My only guardian unlock gripe is that I could never seen to find the pattern Epsilon data as quickly as it was needed for certain mods/fighters.
Does anyone actually enjoy engineering?
- Thread starter Bill Clement
- Start date
"Does anyone actually enjoy engineering?"
In case of myself definitely: NO!
I started the whole engineering-plot a few days ago (after around 400 hours in ED) - and i have to say it`s not playing, it´s still working.
Yes, we had the same discussion about exploring, mining and many other parts of the game.
But after all this feels not as living part of the game. It is just a pain to do!
Not worth such a good game!
Greetings from Austria!
In case of myself definitely: NO!
I started the whole engineering-plot a few days ago (after around 400 hours in ED) - and i have to say it`s not playing, it´s still working.
Yes, we had the same discussion about exploring, mining and many other parts of the game.
But after all this feels not as living part of the game. It is just a pain to do!
Not worth such a good game!
Greetings from Austria!
Bob Lighthouse
Banned
I've done thousands of engineering rolls and I am not sure what you're trying to show there.
Modding one module completely unlocks the engineer and you don't need to unlock experimentals.
Those often use lower level mats as well.
A G5 module maxed out can take 30+ G5 mats that said.
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The way I read it was, he was suggesting to do away with the subcategories of mats and simplify the types, so the blueprint requirements would be more straightforward.
If that's what he meant I fully agree, anything that simplified that system would be welcome. I don't mind difficult things, I mind repetitive, tedious, mind numbing, non intuitive, not fun things. which is what mat gathering and putting together a full G5 build seems to me today. I haven't done as 1/10th as many rolls as you, but even the handful of fully kit G5 ships in my hangar were a chore.
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Apologies, I've changed the wording a bit.
All I'm trying to demonstrate is one of the million ways that they could have had the upgrades more logical.
Plus rare materials aren't rare because people relog.
No. No, it doesn't.
Bob Lighthouse
Banned
It's very convoluted, no doubt.
I'm just confused about what the numbers actually refer to.
Eg it takes more rolls to do a mod at G5, not less.
G1 takes the fewest, most often a single roll.
It's more "flat" when doing the initial unlocks otoh; eg ~5-6 rolls at G1 and still around 10 at G5.
Prior to the update last spring where as the process was changed dramatically, I attempted on three different occasions to do some engineering and ended up with mods worse than I started with. After the new process I've done a great deal of it. My plea to FDev would be to allow somehow to keep some of the mats if and when one sells the engineered mod, rather than loose all that time and effort and have to do it all again and again and when engineering a different mods, such as one would do for various weapons.
To be honest it can be a bit of a chore, but then i do find it keeps me busy in game and pushes me into roles i really didnt want to bother to try. Some of these roles, like mining for example, i found to be fun for a while.
The original engineer section of the game is what made me leave ED for over a year. I came back on by sheer chance after getting one of the regular ED update emails and discovered it had been updated/improved a lot more.
Now if i hit a brick wall with some of the materials, i tend to change role and do something else with a different ship.
The original engineer section of the game is what made me leave ED for over a year. I came back on by sheer chance after getting one of the regular ED update emails and discovered it had been updated/improved a lot more.
Now if i hit a brick wall with some of the materials, i tend to change role and do something else with a different ship.
While late to the party, to the OP question:
Yes.
I enjoy the actual engineering and the materials gathering and trading. I don't even mind the travelling to an engineer for specific aspects of work as that promotes reasons to move around the universe to some degree.
However, while I enjoy it, I think there are clear reasons to substantially address a few areas for Engineers specifically:
So, as stated, the engineering and materials system associated with it, I quite enjoy overall. The Engineer unlock process is ill-conceived to Beyond and further (see what I did there...
).
Your mileage may vary, as always, as this is an area where there is no doubt a lot of subjectivity in what we find enjoyable in the tinkering and design process.
Yes.
I enjoy the actual engineering and the materials gathering and trading. I don't even mind the travelling to an engineer for specific aspects of work as that promotes reasons to move around the universe to some degree.
However, while I enjoy it, I think there are clear reasons to substantially address a few areas for Engineers specifically:
- The inability to also pin modifications to your selected engineering blueprints is odd. The localized engineering bays aren't full service it seems in ways that seem pointlessly arbitrary. You already limit one blueprint type per engineer, why the sub-limit?
- Materials brokers work just fine for me for all materials purposes. I don't share concerns regarding the sourcing challenges of some versus others because I can readily stockpile whatever IS appearing for what isn't and trade accordingly. The only edge case to this is not being able to trade across material groups (i.e. data to raw to industrial) or engage the brokers with actual money. That conversion gap is the only thing in the system I find irksome, but hardly to the point of distraction.
- Unlocking the engineers is a ludicrous task in several cases, designed to be pointlessly punitive. The engineering itself is interesting and promotes variety of choice and experimentation for me. Getting access to it for some of the engineers was a lesson in tedium and aggravation to a significant percentage. I strongly believe that a large part of people's lasting frustration for engineering comes from a 'was this juice really worth that arduous, mind-numbing squeeze?' aftertaste, but your mileage may vary. If these tasks were _a_ way to unlock the engineer but there was another (again, cash money comes to mind, even if in large sun-eclipsing stacks worth), I would expect everyone's enjoyment of the options would increase dramatically as they didn't start from a place of misery.
So, as stated, the engineering and materials system associated with it, I quite enjoy overall. The Engineer unlock process is ill-conceived to Beyond and further (see what I did there...
).Your mileage may vary, as always, as this is an area where there is no doubt a lot of subjectivity in what we find enjoyable in the tinkering and design process.
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I dunno mate. I don't object to picking up mats after an encounter- looting the body is a very apt description. What I object to is needing to loot hundreds of bodies...
While late to the party, to the OP question:
Yes.
I enjoy the actual engineering and the materials gathering and trading. I don't even mind the travelling to an engineer for specific aspects of work as that promotes reasons to move around the universe to some degree.
However, while I enjoy it, I think there are clear reasons to substantially address a few areas for Engineers specifically:
- The inability to also pin modifications to your selected engineering blueprints is odd. The localized engineering bays aren't full service it seems in ways that seem pointlessly arbitrary. You already limit one blueprint type per engineer, why the sub-limit?
- Materials brokers work just fine for me for all materials purposes. I don't share concerns regarding the sourcing challenges of some versus others because I can readily stockpile whatever IS appearing for what isn't and trade accordingly. The only edge case to this is not being able to trade across material groups (i.e. data to raw to industrial) or engage the brokers with actual money. That conversion gap is the only thing in the system I find irksome, but hardly to the point of distraction.
- Unlocking the engineers is a ludicrous task in several cases, designed to be pointlessly punitive. The engineering itself is interesting and promotes variety of choice and experimentation for me. Getting access to it for some of the engineers was a lesson in tedium and aggravation to a significant percentage. I strongly believe that a large part of people's lasting frustration for engineering comes from a 'was this juice really worth that arduous, mind-numbing squeeze?' aftertaste, but your mileage may vary. If these tasks were _a_ way to unlock the engineer but there was another (again, cash money comes to mind, even if in large sun-eclipsing stacks worth), I would expect everyone's enjoyment of the options would increase dramatically as they didn't start from a place of misery.
So, as stated, the engineering and materials system associated with it, I quite enjoy overall. The Engineer unlock process is ill-conceived to Beyond and further (see what I did there...
Your mileage may vary, as always, as this is an area where there is no doubt a lot of subjectivity in what we find enjoyable in the tinkering and design process.
Back to my OP " I don't mean 'do you enjoy having an engineered ship' or 'do you enjoy trying out different engineering modifications', I mean do you actually enjoy the process, the things that you do to get to that engineered module? "
I don't enjoy having engineered ships in the game, I think the whole process was a good idea (customisation) that's completely and utterly broken the game's balance thanks to utterly cack handed implementation. I do enjoy playing around with different ship builds, in game, so a form of engineering really ought to appeal to me. I don't mind visiting and unlocking engineers-a little role play appeals to me. I detest the outrageously complex materials spreadsheet and the imbecilic and far too often completely counter intuitive gathering process.
So to build on your points:
1. I'm ambivalent to pinning blueprints. I don't mind visiting the engineer in person, it actually helps with my immersion. (Why do I always hear the Yamiks when I say that?
)2. The sheer number of materials, the random nature of collecting them, the requirement to visit three different brokers in three different locations to trade them and the outrageously large number needed to fully engineer a single module is driving me insane! It's not a credibility gap, it's the layers of ridiculously random make work required to get to the effect I want, an effect that may or may not do what I expect it to, given the coy and not entirely
3. I've unlocked most of the engineers fairly painlessly, it's having to bring them a mountain of scrap and building materials that's grinding me down.
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I dunno mate. I don't object to picking up mats after an encounter- looting the body is a very apt description. What I object to is needing to loot hundreds of bodies...
Back to my OP " I don't mean 'do you enjoy having an engineered ship' or 'do you enjoy trying out different engineering modifications', I mean do you actually enjoy the process, the things that you do to get to that engineered module? "
I don't enjoy having engineered ships in the game, I think the whole process was a good idea (customisation) that's completely and utterly broken the game's balance thanks to utterly cack handed implementation. I do enjoy playing around with different ship builds, in game, so a form of engineering really ought to appeal to me. I don't mind visiting and unlocking engineers-a little role play appeals to me. I detest the outrageously complex materials spreadsheet and the imbecilic and far too often completely counter intuitive gathering process.
So to build on your points:
1. I'm ambivalent to pinning blueprints. I don't mind visiting the engineer in person, it actually helps with my immersion. (Why do I always hear the Yamiks when I say that?
2. The sheer number of materials, the random nature of collecting them, the requirement to visit three different brokers in three different locations to trade them and the outrageously large number needed to fully engineer a single module is driving me insane! It's not a credibility gap, it's the layers of ridiculously random make work required to get to the effect I want, an effect that may or may not do what I expect it to, given the coy and not entirelyhonestaccurately described summary given in game. It's completely impractical and totally unreasonable to expect a player to find all those bloody brokers, after spending an implausible amount of time gathering them, to trade at stupidly excessive ratios for the thing that's needed for progression to the next level. Without third party tools it would take several game sessions just to find the traders needed (my galaxy filter doesn't seem to show the little buggers home systems- a combination of the graphics settings I use and my being a total n00b with the map, no doubt, but even so...) It's a total pita.
3. I've unlocked most of the engineers fairly painlessly, it's having to bring them a mountain of scrap and building materials that's grinding me down.
I clearly don't share the nails on chalkboard components you do with some of this. And honestly, imbecilic is overstating the materials variety, which was done ostensibly (however effectively or ineffectively) to promote travel and regional\situational differences in gains. While I agree it's probably more diverse than need be, I suggest that if they allowed cash injection to solve the problem or broker type to broker type exchanges, your distaste would drop pretty substantially as the variety would no longer be such a perceived limiter.
I do find your definition of painless versus mine notably different as the rare goods unlocks requiring multiple trips or the specific area/region faction grinds stand out to me as needlessly annoying. Some of the rare goods unlocks feel beyond obstructionist and arbitrary to me as well as a chore to complete, but your play preferences are just clearly different than mine.
The third party tools argument is, for good or ill, not remotely isolated to engineering. Just finding what ships/ship parts/weapon fitting variations and so forth one wants is often a trip to EDDB for efficient finding and I don't know a single trader who isn't a Market Connector user. Hell, the sheer number of us that use Voice Attack for voice command macros (which is actually two external programs for one function, HCS Voice packs and Voice Attack) suggests that the expectation for Elite is a living game environment that leverages and is dependent upon external references at this stage. While I believe that kind of information should exist in game clearly and cleanly, it would appear as a release philosophy that ship sailed LONG ago, so I find it hard to take any system to task on that line of reasoning. It's apparently reasonable for all other aspects of the game, this doesn't raise the bar past that tolerance to my mind.
I follow your arguments here Bill, but I can't disconnect them from a place of preference rather than neutral assessment in the big scope, for your distaste or my current comfort with the system as is. We are both in agreement that some improvements or adjustments could go a long way, but we'd clearly prioritize them differently. I do think though we agree that some collapse/condensation or standardization of the materials trading would be welcome!
That is wise advise cmdr. I just wasted a chunk of time grinding explo data to rep up an engineer to no avail, then checked coriolis and that last jump to L5 was worth ... 0.02ly ... no thanks, will enjoy doing other things.
Just reading through this whole thread and I think it all comes down to personality types. Some (maybe enlightened?) cmdrs just play the game and engineer when they can, and others (maybe goal orientated?) tend to stay focused on a task through to completion and then get caught in the inevitable grind. More often than not I fall into the latter whilst wishing I could be happy being the former!
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Quote, GuyFawkesMaskGuy: "I follow your arguments here Bill, but I can't disconnect them from a place of preference rather than neutral assessment in the big scope, for your distaste or my current comfort with the system as is. We are both in agreement that some improvements or adjustments could go a long way, but we'd clearly prioritize them differently. I do think though we agree that some collapse/condensation or standardization of the materials trading would be welcome!"
That's putting it mildly, Guy! My preferences are a side issue, important to me but I accept they shouldn't have much weight on other player's options. I think it's pretty clear that engineering is deeply flawed, though.
The thinking process seems to have been to force us into sampling other play styles. My issue with that isn't just a gameplay one. ED has various moral choices and decisions the player has to make, There are a whole bunch of things I just will not do, in this or any other game. Griefing fellow players, pretending to be a slave trader, massacring hordes of npcs are just three. I'm not saying we should try to turn the clock back, but there should be room for accepting that some options that are in the game won't appeal to everyone.
Imagine the (snowflake) storm if a hypothetical mmo required players to consume (virtual) pork to get a game critical upgrade. I'd consider that a far lesser issue than encouraging players to attack isolated, fictional moon bases, or murder civilian ships, but the real world consequences could put the company forcing pig meat down their customer's pixellated throats out of business. Here in the UK there might even be legal issues!
FD wouldn't even countenance such a move, but they'll gleefully put players in a position where they have to perform deeply immoral and unethical actions, just to reach a stage where they're somewhat equal to in game opponents.
I 'get' that it's just toy spaceships, no-one is really being executed when we annihilate a convoy, but I'm still loath to take part in those sort of activities. But avoiding them leads down a road to 'gamey' near-exploits, grinding and farming activities that don't really make much sense.
The whole system is a mess. [sour]
In better news, this thread is choc full of great material gathering tips and a lot of the peeps posting seem to really enjoy some, most or all of the activity, so I think I owe it to everyone (including myself! [haha]) to stop sulking and give it another go.
Wish me luck?
That's putting it mildly, Guy!
My preferences are a side issue, important to me but I accept they shouldn't have much weight on other player's options. I think it's pretty clear that engineering is deeply flawed, though. The thinking process seems to have been to force us into sampling other play styles. My issue with that isn't just a gameplay one. ED has various moral choices and decisions the player has to make, There are a whole bunch of things I just will not do, in this or any other game. Griefing fellow players, pretending to be a slave trader, massacring hordes of npcs are just three. I'm not saying we should try to turn the clock back, but there should be room for accepting that some options that are in the game won't appeal to everyone.
Imagine the (snowflake) storm if a hypothetical mmo required players to consume (virtual) pork to get a game critical upgrade. I'd consider that a far lesser issue than encouraging players to attack isolated, fictional moon bases, or murder civilian ships, but the real world consequences could put the company forcing pig meat down their customer's pixellated throats out of business. Here in the UK there might even be legal issues!
FD wouldn't even countenance such a move, but they'll gleefully put players in a position where they have to perform deeply immoral and unethical actions, just to reach a stage where they're somewhat equal to in game opponents.
I 'get' that it's just toy spaceships, no-one is really being executed when we annihilate a convoy, but I'm still loath to take part in those sort of activities. But avoiding them leads down a road to 'gamey' near-exploits, grinding and farming activities that don't really make much sense.
The whole system is a mess. [sour]
In better news, this thread is choc full of great material gathering tips and a lot of the peeps posting seem to really enjoy some, most or all of the activity, so I think I owe it to everyone (including myself! [haha]) to stop sulking and give it another go.
Wish me luck?
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Good luck!
Wish you loads of luck Bill. I won't unlock a few engineers as their requirements go contrary to my play style (pretty much like yours, maybe) so I'm not going to have 'meta' builds for some things, I honestly don't think I'll miss those upgrades, just keep on playing in a way that is fun for me - and pick up materials as I go along
Wow! I am torn. Should i rep this posting? Or report it for breaking the forum culture of focused negativity?
Actually i am also one of those who find most of the engineering still tedious, albeit much better than before the rework. I find that now, when i constantly gather materials and only engineer a ship once a while, i usually have almost everything i need already in storage and engineering requires very limited extra effort. Thanks to pinned blueprints i can even do so with limited traveling. (Any engineer who can do even a G1 of an item can also put special effects on it, no matter which grade it is. So i just need to visit a few selected engineers and have most of my ship fully set up. )
But that's from my current position, where i rarely engineer but collect all valuable stuff crossing my way. For somebody in early stages of engineering and perhaps in a hurry, it's still a chore.
Anyway, i not only wish you luck but also fun and good success.
Wow! I am torn. Should i rep this posting? Or report it for breaking the forum culture of focused negativity?
Actually i am also one of those who find most of the engineering still tedious, albeit much better than before the rework. I find that now, when i constantly gather materials and only engineer a ship once a while, i usually have almost everything i need already in storage and engineering requires very limited extra effort. Thanks to pinned blueprints i can even do so with limited traveling. (Any engineer who can do even a G1 of an item can also put special effects on it, no matter which grade it is. So i just need to visit a few selected engineers and have most of my ship fully set up. )
But that's from my current position, where i rarely engineer but collect all valuable stuff crossing my way. For somebody in early stages of engineering and perhaps in a hurry, it's still a chore.
Anyway, i not only wish you luck but also fun and good success.
I don't understand with the revamp of Engineers why they still left in needless busy work. ie: Why, once you'd unlocked an Engineer could we simply not performing engineering with them at any station on any associated module etc? Why needless put in faff (busy work)?
Allow us to play the game, collect materials, and apply engineering as easily/painlessly as possible surely?
Heck, worse case make the magic side effects require a special visit to an Engineer or the like... But for simply upgrading just let us do it as easily as possibly if you want us to do it regularly/organically.
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I rarely visit an engineer for normal upgrading. When i visit an engineer, I pin the right blueprints. That means i really rarely have to go there. Usually i only visit engineers when i need to add special effects or when i build a new ship and require some more unusual modifications done.
It's really not that bad, once you have all engineers unlocked and keep your material storage in shape by picking up the valuables on the wayside.
And on why to travel there at all: hmm. Yea. We could also have instant transfer of ships and modules. Why have a waiting time?
Why do we need to pin blue prints? What does it bring to the process? Why not in effect treat every blue print as pinned? In that way, we can simply upgrade more easily and more often. And surely upgrading more often is what it should all be about?