Should materials be buyable with cr

[Abex]

Just because earning credits was/is broken doesn't mean other systems in the game have to suffer.

Materials should be removed from the game entirely.
Add some more commodity types if you really want to. Give the SRV internal slots, a refinery and cargo racks and done. (maybe some exploration scanners while you're at it) Or if having multiple tons of cargo in your SRV is immersion breaking to you, add skimmer collector limpets that drive to and from you ship. If there are certain resources that can only be mined on the surface that should be incentive enough for those that want to do it. You could make the engineer stations have a demand for these to promote trading with them as well.

You already have to unlock the engineers before you can use them, so why not have those unlocks actually use the "new" horizon mechanics? Instead of having to bring him 50 Lavian Brandy when they only sell you 24 at a time!

Everything in the game used to be optional, you could buy the best ship with credits and earn those credits in any way you liked. Now in the next expansion they'll add S tier modules and you'll have to collect different types of food from the settlements in cooking minigames because the mechanic that installs your power plant really likes hotdogs...

 

[Jmanis]

I noted last week that virtually all manufactured materials to G4 can be farmed conveniently from an anarchy nav beacon,

Nonono... you don't understand.

I want to mine heat conductors. How I mine for fish?

 

[SCiARA]

for the "No's" amongst you, is it because it would be too easy to buy them?
maybe it should be an expensive option ?

 

[Drelthar]

It does involve a fair bit of murder though.

Nothing wrong with a bit of murder.

 

[Drelthar]

for the "No's" amongst you, is it because it would be too easy to buy them?
maybe it should be an expensive option ?

I still say let the players decide their value - if some players went out and farmed loads of G5 materails, then sold them for huge amounts of credits, I duno, I kinda think it's ok, -someone- has to get the G5's, the gameplay isn't being removed.

But perhaps, it would be better if players could simply, trade materials for materials - basically, a player to player mat trader.

 

[GloatingSwine]

I'd fully expect it to just get drowned out by a chorus of "WAAHMAHGOD BUT I CAN'T KILL A CORVETTE WITHOUT G5 POWER WORD: KILL AND ELEVENTYJIGGLIONS OF DPS" because of this inane idea you can't do anything until you have that.

Even though most of the benefit of engineering is attained by G3/Experimental, it's just not finished until it's G5. Neatness demands completion.


That said, clearly Something Must Be Done when it comes to acquiring engineering materials, because right now most ways to obtain them are irrelevant. If you want any encodeds it's faster to farm at Jameson, if you want any raws it's faster to go to crystal shards, and if you want any manufactured it's generally faster to just get Imperial Shielding (because it pops consistently in volume). So prospecting is irrelevant except for Selenium, scanning shields and wakes is irrelevant, and 99% of all signal sources are irrelevant.

So buying mats for credits wouldn't actually be a change, you'd just be acquiring a different intermediary on the way to the thing you actually wanted.

I'd say it's a victim of players optimising the fun out of games, but it kinda isn't because it doesn't change what you actually do moment to moment, you just do it in a very limited subset of all possible places.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

for the "No's" amongst you, is it because it would be too easy to buy them?

Well, that's presumably what the "Yes's" are hoping for - there are far more ways to obtain credits than any specific material, so it's much more likely that there'll be a high-end credit route than a high-end material one, plus the material cap means that they're limited on how many materials they have but nothing has stopped them getting tens of billions of entirely useless credits "just in case".

If Frontier set the materials price so that "gaining credits at maximum possible rate, then buying materials" was equally effective as "gaining materials directly at maximum possible rate" then we'd be looking at G5 materials costing probably well over ten million per unit for some of them.

Having done that, it would then be more convenient all round to have the engineers just charge credits instead - around 100M for a G5 module [1], on a time-for-time basis - and run the conversion the other way - that pirate Anaconda that you killed gives you 200k in bounty payments ... and 30 million in material drops if you get lucky and see a G5 in there.

[1] Which would then add to your rebuy?

 

[Jmanis]

That said, clearly Something Must Be Done when it comes to acquiring engineering materials, because right now most ways to obtain them are irrelevant. If you want any encodeds it's faster to farm at Jameson, if you want any raws it's faster to go to crystal shards, and if you want any manufactured it's generally faster to just get Imperial Shielding (because it pops consistently in volume). So prospecting is irrelevant except for Selenium, scanning shields and wakes is irrelevant...

Lol... really?

That's all terrible ways to get mats and data... raw's the only one that's kinda right, but there's closer options.

This is the problem predicating all complaints about mat gathering... people have no idea.

for the "No's" amongst you, is it because it would be too easy to buy them?
maybe it should be an expensive option ?

No price makes sense.

What's 1 unit of Antimony going to be worth? 10 million credits? 100m credits? Ahuh... ten to a hundred times more than a single tonne of LTDs. Absurd.

The economy is a busted waffle. You can't even think about putting a price on mats until you nerf the bejeezus out of mining and it's broken outliers. As I said before, ingame value of a G5 material is 400k. You can't change that without busting that waffle wide open.

 

[Mrat13]

I never said missing out on gameplay, I said reasons to do gameplay.

You could still choose to gather mats instead of use credits......

 

[Drelthar]

That's all terrible ways to get mats and data... raw's the only one that's kinda right, but there's closer options.

Really? You like... raws gathering?

There's ONLY one way to get them (I guess asteroids but....not many) I hate the raw gathering out of all of them. I really wish there were more ways to get those.

 

[Jmanis]

Really? You like... raws gathering?

There's ONLY one way to get them (I guess asteroids but....not many) I hate the raw gathering out of all of them. I really wish there were more ways to get those.

Oh no, I hate raws too.

So, the ways I used to do it pre-Crystalline Shards was Barnacles. You're guaranteed one or two G4s, a couple G3s and a handful of G1/2s. Way more tolerable than jetting out the however-many-thousand LY it is to the nearest crystalline shard, if you only need a handful of mats to tide you over.

You could also hit up any of the other geo/organic POIs in the bubble that have mats in them and cherry-pick the nice ones quick enough.

Obviously if you're some completionist that needs to fill up your entire holdings for no reason whatsoever then it's not gonna suffice, but nobody needs that.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You could still choose to gather mats instead of use credits......

You could, but who would?

 

[avow555]

Everything should be purchasable in game with credits.

 

[Franc Kaos]

Plenty to do in this game, if players choose to engage with it, rather than expect the game to change to suit their own agenda.

2000 Hours in, Expert in Combat, I've paid my dues! Engineered when it was far more painful than it is now and yes I don't need G5 engineered parts to just pootle about scavenging outside the bubble but...

Even though most of the benefit of engineering is attained by G3/Experimental, it's just not finished until it's G5. Neatness demands completion.
...

Beautifully said!

I can't find the quote now but it used to be something like: Elite Dangerous: Play how you want to play... not, these are all the gameplay loops you must complete to take part in engineering...

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

I went down to the hardware store and asked for some steel, and they told me I had to go mine the iron and the carbon myself.

Except you can't mine the iron and carbon. You have to find random surface rocks, shoot them, then fit them into your magic pockets. These will never be worth anything as a commodity, either.

 

[Thepirateorc]

I still say let the players decide their value - if some players went out and farmed loads of G5 materails, then sold them for huge amounts of credits, I duno, I kinda think it's ok, -someone- has to get the G5's, the gameplay isn't being removed.

But perhaps, it would be better if players could simply, trade materials for materials - basically, a player to player mat trader.

I dont see much gameplay from flying around a system looking for a signal source, after awhile it gets pretty boring.

 

[CMDR Jayce MacLeod]

Nope, not at all. The fun is in finding them and gathering them

 

[Thepirateorc]

Lol... really?

That's all terrible ways to get mats and data... raw's the only one that's kinda right, but there's closer options.

This is the problem predicating all complaints about mat gathering... people have no idea.




No price makes sense.

What's 1 unit of Antimony going to be worth? 10 million credits? 100m credits? Ahuh... ten to a hundred times more than a single tonne of LTDs. Absurd.

The economy is a busted waffle. You can't even think about putting a price on mats until you nerf the bejeezus out of mining and it's broken outliers. As I said before, ingame value of a G5 material is 400k. You can't change that without busting that waffle wide open.

I mean you do you and go enjoy your mat grinding however the implication of buying mats with cr will not effect you in the slightest and who knows, maybe you might use it too at some stage.

 

[Thepirateorc]

Nope, not at all. The fun is in finding them and gathering them

Lol nice sarcasm

 

[Denneb]

No!. Not in a million years. Mats are easy to find already and mat. traders make it even easier. Just because FDev allowed people to brake the game and acquire billions and FCs in days, doesnt mean they should give them free engineering as well.
That is the purpose of mats as a currency for engineering. To act as a barrier to billioners and urge you to do diverse gameplay to gather them.
Your proposal has no logic because, if you could buy mats with credits, then why not directly buy engineering with credits? That is their sole purpose of existence.