Engineers 3.1 High grade emissions

o7 all, is anyone having having trouble finding HGE's at all? Been whizzing around the sweet spot in a few systems for well over an hour and yet to find a single one :(
 
o7 all, is anyone having having trouble finding HGE's at all? Been whizzing around the sweet spot in a few systems for well over an hour and yet to find a single one :(

It has always been like pulling teeth but the past few days have been torture for me.
 
Varies. Sometimes I get a HGE every few minutes, other times it can be half an hour between them. Been like that always, I suppose.
 
OP. It's like looking for love, the more you look, the more elusive....

My strat is to play the game "normally" and ENG my ship as and when the mats appear. I find it significantly less frustrating and don't feel I'm wasting my time.
 
OP. It's like looking for love, the more you look, the more elusive....

My strat is to play the game "normally" and ENG my ship as and when the mats appear. I find it significantly less frustrating and don't feel I'm wasting my time.

Except that HGE are the only place to find certain materials, and only appear in certain states. If I want Imp Shielding, I can't just "play the game normally", because I normally kick around in Federal space. A billion random HGEs won't get get me what I need unless I go out of my way to find the right ones.

If everything was available, in decent quantities, from all kinds of missions. Maybe then we could engineer as we go. That's currently not the case. If you want to G5 something, you have to go hunt HGEs for hours on end.
 
Except that HGE are the only place to find certain materials, and only appear in certain states. If I want Imp Shielding, I can't just "play the game normally", because I normally kick around in Federal space. A billion random HGEs won't get get me what I need unless I go out of my way to find the right ones.

If everything was available, in decent quantities, from all kinds of missions. Maybe then we could engineer as we go. That's currently not the case. If you want to G5 something, you have to go hunt HGEs for hours on end.

I got so frustrated with this the other week that I just used the mats trader to get the G5 (and some G4) stuff I wanted - making loads of trips to and around Dav's hope to fill up with G3 and G4 for trading. Really annoying and wasteful but not as mind-achingly frustrating as hoping for a HGE to pop-up.
 
Except that HGE are the only place to find certain materials, and only appear in certain states. If I want Imp Shielding, I can't just "play the game normally", because I normally kick around in Federal space. A billion random HGEs won't get get me what I need unless I go out of my way to find the right ones.

If everything was available, in decent quantities, from all kinds of missions. Maybe then we could engineer as we go. That's currently not the case. If you want to G5 something, you have to go hunt HGEs for hours on end.
To be fair it makes sense that you'd be more likely to find imperial shielding in Empire space. Plus you can use the material traders, so just collect the G5s you find and trade for them (albeit at a bit of a loss)...

As an aside, has anyone else noticed a general scarcity of USSs? I still find them (inc HGEs) but not as frequently as I remember (before 3.1)...
 
Two tips if you're not already trying them:

When searching for HGEs, stay away from multi-star systems. HGEs that require you to be in Deep Space within a certain range of arrival seem to get totally borked when the boundary for Deep Space gets pushed out beyond that range by multi-star systems.

And the materials drop elsewhere - I got interdicted by a Type 10, and when I blew him up, he dropped a Core Dynamics Composite. I've found Military Grade Alloys and Pharmaceutical Isolators in the NPC debris in res sites.

Make it three tips: if you can spare a module slot, carry a small limpet controller to save time picking those bits up. [big grin]
 
To be fair it makes sense that you'd be more likely to find imperial shielding in Empire space. Plus you can use the material traders, so just collect the G5s you find and trade for them (albeit at a bit of a loss)...

As an aside, has anyone else noticed a general scarcity of USSs? I still find them (inc HGEs) but not as frequently as I remember (before 3.1)...

I'm not disputing the location, I quite like that materials are thematically aligned with states/control. I just wish there were a reliable to way get G5s other than camping deep space, praying to RNGesus; I detest the activity. I brought it up months ago, but the HGE mechanic would be improved immeasurably by either some rubber-banding, more evenly distributing mats between states, additional factors to increase specifically HGE spawn rates, or some combination of those. Imagine if HGEs in None Federal systems only spawned CDCs. Or if Proto Heat Radiators weren't always the minority amongst a field of Proto Lights. Now imagine a system that, while in Deep Space, increased the chances of the next USS being a HGE everytime a non-HGE spawned. Either of those would solve a lot of the community's grief.
 
Make it three tips: if you can spare a module slot, carry a small limpet controller to save time picking those bits up. [big grin]

This. On my Corvette, I have a 5A collector limpet controller which lets me pick up useful materials much more quickly after destroying an enemy ship.
 
Sometimes I run my own little search and recovery business. This means I’m exclusively hunting degraded signal sources because this is where all the goodies drop.
So I’ll supercruise at about 20c in the deepest black I can possibly find to reduce the chance of convoys/distress/aftermath. I rarely ever get HGE’s when I do this and I’ve spent HOURS doing it.

For HGE’s I want to be as close to the main star as possible while also being in deep space, then I throttle back to 1c and float.

Hope this helps.

For what it’s worth I find combat aftermath the most annoying signal to pinpoint, that one never seems to pop when I need it to. Never struggled with HGE’s though.
 
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Did you guys try simply running into a system with the required criteria and a hazRES and shoot some condas out of the sky? I never hunted for HGEs in my life (only found one by coincidence so far) and never had a problem with raremats apart from proto heat radiators.

Normally anacondas always drop at least one G5 mat, though I had some dropping three different kinds at once also already. Maybe CZs can also be used for this, but limpets tend to die often due to NPCs spamming their ECMs.
 
I usually don't farm up mats in my combat ships, but may have to start. Luckily I can cruise around for HGEs while doing other stuff on a 2nd screen or whatever.
 
Judas H man, do you mean to tell me that RNGineering's sole remaining choke-point has just got worse..?

Braben, have mercy. Fix it, pls.
 
Did you guys try simply running into a system with the required criteria and a hazRES and shoot some condas out of the sky? ... Normally anacondas always drop at least one G5 mat

While that's a far more engaging way of trying for G5 mats, and you can make some money while you're at it, you're still at the mercy of multi-tier RNG (something FDev seem to have an obsession with). RNG for a Conda to show up, RNG for if it drop a G5 and, seemingly, RNG what it drops. If you're after ~18 CDC to engineer a few HRPs, you're looking at dozens upon dozens of Conda kills to get what you want, and that's if you get an even distribution, which is, ironically, unlikely.

Why FDev can't design a system that doesn't involve RNG, let alone multiple tiers of it, is beyond me. I feel like the studio needs a gambler's intervention.
 
While that's a far more engaging way of trying for G5 mats, and you can make some money while you're at it, you're still at the mercy of multi-tier RNG (something FDev seem to have an obsession with). RNG for a Conda to show up, RNG for if it drop a G5 and, seemingly, RNG what it drops. If you're after ~18 CDC to engineer a few HRPs, you're looking at dozens upon dozens of Conda kills to get what you want, and that's if you get an even distribution, which is, ironically, unlikely.

Why FDev can't design a system that doesn't involve RNG, let alone multiple tiers of it, is beyond me. I feel like the studio needs a gambler's intervention.

Whilst i kinda agree a tad, RNG is a vital part of the game. The agree part of your statement is i think it should be made slightly easier, but not gone completely. Imaging if you could just buy (Game Credits) or all MEF was in this place and all Imperial Shielding (Grade 5/4 Mats/Data), you would then have everything you want, everyone would have the same top of the range of everything, so what then would be the point of the game

There is no time limit on doing engineering, just take your time, enjoy the game and collect everything as you come across it. I have 34 Datamined Wake exceptions. I don;t have any need of them but just collected them as i see them.

Trouble is people want the best ship with the best mods NOW!!, just chill and do it as it comes!
 
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I'm in an area with several high population boom systems and over the weekend saw exactly ZERO High Grade USSs which is insane really. I am not seeking them but I always farm them as they come along. I have a Krait and challenger I just bought so soon I'll be engineering them.
So for me since 3.1 its about 16 hours of playing in boom systems with no high grade USSs :S
 
Trouble is people want the best ship with the best mods NOW!!, just chill and do it as it comes!

This is an argument that gets thrown around a lot, it's inaccurate IMO. Wanting a system that's fair and rewards time spent with a linear payout is not a form of impatience, it's an expectation of good design. Not everyone wants to play the game and get mats as they go, some of us want to earn credits, or earn materials, when we feel like it, and the current system only breeds frustration for these kinds of players. I'd much prefer a system that rewarded a few materials regularly than the all or nothing design we have atm. I'm not impatient, I just want to know that when I want to engineer a few beams, there's no chance of wasting an hour of my life because FDev know RNG is the easiest way of inflating a game's longevity.

At the end of the day, fully engineering a ship to G5 is a time consuming task, and balancing the game to be fair wouldn't change this, it would just make it less obnoxious.
 
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