Fair enough. People like different things, and not everyone will like everything. And sometimes something you should like will be implemented in a way you don’t. For example, I like survival games, which involves a lot of mining. But I don’t like mining in this game. Not overly fond of combat either, but occasionally I’ll be in the right mood.
The reason why I enjoy enjoy the hunt for materials has less to do with the results (G3 is more than sufficient with most NPCs, and the majority don’t need engineering at all IME) and more how working on engineering alongside my normal activities has added more meaningful decisions to my game, which is badly needed due to the ludicrous levels of income inflation over the years. It also gives me one more thing to keep an eye out for as I fly. In addition, visiting a USS (there’s more than just HGEs out there) quickly requires a bit of skill, similar to isolated stations, which is something I enjoy doing in a skill-based game.
Ultimately, engineering does what credits should’ve done: push me out of my comfort zone, and encourage me to try different activities in the game. You couldn’t pay me enough to go mining in this game, but give me an easy mission that’ll give me datamined wake exceptions? I’ll start singing Diggy Diggy Hole. It also makes my normal activities more interesting, by introducing additional decisions en-route, such as whether I should check out this distress call along my route, and risk the mission I’m running. It also means that my ships are less optimized than they could be, and especially in combat, that makes things much more interesting, given the power creep that has occurred, even in unengineered ships, over the years.
Freedom doesn't mean there will be no consequences to your decisions. It merely means you're permitted to make those decisions in the first place. I want there to be consequences to my decisions. That's what makes those decisions meaningful. For me, a game without meaningful decisions is just a skinner box, tapping a button that says "you win" over and over again.
Pre-engineering, thanks to the then-ridiculous levels of income inflation that accompanied the removal of most operating costs, there were far fewer meaningful decisions to make anymore. You didn't need to balance the offensive power of your ship, relative to your repair and operational costs, anymore. You didn't need to consider balancing cargo capacity vs your operational costs. Money even then was so easy to make, you could A-rate everything without considering the cost of doing so, so your only real consideration for equipping something was how it affected your jump range. When everything paid very well, there was no real reason not to just repeat your favorite activities over and over again. Unless you're doing BGS work, and weren't willing to do the old relogski.
With engineering, I had interesting decisions to make again, ones that had real consequences. I don't like mining or combat? Well, if I wanted anything better than G1 hull reinforcement, I had three choices:
- Do something I don't enjoy, mining, and get this unpleasant thing out of the way.
- Do something I'm not frequently in the mood for, and get this not normally pleasant thing out of the way... consequently making future incidental combat more difficult.
- Engage in unlocking G5 hull reinforcements on my terms, and accept that I'll have to make due with G1 reinforcements for the time being.
My goals in this game have always been fairly simple: assist brave freedom fighters resisting the might of the Evil Galactic Federation; spread the light of freedom, culture, and prosperity throughout the Galaxy; and at a distant third... upgrade my ship(s) along the way. A couple of tweaks to my build, figuring out what to look for, and developing the skills to get them quickly allowed me to engineer alongside my normal activities.
Buckyball racing provided new short-term goals: preparing highly-engineered racing ships for a particular race. It was a fun challenge, especially at first when my resources were much smaller, because in the beginning I was making due with older modified A2 and A3 modules that I no longer used due to my workhorses requiring A4 and A5 modules. I was especially fond of my Racing Hauler that I cobbled together from scraps.
But it didn't take too long before I was engineering with the best of them, even though I frequently had more Super-G4 modules than I did decent G5 modules.
