When rng goes wrong in Od.

avow555

avow555
I finally decided to have a crack at the ground elements of Odyssey.
I studied a few youtube noteworthy guides and set about collecting some mats opening up the engineers.
Now what is totally clear at the very beginning is the complete lack of information even after nearly a year on ways of collecting the various unlock and engineer items.
There are some amazing tools out there which I have used extensively and I have come across some rather odd trends.

The case for "Settlement Defence Plans".

According to my info I'm looking in;
Irregular Markers, threat 1,2 & 3.
And
Minor Wreckage
Over 2 anarchy systems and 4 other type of systems.

Settlement Defence Plans 2.
Weapon Schematics 98.

Obviously I looted other items but these were the most glaring examples.

I have been here since the begining but this rng is just becoming a farce.
Clearly the whole engineers on ground are flawed with this kind of bizarre rng result.

Anyone else struggling?
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
SDPs are just rare. This is known. If you are prepared to relog it's more manageable. Can't say I found the land grind much worse than the space grind.
 

GeorjCostanza

GeorjCostanza
I was almost a year late to start the Ody engineering grind due to modding (I don't actually get to play very much), and have just unlocked all the Ody engineers in the bubble over the past month

Some of those youtube videos are old, and a lot may have changed in the meantime. So feel free to ask me here or PM and I can help you with advice for whatever unlock you need

So for example, Settlement Defence Plans .. I now have about 80 (in addition to the 15 to unlock HF) while grinding Manufacturing Instructions (and have about 160 of these)

All you have to do is find 'Liberate Bootleg Liquor' missions from the ship mission terminal (not the foot missions), and I usually found those by being friendly or allied with a faction. The first one I found at Jameson's Memorial, but then the second one I did recently was just from some random friendly faction.

You might have to try a few missions/locations before you hit the jackpot (I think the prime target is a 'minor wreckage' like you mentioned), but eventually you'll find two crashed skimmers with a data terminal each, and they drop a heap of SDPs and MIs (over several hours).

Plus, unlike foot missions, they last for 6 days. So when you eventually get bored enough to smash your head through the monitor, just take off and do some other stuff. Then when your will to live has returned, come back and grind some more while you watch netflix.

By discovering this wreckage site as a mission, you only need to log to the main menu then back again (I set everything to low graphics to minimise the re-log time), whereas random DSS wreckages require a complete exit to desktop (what I've heard, never tried it that way)

Anyways, I hope that helps

o7
 

zimms

zimms
I would really love to see what percentage of accounts has unlocked Wellington Beck yet. Why does it take a year to adjust such a prominent example?
 

He$$eeTant

He$$eeTant
First question I would ask yourself is why are you doing it? What do you need G4/5 for? It’s not like ships where if you don’t engineer you can’t do combat - I could not take my FDL to a basic fight let alone see off wing pirate missions solo without engineering. But with onfoot Oddy All the gear can be bought to G3 level with no grind.

If you like grind and it makes you feel happier with G5 gear then it’s the only way. If you like playing and feel you can’t - you can - just hop on the sharing is caring thread and go buy what you need. At a minimum you’ll spare yourself G2/3 grind.
 

MVBanks

MVBanks
It's possible to buy SDPs from FC Bartender Trading, using Inara to find them. My FC Dixie Flatline in HR 1183 is still selling 6 SDPs, but it's not listed in Inara,
I don't know why.
 

Fizzatron

Fizzatron
He$$eeTant said:
First question I would ask yourself is why are you doing it? What do you need G4/5 for? It’s not like ships where if you don’t engineer you can’t do combat - I could not take my FDL to a basic fight let alone see off wing pirate missions solo without engineering. But with onfoot Oddy All the gear can be bought to G3 level with no grind.

If you like grind and it makes you feel happier with G5 gear then it’s the only way. If you like playing and feel you can’t - you can - just hop on the sharing is caring thread and go buy what you need. At a minimum you’ll spare yourself G2/3 grind.
Click to expand...
I've been happy with the G2/G3 gear I've found so far, some of it engineered, the G2 Artemis suit with night vision was a score among other things. I'm always checking Pioneer stores when I'm passing through a system, it really helps getting you going. I haven't even unlocked an foot engineer yet, getting around to it but I'm in no rush and time also is limiter.
 

Treya

Treya
SDPs appear quite regularly as targets of procurement missions. What I did was to pick up a bunch of missions for other stuff that I needed and then check all the settlement mission boards along the way. No relogging necessary and most of the time investment happens once a guaranteed source location is known. Doing this over the course of three play sessions got me over twenty of them, enough to cover my own needs as well as helping out someone else later on.
The other nice thing about these missions apart from knowing exactly where to look is that any conditions (like no alarms or no kills) can be safely ignored because failing the mission while at the settlement doesn't immediately despawn the SDP.

The core problem remains though - finding SDPs organically just doesn't happen often enough. Simply increasing the spawn rate isn't a good solution because one only needs 15 of them, anything after that is just cluttering up the loot table. And if the procurement mission approach is what the devs intended it needs more work because from what I've seen around here most people seem to go straight towards a relog grind fest. No concern of mine but explicitly not what FDev envisioned for gameplay.
 

avow555

avow555
GeorjCostanza said:
I was almost a year late to start the Ody engineering grind due to modding (I don't actually get to play very much), and have just unlocked all the Ody engineers in the bubble over the past month

Some of those youtube videos are old, and a lot may have changed in the meantime. So feel free to ask me here or PM and I can help you with advice for whatever unlock you need

So for example, Settlement Defence Plans .. I now have about 80 (in addition to the 15 to unlock HF) while grinding Manufacturing Instructions (and have about 160 of these)

All you have to do is find 'Liberate Bootleg Liquor' missions from the ship mission terminal (not the foot missions), and I usually found those by being friendly or allied with a faction. The first one I found at Jameson's Memorial, but then the second one I did recently was just from some random friendly faction.

You might have to try a few missions/locations before you hit the jackpot (I think the prime target is a 'minor wreckage' like you mentioned), but eventually you'll find two crashed skimmers with a data terminal each, and they drop a heap of SDPs and MIs (over several hours).

Plus, unlike foot missions, they last for 6 days. So when you eventually get bored enough to smash your head through the monitor, just take off and do some other stuff. Then when your will to live has returned, come back and grind some more while you watch netflix.

By discovering this wreckage site as a mission, you only need to log to the main menu then back again (I set everything to low graphics to minimise the re-log time), whereas random DSS wreckages require a complete exit to desktop (what I've heard, never tried it that way)

Anyways, I hope that helps

o7
Click to expand...
Apologies for not replying sooner ( real life interruption).
I shall look into this next login, been really struggling up to this point.
Thx for the tip 🌞
 

Frop

Frop
Treya said:
The core problem remains though - finding SDPs organically just doesn't happen often enough. Simply increasing the spawn rate isn't a good solution because one only needs 15 of them, anything after that is just cluttering up the loot table. And if the procurement mission approach is what the devs intended it needs more work because from what I've seen around here most people seem to go straight towards a relog grind fest. No concern of mine but explicitly not what FDev envisioned for gameplay.
Click to expand...
The most straightforward solution to any of the drop rate woes would be to add data trading to the bartender, in line with what's already possible with Horizons engineering. However, since they didn't categorise or apply grades to any of the OD data, it's going to be rather silly if you end up trading Cat Media for SDPs.
 

Treya

Treya
Frop said:
The most straightforward solution to any of the drop rate woes would be to add data trading to the bartender, in line with what's already possible with Horizons engineering. However, since they didn't categorise or apply grades to any of the OD data, it's going to be rather silly if you end up trading Cat Media for SDPs.
Click to expand...
If the bartender used a similar intermediate currency as they already do it wouldn't be too bad I reckon. Biggest argument against it was, until recently, that it would trivialize this type of unlock task. With the introduction of the FC bartender this has (more or less) already happened though, so maybe it's time to revisit that particular design decision. (EDIT: the decision to exclude data from trading)
 
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GeorjCostanza

GeorjCostanza
avow555 said:
One week down and not a single drop, sigh!
Click to expand...

Hiya, I made a video tonight just for you, to prove the SDP/MI method I described above actually works.

Source: https://youtu.be/w2TicrGQx6k


Based on my observations, the liberate bootleg liquor missions only get offered if you're cordial, friendly or allied (and as I mentioned in my other post, only from the ship terminal, not the foot terminal). So I took 3 missions from Cowper Dock in Anima, from where I've been assassinating people for a while and built up some rep with the local overlords.

The first mission was a no show for skimmers, just barrels of liquor on the ground. I notice that particular mission only had a two-day expiry, and I remember the successful ones I've done previously both had 5 or 6 days expiry, so I aimed for that one next. And on arrival there were two crashed skimmers I can farm SDPs/MIs for the next 6 days.

I didn't edit the video too much so you can appreciate the tedium, but altogether it took about 30-40 mins to locate the skimmers - the first dud mission had me travel to a planet about 330,000ls from the main star (wasn't happy when I arrived to see a bunch of barrels on the surface), so I really recommend only taking bootleg missions that have a 5 or 6 day expiry as I think you'll have a higher chance of finding crashed skimmers (but I could be wrong about that)

I hope you enjoy the video, and good hunting! o7

EDHM Theme: Snarky Vapor by CMDR Snarky_one
 
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BDelacroix

BDelacroix
Oddly, I apparently collected defense plans as a side while collecting other things. Not saying it may be hard to find, maybe I was lucky.
 

R-Irish

R-Irish
Once you know where to go it gets much easier. I could get all the things I needed for weapon upgrades by cheesing anarchy settlements with my SRV at a distance. Other than Manufacturing instructions and it was really P me off. Until I finally realized that Impact sites seem to ALWAYS have at least one. Impact sites are also easy to find and there's never much trouble killing a skimmer near it. Problem solved! Of course it still takes time jumping from site to site and planet to planet so I try to incorporate that activity into times when I decide to explore or do some exobiology. You can then do exo-exploring-scavanging during the one play session. I get more done and find it more interesting to switch between activities.
 

avow555

avow555
Ah well the Liquor Mission has only popped up for me once without any joy, however I began looking more closely at the SHIP mission board to see if there may be any more of these type of missions.

"Wartime Surface Recovery of 2 Hostages"
From Sivas system, Cavalieri Hub.

2 crashed skimmers present and the following dropped for me.

Ballistic Data
Maintenance Logs
Manufacturing Instructions
Operation Manuals
Patrol Routes
Settlement Defence Plans*
Surveillance Logs

Unused Drops

Blacklist Data
Conflict History

Finally making some progress with this pitiful rng loot system.

Source: https://youtu.be/ol0p5X0SzgY
 
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