Does anyone actually enjoy engineering?

Beside the usual of my gripes - I also blame engineers for the lack of content because they had to pour in so much work to fix engineers.
I wouldn't call it fixed. They have just put a load of sprinkles and nice things on top of the turd. Its now bearable to look at, but it is not really what I would call fixed. But they needed to do something as it was pretty awful. The thing that was bad was for seasoned players who suddenly didn't have top of the range ships.

Now if you are a new player, you can start engineering from the word go, unlocking as you go about your business, picking up materials as you go and it is probably not a bad experience. But people that have got everything already, thats all thats left. I was lucky that I was still in a Cobra mk3/Viper mk3 when engineers hit as I hadn't rushed up the ship "progression", hadn't done any gold rushed etc, so it didn't feel like such a chore for myself.

I can imagine that newer players probably don't see it as much as an issue as the more seasoned players did.

Edit: saying that new players can be in an anaconda in a couple of days, so that is probably not really the case anymore as credits are now too easy to come by in the early game.
 
I wouldn't call it fixed. They have just put a load of sprinkles and nice things on top of the turd. Its now bearable to look at, but it is not really what I would call fixed. But they needed to do something as it was pretty awful. The thing that was bad was for seasoned players who suddenly didn't have top of the range ships.

Now if you are a new player, you can start engineering from the word go, unlocking as you go about your business, picking up materials as you go and it is probably not a bad experience. But people that have got everything already, thats all thats left. I was lucky that I was still in a Cobra mk3/Viper mk3 when engineers hit as I hadn't rushed up the ship "progression", hadn't done any gold rushed etc, so it didn't feel like such a chore for myself.

I can imagine that newer players probably don't see it as much as an issue as the more seasoned players did.
Well, I did put some extra strong words in, but deleted them, because it's simply too hot for that today. I can see that starting new won't give you that much a grief like already progressed careers do. Then again, I sank so much time into that progression - I wouldn't want to do it all over.
 
The engineers give me something to do and an excuse to play the game more outside of "I'mma just kill things for a few hours", grind for a reward, feel happy you got it, even if it kills your soul sometimes (Stares aggressively at Guardian Tech), might just be me though, I'm pretty tolerant of grinding.

As far as engineering a ship goes, it's pretty neat, it lets me customize ships in different ways more outside of "Oh this one is that one but with a limpet controller and more Cargo", engineers aren't exactly overly easy to get either, especially back when they first came out, it was a pain in the rear, but it was worth it, still is, atleast for me, having all my specialised ships as a result of Engineers feels nice.

Earning that Exploraconda with a 60ly jump-range and hitting the big black, and having an excuse to have a Scavenging ship to get me out of my corvette every once and a while feels really nice, and sitting in an SRV driving around as soulless as it is, it gives me an excuse to pop up a movie or a TV show on my second monitor, or just do it while having a conversation with a friend on Voice, it goes by pretty quickly, hell even just putting on some music helps, just click off and drive, but that's easy for me to do, not sure about others, I have the ability to play a train simulator pressing 3 buttons every once and a while for hours on end and be happy lmao.

Besides when you reach a point where you have your pride and joy ship you're A-Rating, like my Corvette for example, it feels really satisfying when I grind out the high grade mods and cap them then go rambo in a CZ to see how far I can go before I chaff myself and run, when shes done, I move to her smaller sisters and do it again.

As far as finding out where to get certain things, well, Inara and EDDB exists, people make tools like these so you're not endlessly hunting things down, "Google is your friend" but Elite Edition, it comes in real handy when you're at a loss, failing that, we got Forums.
I only disagree with you on one thing here: Google is NOT your friend! (Was, but not now)
 
Well, I did put some extra strong words in, but deleted them, because it's simply too hot for that today. I can see that starting new won't give you that much a grief like already progressed careers do. Then again, I sank so much time into that progression - I wouldn't want to do it all over.
The thing for me was that I really enjoyed the early game and would have no issues going back to it. I may well do at the next expansion
 
No. Can't stand it to the point where I refuse to do iton

With every grind comes the choice to do something over and over again so a developer can claim they added game play. I choose not to do this because any one with a brain can see right through the and knows it is just lazy work. No different from filler quests to fetch 5 skins to get a tiny advancement.
 
I've started putting a single mining laser on my core-mining build and just depleting any asteroid I find with a core: Prospect > Laser > Seismic Charge > BOOM > Abrasion Blaster. Helps me keep my raw mats topped up, and doesn't add much time to the cycle at all.
I've always lasered the chunks after I blow up an asteroid. I just like to get every last wee bit.... 😃
 
I've always lasered the chunks after I blow up an asteroid. I just like to get every last wee bit.... 😃
Nah, I do it the other way round: Lasers first til depleted, then the corkscrew thingo, then knock off the outer layer of chunks, then KABOOMSKI'S, then scrape the chunks off the inside til it's all gone. Highly recommend a fighter bay, kinda like the pocket knife tool for getting boy scouts out of horses hooves...

When your limpets start crashing, switch to the fighter to get in close and lever them out ;)
 
Is this still the case? Or have they since buffed them again?

In terms of tactics, loadouts, and abilities, the current AI is near the best it's ever been, except for bugs.

Unless it's one of those high-threat opt-in encounters (wing assassinations/massacres, pirate activities, thargoids, CZ Spec Ops, etc), I generally don't need any Engineering at all to defeat a wing of ships similar to the one my CMDR is flying. Obviously Engineering makes things a lot faster though.

Most BGS stuff you don't need engineers and even then you can get mats while doing BGS stuff such as missions.

Doing missions and dropping into the odd HGE that shows up on the way to or from those missions is where my CMDR gets the overwhelming bulk of his materials and data from.

So all those gone days, do you want them back

Yes.

While I still enjoy the game greatly, I think most major updates, with the possible exception of vanilla Horizons (2.0), have been one step forward, two steps back.

Neither Engineering, nor most supposed QoL changes, have really improved the experience for me.

Overall everything feels more resilient than prior so I can understand the feeling of being nerfed out of the activity since your ammo won't go as far, especially unmodified, and your resilience may be further tested as you're trying to get kills.

An Elite NPC in the same ship as my CMDR simultaneously should always have had, never actually has had, and probably never will have, a significant chance of besting my CMDR.

I completely agree that NPC kills per hour have increased and completely understand that this feels like a nerf to some.

I just don't think we ever should have been able to measure our abilities against NPC combat vessels in terms of kills per hour. My CMDR has at least ten, and probably closer to a hundred, times the number of NPC kills as I'd consider plausible in any well-conceived and executed system.
 
An Elite NPC in the same ship as my CMDR simultaneously should always have had, never actually has had, and probably never will have, a significant chance of besting my CMDR.

I completely agree that NPC kills per hour have increased and completely understand that this feels like a nerf to some.

I just don't think we ever should have been able to measure our abilities against NPC combat vessels in terms of kills per hour. My CMDR has at least ten, and probably closer to a hundred, times the number of NPC kills as I'd consider plausible in any well-conceived and executed system.

PvE combat isn't balanced around realistic plausibility. It seems balanced around being a gainful activity with some risk potential rather than a balanced engagement and I believe this to be intentional. As such, earnings potential seems like a valid measure as opposed to the lethality of each engagement.

Now for you that might not be the desired point of PvE balance from a personal standpoit but as it stands I think your subject of criticism here is a feature, not a bug.
 
PvE combat isn't balanced around realistic plausibility. It seems balanced around being a gainful activity with some risk potential rather than a balanced engagement and I believe this to be intentional. As such, earnings potential seems like a valid measure as opposed to the lethality of each engagement.

Now for you that might not be the desired point of PvE balance from a personal standpoit but as it stands I think your subject of criticism here is a feature, not a bug.

I fully acknowledge that it's intentional for NPCs to be fodder.

I think this feature is one of the game's most blatant conceptual failings. Conversely, Engineering is a failure of execution, rather than basic concept.
 
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