Should materials be buyable with cr

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I think people shouldn't always expect instant gratification without commensurate effort.

I also think that if FDev do decide to provide additional sources of mat's, they should make the effort to create new gameplay to provide them.

Reasonable progression is fine. No one ever is calling for instant geatification.
But FD's idea of rolling a dice for the gameplay to roll a dice for the reward they can stuff right back their rears. FD is overrelying on RNG..
They also completely blew the balance. A handful of overpowered mods and a boatload of stuff no one would ever use but it checked a box to cover all the equipment with some mod. In return we got a loot table that is beyond reasonable and workable.
And dont get me started on that pitiful excuse of content of engineers 2.1 which was apparently good enough for us.

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

Or you could do it as you go along, whilst doing other activity. Accept my apologies if your an explorer out in the black for months on end As that requires a certain number of hours focussing on datamined wake exceptions in the bubble.

Simon

You can't exactly sit there and just scan over and over again as you go along. The Jameson crash site is out of the way, and scanning wakes is something you really need to focus on if you ever want enough DWE for even one grade 5 FSD boost.

 

[CMDR IDRATHERBERIDIN]

Mats for sale? Sure but make them expensive - certainly more expensive than the often presented choice between a material & credit pay-out vs. a credit only pay-out associated with most missions. It's generally a poor choice rejecting the materials.

That said, I think the game would be better off if most engineering wasn't a thing or if many of the engineer's modifications were seriously nerfed / rebalanced. Some of it is way too out of balance. Healing beams, for example.

 

[CMDR IDRATHERBERIDIN]

Yes, I think so. Credits are surprisingly useless after a certain point in Elite. I never understood why you can't spend money to buy them and it feels quite immersion breaking because they've been designed to be a completely different gameplay loop that is disconnected from the rest of the game, to the point I wouldn't bother with engineering if it wasn't a power creep you can't avoid forever. You can have a FC, buy extremely high tech or basic commodities like water or hydrogen, but for some weird reason you can't buy iron, carbon or a chemical processor..

Not sure I entirely agree. I've been playing about 5 years. Since the introduction of fleet carriers I don't have enough money. I don't want to mine and mine and mine and mine and mine. I generally want to rob people and shoot things. There's not much money in straight up pvp priacy. Just fun. There are weeks that having fun doesn't cover fleet carrier costs and rebuys (rebuys happen).

 

[Zieman]

Not sure I entirely agree. I've been playing about 5 years. Since the introduction of fleet carriers I don't have enough money. I don't want to mine and mine and mine and mine and mine. I generally want to rob people and shoot things. There's not much money in straight up pvp priacy. Just fun. There are weeks that having fun doesn't cover fleet carrier costs and rebuys (rebuys happen).

Umm, why do you think you need a fleet carrier?

 

[CMDR IDRATHERBERIDIN]

Umm, why do you think you need a fleet carrier?

For me, it's definitely more a 'want' than a 'need'. That said, I do find it useful being able to send my fleet pretty much anywhere in the bubble in 15 minutes.

 

[Thwarptide]

Another thread critical of having to grind for mats that are easy enough to come by if you are look for biological and geological signals. It's all concentrated. No roaming on the surface for hours.

It you want to trade mats you still need to grind for raw mats. Either way there's no way around it, you have to grind. After all somebody has to get out there and get em. However I'm all for creating a niche in the market to be able to sell them all too.
I could make a storm of credits doing this alone.
Especially when you use the following guide, which for now you can use to get your hands on every mat you want with moderate grind in less than a week.

Guide / Tutorial - How to fill all of your Raw Materials bins using Crystalline Shards.

How to fill your boots with Raw Mats using Crystalline Shards Some of us have discovered a new form of materials gathering that can, with a little effort, be used to gather every material needed to compeletely fill all of your raw materials bins. I have decided to share that knowlege here with...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[lefty1117]

Make them expensive to buy but don't make them sellable by players. It would be a good way to get some excess (exploited) wealth out of the economy. And these things are consumables so it's not like you're just transferring wealth to another form of currency.

 

[smiths121]

You can't exactly sit there and just scan over and over again as you go along. The Jameson crash site is out of the way, and scanning wakes is something you really need to focus on if you ever want enough DWE for even one grade 5 FSD boost.

I'm in the early Asp/Vulture phase on one of my accounts. Just gone and got the meta-alloy (harvested not purchased, got 3 of em), as its only now I have the materials to Long Range Level 5 one drive, powerplant (to level 3), and a booster to level 1. I'm guessing 20-30 hours of play. Wake wise I have just done it as I go along. I did spend a bit of time at some geological sites for the raw materials though - so I cannot say everything was side effect of other play, but the vast majority is. I also needed to use a material trader to tweak what I had.

Most of my accounts only have 3 or 4 ships, so engineering needs are actually quite limited compared to those with fully engineered mega fleets. I would imagine that needs some serious material gathering effort.

For my game style, as you go along, planning ahead seems to work well - done it a number of times.

YMMV
Simon

 

[CMDR IDRATHERBERIDIN]

Make them expensive to buy but don't make them sellable by players. It would be a good way to get some excess (exploited) wealth out of the economy. And these things are consumables so it's not like you're just transferring wealth to another form of currency.

I'd agree with this if it weren't for the fact that fleet carriers have now made credit transfers between players a thing.

 

[Jmanis]

Compromise Proposal:

Allow the free sale of all engineering materials (Raw, Encoded and Manufactured) from and to NPC and between players.

Engineering materials will rise in cost from cheap (thousands of credits) for G1 to very expensive (millions of credits) for G5. You will still be able to harvest/collect/mine them like you already do. (thus making them "free")

Engineers will now charge credits in addition to requesting materials.

G1 upgrades will cost 1,000 credits per "hit" or "roll", plus materials
G2 will cost 10,000 per roll
G3 will cost 100,000 per roll
G4 will cost 1,000,000 per roll
G5 will cost 10,000,000 per roll.

And yes, all credit costs will also inflate the value of the ship, thus increasing the rebuy.

End proposal

Well you'd never see G5 and rarely G4s (never more than one) as mission rewards with that system, so congrats, you just broke missions.

Or are we proposing a basic assassination mission can pay out over 50m (which is technically impossible anyway, so i guess not)

But whatever, rest of the game doesn't exist apparently, that's how we got to this thread.

 

[CMDR Jayce MacLeod]

Well you'd never see G5 and rarely G4s (never more than one) as mission rewards with that system, so congrats, you just broke missions.

Or are we proposing a basic assassination mission can pay out over 50m (which is technically impossible anyway, so i guess not)

But whatever, rest of the game doesn't exist apparently, that's how we got to this thread.

If they are for sale, there is no need to have mats as mission rewards anymore.

 

[Jmanis]

If they are for sale, there is no need to have mats as mission rewards anymore.

Right. So nerf missions by removing the slim advantage it has over mining right now. Gotcha

What a trash idea.

 

[CMDR Jayce MacLeod]

Right. So nerf missions. Gotcha

What a trash idea.

Not a nerf if you increase the payout on them. Try thinking outside the nerf box. So yeah, not so much a trash idea, but if you'd like to believe that then go right ahead.

 

[Jmanis]

Not a nerf if you increase the payout on them. Try thinking outside the nerf box. So yeah, not so much a trash idea, but if you'd like to believe that then go right ahead.

It's a lack of any thinking, inside or outside the box, that's caused this thread.

And like I said. You think buff the payout? Ok. 50m for a basic assassination for starters. That's 5 x G5.

 

[Deleted member 257907]

Yes they should be buyable with ingame credits but materials serve as sort of timed gates wouldn't be surprised if they started selling them for arx though.

 

[Captain Willard]

Elite doesn't need ptw of any kind.
If you want something in the game? Go get it.
Everyone working for items keeps the playing field level.

 

[The Nude Wizard]

Personally I think materials and engineering should work more like WoW and just about every other MMO ever mades player crafting system. materials should be player tradable on fleet carriers and players should be able to sell engineered modules and ships,however experimental effects are only available to people who have unlocked the blueprint themselves also I would leave all the current inventory limits on materials and modules, ships etc as they are so people don’t just hoard stuff and this would ensure ability to supply is limited and people won’t be able to corner markets by buying and selling materials/blueprints which is the biggest down side to WoWs system.
IMHO the game is crying out for a more player driven economy and a crafting system would have been a good start to add to carriers. No one has ever called the crafting systems in every other mmo pay to win or cheating it’s simply a time trade off, you can grind for materials/blueprints or credits the choice is yours and if you level the profession yourself you get experimentals as a bonus so people will still want to unlock engineers themselves.

 

[Stealthie]

I thought you only got adaptive encrypted captures from that. That means using the materials trader at 6/1. So only 16 per run after flying to the nearest trader. 6 trips to get a full 100...

Fantastic gameplay and in no way monotonous or boring.

You're right.

You're only going to be using DWE's for G5 FSD mod's, though, so you shouldn't ever need 100 at a time.
A 10 minute visit to the Jameson site, followed by a hop to Ray Gateway, in Diaguandri, to trade for DWEs will get your new ship straight to G5, which has got to be better than spending an hour, or more, haunting famine distribution sites or whatever.

 

[Stealthie]

If credits were actually in any way meaningful, it might be worth discussing, especially if buying materials cost a lot.

But as things stand, they'd have to make grade 5 mats cost tens of millions to make people think twice about whether to buy or earn.

That's the thing.

Basically, asking for anything in the game to be purchaseable for credits begs the question of whether it's quicker to obtain the required thing by the intended method or go mining and buy the required thing with (some of) the credits you earn.

Personally, I'd say the best metric FDev could use to define how "valuable" things are is how long it takes to obtain them.
If they applied that to the value of G5 mat's You'd probably be looking at 1 hour = Cr200m in mining and 1 hour = 10 DWEs (by the intended method) therefore each DWE should cost around Cr20m!