineer. One material trader for everything might be seen by FD as going too far in that direction and a reason not to give concessions in the first place.

I was recently trying to remember how it used to work, and was having a hard time of it.

Was it just one list of mats with a cap of a thousand? I remember having to sort through and dump stuff in favor of what I'd just found.

 

[cmdr milesred]

the slopes at geo sites and any srv driving in them tends to be a real pain
but I can say for me anyway that all the bio sites I have been at were super easy to drive and seriously fast to fill up.

 

[Cmdr Nemo]

The one thing I dislike about engineering is; if one makes an error it can not be undone. I mean not all mods need to be g5'ed. If one spends the time and gather's the mats to g5 something and it works out to be worse than a g4. There's no undo. One has to start the engineering of that mod from scratch, which requires all the same materials one has already paid once to get back to a g4.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

We received the three types of material trader as a concession. Before that, you had to visit each Engineer. One material trader for everything might be seen by FD as going too far in that direction and a reason not to give concessions in the first place.

That is why I said it would be nice if you could do it as trade between players. FDev has really missed the mark with designing game systems that encourage and foster player interaction (both cooperative and competitive). This is just one thing where I feel they could remedy that (there are 100 more).

Instead of tacking on things to address problems willy nilly like they seem to have done (i.e. adding the material traders to address shortcomings in their loot system), they could be thoughtfully making these changes in a way that enhances the multiplayer aspect of the game (i.e. allowing players to trade materials). It'd be better for their bottom line in the long run and probably be much more accepted by the community than the current system apparantly is (based on comments here).

This is just, of course, my opinion. Anyone is free to disagree.

So you're saying that material gathering is not too bad IF you do research on 3rd party sites AND use multiple exploits (relogging at specific locations).

I disagree - this is proof that material gathering in ED is terrible game design, as are material traders and several other parts of engineering.

I was merely providing the OP with some suggestions to help it not be so bad of an experience, for him. The comment you quote was in no way supposed to be construed as a commentary on the game design or systems in place.

You don't disagree with what I said, you disagree that it "should be this way"....unfortunately, it IS this way so all we can do is the best we can do with what is in place until (if ever) FDev changes it.

 

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

We received the three types of material trader as a concession. Before that, you had to visit each Engineer. One material trader for everything might be seen by FD as going too far in that direction and a reason not to give concessions in the first place.

I don't know why it's like pulling teeth with them just to make the game more enjoyable.

If they want this game to grow it needs to be more intuitive and feel more natural. I've never seen anything as convoluted as the materials trade grid in any game.

They should focus on making this feel more like a simulator where your activities are those that you would expect someone living in the year 3033.

 

[Lightspeed]

I was recently trying to remember how it used to work, and was having a hard time of it.

Was it just one list of mats with a cap of a thousand? I remember having to sort through and dump stuff in favor of what I'd just found.

Two years ago the cap was increased to 1000 total, from a ridiculously low number. So we had to throw away mats in favor of others.

Also, remember the early system when we also had to use cargo materials? Which we found and desperately tried to cling onto in the ship, while pirates made a bee-line for our "tasty cargo" ?

 

[SciTrekker]

You like combat? Outfit some cargo racks (4t will do if you have enough iron and nickle to synth 4 limpets) and collector limpet controller. Let the limpets collect the kill droppings while you continue slaughtering the Wanted. Helps to stay in place to let them collect the mats if you have >4t cargo and put some commods in there. The baddies will come to you.