Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering

[DemiserofD]

I got to thinking about it, and thought of an incredibly simple way to really help the process of materials collecting.

Make targeted collector limpets return the limpet on completion.

Think about your average Conflict Zone; you kill your first ship, deploy some limpets to grab the loot, and then fly off to attack your next enemy. They have point defense, which immediately shoots down your collectors. So you deploy more, and they get shot down the NEXT enemy. Within 3-4 enemies, you're out of collectors, unless you sacrificed a huge amount of optional slots on cargo, which most combat ships can't afford. The only other choice is synthesizing, but using materials to get materials makes no sense at all.

So you change it! If rather than being destroyed, targeted limpets are returned to your cargo bay, then after collecting your materials, you're right back to full again! You can go for a long time with just 4-16 cargo space! And because targeted limpets move much faster, it speeds the process up dramatically!

This change ALONE would make a BIG difference.

 

[Nickolai]

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet.

Right now, the PvP meta ship is an engineered FDL with plasmas and rails.

Literally any post asking about what ship to build for PvP gets answered with that. Any other ship is a disadvantage. Fully engineered Federal Assault Ship? Disadvantage. Chieftain? Disadvantage. Mamba? Disadvantage. Large ship? Destroyed in seconds! Small ship? Can't keep up.

Why is the FDL the perfect ship and everything else sub-optimal?

This goes with my previous post in this thread about how shield engineering is overpowered.

Let's bring some balance here...multiple types of ships should be optimal in different ways. It's so incredibly boring that PvP fighters have such predictable loadouts, and any deviation from that loadout is a "meme build."

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

The number of ingredients is just too high. It dilutes any loot rolls you have and pple end up with stuff they dont need and have to exchange that at bad rates and two weeks later it turns out they might need it for some obscure crap to get on with.

 

[BackToTheMud]

I personally feel getting 3 mats when you picknpne up is fine. It's more about the RNG and general availibility that need adjusting.

More even drop rates would be good. For example, the time it take you to get the military supercapacitors you need is the time it takes you to find enough military grade alloys to trade. It's somewhat frustrating.
And more, in more obvious places, higher end raw mats. You don't need to bring back the PoV from before Odyssey, but a clearer indication on planets after a DSS would be great.

Everyone in a wing getting the material when one gathers it. I know it doesn't make complete sense, but it would mean you wouldn't be completing with your friends for enginering mats. Seem like a good thing for a multiplayer game.

Add all grade 5 (4 for raw) material as mission rewards. Not just at engineers, but everywhere. You could make it ecconomy type decide whoch materials will be used as the rewards. Also make 5 a more common amount.

Human ships you destroy in combat should drop all types of human materials in a more even maner. Should start to include data; especially those you don't get by scanning ships.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

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

Bruce, can the undue effect on the background simulation be sorted when people pour into Anarchy systems looking for mats from settlement?

At the rate it is going, there will soon not be any Anarchies left!

 

[CMDRjoezifer]

I want to add my POV as someone who just recently got back into the game after several years.
When I got the first messages from engineers and started looking into the process of unlocking the other engineers I kinda liked the idea. Sure, it's grindy but you're actually playing the game while you're doing it.
Then I looked into material gathering and I honestly thought the Youtube guides I looked into were messing with me.
I have to go to a planet, get into my SRV, drive around in a circle, pick up ten containers, then actually log out of the game, log in again and do it all over?
That seemed so ludicrous that I still can't believe that that's what the people who made the game are expecting from me, I must be missing something, right?
I mean, to actually leave the game in order to play the game? Can that even technically be considered a game loop?
So I did that for a little while, got a few little upgrades and then just said: "Nope, not touching this again until there is a way to do this that doesn't feel like an exploit."
Alternative ways to acquire materials doing activities I already enjoy would be my preferred way to go about this, it's not even about the invested time, it's about investing time into something fun, instead of staring at the game menu. (And preferably not driving around in circles in the exact same spot 10000 times).

 

[Chaparral]

1) Materials gathering has become the gameplay focus since it gates actual game play (miner, explorer, bounty hunter, assassin, BGS player, trader, AX, etc. is optimized by engineered modules).

2) Reprioritize the vehicle for material gathering so that it is a reward for game play, DO NOT make material gathering a redundant low skill gameplay loop that takes advantage of relogging.

3) Make missions, bounties, combat bonds, trade profits, mining profits the most attractive path to scoring mats.

4) If time-gating is in your DNA, then scale the rewards based on numbers cashed in for a given faction. You receive 1x for your first million credit value turned in 2x, for breaking 5 million, etc.

Let's be clear, when I was trying to get players to gear up to fight Thargoids, and they saw what was involved in the Guardian grind, they straight up quit the game. When I encouraged them to do some PVP, and they looked at the grind wall to gear up engines, weapons, armor, etc. they said "let's fight stock". Your best game play is obscured unnecessarily.

 

[CMDR UvealPepper]

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

LOVE THIS CURRENT FORM OF MATERIAL FARMING BUT... (from an Xbox One S user/owner)

Engineering is meant to be hard work. It is a players Choice not a Requirement.

A LITTLE HISTORY BEFORE MY POINT
I am very unwell & I am not allowed to work except for helping companies from home, unpaid via constructive criticism & using my experience to help fix & create solutions, my point, I get to play 'Elite Dangerous: Horizons' for at least 10hrs a day & I Do play for 10hrs a day, sometimes I will play for 3 days solid as of just recently.
I cannot get enough of ED:H, to be honest, 'Horizons' IS Magnificent, A Life I always wanted.

1st of off, there is plenty of players like myself who absolutely LOVE spending time on the Planet surface in that Fun creating SRV farming for Raw Materials, it gives that sense of Earning the Right to Upgrade my ship & for that reason, that is why my headline for this reply is (above-named).
However, I appreciate there is an abundance of players who simply do not have the time to Farm for Materials in this current farming form.
I also know for a Fact, there's quite a lot of players who simply HATE anything in game if it means working for it, these of course are the 'pick up & play' players.

WHAT IS MY SOLUTION FOR THIS PROBLEM?
ADD onto the existing current ways of Material Farming, shops or Outlets' where CMDR's can happily purchase these Raw Materials but at a cost, Realistic cost. Think of a litre of oil for your car, easy to purchase at a price that is small BUT now think of a piece of Gold fused Titanium that is part of a performance high end Supercar. You can purchase this very rare fused Material at a very high expense.
You want Sulpher? 100 credits each
You want an incredibly Rare piece of Raw Material? 10,000,000 each.
Like in real life that Elite is half based on, you want to purchase Materials, no problem but your gonna have to pay for the time it has taken for that vendor to make those rare Materials available.

Players cannot have it both ways and there should be that mix of pricing, true pricing. I know a lot of players of today who want everything to fall on to their laps within a week of game play but that is not Elites way. (I have Not always been unwell while owning ED:H so I am aware of life time constraints.)

Please DO NOT take away my & other players choice to Farm for these Raw Materials. It is a Huge part of my enjoyment I get from ED:H.

FUN, FUN, FUN...
When I go Material Farming I always listen to ABBA & Bee Gees mix playlist of those 70's disco sounds... I leave my T10 Exploration Vessel 'Columbia Interstellar' in my SRV, completely strip the Geological site of Raw Materials but I like to catch those pieces of Raw Materials that try to float away in mid air by boosting after them, catching in mid jump & then... I full throttle it back to my Tall & Wide T10 & just before I enter the 'lose ability to Fire' range, hit those SRV boosters, roll my SRV as many times as I can in mid air/gravity over my ship before landing on the other side of my T10 on all 6 wheels. Landing in any other position doesn't score a point.
For smaller ships, I try to land on top of the ships on all 6 wheels but bouncing off the roof of a ship can hurt!

My point, Farming for Raw Materials can be very relaxing, FUN & of course, very rewarding.

How many of you enjoy that sense of, "I made that ship, It is My ship" a sense of Pride & Proudness of your own ability. Earning the right to owning 1 of the best powerful ships in the Galaxy that You created.

When your given something on a plate, whether it's paid for or not, it doesn't give that same feeling of self Pride.

Almost forgot, We have Vendors already in the Elite Galaxy. I use these vendors a lot to trade Mats I need with Mats I have to many in excessive amounts off.
These vendors are everywhere, You just have to check every new station You visit for such vendors.
Remember Cmdrs, other than the time taken to farm for raw materials, they are virtually free to resource yourself.

 

[Xae]

There are 1500+ possible outputs. 3500+ If we count different effects on different grades.

And yes grades matter, points to shield boosters.

A good attempt at a single pass is in the tens of thousands of man hours. And it would take many passes and the path to balance would not be a straight line. Figure a half dozen at least to get it into a steady state. From there you still have to revisit the entire thing from time to time because other parts of the game will change.

Which makes the question that the dev team needs to ask themselves: Is fixing engineering worth 100,000+ hours? Is it worth 50 people working on it full time for year?

There are 200+ inputs, really currencies, that drop.

How do you plan on measuring currency acquisition rate to manage it? There are hundreds of currencies, how can you programmatically tell if someone is trying to acquire more of a specific one and failing, or finds it so worthless they can't be bothered to pick it up?

And you have to be able to measure it, or you can't manage it. And you don't want to have to ask the question of "How long does engineering take???" to your players a second time. It is imperative that the dev team know this and manage it.

Even if you can solve that that Engineering creates an unsolvable problem for the rest of the game. Engineered ships are about 5-10x more powerful than unengineered ships.

So either you balance challenging content for unengineered ships which means engineered ships can AFK through, or you design content for engineered ships which locks content behind a grind wall.

Engineering simply can not be fixed. Recognize the dev team is currently operating in a sunk cost fallacy and start removing engineering instead of spending years of dev time trying to fix an unfixable system.

 

[mj55]

• Material Traders at every Engineer base (all 3 types)
• Reduce the grind to collect the stuff needed
• Let us get the stuff some other way
• Lose the RNG aspect of buying a mod
• Do away with or drastically reduce the negative effects associated with getting a mod (i.e. yes, you can have increased FSD range but at the cost of additional mass or power use or reduced integrity. what? That's not an attractive offer. It creates a never-ending circular quest...upgrade FSD range...upgrade power to compensate for losses...upgrade something else to compensate for negative effects caused by that...etc. What's the point?

 

[Damgalnuna]

I would like to see something like the geo/bio POI's in odyssey, they were the main way to gather raw materials in Horizons and there is no comparable way that I know of in Odyssey.

 

[Vi7ER]

The best solution in my view to address the MANY issues with engineering, without reinventing the wheel is to drastically reduce time to acquire.

Make it easily accessible so casual players can achieve it too. Level the playing field. Then perhaps do a few tweaks to certain upgrades for balancing purposes (e.g. PvP meta) and make engineering about specialising to suit your playstyle.

 

[zimms]

One more thing, let us add experimental effects via remote engineering.
Why does every single step in Elite have to be a time sink? We already had to unlock the Engineers, level up our reputation and gather the materials.

 

[Imo]

Frontier: you want to balance the ship engineering? that's easy. remove the damn engineering!

 

[rootsrat]

May I remind everybody that this is not a discussion thread. Please simply reply to the OP with your ideas, feedback and suggestions. It's OK to agree with someone and support their post, but please do not initiate discussions and arguments with other posters.

The rules of Focused Feedback type of threads are always outlined in the OP. Please refer to that if in doubt.

Thanks.

 

[DesoLunatic]

May I remind everybody that this is not a discussion thread. Please simply reply to the OP with your ideas, feedback and suggestions. It's OK to agree with someone and support their post, but please do not initiate discussions and arguments with other posters.

The rules of Focused Feedback type of threads are always outlined in the OP. Please refer to that if in doubt.

Thanks.

Alright then, instructions in OP are a bit unclear. In the last paragraph there are 2 contradictory statements:

[...]
Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above. [...] Please only reply with responses to the topics mentioned and keep feedback constructive.
[...]

Please advise.

 

[nemolomen]

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 bought Horizons in Sep 2020 and Odyssey the day before launch. I have over 2000 hours in game (according to my Steam client)

I play every day, or at least nearly every day, sometimes more than once per day and most of my play time is with IRL friends.

I play in a casual manner, meaning I do not feel the need to have everything right now. I play how I feel like playing at any given time. If I'm not having fun I change to another mode of play that, at that time, is fun to me.

The way the engineering ecosystem is set up seems to me that it is a very long term goal and I approach it that way. I'm in no rush, and because of that there are parts of the game that I cannot meaningfully participate in, namely PvP, but some others as well...

I have done grind (via relog) a few times for Guardian modules/weapons because I wanted to do AX combat more effectively. And now I've had enough of grind. I will get all of the engineers unlocked some day or maybe I won't if it takes too long, but I will proceed by playing the game and not grinding specifically. At least not until I am really close to some goal I have and the material needs are just a few of something away and I dont have anough other mats to trade for what I need, then maybe I will grind again.

So how long will it take me before I can meaningfully compete in PvP?

Spoiler: What have I unlocked?

And, for perspective, as of 14 months and two weeks of playing the game, I have unlocked the following:

Guardian Items Unlocked:

• FSD Booster
• Small and Large Gauss Cannon
• Hull Reinforcement Module
• Module Reinforcement Module

Ship Engineers Unlocked:

• Felcity Farseer - Have engineered FSD on most ships (a few at G5), Thrusters and PP on 2 ships (< G5)
• The Dweller - Lasers on one ship to G1 or G2

Odyssey Engineers Unlocked:

• Domino Green - nothing at all

And that, as they say, is it.

 

[NSM1327]

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 Commanders, I would like to add my two cents.

I feel that if a commander is ranking up in a discipline then they should be able to purchase mats in a similar field to that rank. Raw materials for Trade Rank, Manufactured for Combat and Encoded Data for Exploration as an example. You could have the Grade of materials unlock as the commander ranks up so Grade 5 mats would be available to purchase at an Elite rank while lower grades would open up similarly to how faction ships become available to purchase after ranking up with the Federation/Empire.

I think the engineering mat gathering side needs to be re-evaluated regularly to make sure any pain points can be minimized and many of the suggested changes be considered. It adds a whole ’nother level to ship builds which is very useful for endgame PvE and PvP so it's a pity that so many opt out of engineering altogether due to the mat gathering being such an undertaking.

Personally I really enjoy the Guardian/Thargoid side of things so if the Guardian modules could be made semi-engineer-able using guardian mats it would fit in the engineering part of the game and would make them more viable to use when fighting the Thargoids.

To the poor soul that read all this, much appreciated

 

[nevim]

Hello,
I am really excited that you consider engineering changes. For me the materials grind is very painfull. I have many ships that needs to be engineered badly but I never managed to do it. Basicaly the problem is I burn out during the materials gathering. I grind for a day or two and then I need to take a 1-2 week break from Elite. Same with my friends. Some of them take even longer breaks after the grind.

Considering your proposals - it will be great to make more ways to gather materials. But please make us able to buy (maybe even sell) the mats as it makes no sense to me we cant. You can even make it expensive so many players would consider gathering them manually (signals, missions).

Considering balance/gameplay - make the high grade emissions more rare so players must search for it more. But when somebody drops into them, they should be able to get full inventory of one specific G5 material. This will prevent the reloging loop which many players do right now and from my point of view is very very weird game mechanic (if you can call it like that).

I am looking forward to the changes you choose to implement so we have better in game experience. o7

 

[Woakes]

First,
Remove the GATED Horizon Centered Gameplay (to encourage ED season 1 owners to season 2) and rebalance materials back into the original Space base.
Allowing for materials to be found in more abundance in mining sites or loitering more near facilities (like the shipyards) construction.
Allow more ways to fuel and re-arm the ships.
i.e. Refinining Triton instead of fuel scooping.
Using the fuel scoop to collect gasses from geysers,
manufacturing facilities which relies on scannable blueprints, so basic grade1 manufactured parts can be well....manufactured.
So Explorers can craft things like Heat-Sinks (whose components can only be found in the bubble).

Predictability and Readability
Elite Dangerous is procedurally generated and not Random numbers, so the "seeded" experience is consistent for all players.
Use that to the advantage of the game, create skill-based tools and exploration to allow people to map (and even second guess) where Procedural Generation will "generate" the desired materials and stop relying on the math, to drive the percentage of materials from the planets "drop" rate.

Instead, make the game to be consistent with what gets dropped and where.
It's the "amount" that is RNG'd.

So if I "know" how to find polonium, I WILL FIND POLONIUM,
Especially if I can expertly tune my Pulse wave scanner to find hotspots of polonium in Asteroid belts and rings.
It's the amount that might vary.


DOUBLE RNG
As obsidianant and others have moaned about over the years.

the Double RNG is a kick between the legs.
Praying to RNGesus for a good drop of materials and being rewarded with rare materials, should not be then "chastised" by poor progress at the engineers by a series of poor rolls.
Especially when some G5 materials are locked behind Background States, or behind gameplay loops that we not be so good at.
And Scanned data, really is a confusing kettle of who, what, why, hope and praying.

We have ONE PROGRESS BAR FOR THE ENTIRE G1-G5 UPGRADE PROCESS

Instead of Five progress bars with 5 unique different grades of upgrades.
We have a single upgrade, represented by a single progress bar. (yeah I know.....not very creative)

Grade5 materials will give you the full upgrade in 5-7 rolls. End of story.
(The materials are better / purer leading to a consistent upgrade experience. A little bit of RNG for suspense but it's more for consistency's sake).
So a grade 5 blueprint gives you 15-20% of progress.


However, if you have ONLY Grade 1 materials, you can STILL get THE SAME full upgrade just with a heck of a lot more rolls 30-50 rolls. 2-3% of progress.
The substandard materials give a lower "progress" to the upgrade (The RNG of the results gives a wilder ride) but it's still fairly consistent because the known amounts of ingredients going in.

And to boot, if you have a smörgåsbord of materials from Grade1-Grade 5 blueprints, you can STILL hand them over to the engineer.
This cross-pollination of blueprints leads to an even wilder rng ride in the progress bar, as the high-grade materials will increase the upper limit of the roll. but lower grade / sub-standard materials will drag the low end of the rolls down.
So I could have a mixture of Grade 1 and grade 5 materials will put the upper and lower band to 2-20% of the progress bar (of course it's weighted for the amount delivered.)

So the engineer themselves are not "gated" by Background state, or the lack of a poor drop rate in the game that week,
the player ALWAYS get's their upgrade.


The biggest take-away

• Remove the “grades” and just have ONE Upgrade which has “fixed” start and “Fixed” end point – a Quota to fill.
  • Removed of the Double RNG (one for collection, one for engineer rolling).
  • ALL blueprints of all grades and all materials of all grades contribute towards that overall upgrade quota.
  • Grade 1 recipe contribute towards Grade1->grade5, they just have less of an effect on the build, but they STILL contribute.
  • The arbitrary constraints of having materials for a G5blueprint but you have to grind through the lower-tier Blueprints is now removed.
  • All materials contribute regardless of “grade” boundary.
• Now that Horizons is the new “base” game,
  • democratize and distribute the prior “horizon- centric” distribution of material gathering activities back into the “Original Base Game” mechanics and gameplayloops
  • example MINING, with upgrades to the wave scanner to find materials and not JUST surface, sub-surface and deep core deposits.
• Increase lower grade pay-out.
• BlackMarketeer can be requested for specific items, and be given a mission of equal awkwardness ( a messy catch-all solution I know).
• Galaxy map, should have engineer information
  • bare minimum is showing off the list of “known” Engineers and their names and being able to set a course to their base (not just their system)
  • Full implementation of course
    • having bios, unlock status, recipe status.
    • List of all blueprints at the engineer (for planning reasons)
    • Maybe allow use to re-pin other blueprints.
• Station UI upgrade for Remote Workshop
  • Pinned blueprints need to specify which engineer(s) that pinned blueprint is associated with, so it’s not waste of time traveling to the wrong engineer, because you got the bio’s mixed up on the engineer subpage that always resets when you close it down.