A very easy way for FDev to improve ship engineer grind

Aerendyl

Aerendyl
Northpin said:
There is no grind - the entire process is non-trivial so the engineered ships have an achievement value.
Else we all would be playing Counterstrike, buying the weapons at the start of the round and be done with it several minutes later.

Even after 50+ engineered ships, every single ship i engineer is part of a process i really love, starting with deciding what i want from that ship, to numerous coriolis/edsy iterations then the engineering itself and then the maiden voyage to apply experimentals

Else they could have implemented a 1-button engineering and be done with unlocks, blue prints, materials and the entire ship building and customization process
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I'm not asking for 1-button engineering or any such extreme strawman. I'm not asking for the WORK to be removed from the whole process of building a ship - I really don't want to have a menu at the start of the game where you pick "Imperial Cutter" and fly it immediately - that would be terrible.

What I'm asking for is that in an engineering process where I need to trade materials, and I already have all those materials (though that process of painstakingly collecting them, via real gameplay and not just relogging for 95% of them mind you) - that I don't have to fly to another station because the dice throw required ONE MORE of a thing that I haven't traded. This is absolutely painful. I've done the work, don't make me do extra dumb busy work too. Put the trader there so I don't have to make a pointless trip out to a trader, trade the thing, fly back and discover (YIPPEEE) that I need another different ONE thing once again!

They could remove the dice throws too, so the exact quantities that are needed can be predicted. But there will be just as much complaining about that suggestion I'm sure.
 

Aerendyl

Aerendyl
Old Duck said:
Oh I'll be the first to shout a hearty "Amen!" to anyone proclaiming that Engineering in Elite is totally and completely nonsensical. I much rather it follow typical crafting models common in other games, where we the pilot engineer our own ships, after we learn the "secret arts" of engine tuning or weapon enhancement. I also think the material system is utterly bonkers - the idea that I have to go out and chip rocks to somehow get processed iron without a refinery (I guess the magic synthesizer is a refinery, too?), but I can't get these COMMON materials at the local hardware store commodity market like I can IRL, but I can buy Uranium at the grocery store commodity market, is the most illogical, nonsensical, immersion-breaking nonsense that has every been created during mankind's existence on this earth.

Oh, and all these materials are massless, volumeless, and omnipresent. Yet they also have restrictions in quantity, defined by some arbitrary law of nature. Same goes with data, with individual files taking up terabytes of drive storage (either that or ships in Elite switched back to old floppy drives for data storage).

I'm just saying that your idea is trying to fix nonsensical with nonsensical for the sake of ease of gameplay. It's duct tape on a rusty truck.

iu
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Yes it is! Easily implemented duct tape that would make the beloved rusty truck just a little more convenient to drive.
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Aerendyl said:
They could remove the dice throws too, so the exact quantities that are needed can be predicted. But there will be just as much complaining about that suggestion I'm sure.
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You certainly would not hear me complaining if that was the case.
A QoL change as simple as that would make planning engineering much easier. (Yes, I've done the "forgot to trade for this" bit in the very recent past!)
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
Aerendyl said:
What I'm asking for is that in an engineering process where I need to trade materials, and I already have all those materials (though that process of painstakingly collecting them, via real gameplay and not just relogging for 95% of them mind you) - that I don't have to fly to another station because the dice throw required ONE MORE of a thing that I haven't traded. This is absolutely painful.
Click to expand...
I feel like the source of your pain is self-inflicted. Do you realize that the difference between 3/4 of a filled bar and a 100% filled bar is minuscule? I rarely maxed engineering, even when I had the materials, because it's quite frankly a waste of those materials. I get that it's a bit deceiving, because one would naturally think that going from 3/4 to max engineering in a specific grade level would improve the actual engineering effect (FSD range, weapon DPS, etc) by 25%, but it doesn't. It's additive, not multiplicative (I think I'm using the right terminology). Raising the "gauge" by 25% usually only increases the effect by few percent, especially once you're at G5, which usually just doesn't matter in actual gameplay. For example, you might save two jumps over a 2000 LY trip by pushing G5 FSD from 3/4 to full bar. I'm making these numbers up (maybe it's three jumps), but I'm basing them on actual experience, and point I'm trying to make is valid. You can see it for yourself by focusing on the number inside the gauge rather than the gauge bar the next time you engineer something.

I tell you this because Frontier is not going to grant your request, and I hate seeing a fellow CMDR in pain.
 

Aerendyl

Aerendyl
Old Duck said:
I feel like the source of your pain is self-inflicted. Do you realize that the difference between 3/4 of a filled bar and a 100% filled bar is minuscule? I rarely maxed engineering, even when I had the materials, because it's quite frankly a waste of those materials. I get that it's a bit deceiving, because one would naturally think that going from 3/4 to max engineering in a specific grade level would improve the actual engineering effect (FSD range, weapon DPS, etc) by 25%, but it doesn't. It's additive, not multiplicative (I think I'm using the right terminology). Raising the "gauge" by 25% usually only increases the effect by few percent, especially once you're at G5, which usually just doesn't matter in actual gameplay. For example, you might save two jumps over a 2000 LY trip by pushing G5 FSD from 3/4 to full bar. I'm making these numbers up (maybe it's three jumps), but I'm basing them on actual experience, and point I'm trying to make is valid. You can see it for yourself by focusing on the number inside the gauge rather than the gauge bar the next time you engineer something.

I tell you this because Frontier is not going to grant your request, and I hate seeing a fellow CMDR in pain.
Click to expand...
IIRC I needed to get enough G4 to get into G5. I was trying to G5 all 8 of my hull reinforcements and they are indeed not fully maxed out.
But thanks for the tip.
 
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