That's very unfair. You don't upgrade let's say your multicannon through ALL the possible "paths" (overcharged, long range, short range....). Only the one you want. All the suits and gun in Odyssey only have one path. Inara show all the mat as if you would. Which mean you will not use all the mats in horizon. Only the one you need for your specific upgrade.
First, thanks for the reply. I'll try to cover most of what you've said as best as I can. You've taken a couple points I made and really have gone to town with what you dislike about Odyssey engineering and I think that's great. Just bear in mind, I was directly comparing how "crazy" Odyssey Engineering is compared to Horizons, because that is what the guy said.
This first point. I don't think it's important that I'm being "fair" here. The reason I linked the two sets of mods is to demonstrate that Odyssey engineering is simpler than Horizons. As a player who does not use third party tools, both can be a touch bewildering at first but I will suggest that retaining the knowledge of what is useful for you in Horizons is a feat of extreme cognitive retention and not actually practical, even for an experienced player like me. EdEngineer is a must. Odyssey is similar but not as extreme. Certainly I cannot rememeber all of the blueprints but I do know what materials are useful for me and which aren't. All in my head now.
Of course you're right, you don't need all of the mods on Inara to build a ship. You don't need all the mods on Inara to gear up in Odyssey either. The total volume of options remains valid as a form of comparison. And actually, the single upgrade path for Horizons is still much longer.
Assuming G5 combat is the target, using just a medium ship (for balance, small ships use less and large ships much more), this is a typical list of upgrades for a single ship - this assumes full unlocks and all engineers leveled up (the first run takes longer but it's not useful to compare that) and so the generally accepted "maximum rolls per grade" follow 2-2-4-4-10 (it's not always that but you have to make sure you have those totals per upgrade otherwise you risk running out mid engineer) - this is 32 total rolls per mod but let's just say it's 30:
- Weapons: Between 4 and 6
- Between 120 and 180 rolls total
- Upper value of 63 total mats required for each weapon (including experimental)
- Total mats required is between 252 and 1,080
- Utility mount: Between 4 and 6
- Follows the same numbers as weapons, obviously depending on what you want but assume shield boosters
- So total rolls between 120 and 180
- So total mats required is between 252 and 1,080
I'll stop there actually. That's already double the mats required for a full G5 dominator loadout. And the number of "rolls" extends the process by a long, long way. For Odyssey, we click no more than 10 times per item to fully upgrade it. So the whole process to get to G5 in Odyssey is demonstrably shorter than Horizons. And that's just G5 for weapons and utilitie slots.
Add in:
- Optional internal
- Core internal
- Armour
Quick comparison then, this is Odyssey (
for reference):
- Suit: Just 1 (although, we could make this all 3 and still fall way short of Horizons)
- 4 "rolls" to G4, 4 "rolls" to add 4 mods
- 284 mats to fully upgrade to G5
- Highest required mats required for the 4 mods is 45 (it varies but it's not too much lower than that). We'll use that even though it's possible to avoid that
- 329 total mats required
- Weapons: 3
- Slightly less than the above (253 to get G5)
- But for brevity, let's just say 329 total mats required (inaccurate, but accuracy is no longer needed now)
The total mats required is actually just over 1000.
Odyssey requires 1000 mats for a full G5 suit and weapons. Horizons requires double that for just weapons and utilities. Not to mention, Odyssey's requirements are 100% fixed, Horizons' are variable, up to RNG.
It's easy to see that the act of upgrading one ship is a mamoth task compared to ugrading a suit and three weapons.
Odyssey and Horizon also suffer from the same issue. You earn very little, and rarely what you want, by simply playing.
Agreed with Horizons. Not so much Odyssey. As I pointed out in my post above, one can gain all of the mats required for upgrading via missions and looting as you do missions. The same cannot be said for Horizons.
That said, Osyssey could be better here if we got loot from kills and if Exobiology rewarded us with mats in the same way missions do. That would make Odyssey even better.
Then in Odyssey, you have lots of useless mats. They have no use at all.
Agreed. It's an issue for data, because data is so hard to get. Still, we do get to sell mats. We cannot do that in Horizons. This means a player can gain credits from all of the things they do not need and that's a huge bonus compared to Horizons.
Also, the whole design of upgrades is very poor. Night vision is behind engineering gate, yet all the NPC can see in the dark (because they are computer AI, with aimbot and wallhack, their only nerf is horrible spread compared to us).
This is incorrect. I've tested NPC reactions to the player extensively. They see further in light conditions and their vision is limited at night in comparison. They do not "wallhack". If you hide out of line of sight they will lose you and change into hunt mode. If they cannot find you after around 30 seconds, they give up.
Night vision is a game changer for us. And I see nothing wrong with that being locked behind Oden. You've actually picked the one of three engineer pathways in Odyssey that's reasonable to unlock too. Just 22 missions and 15+20 data (Oden was so easy to unlock, you can do it via missions to get the Genetic Data!)
Explorers have little use for engineering. Sure more battery, jump and night vision is not useless, but it's not very useful either. Just hop into the SRV.
Others are laughable. There are 2 "silencers" mod. Since making a silencer for no atmo was ridiculous (since there are no sound), they slapped a module that magically reduce the range the omniscient suit can pick sound to simulate them. Overall, it's far fetched, slightly on the ridiculous side, AND is bad for gameplay. Having 2 silencers mods is something I've never seen or heard in any FPS.
I think the first point is true of both Horizons and Odyssey and I'd agree that Odyssey desperately needs more "tool utility" mods that would enhance the explorer's equipment but... and this is a big one... If one is a pure explorer, it'd be pretty harsh to impose scavenging and missions on them.
So I'd only agree with this if exobiology provided mats.
As for the two silencers, I'll just allow myself to disagree with you. Having the two is perfect. Not everyone needs both. And if you do, it's just a more specialised choice. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. If only Horizons followed this more closely! In Horizons, there are almost no choices like this. It's generally "get the highest dps" and then getting other mods that support that highest dps build by countering the negative effects of it. The only true decision in Horizons is class A sensors lightweight or class D sensors long range
(PS, the best is the latter, so no choice at all).
I love this feature in Odyssey. Coming from someone who loves stealth, this is OK by me. My silenced Executioner will be amazing when it's finished.
Range doesn't increase plasma projectile speed. Apparently, range is fairly useless overall.
Agreed. This could change.
Finally, you have "goods" which are used for engineering. And assets to. And I have no idea what to keep and what to sell, unless I check them one by one in Inara. That's bad. Very bad. Especially since we have a "sell all" for goods, and they appear, at first glance, like Horizon's commodities. I almost was tricked to sell them. Thankfully I double checked before.
In Horizon, you have engineering mats. And comodities to sell. Done, over, no "what", no "if", no "perhaps". You can't sell your engineering mat by mistake. And if you need commodities for the rare "special" recipes that need them (like tech broker unlock), you can always buy them.
Selling mats is a positive change in Odyssey. You'll have a hard time persuading me otherwise
I agree that there are too many mats overall and that Inara does help to get a grip on it. But, three weeks into the game, I have a full understanding of what goods I can sell and what I need. The list of what you need is actually very short. More so given you likely don't need to build every single blueprint. It's way easier to remember what is useful than what isn't. And for goods it's:
- Weapon or suit schematics
- The two gas types (only one if you use plasma)
- Health monitors
- Power regulators (easy one to remember this! Always, always take them)
- G-meds (I don't actually need these)
- And the below are only needed once and can then be sold forever:
- 5 push
- 5 surveilance equipment
- 5 insight entertainment suites
- 5 genetic repair meds
Not a long list to recall, I think you'll agree.
Data is messy but again... I know all the data I need now. I can retain, in my head, the data that is used in some way or another. I actually just keep them all, even though I won't likely use them all. I sell data that I know is useless. And, as I said, I now do not need Inara for that.
The most important thing though, is that for engineering (not unlocking) and upgrading, all goods and data can be obtained via mission rewards.
It's really important to remember that. This is a key difference between Horizons and Odyssey and Odyssey does it better. All of that stuff above, except unlocking, can be gained via missions. All of it. Every single upgrade in the process can be done purely by completing missions and looting as you go.
All that's left are assets. They're pretty easy to retain as they're in 3 short lists. I know which I need and which I don't. And they're easy to trade about anyway. Assets are the more problematic only due to the 1000 limit cap, which I mentioned in my post so I don't think I need to cover that again. It needs to change.
The only good things I saw in Odyssey, is the ability to use (apparently) a "trader" currency, so I don't have to bother trading specific mats for another. I can just sell and buy. If I understood correctly.
Agreed that selling stuff is good. It's one of the best features of Odyssey that Horizons doesn't have.
