Hi all. With the rumor of yet another grind coming on the way for the "caustic sink" it's really about time we get a balance to the grind of this game for materials and engineering so that at least a lil bit of fun can be squeezed from this pile of pain! (insert phantom pain meme here lol).
It's funny in a certain way since FDEV knows how to implement the balance but it feels like they just want to stay in a forever low player base to go and invest money in their zoo games lol.
But you see, the way unlocking guardian weapons, modules and SLF works should be how the general grind works for the rest of the game!
For guardian equipment we grind materials once and them you have access to them forever with credits... that's more or less how it should work for everything else. Once unlocked you can just use credits after that.
How it works today is you want to make a build and you make an extremely long and boring grind to get your modules and your weapons in a certain way. If you decide to make a different build you will have to grind everything all over again even if you just want to get the same effect on a weapon but in different size. The grind in this game is extremely toxic since its very hard and very boring and practically everything in the game if not indeed everything needs grinding.
How it should be balanced. Well by making them close to what guardian grind is.
So lets say you want to put 2 Huge beam lasers in a corvette with long range and thermal vent in them. Today you have to grind a **** ton of materials and get each gun to the grade 5 long range and them grind more materials and apply the experimental effects.
But what if instead, once you made the full grind for grade 5 effect you want, this effect would them be unlocked forever to be implemented in any weapon that can have that effect and in any size and instead of grinding every time, you would just apply the effects on the weapons you want using credits!
So you grinded and unlocked the grade 5 in one of your beam lasers... now on the other one you can simply apply the effect by paying a set amount of credits on each grade.
This credit costs could be determined by the size of the weapon or module your applying the desired effect.
So for example applying long range effect grade 5 on a small multi-cannon would cost 500k Cr per grade, installing the effect on a medium size weapon that can receive it would cost 750k Cr per grade then 1M Cr for large and 2M Cr for huge. This would make the grind a lot more bearable as you would only need to grind a desired effect once instead of having to grind over and over again every time you want to put the same effect on a different weapon or weapon size.
So making this picture clearer I'm not talking about just gun engineering but all engineering so lets say you unlocked grade 5 Dirty for thrusters. Instead of having to grind all over again you could apply the effect any time after in any ship just paying accordingly to the size, so just like guns applying lets say charge enhanced on a size 1 Power Distributor would cost 500k Cr per grade, size 2 750k, size 3 1M, size 4 2M, size 5 3M... culminating in size 8 costing 7M per grade for example.
This would make the grind of the game a lot less demanding and ppl would be able to experiment more with the builds they want without having to worry so much about hoarding materials. This would not by any means make materials become useless as after all to unlock every engineering effect for modules and guns it would still take a long time but also materials even for ppl who unlocked every effect would still be used for synthesis or applying experimentals!
The costs in credits for applying unlocked effects for cmdr weapons, gadgets and suits should be lower than what you would need per grade applying effects to things related to the ships to be fair. So for example instead of each grade be based on size the cost would be on the type of weapon. I don't know much about on foot engineering but lets say there's an extended magazine effect you can engineer for the guns... you would pay 50k per grade on a pistol 100k on an rifle and 200k on a rocket launcher.
A limitation for all of this to make realistic fair from FDEV pov could be that an effect would only be unlocked once you have grinded an effect to grade 5. So lets say to unlock overcharged effect you would need to have grinded it fully for one weapon. Or increased range for FSD you would have needed to have fully grinded in one ship.
And finally since I think today size matters for the amount of materials you need to waste grinding, instead of someone just taking a ship and fit the smallest version of everything on it, the amount of materials should be set per grade and not for size. Again just like it works for Guardian stuff where the amount of what you need is set in stone.
So lets say... today to apply Efficient effect into a plasma accelerator you have to use 1 sulphur in grade one then 1 sulphor plus 1 head dispersion plate and etc. Even though today you know which material and how many of that material you need to use to make 1 upgrade, the ammount of times you need to apply the upgrade is random to complete a grade! So this needs to change too. so to unlock an effect it would show for example that to upgrade the grade 1 you need 5 sulphur to upgrade the grade 2 you would need 6 sulphur and 6 heat dispersion plate or whatever. Each grade should have a determined amount instead of being this material dump it is today.
It's insane the level of frustration I get when I'm making a grade 4 or 5 of an effect and them I start to dump materials on it and the circle never finishes. This should change.
So this is it! This balance is realistic enough that FDEV can't say it's bad for the game and fair enough that the community would be happy with it. And again this wouldn't make material useless as for unlocking an effect you would still have to grind it once and even if you unlocked every engineer effect you would still need materials to apply experimental and for synthesis.
If the community gives enough attention or likes to this maybe FDEV could implement this as soon as the upload a hotfix to fix the fps mess surface gameplay has become in this update 14 lol seriously, getting 20 fps while on a guardian site which is as far away from a burning settlement is ridiculous.
Please like and give feedback on this Cmdrs! see yall in the black.
PS: Since there's always new weapons and modules that come in CGs and such, our inventory space should go way up! from 200 to 2k or more.
It's funny in a certain way since FDEV knows how to implement the balance but it feels like they just want to stay in a forever low player base to go and invest money in their zoo games lol.
But you see, the way unlocking guardian weapons, modules and SLF works should be how the general grind works for the rest of the game!
For guardian equipment we grind materials once and them you have access to them forever with credits... that's more or less how it should work for everything else. Once unlocked you can just use credits after that.
How it works today is you want to make a build and you make an extremely long and boring grind to get your modules and your weapons in a certain way. If you decide to make a different build you will have to grind everything all over again even if you just want to get the same effect on a weapon but in different size. The grind in this game is extremely toxic since its very hard and very boring and practically everything in the game if not indeed everything needs grinding.
How it should be balanced. Well by making them close to what guardian grind is.
So lets say you want to put 2 Huge beam lasers in a corvette with long range and thermal vent in them. Today you have to grind a **** ton of materials and get each gun to the grade 5 long range and them grind more materials and apply the experimental effects.
But what if instead, once you made the full grind for grade 5 effect you want, this effect would them be unlocked forever to be implemented in any weapon that can have that effect and in any size and instead of grinding every time, you would just apply the effects on the weapons you want using credits!
So you grinded and unlocked the grade 5 in one of your beam lasers... now on the other one you can simply apply the effect by paying a set amount of credits on each grade.
This credit costs could be determined by the size of the weapon or module your applying the desired effect.
So for example applying long range effect grade 5 on a small multi-cannon would cost 500k Cr per grade, installing the effect on a medium size weapon that can receive it would cost 750k Cr per grade then 1M Cr for large and 2M Cr for huge. This would make the grind a lot more bearable as you would only need to grind a desired effect once instead of having to grind over and over again every time you want to put the same effect on a different weapon or weapon size.
So making this picture clearer I'm not talking about just gun engineering but all engineering so lets say you unlocked grade 5 Dirty for thrusters. Instead of having to grind all over again you could apply the effect any time after in any ship just paying accordingly to the size, so just like guns applying lets say charge enhanced on a size 1 Power Distributor would cost 500k Cr per grade, size 2 750k, size 3 1M, size 4 2M, size 5 3M... culminating in size 8 costing 7M per grade for example.
This would make the grind of the game a lot less demanding and ppl would be able to experiment more with the builds they want without having to worry so much about hoarding materials. This would not by any means make materials become useless as after all to unlock every engineering effect for modules and guns it would still take a long time but also materials even for ppl who unlocked every effect would still be used for synthesis or applying experimentals!
The costs in credits for applying unlocked effects for cmdr weapons, gadgets and suits should be lower than what you would need per grade applying effects to things related to the ships to be fair. So for example instead of each grade be based on size the cost would be on the type of weapon. I don't know much about on foot engineering but lets say there's an extended magazine effect you can engineer for the guns... you would pay 50k per grade on a pistol 100k on an rifle and 200k on a rocket launcher.
A limitation for all of this to make realistic fair from FDEV pov could be that an effect would only be unlocked once you have grinded an effect to grade 5. So lets say to unlock overcharged effect you would need to have grinded it fully for one weapon. Or increased range for FSD you would have needed to have fully grinded in one ship.
And finally since I think today size matters for the amount of materials you need to waste grinding, instead of someone just taking a ship and fit the smallest version of everything on it, the amount of materials should be set per grade and not for size. Again just like it works for Guardian stuff where the amount of what you need is set in stone.
So lets say... today to apply Efficient effect into a plasma accelerator you have to use 1 sulphur in grade one then 1 sulphor plus 1 head dispersion plate and etc. Even though today you know which material and how many of that material you need to use to make 1 upgrade, the ammount of times you need to apply the upgrade is random to complete a grade! So this needs to change too. so to unlock an effect it would show for example that to upgrade the grade 1 you need 5 sulphur to upgrade the grade 2 you would need 6 sulphur and 6 heat dispersion plate or whatever. Each grade should have a determined amount instead of being this material dump it is today.
It's insane the level of frustration I get when I'm making a grade 4 or 5 of an effect and them I start to dump materials on it and the circle never finishes. This should change.
So this is it! This balance is realistic enough that FDEV can't say it's bad for the game and fair enough that the community would be happy with it. And again this wouldn't make material useless as for unlocking an effect you would still have to grind it once and even if you unlocked every engineer effect you would still need materials to apply experimental and for synthesis.
If the community gives enough attention or likes to this maybe FDEV could implement this as soon as the upload a hotfix to fix the fps mess surface gameplay has become in this update 14 lol seriously, getting 20 fps while on a guardian site which is as far away from a burning settlement is ridiculous.
Please like and give feedback on this Cmdrs! see yall in the black.
PS: Since there's always new weapons and modules that come in CGs and such, our inventory space should go way up! from 200 to 2k or more.
