ilo, I know this was directed at the OP, but if I can chime in as well (as I do appreciate your reaching out to attempt to help), I'm just one of the posts on this forum that you can find that are using these tools that explicitly state where to find confirmed found mats, but the mats are still simply not spawning. Or the USSs, or the missions, etc. Either this is a case of the most profound bad luck vs way-too-many-hours-in-a-sitting-spent-for-six-days-straight scenario, or something simply isn't right here.
Sure, I get your point.
This 'guides' or 'tools' are still inaccurate, or sometimes just wrong because nobody has certainty on how items spawn and there is always going to be a degree of randomness.
In my case, for the commodities part, when I was looking for "energy grid assembly" components for the FSD level 4 (the engineering description is says: refinery/industrial close to stafkarl) I spend quite a bit of time trying 'luck' on different systems. Bu then I arrived to the first station in stafkarl and they were offering "modular terminals (for FSD level 3) and "magnetic emitter coils" (FSD level 5) for mission rewards (I noted it). I bought the market information for this system, and it was importing from 2 or 3 systems, I tried all and the last was 40 Cetis. when I went there a station was selling the "energy grid assembly" for the FSD level 4 I was looking for. When I told my friends, one told me "magnetic coils" you can also buy in here, the other told me: "oh, modular terminals are for sale there".. and when I brought my ship back home, the main station I use to camp was offering the three of them on mission rewards... So, yeah, I only I knew about it, I'd have helped my own local faction instead. They don't only spawn in one single place. If I'd had played normally I'd probably finished this part earlier. Anyway, missions are still random, so they might not spawn just those that you desperately need. Just try another station, or try looking for something else, or stick to play the game for 2h and then come back.
For signals, and other data, it is a bit random yet. I'm sure soon we will have a close pattern to understand what to look for. Sure different ships provides different types of signals, but I'm sure some will just don't drop any at all. For data in scans I use to note: where and what, even the local faction of the ship, just in case. Then I stick around or fly and if I see one of these ships I know it will have better chances to give me that signal. Some signals are still so random that hardly we can have a pattern right now.
As I said, Asp Explorer is the ship I looked for when I was in need of the distillers. I tried a few of them, when I saw the Asp dropped it I started focusing on them. It may happend that some Aspx don't drop it in favor of another component. According to the description, distillers are in haulage ships, turns out haulers didn't give me any and I tried a few.
USS now spawn in certain 'points', unlike before. You can't just camp a system and wait for USS to appear. When someone just says "in a USS" that is totally inaccurate. You also need to know if the USS is spawned in a planet (it will say you are close to a planet in your hud), on a shipping lane (hud will show you if you are in one) and also, just in case distance to one of the two bodies of the shipping lane.
Materials as we knew before (prospection) can still be found in planets. It takes too much time to find a correct source of Polonium that I doubt people will be willing to just post here and there. Even in that case, you still need to find metallic meteorites in that location to get the polonium. I think this is the worst part at all, as very rare materials are either hard to find and the information is not so public knowledge. There is polonium in the bubble, that is for sure. There is also the option to do mining on rings to get these materials as well but it is as difficult as with planet surfaces. Materials show up as mission rewards too.
I have the feeling that the tools and descriptions people are giving in the forum are not complete and some of them are misleading, but I'm sure also, most of the people don't really care once they get the materials to come back and feed these tools with the appropriate information, so .. will take a bit more time to have a proper idea on what is what, where, when and how to get specific items yet. My advice would be:
- scan a ship, note the type of ship and what it gives you, also note where.
- scan a wake, note the type of ship and source/dest with the signals you get.
- check the mission board wherever you park, note the mission rewards.
- when you kill a ship, note the type, the role (pirate, smuggler, police) and the drops.
- when you find a USS, note what you get.
I know this is useless for you now, as you are looking after specific materials for an upgrade. But this will be your best and accurate tool you will wind for the next upgrade.
PS: and of course, all this is pure observation, it can be totally inaccurate again in one week
