How much engineering can I get done with all bins filled?

[Dragsham]

Someone mentioned earlier how once bins are filled your knackered burned out wana rage quit ..frankly I'm in agreement its a pointless task and I've seen 2 cmdrs do it and now they don't play Citing their self imposed grind.
I've 11 ships fully engineered I know how it works. I'm always short of one or another but l wangle it through. I don't stack mats for specifics I just do what l do and get them as a result.
Only advice ill say is farming high grade emissions, and a trip to the crystal forest once are 2 things to do.
Every ship is different. Themed perhaps yes like my combat ships are all railers except a few fraggers. With gimballed venting beams.
I even have an all beams vette which is fun. None of this happened because I gave a thought to grinding mats. I needed this or that I swapped em accordingly. My playstyle ensures adequate supply to swap with.

 

[o2thaZ]

Doesn't Inara have a function to check this out?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

If they are full of the wrong stuff you wont get far. Have fun juggling 150 ingredients.

 

[skananote]

Ok fair enough. What is a more realistic goal as far as these mats are concerned to engineer my two ship goal?

Don't listen to them. Collecting mats is actually fun. I love it, driving SRV is one of the most calming experiences in the game. I spend one/two FULL DAYS every month in Dav's Hope. I also scan a lot at every opportunity and collect HGEs. I find collecting mats nice and easy job. Unlocking engineers is another story. I still do not get what would flying 222+ kLs prove for that missiles chick...

 

[Lowbee]

I even have an all beams vette which is fun.

So do I! Being able to hang as long as you like and never draining the caps is quite an experience.

o7

 

[Northpin]

A realistic goal is :- Get grade 3 on everything and have the experimental on them all.

Grade 3 is cheap in mats and once you have the experimental on an item you can do the G4 and G5 at anytime, as you dont need to redo the experimental.
On some things Grade 1 is enough as the experimental is the thing you want most.

This is the most sensible approach to avoid burn out
G3 is good enough most of the time (although not for my G5 OCD)


@OP
Materials can be gathered while playing (encoded and manufactured mostly) - this can take a while tho.

• Just scan every ship nearby while leaving or approaching the station (big combat/system authority ships will have the chance to give Abnormal Compact Emission Data or Classified Scan Data, very rare tho)
• Fit a wake scanner and do the same while leaving the station - that is scan the wakes for the most desired prise: Datamined Wake Exceptions
• When arriving in a system drop in the nav beacon, scan it then go back in supercruise to your destination, but check if there are any HGE in decent range. Take a detour to collect materials
• While in supercruise target, face and scan ships flying through the system
• Settle in a system, at least for a while, get allied with the factions, do mission and take the material rewards. Some materials can be found only (or mostly) as mission rewards (Biotech conductors, Exquisite Focus Crystals, Modified Embedded Firmware)
• when doing combat fit some collector and limpets and make sure you pick the materials left behind by your enemies. Every zone and every ship category are dropping various material types. Eventually find an anarchy system and go nuts on convoy ships, ceremonial barges, passenger ships at touristic beacons and so on.

Or if you really want - you can do periodic refill expeditions

• raws from Crystalline shards
• HGE loops - check inara, find systems with factions in the desired state, pick 4-7 systems and jump into them, check the nav beacon then go to the next one and so on in a loop
• encoded are always a problem since there is no elegant way of getting them fast or in an organized manner - except for relog fests in certain places. They can be gathered by scanning data points in planetary installations and space installations (this might incur a fine and trouble with locals), or by scanning beacons at Jameson Crashed Cobra, Bug Killer Anaconda or other planetary POIs. They might also be encountered in Encoded USS, but very random and very few (a single scan or none at all)
• and then make use of the material traders.

HGE stuff explained:
the materials found in a HGE (high grade emission) depend on the state of the faction (as it appears on the info box) and to the system allegiance (sometimes the allegiance will override* the faction state)
If the faction has multiple states, only the first one will be listed, but the materials can pop from any of the states

Alliance Systems, Independent Systems, Imperial Systems (some overrides possible)

• boom, investment, expansion: Proto Radiolic Alloys and/or Proto Light Alloys (G4), Proto Heat Radiators
• war, civil war: Military Grade Alloys, Military SuperCapacitors (rare)
• civil unrest: Improvised Components (rare)
• outbreak: Pharmaceutical Isolators (rare)

Imperial Systems
- no state or some occurrences of overriding the faction state: Imperial Shielding

Federal Systems
- no state or common occurrence of overriding the faction state: Core Dynamics Composites and/or Proprietary Composites (G4)


* might not be as much override as it may be the fact that the system-allegiance material is added to the pool of random material that may pop in the hge, but with a much bigger chance than for the state materials.

 

[Speedcuffs]

If the faction has multiple states, only the first one will be listed, but the materials can pop from any of the states

But you try telling that to folk.

 

[goemon]

there is no easy way to answer the question.

a) depends on ships and engineering. exampel: if you, for some weird reason, want to fly two AspE with 6 G5 overcharged multicannons, your 100 pieces of modified empedded firmware will last you ~1,8 ships. To complete a G5 (which has no practical performance effect) you need around 10 rolls, and you are limited to 100 pieces of G5 materials - always 1 is needed per G5 roll.

b) pre hardpoints, boosters and ligthweight everything (so outside of those things, which you would G5 several times per ship) a totally filled mat inventory should allow you to engineer ~10 ships.

your approach isn't practically, as stated above several times. but if you have fun doing it, go for it!

i personally only go out of my ways for raw mats at geo sites - and have collector on my armed trader and combat ships to collect after combat. i tend to take any G5 material reward from missions, where no +++ option is available, if i back that faction. in hard cases i filter my map to states on a tour between engineers, to stock up on G5 materials.

also i tend to go for only ~3 G5 rolls on a module if i g5 it, as the gains are so minor.

G1 gives you 25-45% depending on blueprint of all you can gain by engineering.

 

[Ydiss]

I'd suggest your approach is needlessly excessive.

If you haven't already go here and download Edengineer...

GitHub - msarilar/EDEngineer: An overlay to track Elite Dangerous blueprints progress in real time

An overlay to track Elite Dangerous blueprints progress in real time - msarilar/EDEngineer

github.com

Use this extensively. Don't do engineering without it. Create shopping lists for every build. Even one item.

This alone will help you be as efficient as possible.

 

[Crank Larson]

Just do the engineering and collect any mats you are short on. Full bins will certainly be enough for two builds, but you won't need most of the materials, so filling your bins is just wasting time (unless you enjoy it, in which case it's all good ).

 

[skananote]

(unless you enjoy it, in which case it's all good ).

I do. My bins are bursting with stuff that I can trade for something I need at any point...

 

[Bottom Hat]

I'm rather late with this, but to answer the OP's question, I'm going to guess at tree-fiddy.

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

two weeks later OP: This game is a total and utter boredom and grind. I quit..

Those bins are not 'achievement bins'.. I don't think they were ever meant to be all filled but yet so many people try to do it and then complain it takes a week of grinding to do it (even with the best shortcuts out there). With all bins filled you could probably engineer over 10 ships.. so quite a bit of overkill.

Here is my advice... take it easy, take it slow.. you will enjoy it a lot more. Get Grade 3 engineering first... It is a lot faster / easier and doesn't require any G4-5 Mats...

I am over 150 hours played and the only G5 engineered ship I have is an FDL... Made a billion of bounty/massacre credits + 10 Imperial ranks with it. It is a waste of time to fully engineer a multipurpose Python.

You asked for a combat build.. this is mine: Dangerous Condas/Corvettes (sometimes both attacking me) die under 2 minutes with my shields over 50%. If you really want to enjoy the game at a deeper level, dig in and understand what each number on EDSY means.. you will be able to create a ship exactly to your liking and purpose.

WOW....well I guess it's good to know it wasn't personal with me. You're just a natural jerk to anyone who plays in a way you don't.

Seriously is all this snark really necessary? Wow you have a whole 150 hours played huh, and you're already a salty vet forum troll. I guess you deserve a medal huh guy?

I know in your mind you feel posts like this are helpful but I can assure you they are not. Stop telling people if they so much as dare setting a personal goal, they will end up having to "quit".

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

With all bins filled you could engineer a whole fleet of ships with plenty of stuff left over.

Unless you have a few combat ships in there...many HRPs and many Shield Boosters can drain mats very fast...thankfully we have mat traders

Personally I wouldn't mat grind...play the game and any mats you come across, either from POI or combat, just scoop them. Before you know it you'll have enough for many maxed out G5 upgrades.
Take a trip to crystalline shards, as others have mentioned, as you can fill up the top level raw mats from 0 to max at a single site without logging...Quick Guide on this: (1) Guide / Tutorial How to fill all of your Raw Materials bins using Crystalline Shards. | Frontier Forums

Doing it this way enables you to experience many aspects of ED without a grind. I've been playing since alpha and I never have maxed out all my mats...there's no point. All my ships are full maxed out g5 but I've never grinded for mats, just played the game.

 

[TheChosen]

WOW....well I guess it's good to know it wasn't personal with me. You're just a natural jerk to anyone who plays in a way you don't.

Seriously is all this snark really necessary? Wow you have a whole 150 hours played huh, and you're already a salty vet forum troll. I guess you deserve a medal huh guy?

I know in your mind you feel posts like this are helpful but I can assure you they are not. Stop telling people if they so much as dare setting a personal goal, they will end up having to "quit".

Triggered much? Keep on topic and stop insulting people on the forum. And even more so .. stop telling me what to do as I didn't ask for your opinion.

 

[Ydiss]

There's a thread arguing what is grinding and what isn't here and I don't think it's important. If someone wants to build something, they're going to want to build it. Getting stressed because someone might approach it in a really inefficient way isn't useful.

Filling all bins definitely isn't required for efficiently approaching engineering. I'd never recommend it if the goal is efficiency. Focusing on the blueprints you want, the exact requirements for those and then obtaining those materials using the fastest methods is efficient and is viable if you use Edengineer. But not everyone cares about that.

I think arguing with those who want to do it inefficiently because they like filling all bins is pointless. I'd never recommend it if the goal is build efficiency but what's the point in me arguing with someone who does it?

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

Triggered much? Keep on topic and stop insulting people on the forum. And even more so .. stop telling me what to do as I didn't ask for your opinion.

No but you just told this guy the same thing you told me. Telling people they are going to quit just because they want to work on Engineering is what's insulting.

 

[Stealthie]

With all bins filled you could engineer a whole fleet of ships with plenty of stuff left over.

Not sure about that.

At the end of the day, you can only store 100 G5 mat's and it takes ~10 rolls to complete a G5 mod' so 10x G5 mod's is going to empty your stock of the associated G5 mat.

If you're talking about thrusters, FSD or PDist (etc), you only need to complete one mod' per ship but if you've got, say, an FGS or Challenger with a heap of MC's or lasers bolted to it, just engineering the weapons on that one ship is going to chew through a heap of G5 mats.

Course, OTOH, if you've got a big heap of mat's, you'll be able to do an awful lot of engineering up to G3 or G4, and then if you trade down some of your G5 mat's you'll be able to do a heap more.

Personally, I'd advise the OP not to get too obsessed with collecting mat's.
Even if you're trying to G5 engineer 2 or 3 ships at the same time, the list of required mat's can quickly become very daunting.
Better to concentrate on one ship, do some engineering and then just enjoy the game, collect mat's as you go and then, a couple of weeks later, look at engineering another ship.

The only exception would be in the case of raw mat's, where taking a trip to the Bio' sites is a nice little adventure and will collect you a heap of top-tier raw mat's as well.

 

[Greasetrap42]

My personal low effort method for ship building is to have a "Ship of The Month". I decide what kind of ship I want, then using my current ships I gather credits and most of the engineering material I might need doing activities I typically enjoy. If there is an engineer I should unlock, good time to do it. Then I buy the ship and do most of the upgrades/engineering. For the rest of the month I fly around in the new ship doing activities it was designed for and finish off the upgrades/engineering I hadn't completed to my personal satisfaction.

Of course I don't always have a "Ship Of The Month". I'm currently happy with the ships I have. Every player has their own way of doing things though.

 

[skananote]

My personal low effort method for ship building is to have a "Ship of The Month"

Hmmm, I have only three ships... Not planning to get any more... And two of those are nearly completed as far as engineering goes... I am thinking however of another Python for trading only...