Does anyone actually enjoy engineering?

Personally I like it,

why are we still moaning about it. Engineering is here, let's move on, rather than trying to get fdev to waist development time in changes or removals of functions, let's spend it on new functionality.

I am not against some tweaks if necessary. I think some of the rare unlocks are tedious. But I agree that there isn't much point in demanding fundamental changes.
 
I am not against some tweaks if necessary. I think some of the rare unlocks are tedious. But I agree that there isn't much point in demanding fundamental changes.

I wouldn't mind if it, the Engineers themselves specifically, were opened up a bit more to other play styles and approaches, but that seems to be my MO for the game in general of late.
 
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I wouldn't mind if it, the Engineers themselves specifically, were opened up a bit more to other play styles and approaches, but that seems to be my MO for the game in general of late.

It would be great if Engineers had some handcrafted missions to unlock them. I could understand if others would see it as wasted dev time though.
 
If you play game the engineers do unlock, people tend to want an engineer, now now now.
So the requirements become a must do now now

Fasttrack game play for instant large ship and g5 engineering makes the grind feel massive. I think
 
It would be great if Engineers had some handcrafted missions to unlock them. I could understand if others would see it as wasted dev time though.

Been asking for that since the beta for them. :D

Well, I was glad at least we could sell exploration data, commodities, and the like to them to gain rank with them, which was added in based on feedback from the beta, if I recall correctly. Still doesn't so much address the requirements to reach them, but at least it's something.
 
Personally I like it,

why are we still moaning about it. Engineering is here, let's move on, rather than trying to get fdev to waist development time in changes or removals of functions, let's spend it on new functionality.

The OP asked a question...do you enjoy engineering?

The answer is predictably a mixed bag...but yes, lets move on. It is what it is, use engineering or don't. I'd rather they spend the majority of their dev time bringing out fresh content but it would be nice if they spent some time smoothing off the rough edges.

And yes the unlocks for some engineers are just terrible, shallow and poorly thought out....50 special cigars? Really?
 
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I enjoy the result, but the actual act is little more than a pain in the butt.

It does seem a bit contradictory in a free form, open ended game where you can otherwise get away with playing your own way fairly well. Engineers are more their way or the highway.
 
Just collating a lot of things I've read here, is it that people who focus on combat don't like engineering but people who like general space flying do like it? Not saying one is right and the other is wrong, just seeking understanding.
 
It does seem a bit contradictory in a free form, open ended game where you can otherwise get away with playing your own way fairly well. Engineers are more their way or the highway.

Some potential improvements could be very controversial. I always thought it's such a waste of materials when I blow NPCs up that I should somehow obtain the materials automatically. On the other hand it's such a waste of all the interesting mechanics like scooping up stuff manually or using limpets. But then again it's so tedious and the current limpet situation is just annoying. Sometimes I really don't know what I want. :)

What I do know is that I want a scrap modification mechanic that allows you to recover a percentage of spend materials for modules you no longer need.
 
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Personally I like it,

why are we still moaning about it. Engineering is here, let's move on, rather than trying to get fdev to waist development time in changes or removals of functions, let's spend it on new functionality.

I think it is very interesting that people are still "moaning" about it. Apparently engineering did something to the game that turned out to be very controversial for many players. The comments can provide hints on what it is and lessons can be learned.

Sorry, no brilliant insights or lessons learned from me. I'm a hopeless techie. I'm really bad at the soft (i.e. non-technical) side of game(play) design. But... maybe that is an insight?
 
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I wish ED's Engineering took a page from games like Monster Hunter World. In that game, when you upgrade a weapon, you can later "undo" a particular upgrade and your materials are refunded to you.

My second CMDR just bought a Cutter - the first Cutter I've ever owned after 1.5 years playing the game, woot woot! I can't afford to A-rate the things I typically would, so I'm settling for C & D for now. Because the jump range is rubbish (thank the Guardians for that booster), I'll likely G5 my 7C FSD. Some of those "materials" are a big pain in the stern to gather, so it sure would be mighty nice if I could get those mats & data crystals back to use on my 7A FSD when I can afford it.

BTW, I inadvertently shine a light on another problem with Engineering. In many cases it's optional - nobody needs a ship with 80LY jump range or lasers than can melt an NPC in 2 seconds. However, take a ship like the Cutter, and without some serious engineering, it's just not that fun to fly (that's including the very sad default jump range). Nine times out of ten, I'm engineering to compensate for weaknesses in things like weapons range, FSD range, top speed, etc. Nothing I have is a "god ship" (no 80LY JRS, no 800+ m/s thrusters, no instakill phase-shifting quantum entangled bacon-powered torpedoes). Nope, I just want to the ships I like to be good, not necessarily super. That makes Engineering mandatory, whether I like it or not.

Gratz on your first Cutter Duck! I would strongly advice you to keep on to your G5 mats and save for a grade A FSD. Don't waste those precious mats on a 7C. I'm currently re-engineering mine for some NPC pirating. It's a great ship! As in regards to the Cutter's handling. It takes getting used to. It drifts a lot. It takes some practice to cope with the drift. You also don't need heavy engineering for this ship to be useful or fun to fly. If you're low on funds then I'd recommend using it as a bulk trader or go deep core mining with it. Neither require you to do heavy engineering on the ship. The latter will pay for an A rated one in no time. If you want to go mining with it then I'd recommend getting used to the Cutter's handling first.
 

Rafe Zetter

Banned
Engineering was added to try and mend the cookie-cutter results of having no real player-driven crafting system. But since they didn't want to add a real player-influenced economy, they opted for this monstrosity.

Even Ultima Online in 1997 had a more balanced and interesting crafting system.

Their mistake was in listening to the players who thought cookie cutter builds was a bad idea - usually those were the players who ended up with "god rolled" ships that can give 10 second kills just by facerolling - they didn't want to be "forced" to L2P where SKILL and FA Off was king.

Anyone noticed that Isiona - the main purveyor of all the FA Off YT's, and one of the early promoters of ED, has been absent since engineering was introduced?

Why do you think that is? Is it a quinkydink (love that word) or indicative of something else?

To be fair to FDev (don't faint mods) - a player influenced economy was (and still is) impossible to create under the P2P system and would have to be serverside.

Now that the mission board has been moved serverside - maybe the promised PLAYER DRIVEN economy might be a consideration FDev are err... considering.
 

Rafe Zetter

Banned
I wish ED's Engineering took a page from games like Monster Hunter World. In that game, when you upgrade a weapon, you can later "undo" a particular upgrade and your materials are refunded to you.

Can't make people spend more time in your game getting more then can you?

[snip]

BTW, I inadvertently shine a light on another problem with Engineering. In many cases it's optional - nobody needs a ship with 80LY jump range or lasers than can melt an NPC in 2 seconds. However, take a ship like the Cutter, and without some serious engineering, it's just not that fun to fly (that's including the very sad default jump range). Nine times out of ten, I'm engineering to compensate for weaknesses in things like weapons range, FSD range, top speed, etc. Nothing I have is a "god ship" (no 80LY JRS, no 800+ m/s thrusters, no instakill phase-shifting quantum entangled bacon-powered torpedoes). Nope, I just want to the ships I like to be good, not necessarily super. That makes Engineering mandatory, whether I like it or not.

And this was because FDev didn't want to do what most people asked for, which is to make the ships have stats that were defined by a prescribed role, they thought that making every ship be able to do anything was a better idea - and so a portion of the ships available just get ignored - mostly the smaller ones and most commonly used ships are the same ones for most people.

You don't see threads on the forum "X ships is better than Y - and here's why" - because everyone knows outside of the mainstays everything else is just "meh".

I mean seriously if FDev can't see that ships DESIGNED to be passenger ships being LESS EFFICIENT at the role than a non passenger ship as a problem, what can you possibly expect them to understand?
 
Gratz on your first Cutter Duck! I would strongly advice you to keep on to your G5 mats and save for a grade A FSD. Don't waste those precious mats on a 7C. I'm currently re-engineering mine for some NPC pirating. It's a great ship! As in regards to the Cutter's handling. It takes getting used to. It drifts a lot. It takes some practice to cope with the drift. You also don't need heavy engineering for this ship to be useful or fun to fly. If you're low on funds then I'd recommend using it as a bulk trader or go deep core mining with it. Neither require you to do heavy engineering on the ship. The latter will pay for an A rated one in no time. If you want to go mining with it then I'd recommend getting used to the Cutter's handling first.

FWIW, I actually like the sluggishness and drifting of the Cutter. It's the top speed and jump range I find so very limiting.

Back to the drifting - it actually bothers me that so many ships in ED completely ignore the laws of physics. It's one thing in supercruise, but in normal space a ship the size and mass of a Navy destroyer should not be whipping around like it's a radio-controlled airplane. This game seems designed on replicating WWI dogfights, regardless the size and mass of the ships. When I engineer my thrusters, it's usually to improve top speed rather than maneuverability, because I'm a "realism nerd". That's why we have turreted weapons, after all :p

ps - I stopped at G4 the 7D FSD (no Cs in stock where I was), and with GFSDB that gives me 27 LY per jump, which is good enough for me, for now. Sure beats the original 10 LY range!
 
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Just collating a lot of things I've read here, is it that people who focus on combat don't like engineering but people who like general space flying do like it? Not saying one is right and the other is wrong, just seeking understanding.

A good point. I've noticed that when I've gone through my ships in Coriolis and removed the engineering, I still have something that would currently be functional, with only the need for a bit of power prioritising to deploy all the hardpoints.

People who are combat focused, especially in PvP, are probably in a position where they have to do significant engineering to have something that stands a chance of a kill against an engineered ship. Also, the builds of a usable ship may be impossible without engineers (many Vulture builds for example).

Maybe that's the difference. For people like me where it's optional it's ok, or even fun. For those who have to do it to maintain (or even open up) their preferred play style it's a chore. Maybe this points to engineering providing too much of a performance boost.
 
I wish ED's Engineering took a page from games like Monster Hunter World. In that game, when you upgrade a weapon, you can later "undo" a particular upgrade and your materials are refunded to you.

It's not like that because Braben's holy vision of his Elite social experiment space sandbox is to catch whales in timesinks, making them fill lots of bars slowly, percent by percent.

That's why you cant experiment in this system and metas are the go to. In this realistic sim economy people just cant rent mods or test them neither, because Braben's holy vision is for you to sacrifice 500T of Painite and commit to grind for an upgrade with an incorrect text description that never got patched.

It sucks on so many level, there isn't enough dimensions in realspace to describe it.
 
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