Does anyone actually enjoy engineering?

[Jaggid Edje]

Frontier first took a stand against peeps pulling the plug when there was a fantastic opportunity to take long range smuggling missions to and from the bubble. Robigo was the best known destination, but there were a few others. The missions had massive pay outs, but they were dependent on not getting scanned. With so much virtual money at stake there were a whole bunch of shenanigans going on. Some players went out of their way to scan suspected smugglers, some greedy gits logged out rather than let themselves be scanned. There was no actual combat involved, but we all talked about 'combat logging'. And griefing. And nerf/don't nerf long range smuggling. (It got nerfed... ☹)

Before they updated the forum I could have send you links to threads about it. There are a lot of very funny people who used to post here, the internet handbags were fantastic!

Sadly, my search fu is weak, I can'tfind threads I was in, much less the mega threads the PvP crowd kept going.

I'll give you that they probably frown on it. I wouldn't ever do it because it's ...well...tedious to have to log back in. LOL

Check my previous post btw for an edit where I show you how your number of materials required for engineering pans out if you farm the materials specifically for efficiency. You way overstated the quantity needed to fully engineer a ship, by a massive margin.

 

[Feros-da-Grundig]

Fair enough- would 'signal logging' do for you? It's still specifically disallowed by FD,

No, relogging is fine.
There are three different things being discussed here, and you are conflating them all.

I assume he meant signal logging as task kill (or PS4 menu close applicaton in my case) at an HGE, since I believe I introduced the term to this thread and that's what it means. Not exit to menu and relog back in.

Signal logging is a variant of the original 3.0 HGE exploit (exit to menu to get HGE respawn) that was fixed, but if you task kill instead of exit to menu the exploit actually still works (albeit it is slower than original variation since need to reload game).

This behavior is indeed prohibited, so I don't think he was conflating there.

There used to be another exploit where you could task kill during the jump screen animation to drastically reduce the distance for long super cruises like hutton orbital. That was used very commonly, and no one ever was punished.

Various PvP groups conducted experiments creating dedicated CLogging accounts, and none were punished.

Thus I do not expect to ever see any real repercussions for any type of task killing, despite it being "prohibited". So if it's never actually punished, the prohibition means little or nothing and the whole discussion basically meaningless.

Sure if someone either combat logs or menu logs against me (I don't differentiate), it will make me consider them a garbage player, but that means nothing aside from among a small population of PvPers. And task killing to reduce grind, I don't see that as garbage play at all since it's the grind that's garbage.

 

[Bill Clement]

No, relogging is fine.
There are three different things being discussed here, and you are conflating them all.

Bob, you're picking a fight for absolutely no reason- I've already said I'll go with whatever terminology suits you. But we both know there's a very definite difference between logging out using the menu and whatever term you prefer to use for not logging out correctly. One is permitted, the other is not. One (in the very specific case we're talking about) won't allow you to respawn a signal source, the other will. Since Frontier went out of their way to prevent the signal source respawning when we log in and out, it follows that what we're talking about is working around a fix they made to the game. We're talking about doing something to exploit the way the game works. And that is against the EULA we both signed.

Now I'm happy to use colloquial expressions like 'log', 'combat log' and 'exploit'. You know what I mean by those expressions, otherwise you wouldn't be sending multiple posts my way demanding I retract everything I've posted over the last couple of days on the subject. I don't see why you're so unhappy with the words I've used, but hey, live and let live, I'll use your terminology if you prefer.

Now clearly state what you want me to use in each instance:

1 Logging out using the menu.
2. Logging out by other means in order to gain an advantage otherwise denied by using the game menus.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

...

Sadly, my search fu is weak, I can'tfind threads I was in, much less the mega threads the PvP crowd kept going.

I think search got a lot better with the new forum.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I assume he meant signal logging as task kill (or PS4 menu close applicaton in my case) at an HGE, since I believe I introduced the term to this thread and that's what it means. Not exit to menu and relog back in.

Signal logging is a variant of the original 3.0 HGE exploit (exit to menu to get HGE respawn) that was fixed, but if you task kill instead of exit to menu the exploit actually still works (albeit it is slower than original variation since need to reload game).

This behavior is indeed prohibited, so I don't think he was conflating there.

There used to be another exploit where you could task kill during the jump screen animation to drastically reduce the distance for long super cruises like hutton orbital. That was used very commonly, and no one ever was punished.

Various PvP groups conducted experiments creating dedicated CLogging accounts, and none were punished.

Thus I do not expect to ever see any real repercussions for any type of task killing, despite it being "prohibited". So if it's never actually punished, the prohibition means little or nothing and the whole discussion basically meaningless.

Sure if someone either combat logs or menu logs against me (I don't differentiate), it will make me consider them a garbage player, but that means nothing aside from among a small population of PvPers. And task killing to reduce grind, I don't see that as garbage play at all since it's the grind that's garbage.

That's some clever use of logging mechanics. I just rage quit with alt-f4 when I feel that engineer itch creepin' up me rear.

 

[rootsrat]

Yes I do. It allowed me to try different aspects of the game to gather some necessary materials. But I take it slowly and don't rush it. Most of my materials are from organic gameplay, running missions, fighting in CZ's etc. I also use material traders often, as and when required.

Most of my ships are half-engineered to the level that I could afford at the time and I'm chipping away at them slowly.

Only 1 of my ships is fully engineered, and I mean every single module to the max. It's my main ship, Anaconda.

If people make themselves grind for materials, because they want super-ship like now, this very instance, and then complain about the said grind then it's totally on them lol

"Ok, I'm going to spend next 5 hours relogging. I hate it, but I'll do it anyway. I hate this game!"

Dude... you made this choice, they are other ways to get materials. What's that? You want that uber ship like NOW? Well that's still your choice, nobody is forcing you, but you

Oh, you're throwing a tantrum now and the game is stupid. I see.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Yes I do. It allowed me to try different aspects of the game to gather some necessary materials. But I take it slowly and don't rush it. Most of my materials are from organic gameplay, running missions, fighting I'm CZ's etc. I also use material traders often, as and when required.

Most of my ships are half-engineered to the level that I could afford at the time and I'm chipping away at them slowly.

Only 1 of my ships is fully engineered, and I mean every single module.

If people make themselves grind for materials, because they want super-ship like now, this very instance, and then complain about the said grind then it's totally on them lol

"Ok, I'm going to spend next 5 hours relogging. I hate it, but I'll do it anyway. I hate this game!"

Dude... you made this choice, they are other ways to get materials. What's that? You want that uber ship like NOW? Well that's still your choice, nobody is forcing you, but you

Oh, you're throwing a tantrum now and the game is stupid. I see.

Ah, yes - nobody forces you. We have dismissed these claims. When we marvelled at the peashooting bonanza and finally had to ram the enemy to get the stupid job over with.

 

[Bill Clement]

Show me where it is against the ToS? What I've seen makes it very clear that it is a bannable offense if you do it when in ship-to-ship combat. I have not seen it anywhere stated it's a problem when you are all by your lonesome at a signal.



If you read my original post, I said "a couple of weeks". The two days was of "intense farming" but I continued to collect materials as I did other things for the next few weeks. The distinction being, 2 days of play it's all I was doing, and the main focus of my play, the rest of the time I just got whatever I got when doing other things. I listed some of those other things I did over that period in the post you quoted.

I continue to gather materials as I do other things, despite not needing any more at the moment. Today, for example, I've been doing CZ's. I don't gather materials while fighting, but when the CZ ends in victory, I stop to gather what materials are still available before exiting. I also drop in at the nav beacon, scan it, and then check for HGE's when jumping into systems unless I'm in a hurry.

I expect I'll be able to fully engineer the next several ships I buy the same day I buy them as a result....and if I continue on this same path, I will continue to accumulate materials faster than I use them. And that ultimately was the point I was trying to convey. That materials are everywhere, you don't need to make it into a grind unless you want to (or are just starting out, like I was for those first 2 days of intensive farming).

Regarding your material cost numbers. The average number of rolls needed to get to max (G5) by rank is G1: 1 G2: 2 G3: 3 G4: 3.5 G5: 7ish
Taking Dirty drives to thrusters as an example, the total materials required for taking it to G5 are:

• 6 grade 1
• 9 grade 2
• 17 grade 3
• 8 grade 4
• 7 grade 5

Now, at the material trader, you can trade in a single G5 for 81 G1, 27 G2, 9 G3 or 3 G4, so that thruster upgrade only actually "requires" about 12-14 G5 materials. Across 10 modules (your number, not mine), that's only 120 to 140 G5 materials. When you pick a single thing up, you get 3 of them, so that's only say 40 to 50 pickups.
Granted, if you have to trade outside of the same row, that's multiplied by a factor of 3, but still...100 or so pickups to engineer an entire ship.
That's nothing.
My days of intense farming involved only targeting G5 material (G4 for raws, seeing as there is no G5 for those), it makes no sense to actively farm anything else given the ability to trade down. And yes, I do pick up lower grade things that are also there...but I certainly don't actively go looking for them.

My issue is I've gone through various stages since November. Initially I just grabbed everything. That's inefficient, I wasn't getting anywhere. Then I tried farming. That took my will to live- I detest those log out, log in, SRV run here, scan the same darn thing a hundred times type of activities. More recently I've been trying for high quality mats (preferably the right type). HGE spawns are supposed to be more frequent now, suggesting Frontier see that as the 'preferred' farming method.

None of the various ways have gotten me anywhere fast. I'm really thoroughly hacked off with the whole sorry show. It's not fun, I don't want to be doing it and when I've finally had enough I come on here and vent for a bit.

Who knows, the thread has legs, maybe Frontier will actually take some kind of action? You can hope, right?

On module rolls- do you play PC or console? I've never had a single module roll, ever. I laugh out loud when I get lower grades in three or four rolls! If you're on PC as well, it would seem that the process is even more random than I thought.

 

[Feros-da-Grundig]

Dude... you made this choice, they are other ways to get materials. What's that? You want that uber ship like NOW? Well that's still your choice, nobody is forcing you, but you

Oh, you're throwing a tantrum now and the game is stupid. I see.

We sacrifice time doing boring things to then be able to do fun things.

There's a disconnect between the need to grind for mats for PvP vs PvE. Fully engineered ships are not required for anything in PvE; they may make a few edge case tasks marginally easier (the most challenging CZs or assinations missions, etc) , but aside from G5 LR FSD for explorers you can pretty much do every activity in just about any ship and you don't really miss out on much or find it more difficult with a G3 ship or even a vanilla ship. Sure some PvE'ers might choose to have a hangar full of specialized G5 ships b/c they want to, but it is in no way a requirement.

For PvP, it's more important to both have fully engineered ships (since everyone does, and thus not having one is a huge disadvantage) and also have more than one of them b/c a lot the variety and interest comes from different matchups and tactics.

Without this, you'll have less fun and won't succeed in PvP. It is simply the way it is.

Plenty of folks will dismiss this as PvP/Gankabois "tantrums" but it's perfectly rational to resent and discuss (within reason) pointless and repetitive tasks that are required to be performed in order to achieve a goal you want. This surely also applies to a lot of things outside the game.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

My issue is I've gone through various stages since November. Initially I just grabbed everything. That's inefficient, I wasn't getting anywhere. Then I tried farming. That took my will to live- I detest those log out, log in, SRV run here, scan the same darn thing a hundred times type of activities. More recently I've been trying for high quality mats (preferably the right type). HGE spawns are supposed to be more frequent now, suggesting Frontier see that as the 'preferred' farming method.

None of the various ways have gotten me anywhere fast. I'm really thoroughly hacked off with the whole sorry show. It's not fun, I don't want to be doing it and when I've finally had enough I come on here and vent for a bit.

Who knows, the thread has legs, maybe Frontier will actually take some kind of action? You can hope, right?

On module rolls- do you play PC or console? I've never had a single module roll, ever. I laugh out loud when I get lower grades in three or four rolls! If you're on PC as well, it would seem that the process is even more random than I thought.

Hope? Well hope harder - it took 2 years to rework the cancer version to mouseclick simulator. Best thing to hope for they get bright spark of enlightenment and instance different zones/regions for different difficulties rather than obsess on the rng generator they fancy so much.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

My issue is I've gone through various stages since November. Initially I just grabbed everything. That's inefficient, I wasn't getting anywhere. Then I tried farming. That took my will to live- I detest those log out, log in, SRV run here, scan the same darn thing a hundred times type of activities. More recently I've been trying for high quality mats (preferably the right type). HGE spawns are supposed to be more frequent now, suggesting Frontier see that as the 'preferred' farming method.

None of the various ways have gotten me anywhere fast. I'm really thoroughly hacked off with the whole sorry show. It's not fun, I don't want to be doing it and when I've finally had enough I come on here and vent for a bit.

Who knows, the thread has legs, maybe Frontier will actually take some kind of action? You can hope, right?

On module rolls- do you play PC or console? I've never had a single module roll, ever. I laugh out loud when I get lower grades in three or four rolls! If you're on PC as well, it would seem that the process is even more random than I thought.

I wouldn't be opposed to Frontier making some quality of life improvements to the process, that's for certain. I haven't found it particularly tedious, personally, but it could be better. The whole approach to scooping is annoying to me, for example. I want a tractor beam (and yes I know I can use limpets, I do in my FDL cause scooping in it is unbearable...but even in the SRV I wish I didn't have to do the whole process to scoop).

Regarding my platform, I'm on PC. Engineering grade 1 only takes a single roll to unlock G2 for me, once the engineer is at rank 5 that is. To level them up the number of rolls required averages 2, 4, 6, 6 for grades 1 to 4. But it only takes that one single module and after that it's consistently 1, 2, 3, 3 or 4, ~7 for the average. Sometimes a grade will take 1 extra roll, but other times 1 fewer....so using that average when determining what materials I would need has worked out pretty well.

You aren't continuing to roll a lower grade upgrade until it gets completely maxed, are you? Cause you don't need to, as soon as the next grade up lights up....switch to the higher grade. You get NOTHING extra for continuing to roll the lower grade until it is at max.

 

[Maymo]

On module rolls- do you play PC or console? I've never had a single module roll, ever. I laugh out loud when I get lower grades in three or four rolls! If you're on PC as well, it would seem that the process is even more random than I thought.

Once you have max reputation with an engineer it’s common to only need single rolls on all future g1 and even g2 mods. I don’t think I’ve ever had a single roll on a g3 though...

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Bob, you're picking a fight for absolutely no reason- I've already said I'll go with whatever terminology suits you. But we both know there's a very definite difference between logging out using the menu and whatever term you prefer to use for not logging out correctly. One is permitted, the other is not. One (in the very specific case we're talking about) won't allow you to respawn a signal source, the other will. Since Frontier went out of their way to prevent the signal source respawning when we log in and out, it follows that what we're talking about is working around a fix they made to the game. We're talking about doing something to exploit the way the game works. And that is against the EULA we both signed.

Now I'm happy to use colloquial expressions like 'log', 'combat log' and 'exploit'. You know what I mean by those expressions, otherwise you wouldn't be sending multiple posts my way demanding I retract everything I've posted over the last couple of days on the subject. I don't see why you're so unhappy with the words I've used, but hey, live and let live, I'll use your terminology if you prefer.

Now clearly state what you want me to use in each instance:

1 Logging out using the menu.
2. Logging out by other means in order to gain an advantage otherwise denied by using the game menus.

I'm not picking a fight, I'm trying to help you straighten out your jargon.

There are 3 distinct situations.


Do you understand that combat logging, refers to avoiding combat?

Because you seem confused on that point.

 

[baqar79]

Since 3.0 at least the process of rolling on modifications has been made a lot easier. The random slot machine mechanics may of given me bragging rights on occasion, but the pain of burning G5 materials for no guaranteed gain is something I'm happy to forget.

Since my last post I've been trying to upgrade my long neglected Dolphin, and am wondering what happened to the Pharmaceutical Isolators. At least in the past an HGE in an Outbreak system was a pretty good guarantee, but I had no such luck finding a single one of these (HGE's were there, just all different things).

I like the trading system, but the sideways G5->G5 material rates are simply ridiculous. Dropping them from 6:1 to 3:1 would greatly cut down the amount of collection work and I don't think 2:1 is being to unfair.

Whatever way I look at it, G5 materials in a different row at the trader, should still be more valuable than G4 materials in the same row as my targeted G5 material in my opinion.

 

[rootsrat]

We sacrifice time doing boring things to then be able to do fun things.

There's a disconnect between the need to grind for mats for PvP vs PvE. Fully engineered ships are not required for anything in PvE; they may make a few edge case tasks marginally easier (the most challenging CZs or assinations missions, etc) , but aside from G5 LR FSD for explorers you can pretty much do every activity in just about any ship and you don't really miss out on much or find it more difficult with a G3 ship or even a vanilla ship. Sure some PvE'ers might choose to have a hangar full of specialized G5 ships b/c they want to, but it is in no way a requirement.

For PvP, it's more important to both have fully engineered ships (since everyone does, and thus not having one is a huge disadvantage) and also have more than one of them b/c a lot the variety and interest comes from different matchups and tactics.

Without this, you'll have less fun and won't succeed in PvP. It is simply the way it is.

Plenty of folks will dismiss this as PvP/Gankabois "tantrums" but it's perfectly rational to resent and discuss (within reason) pointless and repetitive tasks that are required to be performed in order to achieve a goal you want. This surely also applies to a lot of things outside the game.

Yes, I fully agree that for PVP it is actually pretty much mandatory. An exception to the rule, as majority of activities in the game are PvE really. But yes, I feel for you PVP-ers...

 

[Vorxian]

Remind me what 'engineering' is again?

 

[B1rdy]

If people make themselves grind for materials, because they want super-ship like now, this very instance, and then complain about the said grind then it's totally on them lol

This is only partially true. Player can of course chose the activity they want to pursue, but it is the game that often times only provides a single, simple activity to get certain mats or data. Mat traders being just a workaround to this problem.

 

[rootsrat]

This is only partially true. Player can of course chose the activity they want to pursue, but it is the game that often times only provides a single, simple activity to get certain mats or data. Mat traders being just a workaround to this problem.

I thought you get get every material in at least 2 ways. Is that not the case?

I wouldn't call traders a workaround. They're more of a convenience. Quality of Life improvement.

Of course more ways of getting materials would be good, but - to me at least - it's not a "problem"... precisely because we have mat traders.

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

I can't say I enjoy engineering, but I do enjoy the end result. Faster thrusters, more efficient power plant and better jump range.

 

[govny]

engineering is a tool to enhance your ship and doing better what you would do without it.
do you enjoy a snow shovel?
no?
try to clean your house sidewalk wihout one.