2.1 - Speculation on Major Faction spread of Engineers (time to rank up?)

[TheSisko]

So there will be 30 Engineers, perhaps with more to come later. I was thinking, will the skills the Engineers have be spread around through each major faction?

So, if there's an Engineer who could upgrade your Power Distributor (useful after seeing that huge beam laser in action), then would there be one such Engineer who would work with Federation allied only pilots, and another who one is an Imperial fan? Or would there just be the one Engineer with that skill? If such, and he's say, dealing with high-ranking Federation pilots only, then Imperials will have to raise their Fed-rank, and potentially vice-versa.

If that's the case, then that makes things....interesting [up]. And I'm all for that. Perhaps its time for me to start work on getting promoted from a Chief Petty Officer.

 

[Leo Sagan]

I don't know how this will work. I'd like to see the military rank getting more coherent though : I think it should be impossible to be highly ranked in the Fed navy and in the Empire at the same time. Maybe some kind of rep loss for one when working for the other one. Those two factions are enemy and you can become king in one while you are rear admiral in the other one. It makes no sense to me. I'd like to see the engineers rep system following the same logic. I don't see this changing in the foreseeable future though, for FD has bigger fish to fry atm.

 

[TheSisko]

I don't know how this will work. I'd like to see the military rank getting more coherent though : I think it should be impossible to be highly ranked in the Fed navy and in the Empire at the same time. Maybe some kind of rep loss for one when working for the other one. Those two factions are enemy and you can become king in one while you are rear admiral in the other one. It makes no sense to me. I'd like to see the engineers rep system following the same logic. I don't see this changing in the foreseeable future though, for FD has bigger fish to fry atm.

Agreed, the dual-navy role is a bit odd, but its not harmful to the game (not yet anyway).

 

[Henri]

having rank in two navies is extremely odd and would be a great way to make sure the modules diversify within the community.
it's already real boring with 80% of the community flying in fdl let alone if they are all equipped the same.

 

[Badben]

I can't imagine that there will only be one Engineer that can upgrade any one module, but I also don't think it will be that every major faction will have a perfect spread of all "types" of Engineers. If I were to do it, no single module will be locked to one specific Engineer, but there wouldn't be enough of one type of Engineers to cover all major factions. I Also think it will be impossible for any one CMDR to access all Engineers. I think requirements to access one Engineer will automatically lock you out of another Engineers requirements. For example, one Engineers requires a certain Fed rank, but another Engineer hates the Feds and therefore won't help you. I think it will be interesting for the people with high ranks in all major factions. Who knows though, it's still all speculation.

 

[Macros Black]

Would be nice if military rank would come to mean more than just access to ships. This however gives the Alliance somewhat of a disadvantage, so unless FD introduces Alliance military rank and ships, I'd say the spread will be 40/40/20. Not so much for military rank, but more for the size parameter between Federation, Empire and the Alliance.

As to the locations of the engineers, we already know the location of one, Prof. Palin in Maia. He'll probably himself give clues to other locations., but here are my guesses:

• Shinrarta Dezhra
• SOL, Mars High
• PLX 695
• Vega
• Cubeo
• Facece
• Alioth
• Lave cluster
• One or two in non-rank permit locked systems, e.g. Terra Mater.
• NLTT 53690
• Brestla
• IX
• New Yembo, Unity Station
• Jaques Station
• Black Station (just because of the name)
• A system with a cool weapon/research description, forgot the name
• Bob, Howard, or Mike (actual systems)

Those will be the places where I'll start my search. Wonder if FD will move the engineers after the Beta?
I don't expect major upgrades or enhancements, just minor just like in PP (most of it pretty useless, actually). According to FD, NPC's will be using the upgrades too (could also be a clue to a location), and if a CMDR is blown away by a NPC using the upgrades, expect a major forum explosion of rage quits.

Personally, I'll be looking for the 3-in-1 FSD engineer...

 

[Vasious]

Here is Lord Zapan's thread collecting all the system descriptions

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=128154

not sure how up to date it is, but the only new descriptions added will be the Player Factions as far as I have seen.

There a numerous systems that state they are the home of system specialist and tuning companies.

I hope this connects to the some of the Engineers so you could go to Carcinus for Auger Vision corporation. "Specialist sensors for specialist jobs." or Cockaigne "For the ultimate performance." for your sub-light thrusters at Drive Performance Specialists (DPS)