A cure for engineer grind perhaps?

[Gypsy12]

Been thinking about this.

Although not a 100% cure, maybe this worth considering.
The quality of materials. Lets start there. Ive been trying to come up with a system that isn't too difficult for FD to implement, and calms people down a bit.

Each material has a quality level. I think it goes up to 4. Correct me if im wrong there. And as in the real world, if you put crap components into your car, you are taking a gamble. Better components are more reliable. One knows the toleration and limitations of the better quality component.

Ergo, when you put better quality components into your ship, the chance of them not performing correctly is vastly reduced. And this should be reflected in the RNG process. Using grade 1 leaves you where we are at the moment. Use grade 4 however, and you are pretty much guaranteed a happy outcome.

That should appease the RNG haters. (Include me in there)

Next up. Finding them.

This is the main thing that needs to be addressed IMHO.

I would propose having a shop. For a long time our friend the mineral magpie has been floating around the stars, bored out of his mind. Lets give him more to do.
and us...a bit less.
But there should be a caveat. Like any shop, sometimes things are not in stock. We might find that we can purchase 70% of our materials from him, but we will have to find the rest.
And those grade 4's should be pricey.

What do you guys think about that? He is in game already, and can at the moment transfer cargo from your ship. Creating the code for a menu and two way transactions should not be that difficult? perhaps? (no idea there)

The cargo problem I am still considering.

Have at it!

Gypsy.

 

[Gypsy12]

Anyone?

 

[deathcoy]

So either mass large amounts of low grade mats but lower chance of stronger mods or hunt for rare high grade mats for higher chance of stronger mods. RNG is still there, grind is still there, people will still complain lol.

Having NPC vendors is something i'm also inclined towards as it pretty much solves the extreme difficulty of acquiring mats. One can exchange mats or buy/sell mats with each vendor having different spread of inventory and stock, so players still have to travel around. I've seen quite a sizeable people up for this idea but i've been told that FD is not open to such a mechanic. Why? I'm not sure either but they probably have plans and NPC vendor is counter intuitive according to them. I wish FD was much more transparent on their design decisions and planning, partake in more discussions with the community, take a more active approach.

Only thing we know is FD has put priority on storage means for the player, which is already a damn good step forward, though now its a matter of 'when'.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Been thinking about this.

Although not a 100% cure, maybe this worth considering.
The quality of materials. Lets start there. Ive been trying to come up with a system that isn't too difficult for FD to implement, and calms people down a bit.

Each material has a quality level. I think it goes up to 4. Correct me if im wrong there. And as in the real world, if you put crap components into your car, you are taking a gamble. Better components are more reliable. One knows the toleration and limitations of the better quality component.

Ergo, when you put better quality components into your ship, the chance of them not performing correctly is vastly reduced. And this should be reflected in the RNG process. Using grade 1 leaves you where we are at the moment. Use grade 4 however, and you are pretty much guaranteed a happy outcome.

That should appease the RNG haters. (Include me in there)

Next up. Finding them.

This is the main thing that needs to be addressed IMHO.

I would propose having a shop. For a long time our friend the mineral magpie has been floating around the stars, bored out of his mind. Lets give him more to do.
and us...a bit less.
But there should be a caveat. Like any shop, sometimes things are not in stock. We might find that we can purchase 70% of our materials from him, but we will have to find the rest.
And those grade 4's should be pricey.

What do you guys think about that? He is in game already, and can at the moment transfer cargo from your ship. Creating the code for a menu and two way transactions should not be that difficult? perhaps? (no idea there)

The cargo problem I am still considering.

Have at it!

Gypsy.

The guy behind The Engineers did mention, during a Livestream, that they are considering having material quality impact on the upgrade outcomes. I have also mentioned my desire to see repitition and reputation have an impact on reducing variation (but not eliminating it) & possibly even using the "calling in a favour" mechanic to cash in rep for a boost in one of your upgrade stats.


Another poster has put up a suggestion to make the Detailed Surface Scanner a useful tool for determining the likelihood of finding Materials.

 

[sp0q]

A NEW MISSION SYSTEM, everything in this game could be fixed with a new mission system.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Anyone?

Just to warn you, bumping threads is against forum rules.

And cure is not to grind.

 

[FutronBob]

Sounds good, OP. Anything's better than what we have right now.

A NEW MISSION SYSTEM, everything in this game could be fixed with a new mission system.

I'd be more than happy with this too. Wish I could rep you again for this. Keep on spreading the word!

 

[Mr_sukebe]

My thoughts:
- Reduce the number of material types. I like the requirement to need to track things down, but seriously, do we need say 5 different types of shield debris (sorry, not sure actual number, but it feels like 5)
- Increase significantly the number of drops on planets (happy with the ratio)
Problem solved.

 

[Gypsy12]

So either mass large amounts of low grade mats but lower chance of stronger mods or hunt for rare high grade mats for higher chance of stronger mods. RNG is still there, grind is still there, people will still complain lol.

Having NPC vendors is something i'm also inclined towards as it pretty much solves the extreme difficulty of acquiring mats. One can exchange mats or buy/sell mats with each vendor having different spread of inventory and stock, so players still have to travel around. I've seen quite a sizeable people up for this idea but i've been told that FD is not open to such a mechanic. Why? I'm not sure either but they probably have plans and NPC vendor is counter intuitive according to them. I wish FD was much more transparent on their design decisions and planning, partake in more discussions with the community, take a more active approach.

Only thing we know is FD has put priority on storage means for the player, which is already a damn good step forward, though now its a matter of 'when'.

I just thought that hand in hand with the shop, which would vastly reduce the time needed to find materials, that either buying or finding those grade 4 mats in order to maximize the potential of your ship would be cool. I certainly don't want more grind, but I do believe that having the "perfect" ship should be hard to achieve. Otherwise everyone and their dog would have that.

 

[bamber]

Anyone?

Sorry I was reading all the other threads and thoughts on it before I answered

 

[SirGirard]

Been thinking about this.

Although not a 100% cure, maybe this worth considering.
The quality of materials. Lets start there. Ive been trying to come up with a system that isn't too difficult for FD to implement, and calms people down a bit.

Each material has a quality level. I think it goes up to 4. Correct me if im wrong there. And as in the real world, if you put crap components into your car, you are taking a gamble. Better components are more reliable. One knows the toleration and limitations of the better quality component.

Ergo, when you put better quality components into your ship, the chance of them not performing correctly is vastly reduced. And this should be reflected in the RNG process. Using grade 1 leaves you where we are at the moment. Use grade 4 however, and you are pretty much guaranteed a happy outcome.

That should appease the RNG haters. (Include me in there)

Next up. Finding them.

This is the main thing that needs to be addressed IMHO.

I would propose having a shop. For a long time our friend the mineral magpie has been floating around the stars, bored out of his mind. Lets give him more to do.
and us...a bit less.
But there should be a caveat. Like any shop, sometimes things are not in stock. We might find that we can purchase 70% of our materials from him, but we will have to find the rest.
And those grade 4's should be pricey.

What do you guys think about that? He is in game already, and can at the moment transfer cargo from your ship. Creating the code for a menu and two way transactions should not be that difficult? perhaps? (no idea there)

The cargo problem I am still considering.

Have at it!

Gypsy.

My cure is don't bother.

It is way too tedious trecking all over the place for hours to find materials. Then RNG???? And did FD really decide not to introduce cargo storage? All a recipe for GRIND again!

I have found I do not need upgrades against the new NPC anyway. Bounty hunting is still the best credit earner by far.

 

[Tinman]

A NEW MISSION SYSTEM, everything in this game could be fixed with a new mission system.

I've seen you write this a couple of times now.

What would be different with this new mission system of yours compared to the IMO very solid system we now have in 2.1/1.6?

 

[Siranui]

The thing that's making you grind is you. There's no need to rush for the upgrades; just play your normal game, do your thing and accumulate stuff.

 

[Tikigod]

Personally I think the most practical solution given the current state of things would be something along the lines of this:


Step 1 - Immediate change in the coming weeks.

Each Engineers has a storage bank players can 'donate' elements, manufactured materials, data and commodities to that fit in with any of that Engineers consumed items. These are then stored with that specific Engineer and can be used for future modification efforts with the system first feeding out of the 'bank' and only touching players personal stores if the 'bank' doesn't have sufficient goods.

This is the first step in tackling the 'storage problem'.


Step 2 - Addressing the other part of the problem a bit later

With the Engineer 'storage banks' in place, expand Engineers to be able to process stored goods to make the next or previous tier of goods of the same type.

So if you're finding 100,000 focus crystals (Grade 3) out there in your travels but sod all flawed focus crystals (Grade 2), you can drop off the focus crystals you have with the appropriate Engineer, and then break a number of them down into a greater number of flawed focus crystals than the number of focus crystals fed in.

If you need refined focus crystals (Grade 4) you can use the same process to turn focus crystals into refined focus crystals but with a output of less outputted than was fed in.

The behaviour could then be applied in various ways to function with data with xxx number of encrypted firmware translating into yyy number of cracked firmware, and maybe even commodities themselves where appropriate so you can take Commodity A and Manufactured material B and use them to make Commodity C.

Or better take 'Random commodity A you got 6 units of from a mission and have no need for' and process it into Materials A, B and C in reasonable quantities.

This second step removes the enforced need to hunt for exact variants of each kind, tackles the storage issue further, and also makes being rewarded random garbage commodities you have no interest in actually still act as a reward as you can process them into base materials that may include more desirable materials... like Arsenic.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Oh and Frontier need to go back and do a proper job of mining for materials. Not just copy and paste the same table of data covering a half dozen very commons and commons to every asteroid in existence and call it job done.

Whoever did the current implementation really did a lazy job of it.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

The solution is simple and should have been done right in the first place. Stop making things stupidly difficult for no reason other than to force people to WORK. Modifying equipment has been done since the dawn of time when people improved the wheel. There should be mechanics at EVERY STATION. If not, at least in HI TECH stations. They all should be able to modify things for you. Let everyone modify their ships to their hearts content.

But what you do is make the best upgrades and the most powerful difficult to get by putting that JOB SIMULATOR type gameplay into it.

It sort of is like everquest. If you wanted the really good stuff you had to work really hard for it, and it could get obscure at times. "Epic Quests". Make the best stuff only obtainable by Engineers after you meet their requirements.

Effectively FD said LOOK AT ALL THESE SHINY NEW WEAPONS!!!! LOL just kidding.. you can't have them. You gotta make 29 trips to haul lavian brandy and spend the next 100 gaming hours to get a 5% increase.

It should be everyone gets good updates .. but not great ones. If you want the BEST THEN you need to work hard to get it.

Stop firewalling everyone from actually having fun.