What's your take on this.

Trgt

T
Is this game random or does it keep tabs on your progression and put road blocks, or at the very least, make it harder to do certain things as you go along. For example, I've been looking for phosphorus to engineer my Fed. Corvette. I have yet to do any mining on the surface of any planet, to add, I don't know diddly nor squat about the SRV. So I try to go the easy route and purchase the material I need but the oh so common element isn't available at the traders I visited.
So I have theorized that the game is forcing me to learn and try something new, IE, surface mining. Is this a clever marketing ploy? I'm already invested in a Federal Corvette now it seems I WILL invest in more time consuming knowledge chasing and I WILL like it. (Where would we be without Youtube and the dedicated scholars). :p
Another fact that rouses my suspicions of manipulation (too strong a word?) is that I've had phosphorus before by mining a planetary ring (I've upgraded three other ships with it), now no amount of that tedium is netting any at all. Again, I ask, is this game monitoring me and forcing my hand? Can not a Vice Admiral of the Federation find a trader anywhere willing to sell some of the not so precious material? Well, not so precious to most.💎
 

goemon

goemon
materials can't be bought.
at material traders you can only exchange materials for materials. and only materials of a kind - raw materials at raw material traders, mnufactured at manufactuired, data at data material traders.
why your mining nets no phosphorus - my only idea is you have set it left hand panel to ignore, when your material storage was full (if you really have no phosphorus at all anymore).
that said - yes, engineering is in parts intended to get players interacting with all parts of the game - see for exampel the 5000 ly out from start requirement for an engineer, something which is a chore for some players, while for explorers it is a non-issue.
 

Trgt

T
I've been to the raw material traders, I've haven't set phosphorus to ignore, and I'm not referring to an open set of parameters specified to achieve certain goals. I'm speaking of a covert, behind the scenes algorithm at work to frustrate an easy solution to a stated requirement. I have no issue with having to do chores to earn things (that Corvette was a real pain to achieve), just a feeling that there's built into the game some "force" made to steer (Spelling,is that a cow?) a person to do unspecified things.
But don't take this thread with anything but a tongue in cheek attitude, I ask this because I have some free time. The mussings of a bored individual waiting for supper to be ready. Nothing more.
 

Trgt

T
Nothing better than collecting knowledge. I mean this game has so many quirks to it the manual is rather skimpy. One more question, how do you know what the mat. trader wants in exchange for what he has?
 

Ethaidan

Ethaidan
OK, here it is. Every raw material trader has every raw material. You are simply doing it wrong. First, select the material you want (if you have no phosphorus it will read zero). After selecting phosphorus, you can then choose what you want to give in trade.

Edit: commodities markets are not material traders.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Honestly, I've often wondered a similar thing myself.

Prior to the "new" system - back when you usually had to fly around waiting for HGEs to spawn - if I hadn't investigated HGEs for months I'd find 5 or 6 almost immediately if I looked for them but then they'd go back to appearing once every 15-20 minutes as I flew around a system.
It felt a bit like I'd "accumulated" a certain amount of HGEs and if I hadn't already found them I'd get them all one after the other but then they went back to spawning at a prescribed rate.

And then there was Conductive Ceramics.
I could (and did) do laps of Dav's Hope for hours on end and I could pick up 150 G4 Chemical Manipulators (50 drops) and I'd only ever find half a dozen G3 Conductive Ceramics.
The results I was getting were way, way outside the calculated drop-rates for Dav's Hope.

I often wondered if ED was set up a bit like an RPG, whereby when you created a CMDR some "dice were rolled" which defined various factors related to your CMDR such as how "lucky" they'd be at various activities.

Honestly, I'd bet money (not a lot of money, mind you) that ED tracks how you're doing at certain things and then manipulates future events depending on your historical results.
If you fail at something a lot, it gets made slightly easier each time until you succeed.
If you succeed at a thing repeatedly, it gets made slightly more difficult in some way until you fail.

Let's face it, ED already blatantly matchmakes NPC ships to suit a player's rank.
It shouldn't be a huge stretch of the imagination to assume it does a similar thing in regard to more subtle aspects of the game too.
 

GroG79

G
So 'No' and 'Yes'

Engineers for instance require different things. One will require exploration. Another combat. So if you play 'normal' (not rush a corvette) then it is likely you will be chilling in your cobra trying to land on a planet and perhaps beinf creative and see if this srv is any fun. You might find some materials in doing this.. Or while mining painite for some Engineer..

Your way of playing seems to be one sided. So you have not encountered 'things' in your early gameplay and made these accidental discoveries.. (ooh.. what is that? Sulfur? What is that good for?)
 
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