Does anyone actually enjoy engineering?
- Thread starter Bill Clement
- Start date
I must admit, I am one of the strange people who preferred the old engineering system, I liked the idea of people's ships being a little different. The occasional ship with a monster cannon or a ship made famous for it's uniquely durable hull etc. It is an easier system now, but lost a lot of character along the way. This is just my personal, subjective opinion though and I fully understand the changes, and still very much enjoy engineering. I also think it is a lot more friedly to the casual player now
I wouldn't call it friendly. Cancer is actually never friendly.
Well you're a box of laughs. I guess you disagree, but why the extreme language?
You haven't seen me use extreme language.
I think just because you haven't used any swear words doesn't make it not extreme. The use of "cancer" as a descriptive is pretty strong. Do you really hate the engineering mechanism that much?
"Strong" isn't "extreme". Cancer is a disease. You usually cut it out to save the rest of the organism. Hence I use it for ED engineers.
This is really off. Statistically there must be several users of this forum undergoing treatment ATM. You are comparing their condition to a game feature you don't happen to like. :-(
I compare nobody's 'condition' to anything. I use a figure of speech to compare a game feature to a festering tumor. And that I express my displeasure with the feature is topic of this very thread. You're just as invited to contribute too.
Yeah, engineering is fun if you take your time and don't stress if you can't G5 everything right away. It really is not a chore if you enjoy doing missions, bounty hunting, mining, exploring, and checking out planets in your srv, all of which I love doing. If you don't enjoy those aspects of the game then yeah, it's gonna be a grind, but to me those activities ARE the game, the engineering is just the icing on a very tasty cake.
Cancer is a horrible disease that kills millions of people every year and leaves millions of families broken by the loss of loved ones and providers. Some people survive their struggle and overcome it but the treatment is not exactly a walk in the park and some survivors are left maimed for life. Comparing engineering to cancer is just terribly wrong. No one likes cancer, but a lot us love engineering our ships! Please think about what you are posting BEFORE you post it, not after, after is too bloody late!
I enjoy bounty hunting in HazRes. I like combat zones too but it's like they're designed for wings or anacondas. I find it hard to survive.
I enjoy mining. The improvements are fantastic.
I just don't enjoy all the flying around after engineering materials. It's 20 jumps here, 15 jumps there. I'm flying to engineers, flying to do stuff to unlock engineers, flying to materials traders, flying to volcanic sites, flying around looking for HGE, flying back to engineers for special effects.
I finally got my G5 dirty drives. I have G5 FSD. If I can get to G5 with my shields then I'm done with engineers. It's a blight on the game. I can just return to doing the things I enjoy.
I think you're playing the wrong game. ED is a space sim, space is big, like really, really f@#$ing big, so it takes a long time to get from A to B, i.e. lots and lots of flying around!
I play real sims. You can fly a 747 from New York to Japan in real time and spend 17 hours flying. But guess what? Real sims allow you to speed up time if you like. And real sims don't require you to unlock stuff. It's a sim. It gives you a set of vehicles and a world and lets you simulate the experience.
My complaint is with the game aspects that force you into terrible gameplay mechanics.
I am sorry to hear that so many people don't like engineering. I am really enjoying engineering my fleet because they all have weaknesses: Porkchop handles like a hog, my FDL can't jump further than a 1-legged pensiober etc. To improve these weanesses I have no issues taking along a wake scanner to a haz res site and scanning some wakes inbetween popping pirates.Or doing some mining: makes a lot of credits and picks up elements I can use too. Or doing missions, I just enjoy going from A to B, and if I get interdicted on the way it's even more fun 'cos I get to send some murdering scum to Hell, and pick up more bits to further my engineering..I don't understand what's not fun about these things.
Problem is you need to enjoy just about all of those things. Having a specific sweet spot you enjoy worked fine for the most part prior to the engineers. There was nothing strictly off limits as far as upgrading your ship save PP specific mods if you just wanted to "play your way." Engineers grinds that philosophy into dust.
let's just say that it's sad when the bulk of gameplay around engineers is essentially broken down into 4 easy steps that only change slightly depending on the type of mat you need.
Step 1: go collect random g5 mats which may or may not be what you're actually looking for. (crystals for raw, dav's hope/USS for manufactured, or jameson's cobra for data)
Step 2: trade for what you need
step 3: repeat steps 1 and 2 until you have what you need
Step 4: proffit by jumping all over the bubble just to get it done.
I feel the entire process could be made much more enjoyable by doing a few simple things.
Option A
1. remove materials entirely, and yes, this would include synthesis. planetary vehicle hangars should be able to resupply SRVs a certain number of times and weapons should have less restrictive ammo pools to make up for the loss of synthesis.
2. allow engineering to be done with credits.
3. give missions or tasks to be done in exchange for the ability to actually use each upgrade/rank. For example, if you want to use the g5 fsd upgrade from farseer you'll have to complete 5 missions for her, one for each unlock you want, but you'll have to do even more missions if you want to use her g3 sensors upgrades, depending on the mod you want. (engineers who share the same modules should not have the same modifications available.)
4. any unlocked modification should be able to be applied from any station with a remote workbench. (including experimentals)
5. break the experimentals down so that different engineers who share a module in common have their own specialty effects, giving you a reason to work for them. (colonia engineers should get unique effects not seen in the bubble to give reasons to make the journey and do the work.)
Option B
simply all of the above but allow the materials to remain and buff the drop rates from data scans and USS signals as well as give a better trade rate at traders.
A major part of my issue with engineering is that it feels like work, too much work. I play the game to have fun, which, for me is trying out various builds and playing with things. Engineering does this nicely but the reward does not justify the amount of work that goes into getting it. It's like a person who enjoys eating apples being forced to tend an orchard, which they don't enjoy doing, just so they can enjoy their apples. After a while, they'll just give up. Also, engineers are supposed to be unique characters in the universe, with their own backstory and motivations. What sense does it make that a person who knows how to make interdicters more effective can also increase your fsd range? wouldn't it be more likely that he understands more about the boot time or how to better protect said fsd drive from attack than an explorer who focuses on jump range? While we're at it, why have so many engineers that can all do the same thing? 2 g5 fsd engineers? who can all do everything? doesn't make much sense to me lore wise. That's the reason for spreading out the upgrades.
Step 1: go collect random g5 mats which may or may not be what you're actually looking for. (crystals for raw, dav's hope/USS for manufactured, or jameson's cobra for data)
Step 2: trade for what you need
step 3: repeat steps 1 and 2 until you have what you need
Step 4: proffit by jumping all over the bubble just to get it done.
I feel the entire process could be made much more enjoyable by doing a few simple things.
Option A
1. remove materials entirely, and yes, this would include synthesis. planetary vehicle hangars should be able to resupply SRVs a certain number of times and weapons should have less restrictive ammo pools to make up for the loss of synthesis.
2. allow engineering to be done with credits.
3. give missions or tasks to be done in exchange for the ability to actually use each upgrade/rank. For example, if you want to use the g5 fsd upgrade from farseer you'll have to complete 5 missions for her, one for each unlock you want, but you'll have to do even more missions if you want to use her g3 sensors upgrades, depending on the mod you want. (engineers who share the same modules should not have the same modifications available.)
4. any unlocked modification should be able to be applied from any station with a remote workbench. (including experimentals)
5. break the experimentals down so that different engineers who share a module in common have their own specialty effects, giving you a reason to work for them. (colonia engineers should get unique effects not seen in the bubble to give reasons to make the journey and do the work.)
Option B
simply all of the above but allow the materials to remain and buff the drop rates from data scans and USS signals as well as give a better trade rate at traders.
A major part of my issue with engineering is that it feels like work, too much work. I play the game to have fun, which, for me is trying out various builds and playing with things. Engineering does this nicely but the reward does not justify the amount of work that goes into getting it. It's like a person who enjoys eating apples being forced to tend an orchard, which they don't enjoy doing, just so they can enjoy their apples. After a while, they'll just give up. Also, engineers are supposed to be unique characters in the universe, with their own backstory and motivations. What sense does it make that a person who knows how to make interdicters more effective can also increase your fsd range? wouldn't it be more likely that he understands more about the boot time or how to better protect said fsd drive from attack than an explorer who focuses on jump range? While we're at it, why have so many engineers that can all do the same thing? 2 g5 fsd engineers? who can all do everything? doesn't make much sense to me lore wise. That's the reason for spreading out the upgrades.
I think, while I agree with these points, we should just agree that this is now a bit off-topic. The cancer reference was possibly ill conceived.
I agree, it is really rather poor form to use 'cancer' to describe part of a computer game you don't like. And I am Dutch, we practically build our entire system of profanity around it. But we have this unwritten rule that states that you should have the decency to pick a disease that is mostly irrelevant in our region in modern times for such trivial issues as computer games, and only bring out diseases and conditions that still affect many people today when discussing major issues. So anyone willing to embrace this, what I consider polite disease-related-profanity-etiquette, please refer to Engineers as 'absolute typhoid fever' or 'complete tuberculosis', if your opinion is on the negative side.