Can you tell us if Smear Campaigns are in game yet? Anyone find one with the update?

Angus

Angus
Zac Cocken said:
I think there's a potential middle ground here between the current situation and giving too much away. Aside from Opinion Polls and Smear Campaigns, are there other materials players are struggling with?
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Power Regulators? I mean you can get them of course, by stealing or failing to carry out recovery missions, but if you roleplay a decent sort of chap it's a bit clunky, especially as they are used in pretty much everything - except the player's SRV, apparently. :)
 

Episparh

Episparh
With so many people looking for this item I doubt no one ever saw it. It is probably a mater of really low chance to drop combined with extremely rare conditions.
 

Episparh

Episparh
Angus said:
Power Regulators? I mean you can get them of course, by stealing or failing to carry out recovery missions, but if you roleplay a decent sort of chap it's a bit clunky, especially as they are used in pretty much everything - except the player's SRV, apparently. :)
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Power regulators are easy to get as long as you are ready to pay a small fine and take a reputation loss. This is how I went "unfriendly" with Sirius corporation 🤫
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
Zac Cocken said:
I think there's a potential middle ground here between the current situation and giving too much away. Aside from Opinion Polls and Smear Campaigns, are there other materials players are struggling with?
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In order of difficulty (what the required total is and what I'd suggest instead)

  1. Smear Campaign Plans (8 - I'd suggest 1, given I've not seen one in over 3 weeks...)
  2. Opinion Polls (40 - I'd suggest 15)
  3. Settlement Defence Plans (15, I'd suggest 5)
  4. Cat Media/Classic Entertainment/Multimedia Entertainment (25, I'd suggest 20)
  5. Financial Projections (15, I think this is OK)
The other stuff? I have never had any issue with but it would be nice if we could loot some materials from fallen victims (both in CZs and any other NPCs), so that we could make some progress via combat.

What I will say, as an overall opinion (hah) on these data unlocks, is they're the least fun of all the engineer process so far. I'd much prefer it if they were replaced with the "do x missions of y type", like with some of the other engineers. These were a lot of fun! Just add in a progress counter so we can measure our progress and then I'd happily do 20 mission types for the later engineers, you know? Missions are genuinely fun and challenging so this would be a much better way to gate progress than RNG data.
 
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Fishy

Fishy
Episparh said:
Power regulators are easy to get as long as you are ready to pay a small fine and take a reputation loss. This is how I went "unfriendly" with Sirius corporation 🤫
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They're also routinely available as mission rewards (including for easy-mode scav cleanups), and are an obvious extra reward to settlement massacre missions. The quantities involved seems big at first, but you just keep collecting them as you go and there are only so many suits one will ever want to upgrade. I don't find them to be an issue personally.
 

Darkman Returns

Darkman Returns
Zac Cocken said:
I think there's a potential middle ground here between the current situation and giving too much away. Aside from Opinion Polls and Smear Campaigns, are there other materials players are struggling with?
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The Engineer unlock requirements are by far the least fun gameplay mechanic in Odyssey. Opinion Polls are particularly tiresome because of the extremely high number required, Smear Campaigns because nobody can find any.

The fact that the drop rate and location for these and the other data appears to make no sense makes it even worse. Opinion Polls you would think might be found in sites run by Minor Factions having Elections perhaps, but no they appear in Tourism and Extraction sites mainly. Smear campaigns who knows? Settlement Defence Plans maybe in Military Outposts, but no you have to camp out next to a crashed skimmer to get them. It makes no sense, so either we're all missing something here or it's not working as intended; unless the intention is just to frustrate your playerbase even more.
 

CMDR Rabbit

CMDR Rabbit
Zac Cocken said:
I think there's a potential middle ground here between the current situation and giving too much away. Aside from Opinion Polls and Smear Campaigns, are there other materials players are struggling with?
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Power regulators seem few and far between, seen them once as a mission reward, but been asked to source them for a power up mission several times.

Can find degraded ones with ease, but have yet (since the start of alpha phase 2) to find one at a crash.

A possible remedy would be the ability to trade up say 3 or so degraded regulators for a working one, maybe as an additional service offered by engineers or tech brokers.
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
CMDR Rabbit said:
Power regulators seem few and far between, seen them once as a mission reward, but been asked to source them for a power up mission several times.

Can find degraded ones with ease, but have yet (since the start of alpha phase 2) to find one at a crash.

A possible remedy would be the ability to trade up say 3 or so degraded regulators for a working one, maybe as an additional service offered by engineers or tech brokers.
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I think just adding them to any SRV you see would be enough. Like in the tutorial.

Remember, you can literally go grab a power regulator from any settlement. These are, in my experience, not a bottle neck if you keep them in your routine.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Ydiss said:
I don't think we need bombard him about all mats, just the data ones for the unlocks which are, in my opinion, the only ones that need urgent attention.
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yeah, Opinion Polls and Settlement Defence Plans are the only issues*. Well, I guess we need to add Smear Campaigns since apparently they are in but no-one has ever seen one ...

* Yeah, I know you can relog to get SDPs, but still ...
 

CMDR Rabbit

CMDR Rabbit
Ydiss said:
I think just adding them to any SRV you see would be enough. Like in the tutorial.

Remember, you can literally go grab a power regulator from any settlement. These are, in my experience, not a bottle neck if you keep them in your routine.
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That requires playing as a thief, but its not really Rabbit's style. I'm more go in, do the mission i'm supposed to do and get out. I know in some places i can loot anything not nailed down, get out the arc cutter, cut the nails and take that stuff too.

But thats not who i -want- to be in ED. I don't mind if things take a little longer to come by more 'honestly', just that its reasonably doable before the eventual heat death of the universe.
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
Power regulators are fine if, as you say, you are ok being a thief.

Simply decreasing the "degraded regulator" chance from srvs and other wreckage in favour of useable ones would help a lot.

Ideally, you'd be able to fix degraded ones using some of the assets you get (wiring, components, etc)

Again probably outside of scope, but could be ham fisted into a human tech broker...
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
CMDR Rabbit said:
That requires playing as a thief, but its not really Rabbit's style. I'm more go in, do the mission i'm supposed to do and get out. I know in some places i can loot anything not nailed down, get out the arc cutter, cut the nails and take that stuff too.

But thats not who i -want- to be in ED. I don't mind if things take a little longer to come by more 'honestly', just that its reasonably doable before the eventual heat death of the universe.
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Mission rewards do exist though. And you can ramp those up to 3 if you get a contact with high rep offering one (not common, no).

I think this isn't the most important thing right here, to be honest. And it's distracting from the topic.
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
Fishy said:
These two are the big outstanding ones, SC for rarity (have yet to see one personally) and OP for the sheer quantity required.

The only thing that comes a little close are Settlement Defense Plans. It's a rare find, which is fine, but is being let down by requiring 15 of them. I thought the patch notes would have fixed that by matching the dialogue which mentioned 5, but it was fixed the other way around.

This is post-collection feedback, I have gone through these unlocks myself, so any easing isn't going to change anything for me, but I do believe that it's going to cause a fair bit of resent in the greater community if left as is.

On the positive side, I started giving away my extra random drops to other players, so maybe that's how those unlocks will go over time, with a community handing out those precious-but-only-once items to players who need them. But being handed out the stuff isn't going to feel the same.
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Here you go Zak,

Someone here has unlocked ALL the engineers (except the one that needs these problematic items) and not found a single smear campaign.

This should surely be ringing design alarm bells.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Zac Cocken said:
Smear Campaigns are indeed in the game, but they are rare. We'll have a discussion RE the rarity of them to see if we want to make any changes based on your feedback.
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That's good to know! Now that you know where they can be found - do you think there is a logic to it that we should be able to work out - if we think really hard?

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This is excellent - I like puzzles :D
 
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CMDR Rabbit

CMDR Rabbit
Ydiss said:
Mission rewards do exist though. And you can ramp those up to 3 if you get a contact with high rep offering one (not common, no).

I think this isn't the most important thing right here, to be honest. And it's distracting from the topic.
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I know they do exist, but seem rare af tbh. As i mentioned, i saw one, one since alpha. And it was bugged (the target crash site i had to Get A Thing from failed to spawn).


Also, as well as existing as mission rewards, they are sometimes required (not provided) for a mission (à la "source a power regulator for settlement X)
 

Ydiss

Ydiss
So I just saw the comment about Smears being in the game but rare. If that's the case then getting 8 would take at least another 32 weeks to find, as I have yet to find one. Assuming I find one today, that's 1 in almost 4 weeks of playing the game.

Something needs to change there.
 
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