Raw Materials Ship Display Bug

[Uiros Ueramos]

Quoting a Cmdr, in another thread, in this same forum:

I checked in-game materials inventory and the material trader. There are some oddities and discrepancies there.
Checking inventory we have:
Grade 5 - Antimony and Polonium
Grade 4 - Ruthenium, Selenium, Technetium, Tellurium, Yttrium and Zirconium
Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials have the same cap, 150 units. However, Zirconium (G5) has a 250 cap - same as a Grade 2 material
Grade 1 materials have a cap of 300, but not Boron (G1) which has a cap of 200

Yet, the material trader is splitting the Raws in 7 Categories. All the top grade in each catgory is Grade 4, there are no Grade 5s
Also Zirconium appears as a Grade 2 in Cat.7 and Boron is Grade 3 in the same Cat.7

So kind of a mess between in-ship inventory and the material trader - mess that might be reflected in missing Selenium from Crystal Shard - unless it was a deliberate omission and the mess above is just the typical FDev at work.

When is this going to be sorted out and be similar to the material trader display?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Quoting a Cmdr, in another thread, in this same forum:

When is this going to be sorted out and be similar to the material trader display?

Yes. There are already, unavoidably without introducing worse issues than they fix, three different raw material grading schemes in use - geological, engineering, and economic. (Which is why Selenium doesn't appear in Crystal Shards - but can be obtained by laser mining - while other raw materials take a higher slot in an engineering recipe than you might expect)

Adding a fourth for display that doesn't match any of the first three is excessive. Hopefully it's on the list to be fixed in the September update.

 

[Uiros Ueramos]

Yes. There are already, unavoidably without introducing worse issues than they fix, three different raw material grading schemes in use - geological, engineering, and economic. (Which is why Selenium doesn't appear in Crystal Shards - but can be obtained by laser mining - while other raw materials take a higher slot in an engineering recipe than you might expect)

Adding a fourth for display that doesn't match any of the first three is excessive. Hopefully it's on the list to be fixed in the September update.

I was asking for uniformity. A single classification, not four different ones. Where did it seemed, from my text, that I was asking to complicate matters more?

 

[Deleted member 38366]

(Which is why Selenium doesn't appear in Crystal Shards - but can be obtained by laser mining - while other raw materials take a higher slot in an engineering recipe than you might expect)

Well, Selenium does appear - but only in Crystalline Fragments, which otherwise contains only Grade 2 Ekements.
It used to be in Crystalline Clusters instead, where it'd belong (normally Grade 3/4).

I guess it's Bug #975 or something.
The inconsistent Element Grades are indeed multiple layers of oversights and got quite a bit out-of-sync across the board.

Earliest expected fix for this Grading mess is likely the next major (small) Update, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Around here and these days, it's normal for Bugs to be older than most Player Accounts xD

 

[Schmack]

Well, Selenium does appear - but only in Crystalline Fragments, which otherwise contains only Grade 2 Ekements.
It used to be in Crystalline Clusters instead, where it'd belong (normally Grade 3/4).

I guess it's Bug #975 or something.
The inconsistent Element Grades are indeed multiple layers of oversights and got quite a bit out-of-sync across the board.

Earliest expected fix for this Grading mess is likely the next major (small) Update, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Around here and these days, it's normal for Bugs to be older than most Player Accounts xD

It seems so many different endeavors have caveats, almost like it's part of the game itself.

You know what got fixed in a hurry? Gold rushes like Smeaton, like skimmer missions, like the 50m Cr trade runs. For some reason these other things, like HGE generation for some mats, odd NPC behavior, mat bugs, ship bugs, missions bugs... they just stick around.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I was asking for uniformity. A single classification, not four different ones. Where did it seemed, from my text, that I was asking to complicate matters more?

We currently have four different classifications. And I fully agree with you that this should be simplified - however, the simplest possible without other changes which will also cause bigger complaints than the occasional bit of display inconsistency does is three, not one.

Getting to a single classification would be extremely difficult. The three necessary classifications at the moment - and it would certainly help if the display classification was at least consistent with one of these! - are:

Geological: this is the oldest classification, and has four grades. It determines which planets the elements appear on according to the 3-2-1 rule - each planet has 3 G2, 2 G3, and 1 G4, and all the G1s (except metal-rich, which only have Iron and Nickel at G1). Getting rid of this classification in favour of another classification would change the minerals found on each planet, invalidating all the work explorers have done over the last few years cataloguing them. This would be extremely unpopular.

Engineering: this is a five grade classification determining where the raw material sits in engineering recipes. This could be switched back to a four grade classification, which would make raw materials less valuable in general for engineering, and mean that manufactured or data G5s replaced them in the G5 recipes where a raw is currently in the "5" slot. This would make high-grade engineering somewhat slower and more difficult (as raws are much easier to collect in bulk than data or manufactured) and would likely be at least somewhat unpopular.

Economic: this is a four grade classification (technically five, but the fifth grade is completely empty) determining how the material traders react to it, and how much of each material you can carry at once. This could use one of the other classifications, but the problem is that there aren't an equal number of materials at each grade in those classifications, and material trading requires that (or you end up with materials which you can only cross-trade for). They already had to invent three new laser-mining-only raw materials (which are pretty rare even if you do a lot of laser mining!) to make it a rectangle, even after moving Selenium to G4. To make this match the geological grading would involve introducing four more new raw materials, none of which could be obtained from planets, none of which would have any current use, and three of which would trade with Selenium (i.e. Selenium could only be cross-traded for raw materials which you might actually want). Matching economic to the engineering scheme would be even more full of holes. This would, in general, make raw material trading less straightforward, which would be at least somewhat unpopular.

Getting rid of the fourth separate display classification and making the display consistently one of the others - probably has to be economic - would on the other hand be a very sensible thing to do


The broad problem is that the original geological and engineering classifications massively pre-date the idea of material traders, so they didn't know back then that the material types list had to be rectangular ... and the original engineering recipes (which only lasted a few months) were fairly irregular in terms of material usage so the engineering grades were retrospectively added on after engineering had been developed. It's not good - but all the alternatives seem worse.

 

[Uiros Ueramos]

We currently have four different classifications. And I fully agree with you that this should be simplified - however, the simplest possible without other changes which will also cause bigger complaints than the occasional bit of display inconsistency does is three, not one.

Getting to a single classification would be extremely difficult. The three necessary classifications at the moment - and it would certainly help if the display classification was at least consistent with one of these! - are:

Geological: this is the oldest classification, and has four grades. It determines which planets the elements appear on according to the 3-2-1 rule - each planet has 3 G2, 2 G3, and 1 G4, and all the G1s (except metal-rich, which only have Iron and Nickel at G1). Getting rid of this classification in favour of another classification would change the minerals found on each planet, invalidating all the work explorers have done over the last few years cataloguing them. This would be extremely unpopular.

Engineering: this is a five grade classification determining where the raw material sits in engineering recipes. This could be switched back to a four grade classification, which would make raw materials less valuable in general for engineering, and mean that manufactured or data G5s replaced them in the G5 recipes where a raw is currently in the "5" slot. This would make high-grade engineering somewhat slower and more difficult (as raws are much easier to collect in bulk than data or manufactured) and would likely be at least somewhat unpopular.

Economic: this is a four grade classification (technically five, but the fifth grade is completely empty) determining how the material traders react to it, and how much of each material you can carry at once. This could use one of the other classifications, but the problem is that there aren't an equal number of materials at each grade in those classifications, and material trading requires that (or you end up with materials which you can only cross-trade for). They already had to invent three new laser-mining-only raw materials (which are pretty rare even if you do a lot of laser mining!) to make it a rectangle, even after moving Selenium to G4. To make this match the geological grading would involve introducing four more new raw materials, none of which could be obtained from planets, none of which would have any current use, and three of which would trade with Selenium (i.e. Selenium could only be cross-traded for raw materials which you might actually want). Matching economic to the engineering scheme would be even more full of holes. This would, in general, make raw material trading less straightforward, which would be at least somewhat unpopular.

Getting rid of the fourth separate display classification and making the display consistently one of the others - probably has to be economic - would on the other hand be a very sensible thing to do.

The broad problem is that the original geological and engineering classifications massively pre-date the idea of material traders, so they didn't know back then that the material types list had to be rectangular ... and the original engineering recipes (which only lasted a few months) were fairly irregular in terms of material usage so the engineering grades were retrospectively added on after engineering had been developed. It's not good - but all the alternatives seem worse.

Thank you for having the patience to explain the complexity and awkwardness of the problem. Your explanation brings some clarity to the matter at hand.

But this confusing awkwardness is entirely the responsibility of FDev. When the revamp of engineering recipes was made and the Material Traders arrived in the game, a simple and logical classification should have been uniformized, at the very least, concerning the ship's interface.

This, to allow for a Cmdr hunting for Raw Materials, to have a specific idea of the importance of each material. I think it would have been wise that this in-ship classification should have followed the Material Trader classification since, for the Cmdr hunting the materials, it is the most important for him.

You mention that in the phrase that I highlighted, and I would reinforce your idea that the most logical choice would be the economical one that is used in the Material Traders. As I have said above, it is the most obvious one because of its effect in the Cmdr's gameplay.

What puzzles me is that FDev did not understood this from the onset of the Engineers' revamp. Any player that actually plays the game and hunts for raw materials understands this. Says something about the developers disconnect with the actual gameplay they create.

 

[Khoraak]

I can confirm, as of 24th of July 2020, this is still a total mess. Seems to me, putting my suspicion-cap on, that this intentional jiggery pokery of basic blatant removal of G5 mats from the trader, would suit perfectly the intention to prevent us from trading down the G5 mats that we can grind quickly... <suspiciously rubs chin>

- So Engineering has intentionally been NERFED, or, at best, made complicated and time wasting.

- Now Mining has been NERFED into a black hole, so Mining is suspended, or, surprise, surprise, made to be a waste of time.

- Trading is... erm... what's trading? I haven't seen any of that in ED. Am I missing something here? maybe a NERF? Idk.

erm... so - <night crickets> eh... ahem, I hear Hello Games has been adding new content to No Man's Sky lately.

 

[Bottom Hat]

Hmmmm

 

[Drelthar]

This is what happens when things are designed entirely outside of each other at different points in time.

The materials were originally made purely for synthesis, and could be gathered on planet surfaces, and there were only four grades.

Then they introduced engineers, and needed five grades, so they split some of them up a bit to fit that.

Then they introduced the material traders, and needed to mess about with it even more to make that work, and ended up adding some more materials to it, possibly -just- so they would fit nicely in the UI they had designed... (that'd be pretty backwards huh?)

So, yeah...

People still expect FD'd claims of "we have everything ready for when you can walk around on ships" to be true... well...

They didn't even forward plan something that really should have been fairly simple to plan for on a design level - so er, yeah, good luck with that.