Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering

[Damgalnuna]

There are already automated planetary surface mining installations which, IIRC, you can destroy for a few mats. I am sure I have seen these at one or more of the Engineers too. They seem to be in groups of 8-ish.

I suggest being able to buy one of these, or the parts to make one, be able to go to a planet,scan for a suitable location and deploy them on the planet surface and leave them there to be able to return later to reap the rewards. We would need a ship with a class 6/7/8 slot with a large hold to enable deployment of these mining installations, and I appreciate it would be a lot of work to implement this...

But think of the game play... Think of the engagement of the Cmdrs, imagine the on-foot/SRV battles to attack/defend a player owned automated mining installation. I am not suggesting all the walk inside buildings that are at planetary settlements. Of course, there is always the risk that another Cmdr might steal the rewards before the owner returns or even destroy it entirely.

The the [raw] mat collection process is automated [grind removed], still in game and it is added into the existing game.

"mining" data? perhaps be able to deploy an automated satellite somewhere to return to later, manufactured mats [Pharma-Isos etc.] - dunno, perhaps someone else will have an idea

I like these ideas, though they are complicated by the open/solo/PG instancing of the game.

I guess you could have them just be part of your own instance, like an SRV or fighter, in which case someone could only attack it while you were physically there. Either way I think they are great ideas and I would love the idea of being able to deploy some assets.

You could have them generate materials faster than normal, but potentially require some interaction so you aren't just dropping them. They would show up as points of interest to other cmdrs in open if you are in open, so any cmdr would know it was easy mats if they can take it from you so it behooves you to defend it.

 

[PDJazzHands]

Another idea I have, allow players to track their contributions to BGS with actual figures, and if they do a certain good job, just occasionally have a minor faction reward them with materials as a thank you, so we can also bring more people into bgs and tutorialize it through player rewards

 

[Fizzatron]

I really wish mats made more sense. I can see why I can't buy frameshift wake exceptions on the market, but why am I stealing epoxy glue from a random miner's bedside drawer?

I agree with this completely, obviously the npc had to get it from somewhere, and not hopefully from some other poor sod's bedside drawer. I think having Pioneer Supplies get in the business of selling various components would be worth considering, same with ship engineering mats.

 

[Lanzelund Zornbold]

Greetings Commanders

Now that Update 8 for Odyssey is live, we'd like to reignite the series of balancing changes that started before Odyssey's release. Now, it's time to turn our attention to ship Engineering. We recognise there has been significant feedback for on-foot Engineering too, but we'd like to approach these one at a time due to the number of aspects involved. Specifically, we'd like to look at the balancing of the Engineering grind, which largely relates to...

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased?

Similarly, Grade 5 materials can be traded down into 3 Grade 4 materials within the same category. However, Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials take similar amounts of time to gather. Should the number of materials picked up per instance be increased to account for this?

We're also aware that some materials are much harder to find than others as they are tied to rarer BGS states. Let us know which materials ought to be made more readily discoverable.

Any estimates regarding how long it took to earn a given Engineered module by gathering materials will also be helpful in addressing this aspect of balancing.

Alternate Gathering Methods​

We appreciate that the repetitive nature of material gathering may not be for everyone. Some have called for ways to earn materials while engaging in the specific types of content they already enjoy.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Some time ago, Engineering was changed so that some improvement was guaranteed with each roll. However, the amount by which your progress towards the next module grade is still random. This means sometimes the same number of materials will produce a minimal increase. Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed.

Other Feedback and Suggestions​

Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above. To keep the conversation on-topic and help us collect the feedback, this thread will be closely moderated. Please only reply with responses to the topics mentioned and keep feedback constructive. Unrelated or unhelpful posts may be removed during clean-up. If you find this has happened to your post, consider raising your points in another thread within the Dangerous Discussion section.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

O7

The material gathering should be scrapped all together.

Missions are a good idea, but not like in other MMOs where everyone gets the same one. Every upgrade should have a list of "parts" the engineer needs. From this list a random part connected to a random mission should be the go to. Difficulty of the mission is dependant on the module grade.
This way the random generation still stays there but instead of grinding for placeholder mats you actually got to get a specific module the engineer needs to finish the upgrade.
I think that would be more engaging.

Also in combination with the mission concept mats should be traded. No gathering at all (makes no sense anyway). Mats should be traded for data or combat/bounty vouchers as well as aquired through piracy and commerce.
If you want to buy the stuff you still need to fly to certain places to get them. Not every mat is created by everyone. This puts importance on agricultural systems, industry systems etc.

The trading option is good but most importantly the aquirey of upgrades should be connected with real gameplay and not mindless grind.

 

[Damgalnuna]

I think of engineering as a form of crafting, and plenty of games have crafting and farming, so I'm not diametrically opposed to farming. I think there should definitely be alternatives to grinding/farming, but even with farming existing its a) way too slow, b) lacks gameplay/danger/challenge and c) almost requires borderline exploits to do in any reasonable time.

I felt that World of Warcraft did an OK job of farming. The materials were spread around such that you explored a lot and saw a lot of parts of the game, the scaled in terms of difficulty (low levels couldn't farm high level materials), and you had to potentially fight and worry about PVP (on pvp servers), and farming could be done while doing quests and other parts of the game.

Even if farming stays, along side other methods of getting materials which I totally support, it should have gameplay as well as challenge relative to the tier of material and it should not require relog "exploits" to do in any reasonable timeframe. Let us stay in the game and play it. As it is, you basically make the conscious decision to stop playing the game so that you can do utterly dull farming so you can progress and be competitive.

 

[CMDR Kasanna]

Greetings Commanders

Now that Update 8 for Odyssey is live, we'd like to reignite the series of balancing changes that started before Odyssey's release. Now, it's time to turn our attention to ship Engineering. We recognise there has been significant feedback for on-foot Engineering too, but we'd like to approach these one at a time due to the number of aspects involved. Specifically, we'd like to look at the balancing of the Engineering grind, which largely relates to...

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased?

Similarly, Grade 5 materials can be traded down into 3 Grade 4 materials within the same category. However, Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials take similar amounts of time to gather. Should the number of materials picked up per instance be increased to account for this?

We're also aware that some materials are much harder to find than others as they are tied to rarer BGS states. Let us know which materials ought to be made more readily discoverable.

Any estimates regarding how long it took to earn a given Engineered module by gathering materials will also be helpful in addressing this aspect of balancing.

Alternate Gathering Methods​

We appreciate that the repetitive nature of material gathering may not be for everyone. Some have called for ways to earn materials while engaging in the specific types of content they already enjoy.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Some time ago, Engineering was changed so that some improvement was guaranteed with each roll. However, the amount by which your progress towards the next module grade is still random. This means sometimes the same number of materials will produce a minimal increase. Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed.

Other Feedback and Suggestions​

Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above. To keep the conversation on-topic and help us collect the feedback, this thread will be closely moderated. Please only reply with responses to the topics mentioned and keep feedback constructive. Unrelated or unhelpful posts may be removed during clean-up. If you find this has happened to your post, consider raising your points in another thread within the Dangerous Discussion section.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

O7

O7 Bruce G, hopefully, this feedback is valuable to you and your team in making decisions in improving the game. For my analysis, I utilized the existing logs in my Elite Dangerous folder. I pulled them into PowerBI for research to help drive discussion and thoughts on improvements.

All my data points are from when I started playing the game from September 2019 to October 2021.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Since I began playing, I have completed 2,676 engineering upgrades; these figures exclude experimental effects placed on items, as those upgrades contain no random characteristics. The current engineering system has a randomizer to indicate the quality of the particular upgrade. The quality is characterized by a number between 0 and 1 in the logs. Where quality of one would mean the best upgrade was applied and would maximize the use of engineering components, while the closer to zero, the poorer the upgrade performed. In my 2,676 upgrades, I averaged a quality roll of 0.79, with the lowest being a .17 and the highest received of 1.00.

A further breakdown of the quality rolls by grade indicates that as upgrades progress in grade level, the average quality level received decreases. Comparing the average quality of .69 received on Grade five upgrades vs. the average of 0.87 received on Grade one indicates a -.18 average quality or a 20.7% reduction in the upgrade quality. However, the stats could be exacerbated because more grade one upgrades are completed than grade five. As engineer levels progress, they are more efficient at lower grade upgrades. As engineers can never progress beyond Grade five, they can never be more efficient at grade five upgrades. They will inevitably maintain the lower average quality roll than other grades and require more upgrade attempts to maximize components.

Suggestion​

Modifying the upgrade process to remove the randomness on the quality so players can know precisely how many of each component they are going to need. However, an expanded suggestion is to have fixed component requirements, as the engineer increases in level, those component requirements decrease as the engineer becomes more efficient at the lower level upgrades.


As an example
Felicity Farseer – Frame Shift Drive Increase Range (each cell assumes you max out the level, the upgrade process still requires multiple attempts, but the cell is your total material requirement)

The number of requirements illustrated in my suggestion are towards the progressive reduction and not a reflection of the current conditions nor is these suggested requirements!

Engineer Level​	1	2	3	4	5
Grade 1​	10 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes	8 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes	4 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes	2 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes	1 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes
Grade 2​	X​	6 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes 6 Chemical Processors	4 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes 4 Chemical Processors	4Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes 4 Chemical Processors	2 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes 2 Chemical Processors
Grade 3​	X​	X​	10 Phosphorus 10 Chemical Processors 10 Strange Wake Solutions	8 Phosphorus 8 Chemical Processors 8 Strange Wake Solutions	6 Phosphorus 6 Chemical Processors 6 Strange Wake Solutions
Grade 4​	X​	X​	X​	6 Manganese 8 Chemical Distillery 8 Eccentric Hyperspace Trajectories	4 Manganese 6 Chemical Distillery 6 Eccentric Hyperspace Trajectories
Grade 5​	X​	X​	X​	X​	8 Arsenic 10Chemical Manipulators 10Datamined Wake Exceptions

So using my example above, If I have Felicity at level 3 and bring a new ship in to upgrade grade 1 frameshift drive, I know I will need four atypical disrupted wake echos. If she hits level four the next time, it will only need two, etc.

Availability and Time Required​

I want to use a small part of this section to point out an existing game problem that will hopefully be addressed by my suggestions and suggestions from other players. While gathering items at a location, logging out, and then logging back in to collect the same resource is not an exploit in Frontier's eyes, it should be a glaring spotlight that there is a problem if players do this. Players feel there is no other way to gather a material type other than logging on and off. In that case, that is a symptom of an existing problem that a material distribution is too low or too difficult. Players are resorting to this method and this should not be a core game design (Odyssey Manufacturing Instructions and ALL odyssey data types come running to the front, but this thread isn't about that). With that said, I have done the relog method for engineering materials on occasion, but I wouldn't say I like it, and it's not my primary way of gathering materials.

I view myself as a well-rounded CMDR and partake in a little bit of everything (combat, mining, trading, exploration, search & rescue, etc.) The distribution of the three types of material (encoded, manufacturing, and raw) is shown in the graph, with encoded being the fewest received material types over my playtime. The encoded category also represents the most difficult to gather (Scanning ships/wakes/data cores etc.).

When it comes to trading engineering materials, I find the opposite of Bruce G's post is true. It is relatively easy to gather the grade one to three materials, and grades four through five are more complicated. I use the material trader to trade up, rather than down, for grade four and five materials. Is this the most efficient method? No, it is not, but as my first paragraph eluded, performing log off/on methods for farming materials should not be considered a method of game design as it symptom of a problem, and I don't do it often.

The chart below demonstrates when I used the material trader and traded the different material types for other resources. It indicates that I'm taking many of my farmed materials and trading them in for a net loss most of the time for the higher-grade materials.

The following chart lays out the above information from when I started playing to now, showing gathered engineering materials, traded engineering materials, side-by-side along with a number of engineering upgrades performed. The graph does indicate my path as a new player; starting out, I minimally needed the material trader to accomplish upgrades, then as I reached mid-tier gameplay. In March of 2020, I unlocked most bubble engineers, hit trade elite, and purchased my first Anaconda. Federal Corvette purchased in April 2020, spent most of May trying to upgrade these two ships, completed upgrading the Anaconda around June. As of this post, the Corvette is still not finished being upgraded, but still super fun for CZ's. However, Odyssey launched in May, and the on-foot gameplay is disconnected from ship gameplay. As the chart shows, there is little to no progress towards gathering ship materials, even though I am playing off and on (another problem indicator).

The chart is really hard to see, blue is gathered materials, orange is traded materials, pink is upgrades completed.

Suggestion and Alternate Gathering Methods​

I have never felt a wall stop with the speed of overall ship engineering speeds, but specific components have felt like a wall stop (those requiring encoded materials or specific BGS state Grade four and five materials) as those generally require an out of the way obscure activity

Anyone or a combination of these ideas can help alleviate availability and provide alternate methods.

• Increase number of encoded materials received
• Increase mission rewards for engineering materials from 5 to 15, allow more types as mission rewards.
• Any material locked to a BGS state needs to be able to spawn anywhere
• Better trade Up/Across rates at material traders
• Add a Guardian Material trader
• Allow players to trade/sell/buy engineering materials through fleet carriers or other means. If this is implemented, the material traders need to be removed from the game; a player economy could thrive in this environment.
• Completing conflict zones should offer engineering rewards and combat bonds; there are many materials that a player cannot gather in the heat of a considerable conflict.
• Opportunity to give search and rescue, and salvaging some love – increase, not only the number of materials but also what is available to be recovered at these signal points. Currently, it is only manufacturing materials that can be gathered. I suggest making it more of a space simulation and allowing all materials to spawn in all signal types potentially.
• Factions that a player is allied with can talk to the faction representative and receive/buy engineering materials based on that outpost/facility type (limited to once-a-week server tick per location).
• Opportunity to give squadrons some love - based on each location that a supported faction that a squadron owns, they can receive materials (limited to once-a-week server tick.)
• Add engineering components to the commodity markets (the game is a space simulation. Really why can we not 'Buy' Iron? AXI players should not have to gather resources to perform synthesis for ammunition. I get from a game design perspective the engineering materials are "tickets" indicating that we are participating in various gameplay aspects but in the spirit of aspiring to be a simulation just get rid of this wall and make them part of the simulation

I do like the idea of more quests for the engineers, and it would give them more opportunities to be connected with more aspects of the Elite Dangerous universe. Repeatable quests from the engineers that net us materials they need would also be a welcome change and require less use of the material trader.

I also like the idea of materials being bought through items not obtainable at commodity markets. However, if you do this, why not just let us buy materials for credits because that's essentially what is happening.

Overall, materials need to be coming from more locations if they are not allowed to be directly purchased. Address the underlying problem that players will resort to log-on/log-off methods and trade down. This problem needs to be addressed as that shouldn't be the core game design (for Horizons nor for Odyssey). When I say solve, I don't mean prevent it; a player should decide that he doesn't need to use that method because he can use another method or play the game normally.

 

[Fizzatron]

Adding a "Material Storage Locker" 1 ton cargo unit (treasure chest or loot box, if you will) as a findable item and/or mission reward. This cargo unit - which cannot be unlocked until taken to a station contact, shady character, or an engineer for example - would contain 10-50 random grade 3, 4 and 5 materials of ANY type. This "Material Storage Locker" cargo unit would be an exciting find during any stage of gameplay, and would always be an exciting find and highly rewarding to manually scoop. This would be an item everyone would be on the lookout for. The contents could be RNG of course, but they could also be influenced by the location you take them to for unlocking, such as a specific engineer, a BGS state, or material trader, for example.

I like this idea, and tying into that, if we were given the opportunity to store materials separate from our person in a similar way, opening the possibility of losing what's stored in them if our ships go boom, it would make sense that these containers would be found among the debris of an exploded ship.

 

[Damgalnuna]

Overall, materials need to be coming from more locations if they are not allowed to be directly purchased. Address the underlying problem that players will resort to log-on/log-off methods and trade down. This problem needs to be addressed as that shouldn't be the core game design (for Horizons nor for Odyssey). When I say solve, I don't mean prevent it; a player should decide that he doesn't need to use that method because he can use another method or play the game normally.

Amazing feedback @CMDR Kasanna, in particular this bit. You put it better than I have; most, if not all of us hate the relog method of gathering and it is utterly immersion breaking, but removing it without rendering it unnecessary would be a step back.

 

[Damgalnuna]

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased?

Similarly, Grade 5 materials can be traded down into 3 Grade 4 materials within the same category. However, Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials take similar amounts of time to gather. Should the number of materials picked up per instance be increased to account for this?

We're also aware that some materials are much harder to find than others as they are tied to rarer BGS states. Let us know which materials ought to be made more readily discoverable.

Any estimates regarding how long it took to earn a given Engineered module by gathering materials will also be helpful in addressing this aspect of balancing.

Frustration:

I want to highlight that time required is not the only metric for current issues with engineering - current methods, even gameplay based ones, incur a lot of frustration and immersion breaking use of external tools (like eddb and inara), guides, and forums. This makes the process frustrating enough that people who even have the time, often don't have the gumption to do the huge amount of tedious work. Plenty of people would spend the time (though I still agree it should be reduced). I probably have to do more research in E: D than my job as a software engineer!

Time Requirements:

Guardian Modules

Guardian stuff really needs some love, a LOT of people totally eschew AX play because of the grind required and its some of the coolest content in the game. AX combat is already challenging in and of itself, so the huge barriers to getting started aren't needed.

I don't have an exact number, but I would not be surprised if it was 40 to 80 hours just to get most of the AX modules for one ship, and that was with a lot of reading to find the most efficient (but least fun) ways to do it AND having a fleet carrier parked in orbit some of the time - without doing a lot of research it could be even worse. This also required being away from the bubble, unable to play with my friends who found the guardian process so tedious that they didn't go through it with me, so we could not do AX content together.

Suggestions:
1. Increase the drop rate of both materials and especially encoded ones.
2. Guardian/AX missions: Make some missions that introduce you to guardian sites and AX content and encourage you to do it! You guys created cool places (this ties into #2), encourage people to go visit them! Have missions be a way to get materials, and also have them give rewards that make them worth doing over just grinding. For AX, have missions to rescue survivors, collect cargo from destroyed ships and collect thargoid data. There could be a lot more gameplay other than killing 'goids and people could get started with it before they've fully
3. Guardian material traders - others have suggested it, and I agree.

Human Engineering

Like other people, I don't have exact times but I'll try to estimate them (20% +/- error at least) . Overall I've spent hundreds of hours for a decent fleet of engineered ships, but I still move a lot of modules around (hull reinforcements, shield boosters, weapons) to avoid grinding enough to have my ships all decently engineered.

Estimate of time for my first heavy duty armor G5 with deep plating, assuming its the first module at this engineer (but this tends to be the most frustrating one, and the initial barrier-to-entry that would turn a lot of people away). Times include overhead of multiple trips and multiple sessions and mistakes.

Total time: ~25 hours and probably 2 weeks of moderate gameplay. I got more efficient later but it still required a good bit of dedication, and several of my friends lost interest in the game due to the time commitment and being underpowered for a lot of gameplay without it.

1. Unlocking engineer (out of game research, meeting requirement, unlock requirement): 5 hours
2. Gathering raw materials: 5 hours (researching planets, grinding, travel time, material trader traveling)
3. Gathering manufactured materials: 10 hours (hunting for high grade signal sources in the right BGS status, relog grinding, material trader traveling)
4. Actual engineering: 5 hours (traveling to engineer, shipping the actual ship I want to engineer to a nearby system, taking actual ship to engineer, doing the engineering, getting back to my home system, shipping my engineered ship home).

Alternate Gathering Methods

Raw Materials in Odyssey:

Raw materials are much slower and harder to find in odyssey, and almost require mining or switching to horizons to do in any reasonable timeframe. Raw materials were one of the few I didn't mind finding in Horizons because I enjoyed exploring bio sites and geo sites - they tended to be pretty and relaxing to farm.

Suggestions:

1. Bring back bio and geo POI's: I honestly liked them and miss them, I don't think they would break current bio exploration because they could be a concentrated area that wouldn't have enough bio-diversity to get but 1 sample of bio, and they could be a dense patch of 1 lifeform. The same applies to geo, and the patches could be smaller and more spread out so that they can blend in, just that they are concentrated enough to farm.

2. Targeted mining in rings and asteroid fields: Have a way to track down specific raw materials when mining. Maybe additions to the pulse wave analyzer to find specific things. This would be a good time to show asteroid fields some love too because I never have any reason to go to them. I don't suggest this as an alternative to other suggestions of a market (player based and or trader based) for materials or mission rewards. This might be a good way to support a player based economy where people who enjoy mining have a new way to do so, but other players who don't can trade with those who do.

Guardian Components

In addition to the suggestions for increasing guardian materials, I think there should be more ways to acquire materials. I like guardian sites and think people should still need to start their AX journey there, but once you get a base level of defenses I think that you should be able to harvest from a) non-human signal sources and/or b) new wreckage signal sources that may or may not have thargoids.

I think these components could be a subset of all of them, potentially oriented towards weapons or synthesis so that guardian sites are still relevant, but not the only way to get set up for AX activity.

 

[sandkid]

O7 Bruce G, hopefully, this feedback is valuable to you and your team in making decisions in improving the game. For my analysis, I utilized the existing logs in my Elite Dangerous folder. I pulled them into PowerBI for research to help drive discussion and thoughts on improvements.

All my data points are from when I started playing the game from September 2019 to October 2021.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Since I began playing, I have completed 2,676 engineering upgrades; these figures exclude experimental effects placed on items, as those upgrades contain no random characteristics. The current engineering system has a randomizer to indicate the quality of the particular upgrade. The quality is characterized by a number between 0 and 1 in the logs. Where quality of one would mean the best upgrade was applied and would maximize the use of engineering components, while the closer to zero, the poorer the upgrade performed. In my 2,676 upgrades, I averaged a quality roll of 0.79, with the lowest being a .17 and the highest received of 1.00.

A further breakdown of the quality rolls by grade indicates that as upgrades progress in grade level, the average quality level received decreases. Comparing the average quality of .69 received on Grade five upgrades vs. the average of 0.87 received on Grade one indicates a -.18 average quality or a 20.7% reduction in the upgrade quality. However, the stats could be exacerbated because more grade one upgrades are completed than grade five. As engineer levels progress, they are more efficient at lower grade upgrades. As engineers can never progress beyond Grade five, they can never be more efficient at grade five upgrades. They will inevitably maintain the lower average quality roll than other grades and require more upgrade attempts to maximize components.


View attachment 274515 View attachment 274516 View attachment 274517

Suggestion​

Modifying the upgrade process to remove the randomness on the quality so players can know precisely how many of each component they are going to need. However, an expanded suggestion is to have fixed component requirements, as the engineer increases in level, those component requirements decrease as the engineer becomes more efficient at the lower level upgrades.


As an example
Felicity Farseer – Frame Shift Drive Increase Range (each cell assumes you max out the level, the upgrade process still requires multiple attempts, but the cell is your total material requirement)

The number of requirements illustrated in my suggestion are towards the progressive reduction and not a reflection of the current conditions nor is these suggested requirements!

Engineer Level​	1	2	3	4	5
Grade 1​	10 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes	8 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes	4 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes	2 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes	1 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes
Grade 2​	X​	6 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes 6 Chemical Processors	4 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes 4 Chemical Processors	4Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes 4 Chemical Processors	2 Atypical Disrupted Wake Echoes 2 Chemical Processors
Grade 3​	X​	X​	10 Phosphorus 10 Chemical Processors 10 Strange Wake Solutions	8 Phosphorus 8 Chemical Processors 8 Strange Wake Solutions	6 Phosphorus 6 Chemical Processors 6 Strange Wake Solutions
Grade 4​	X​	X​	X​	6 Manganese 8 Chemical Distillery 8 Eccentric Hyperspace Trajectories	4 Manganese 6 Chemical Distillery 6 Eccentric Hyperspace Trajectories
Grade 5​	X​	X​	X​	X​	8 Arsenic 10Chemical Manipulators 10Datamined Wake Exceptions

So using my example above, If I have Felicity at level 3 and bring a new ship in to upgrade grade 1 frameshift drive, I know I will need four atypical disrupted wake echos. If she hits level four the next time, it will only need two, etc.

Availability and Time Required​

I want to use a small part of this section to point out an existing game problem that will hopefully be addressed by my suggestions and suggestions from other players. While gathering items at a location, logging out, and then logging back in to collect the same resource is not an exploit in Frontier's eyes, it should be a glaring spotlight that there is a problem if players do this. Players feel there is no other way to gather a material type other than logging on and off. In that case, that is a symptom of an existing problem that a material distribution is too low or too difficult. Players are resorting to this method and this should not be a core game design (Odyssey Manufacturing Instructions and ALL odyssey data types come running to the front, but this thread isn't about that). With that said, I have done the relog method for engineering materials on occasion, but I wouldn't say I like it, and it's not my primary way of gathering materials.

I view myself as a well-rounded CMDR and partake in a little bit of everything (combat, mining, trading, exploration, search & rescue, etc.) The distribution of the three types of material (encoded, manufacturing, and raw) is shown in the graph, with encoded being the fewest received material types over my playtime. The encoded category also represents the most difficult to gather (Scanning ships/wakes/data cores etc.).

View attachment 274519

When it comes to trading engineering materials, I find the opposite of Bruce G's post is true. It is relatively easy to gather the grade one to three materials, and grades four through five are more complicated. I use the material trader to trade up, rather than down, for grade four and five materials. Is this the most efficient method? No, it is not, but as my first paragraph eluded, performing log off/on methods for farming materials should not be considered a method of game design as it symptom of a problem, and I don't do it often.

The chart below demonstrates when I used the material trader and traded the different material types for other resources. It indicates that I'm taking many of my farmed materials and trading them in for a net loss most of the time for the higher-grade materials.


View attachment 274522


The following chart lays out the above information from when I started playing to now, showing gathered engineering materials, traded engineering materials, side-by-side along with a number of engineering upgrades performed. The graph does indicate my path as a new player; starting out, I minimally needed the material trader to accomplish upgrades, then as I reached mid-tier gameplay. In March of 2020, I unlocked most bubble engineers, hit trade elite, and purchased my first Anaconda. Federal Corvette purchased in April 2020, spent most of May trying to upgrade these two ships, completed upgrading the Anaconda around June. As of this post, the Corvette is still not finished being upgraded, but still super fun for CZ's. However, Odyssey launched in May, and the on-foot gameplay is disconnected from ship gameplay. As the chart shows, there is little to no progress towards gathering ship materials, even though I am playing off and on (another problem indicator).

The chart is really hard to see, blue is gathered materials, orange is traded materials, pink is upgrades completed.
View attachment 274523

Suggestion and Alternate Gathering Methods​

I have never felt a wall stop with the speed of overall ship engineering speeds, but specific components have felt like a wall stop (those requiring encoded materials or specific BGS state Grade four and five materials) as those generally require an out of the way obscure activity

Anyone or a combination of these ideas can help alleviate availability and provide alternate methods.

• Increase number of encoded materials received
• Increase mission rewards for engineering materials from 5 to 15, allow more types as mission rewards.
• Any material locked to a BGS state needs to be able to spawn anywhere
• Better trade Up/Across rates at material traders
• Add a Guardian Material trader
• Allow players to trade/sell/buy engineering materials through fleet carriers or other means. If this is implemented, the material traders need to be removed from the game; a player economy could thrive in this environment.
• Completing conflict zones should offer engineering rewards and combat bonds; there are many materials that a player cannot gather in the heat of a considerable conflict.
• Opportunity to give search and rescue, and salvaging some love – increase, not only the number of materials but also what is available to be recovered at these signal points. Currently, it is only manufacturing materials that can be gathered. I suggest making it more of a space simulation and allowing all materials to spawn in all signal types potentially.
• Factions that a player is allied with can talk to the faction representative and receive/buy engineering materials based on that outpost/facility type (limited to once-a-week server tick per location).
• Opportunity to give squadrons some love - based on each location that a supported faction that a squadron owns, they can receive materials (limited to once-a-week server tick.)
• Add engineering components to the commodity markets (the game is a space simulation. Really why can we not 'Buy' Iron? AXI players should not have to gather resources to perform synthesis for ammunition. I get from a game design perspective the engineering materials are "tickets" indicating that we are participating in various gameplay aspects but in the spirit of aspiring to be a simulation just get rid of this wall and make them part of the simulation

I do like the idea of more quests for the engineers, and it would give them more opportunities to be connected with more aspects of the Elite Dangerous universe. Repeatable quests from the engineers that net us materials they need would also be a welcome change and require less use of the material trader.

I also like the idea of materials being bought through items not obtainable at commodity markets. However, if you do this, why not just let us buy materials for credits because that's essentially what is happening.

Overall, materials need to be coming from more locations if they are not allowed to be directly purchased. Address the underlying problem that players will resort to log-on/log-off methods and trade down. This problem needs to be addressed as that shouldn't be the core game design (for Horizons nor for Odyssey). When I say solve, I don't mean prevent it; a player should decide that he doesn't need to use that method because he can use another method or play the game normally.

Incredible analysis and very similar to my own experiences. I don't have trouble getting low grade materials, but I do farm them a lot to trade up to G4 and G5. This was the primary reason I spent so much time in CZs or HazRes, where I could keep limpets deployed to gather materials from quick kills. It proved simpler (and more efficient of my time) to just mass grind low-end materials then trade up.

Whether this is a good or bad design loop, I think, depends on the player in question. Overall, I did find my enjoyment of combat rapidly disappearing because the best way to accomplish engineering at higher grades wasn't to seek out a challenge in combat or missions, but rather to target the most mind-numbing and easiest of targets. Because my time is the most valuable commodity in a game and Elite is notorious for wasting that time (be it in supercruise/hyperspace or farming materials).

Ironically, I probably spend most of my time farming materials for FSD upgrades and mass reductions (I prefer exploration) so I waste less time in jump sequences getting to an area of the galaxy I want to explore. Robbing Peter to pay Paul comes to mind. No matter how I play Elite, it will find a way to waste my time doing something that isn't fun.

 

[Dammage]

I've done full engineering of 30+ ships on 3 accounts, so I am fine with grinding while I watch videos but my friends who got me into this game all left before Odyssey because of the engineering grind and the loss of planned VR support. In Odyssey, I've fully upgraded 3 suits and 4 weapons.

I like the raw collection methods of the crystal shard forest and I like hunting Selenium as it doesn't require the constant relog of HGEs for manufactured or Jameson crash site for data. The guardian stuff is great but requires relogging to get what you need. Setting the materials so you can get a full set at one site and a different set at another site would be better. The jumping into supercruise to reset the settlements in Odyssey isn't that bad, it is just the lack of variety in sources of materials and the drop rates that make it monotonous. Having more mats from mission rewards and more variety in mission types would help. Trading combat bonds in for mats instead of credits would add to that loop.

Exobiology needs something, in Horizons exploration you get interested when you find Earthlike worlds or other rare high value objects. Adding rareish biological samples that you can trade for engineering materials or at least have high value would add something to that gameplay. Trading exploration data for mats would help, or have engineering data be part of the scanning results.
Trading thargoid hearts or bonds for engineering mats would also be great as that was the most challenging and fun part of the game for me to solo. I guess thargoid missions give that, but are much less efficient than other collection methods and don't exist most of the time.

 

[Russ Webster]

Hi, I'm a relatively new player and have been caught in this inane grind drivel in the hope of a better, more capable ship or ships.

I would relish any re-balance of resource drops but I think what would be better would be mission specific rewards rather than this poop grinding which is far less immersive and feels exploitative of a game loop or hole. I can see why the customer base would turn away - and, in turn, the company share price would begin to wither away.

Immersive good. Creates loyal fan base.
Grinding bad. Creates unrealistic workload that drives practice not in creators design.

But you know all this.

I do like what Damgalnuna said above.

 

[Scoobe87]

Thanks for gathering feedback on this. I would say that there are some underlying factors within the current gameplay that have been mentioned.

Current Sub Optimal Factors:

• Logging off and back on behavior in order to grind materials is immersion breaking (high volumes of single type materials randomized)
• Much of the gameplay almost requires going to external sites to know what the heck to do for mats and where to go
• Too many engineers with overlapping upgrades and various levels (related to the above bullet)
• Long repetitive grinds for specific high end mats (random chance)
• Tasks to unlock engineers mostly appears like random tasks
• Chain engineer unlocks

Current Optimal Factors:

• High degree of customization
• High engagement with different areas of the game (combat, exploration, etc)

Of the original suggestions provided, I find the concept of trading certain gameplay obtainable objects for certain materials the most appealing. I think it has the potential to have the most improvement to current gameplay for both new and veteran players. I also like engineer missions that can provide mats level synchronized with threat level.

Ideally there are multiple ways to get what you need with less randomness in the process. The current random drop salvaging etc can still exist as nice surprise as you go about your gameplay, but not be the only way.

Broader suggestions:
The Guardian experience should be thought out in conjunction with the engineering gameplay. I enjoyed my first experiences with Guardian sites but outside a few of the niche modules, it sits in an odd middle relationship with engineers. I would suggest instead it occupy an alternative high end Engineer reward with certain engineering perks reserved just for those modules. Example: Once you engineer a module to lvl 4, you unlock an engineer objective that sends you to the Guardian sites to recover materials to build a related module that is equiv of a lvl 4 engineered module. It would then have 1 engineered attribute to choose for customization (to level 5) along with one other perk unique to Guardian tech (but not so overpowering to make a normal lvl 5 module obsolete, like slightly less mass, power pull, etc). If engineering guardian module is too complicated, make them unlockable once you hit lvl 5 with a module and it be a slightly improved engineered mission level 5 module (end game module) along with elevating the difficulty of the guardian sites (maybe integrating Odyssey ground combat to encourage more Odyssey participation?). Could have each Guardian module contribute to a single buff (+2% shield) so that when you have all guardian modules, you get a worthwhile benefit. Just a thought to take advantage of the existing guardian content.

Suggest consolidating engineering. Have just one engineer for specific module upgrades to level 5 instead of to level 3 here, level 5 over there, etc. I can never remember who I need to go to for certain things and end up looking it up on a web page. Make it simple and easy so it benefits new and veterans alike. To facilitate this (assuming engineers can give missions as referenced above), have each engineer have an unlock mission to take at anytime. This will allow the preferred gameplay of an individual (combat, exploration, mining/trading) go after the engineers that benefits their style gameplay first.

 

[Maur]

Greetings Commanders

Now that Update 8 for Odyssey is live, we'd like to reignite the series of balancing changes that started before Odyssey's release. Now, it's time to turn our attention to ship Engineering. We recognise there has been significant feedback for on-foot Engineering too, but we'd like to approach these one at a time due to the number of aspects involved. Specifically, we'd like to look at the balancing of the Engineering grind, which largely relates to...

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased?

Similarly, Grade 5 materials can be traded down into 3 Grade 4 materials within the same category. However, Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials take similar amounts of time to gather. Should the number of materials picked up per instance be increased to account for this?

We're also aware that some materials are much harder to find than others as they are tied to rarer BGS states. Let us know which materials ought to be made more readily discoverable.

Any estimates regarding how long it took to earn a given Engineered module by gathering materials will also be helpful in addressing this aspect of balancing.

Alternate Gathering Methods​

We appreciate that the repetitive nature of material gathering may not be for everyone. Some have called for ways to earn materials while engaging in the specific types of content they already enjoy.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Some time ago, Engineering was changed so that some improvement was guaranteed with each roll. However, the amount by which your progress towards the next module grade is still random. This means sometimes the same number of materials will produce a minimal increase. Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed.

Other Feedback and Suggestions​

Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above. To keep the conversation on-topic and help us collect the feedback, this thread will be closely moderated. Please only reply with responses to the topics mentioned and keep feedback constructive. Unrelated or unhelpful posts may be removed during clean-up. If you find this has happened to your post, consider raising your points in another thread within the Dangerous Discussion section.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

O7

I agree with all of this... YES! Bring it on!

Additionally...

1. Give us a Material Trader module option for our FCs. Any materials traded there give the FC owner 1 of the material/data supplied for every 1 item received by the player using the service.

2. Better still, and additionally to 1, allow players to use FCs to trade any item obtainable in the game. Raw/manufactured materials, data, rare goods, engineered modules, or even whole engineered ships, suits or guns. Some people like engineering... or would do it for credits, while others would gladly pay a premium in credits to avoid it. If we're to 'make our own way' in the game, this is a necessity.

3. We shouldn't need more than 2 of any one item for a G1 recipe, or more than n+1 items for a Grade n recipe... 1 item for each stat modification step. The grade of materials required shouldn't be higher than the grade of the upgrade, and there should be no more than 1 material with a grade equal to the upgrade step.

4. There's nothing wrong with random engineering percentages, as long as by the time that you apply the full n+1 modifications per grade, you get the full effect, and each application of materials results in some improvement. Each upgrade should result in stats in a given percentage range that is higher than the last.

5. Expand the material traders to include an Alien trader: Guardian/Thargoid materials.

6. Make material trader trades less steeply stacked against the player.

7. Allow players to store a lot more low-grade materials, and allow excess to be stored on FCs.

8. No object/PoI that yields mats should require relogging. It should be possible to scan, scoop or otherwise collect the drops for as long as the object/PoI is active/present. If something must be activated and remains active for a certain time, it should drop data at regular intervals until it deactivates, and it should be possible to reactivate it immediately without relogging. For timed signal sources, they should continue to yield more of their drops at greater ranges until they expire, favouring fast ships with collector limpets, rather than relogging. Nothing breaks immersion more than relogging.

9. Once we have engineered a given type, size and class of module to any given grade, it should be unlocked, and we should be able to buy more of them with credits. I.e. if we engineer a 6A power plant to Low Emissions G5, we should be able to buy any G1-G5 Low Emissions 6A power plant for credits. Adding an experimental effect should just cost more credits if we have already unlocked it.

 

[CMDR Dropstone Ted]

My thoughts on Materials Gathering
I honestly don't mind the gathering mechanic as it makes the process of stockpiling materials for future upgrades somewhat rewarding. I like working towards full inventories of materials and having to seek out worlds / sites with certain raw materials to address a specific need. That being said I do agree there are a couple areas that are worth a tweak and would add significantly to gameplay:

1. Improve the playability of Raw Materials gathering on surface sites. The switch from designated geological / biological sites to the Odyssey "heatmap" makes finding materials way more random than it needs to be. Even after conducting dozens of landings in the highest intensity (blue) regions following a surface scan, I have yet to locate a geological site with more than a few chondrite-type deposits that might yield one or two rares. It's a nice idea to have a more organic surface distribution of elemental deposits but I find the heatmap is not providing a suitable mechanic for reliably locating areas where there are higher concentrations.

2. Improve access to certain rare manufactured or encoded materials, some of which are nearly impossible to acquire outside of mission rewards. Classified Scan Fragments and Datamined Wake Exceptions come immediately to mind. Present opportunities for the occasional "mother lode" of materials for completing difficult or obscure tasks - make it interesting to look for such opportunities. Relogging to hit Dav's Hope over and over again is not interesting.

3. Improve the Materials Trader mechanic:
3a. Improve exchange rates between different material categories - a ratio of 6:1 is unacceptable for trading between similar grade materials. Similarly, there should be greater equity in exchange rates between grades within a category, 6:1 to trade "up" but 1:3 to trade "down" is too much disparity. Something like 4:1 "up" and 1:3 "down" would be more in line with what one might expect in an actual exchange market. Or maybe it depends on local economy, e.g. someone with an abundance of Pharmaceutical Isolators could trade those at a premium for Datamined Wake Exceptions in an Outbreak system.
3b. Facilitate exchange between material types - this would reward different playing styles, i.e. one who likes exploration and seeking out surface materials but doesn't care for wake scanning or chasing down signal sources.

4. Improve variety of material rewards for missions. I'm full up on Exquisite Focus Crystals but don't think I've ever seen Pharmaceutical Isolators, or Military Supercapacitors, or Classified Scan Fragments (to name a few) offered as a mission reward. Ever. Again, this is something where the material reward could be more reliably keyed to certain mission types.

 

[TalonKarrde72]

I like the idea of Engineer missions. Especially with the On-foot side of things, there should be a ton of potential there for missions for mats/upgrades. Raw mats need to be mission rewards, maybe they already are, but I've never noticed them.
Re-ballance the trade system.

 

[CMRD Ammazzone]

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

Yes! Yes!

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.

Hell YES!

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Some time ago, Engineering was changed so that some improvement was guaranteed with each roll. However, the amount by which your progress towards the next module grade is still random. This means sometimes the same number of materials will produce a minimal increase. Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed.

Yes!

Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above. To keep the conversation on-topic and help us collect the feedback, this thread will be closely moderated. Please only reply with responses to the topics mentioned and keep feedback constructive. Unrelated or unhelpful posts may be removed during clean-up. If you find this has happened to your post, consider raising your points in another thread within the Dangerous Discussion section.

• Scrapping engineered modules: the player should be given the option to scrap engineered modules, rather than selling them after all the effort of putting them together, and get back a fraction of the materials used.
• Looting dead enemies: when you kill enemies on foot, it is not sure where the heck their weapons go. It would be nice if you could swap a weapon of yours with theirs, or if you could scrap them on the spot to get weapon/suit modifications that you can reapply on yours once back to a concourse. (Yes, swapping the suit on foot doesn't look promising. Gross!)

TL;DR please, do anything, literally ANYTHING, that sets us commanders better off! Upgrading on foot equipment is an endless grind
) and a pain.

 

[CMDR Dropstone Ted]

My Thoughts on Engineering:
I tend to enjoy the engineering mechanic, but it has it's limitations. Controversial Opinion Alert: I like the random progress towards upgrades. It reflects an actual trial-and-error engineering process. That being said, given the in-game reality that Engineers are now working with the experience of having applyied the same modification to thousands of the same modules to achieve the same outcome, it would stand to reason that by now the Engineers would have optimized their workflows to confidently apply modifications with a known input of materials.

So how do we reconcile expected and reliable increases in performance for specific and substantially field-tested upgrades with the notion of chance in "rolling" improvements for riskier modifications?

1. Move beyond the G1 to G5 upgrade ladder. Assume G1 through G5 are the "in-warranty" upgrade levels that are known to operate reliably. But what if one could keep "rolling" for improvements beyond G5? Maybe that's where the "rolling" mechanic could really play a meaningful role, where the limits of "overengineered' components could be tested, with the chance of getting even greater performance upgrades with, perhaps, the chance for failures in normal operation? How many explorers would go out on a limb with the equivalent of a G7 FSD that might start losing health at an accelerated rate? This would be the bleeding edge that would forever be probed by intrepid CMDRs seeking performance envelopes beyond the fixed constraints of ship outfitting and "safe" engineering.

2. Allow for stacked upgrades. Continuing the FSD example, it doesn't make sense that one cannot pair a moderately increased jump range with a moderately faster boot cycle. Why not allow up to a G3 upgrade in two categories at once? Or G2 in three? Maybe each module gets an upgrade "budget" of five or six levels that can be used as the CMDR sees fit. Would really open up some variety in ship builds.

3. Allow experimental upgrades to be applied through remote engineering. Again, the idea being that after thousands of successful implementations these aren't really "experimental" anymore, are they? More broadly, remote engineering capabilities should be more accessible so experienced CMDRs with G5 access to an engineer don't have to keep going on "engineering tours" throughout the bubble every time they outfit a new ship. Nothing personal against the Engineers or anything...

Fun to think about the possibilities.

 

[Nolimit117]

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.

I'm all for allowing materials to be bought, but why go through specific trading instead of using credits? This would truly allow anyone to acquire materials while playing their chosen discipline, even traders.
We should be able to buy anything. If there is a concern about too much availability you could make the price very high.

 

[O'Roarke]

When reading the subreddit this morning, a thread "Oh my god. Tried the engineering grind for the first time and two hours in I’ve achieved nothing and I hate engineering" popped up.

What strikes me, from reading that thread, is that there are tons and tons of people that go to obscure surface sites that I didn't know existed and had to look up what they are.

I think the real problem with the "engineering grind" are influencers who aren't that good at the game besides pumping a lot of time into it...
...and they then lead folks that need leadership into a horrible experience which requires pumping a lot of time into it.

Similarly...
The "[ED: Odyssey] Smash and Grab" vid shows the application of the "farming meta" espoused today by influencers in action; go to an Anarchic settlement, in an Anarchy system and butcher everything. Loot: One single (coveted) Suit Schematic, acquired in a little over half an hour.
And "Two gamers rob a military base and [REDACTED] die" shows a similar approach; a direct assault on an Anarchic settlement - a large military settlement. In an attempt to butcher everything. Loot: Nuthin', nada, zilch, achieved in under four minutes.

I like these two channels, because they create enjoyable niche content for Elite. I'd like them to produce more of it, to be honest.

Unfortunately these two emulated the "the most current farming meta known by the community", and got results to match - and they believe it's the best they can do.
In the second vid linked, a buddy of the content creator basically gets whacked one minute into the raid - and, yeah, if that's your experience I can totally understand you'd rather play NMS or some other game.
Because this is trying to get results while bashing your head into a wall, repeatedly.

Faux spoiler alert: AndCups and Turtleiss picked the better settlement, whereas Crimsongamer had better tactics.

The above image are two screenshots and the result from a mission I picked up from a Concourse contact; doubled the reward with negotation, and scrounged up loot in-situ.
It wasn't my intention to run an Odyssey mission because I was there for other business, but it was a 5×Manufacturing Instruction reward so I tried negotiating for more.
This loot was acquired from a Sirius Corporation settlement, no fines or bounties were accrued - wasn't caught trespassing or stealing, and didn't murder anyone.
Loot: 6×Suit Schematic, 1×Vehicle Schematic, 1×Ship Schematic, 1×Building Schematic, 10×Manufacturing Instructions, plus a few other assets in about 20 minutes.

All those schematics? -A fresh Odyssey player in their Flight Suit could acquire those, no problem.
And that's 16× more time efficient then the smash-n-grab video. And that excludes the mission reward of 10×Manufacturing Instructions.

So, maybe FDev should just broach that subject on Supercruise News a few times; that some popular influencers are inferring a "farming meta" that is, put diplomatically, inefficient and if emulated will give you a subpar experience. You could also then follow that up, immediately, by informing the public that you kind of like people figuring that out on their own because "gitting gud" is kind of the design philosophy for Elite - that the game has a huge skillcap by design.