Does anyone actually enjoy engineering?

Wow- this thread has legs! Thanks to all who've posted and shared their ideas, it's much appreciated!



I used to love playing ED, but power creep overtook my fleet. My default action became 'run away' from the AI, combat in my non-engineered ships was no longer viable. That put a huge amount of game content behind a grind wall. I spent several months upgrading one of my ships, it proved to be a colossal pita, even with all the very kind help and advice I received on the forum.

I quit playing.

The question you ask is actually back to front in my case. I loved everything I did in Elite apart from engineering, but the requirement to engineer to continue to access the gameplay I loved is just too much for me. I don't have a lot of leisure time, I'm not willing to spend it on activities I don't enjoy.

The sad thing is I'm not missing the game. Engineering has left such a foul taste in my mouth I find myself willing to just walk away from what was my dream come true on release.

I only came back to the forum tonight on a whim. I'm amazed that this thread is still going- I guess the topic generates strong opinions in most people. Unfortunately, I can't see a polarising issue as good for any customer base. I really hope Frontier can figure out a way to resolve the conundrum, because just leaving things as they are will only drive players away from what was once the very best space themed game on the market.



Yes, but they'll infuriate players who actually enjoy gathering materials for engineering!

Make the grind a one time only activity- once a mod is unlocked, no more mat gathering to apply it to identical components.

Simplify the trading process- either by axing most of the mats required, or at least allowing the mat trader to deal in all materials.

Change the utterly bonkers exchange rate.

Have alternatives to mind numbingly boring grind activities. Challenging missions with significant material rewards would be nice. Failing that, just allow us to buy mats. I'd much rather trade/mine/smuggle/bounty hunt 'X' million credits than run around like a demented Mario Cart driver for hours on end at what would otherwise be really cool hidden locations, or drop into endless USSs, or trundle around shooting unconvincing outcrops on unconvincing terrain features for what seems like forever.

But my opinion no longer really matters. I'm not playing the game any more, I'm unlikely to buy future content. I'm not even particularly likely to visit the forum any more. I wish you all well, I hope the game continues to be a success and I'll try, at some point, to bite the bullet and start to play again. For now though, I'm afraid I'm taking an extended break.
NPCs have only had engineered parts for a short while. I played the game without engineering my fleet for well over a year. But what I find now is that you only need to do G1 to G2 modules to be effective against NPCs and the materials for those are easy to come by. Basically there really is no grind wall for the first two grades. I wouldn't be surprised if you had enough materials to do a load of those already.
 
NPCs have only had engineered parts for a short while. I played the game without engineering my fleet for well over a year. But what I find now is that you only need to do G1 to G2 modules to be effective against NPCs and the materials for those are easy to come by. Basically there really is no grind wall for the first two grades. I wouldn't be surprised if you had enough materials to do a load of those already.
Nope, we've had this already 2 years ago. They didn't have engineered weapons.
 
There's the rub.
If you play the game, mats just fall into your stores.
Peeps that grind to max a pvp ship to jump into combat
I can see the frustration.
The rub is that I now need to shoot stuff with bloody peashooters. That isn't fun. And I surely don't want to do this stupid engineer grind just to be able to do exactley the bloody same thing I could do before engineers, because FD forgot to put in some form of difficulty choice and let's buffed AI spawn everywhere.
 
That's what I said. NPCs have only had engineered items for a short while. To combat that you only need G1-2 modules and the materials for those are extremely easy to come by. They are not behind a grind wall.

Max, wasn't this discussed at some length a while ago?. I seem to remember it was just after an update or upgrade of update and FD explained the reasoning behind the NPC buff. The AI was, if I remember correctly, said to be more of a reflection of a players rank and ship specification. I have just spent a couple of hours (privilege of retirement) trying to find that thread without any success.

While I enjoy engineering I have to agree that it has it's own problems which in return have caused much dislike of the current system, the main one being the locating of certain materials. Isn't this down to FD and the latest main update when the game was ruined due to the leveling of everything and thereby removing all system states and therefore the locations of circumstances of where to find mat's. Famine and Outbreak spring immediately to mind. The spawning for USS's also were nerfed which they are supposed to have buffed a little but made very little difference. I find it strange that FD added engineering and made it a vital part of the game for many and have done nothing to correct this apparent subsequent MAJOR problem.
 
The rub is that I now need to shoot stuff with bloody peashooters. That isn't fun. And I surely don't want to do this stupid engineer grind just to be able to do exactley the bloody same thing I could do before engineers, because FD forgot to put in some form of difficulty choice and let's buffed AI spawn everywhere.
Heh heh you should try the "peashooters" on my annie now: 8 multicannons, all G3- G5, with 1x emissive, 1x corrosive, 3x incendiary and 3x autoloader exp efx. After 6 months of running from elite level npc's I now destroy them with ease. You should try it, it's very empowering. Certainly more empowering than constantly bleating and whinging about peashooters and buffed npc's! 😃
 
Engineering has been, to me, a very material addition to the game that has made it a lot worse. It basically is the game for months if you've bought a new ship. It's one of the worst updates to a game ever developed IMO.
Don't think your opinion counts for much anymore.....!! 😀 😃 😄 😅
 
Last edited:
The misstep frontier made when choosing to make engineering progression rather than credits..

For credits, you can suspend disbelief as a space trucker.

I can't come up with any fantasy whatsoever as an antimony collector, or one desperate to become an expert in inconsistent shield soak analysis.

Its all for faptastic gaming i know, but bad for pretending.

What happens without any fantasy for high school chemistry is you end up focusing on the video game gameplay benefit goal, which doesn't work in elite. Same problem as rep grinds etc.
 
Engineering has been, to me, a very material addition to the game that has made it a lot worse. It basically is the game for months if you've bought a new ship. It's one of the worst updates to a game ever developed IMO.

what are you on about? if you know where to go, use bookmarks, and use google you can fill up your raw mats very quickly, currently doing my encoded now... its not months in anyway shape or form.
 
what are you on about? if you know where to go, use bookmarks, and use google you can fill up your raw mats very quickly, currently doing my encoded now... its not months in anyway shape or form.
Heh heh, you must have missed that post where he said that Frontier had deliberately misled ED players about fleet carriers, and that the motive for this deception was greed! The mods had to shut down the post when everyone ripped him a new one after Frontier announced the introduction of Fleet Carriers! It was awesome. 🤣
 
what are you on about? if you know where to go, use bookmarks, and use google you can fill up your raw mats very quickly, currently doing my encoded now... its not months in anyway shape or form.
I only got Horizons a few weeks ago and the modules and weapons on my 2 main ships are all G3 - G5 now. I did play the core game for almost 6 months before buying Horizons, and I was picking stuff up as I played, so I had a decent head start. I think playing without Horizons for a while helped me to appreciate what the engineers have done to my ships, they are so much better in every way now. And I am not grinding for mats, just collecting stuff as I go exploring, bounty hunting, running missions etc.
 
You know what frustrates me about Engineering? It's not the process but rather the implied necessity, as seen by one Engineer (Palin) going 'offline' for a week +/-. Many people seem to assume that the game is unplayable without G5 dirty drives. And perhaps this is the case in PvP. I don't like power creep, especially when the game becomes all about "Who has the best meta build?" rather than "Who can fly like a top gun?"

Engineering is the main reason I don't PvP or fight Thargoids in ED. Casual Engineering is fun IMO, but chasing G5 metabuilds is not.
 
Max, wasn't this discussed at some length a while ago?. I seem to remember it was just after an update or upgrade of update and FD explained the reasoning behind the NPC buff. The AI was, if I remember correctly, said to be more of a reflection of a players rank and ship specification. I have just spent a couple of hours (privilege of retirement) trying to find that thread without any success.
There was an NPC buff when engineer's came out but engineered item were taken off because there was a bug which meant they had multiple upgrades on one weapon. It hasn't been that long that the Engineered items have been back in. 6 months to a year.

While I enjoy engineering I have to agree that it has it's own problems which in return have caused much dislike of the current system, the main one being the locating of certain materials. Isn't this down to FD and the latest main update when the game was ruined due to the leveling of everything and thereby removing all system states and therefore the locations of circumstances of where to find mat's. Famine and Outbreak spring immediately to mind. The spawning for USS's also were nerfed which they are supposed to have buffed a little but made very little difference. I find it strange that FD added engineering and made it a vital part of the game for many and have done nothing to correct this apparent subsequent MAJOR problem.
You are talking about rare mats. More places that get mats I think is fine and have nothing against it. But I was talking about G1 - 2 grades and they are common mats and are very easy to get hold of.

While the NPCs do have engineered modules now, I believe they are limited to G3 at the top end. A lot don't have any and most that do are G1 and 2.
 
Back
Top Bottom