Elite dangerous in 2024 after 200 hours.

[CMDR Zyn]

Discussion

I started Elite Dangerous at the end of last month. My only goal was to be able to fight thargoids and I am happy to say that I have made it and have killed my first 4 cyclops as of today. A big shout out to the Anti Xeno Initiative for wonderfully written guides and to the content creators that have made such great videos for elite dangerous. Without these resources it would of not been possible for me to get to this point.

Elite dangerous is a great game and a very immersive experience one that I can say is entirely unique and it delivers on a space sim. The flying in this game is pure magic and the solar system map with the freedom to go wherever is just beautiful.

But if one thing needs changed it is engineering in every way, shape and form. First the unlock grind for engineers is not engaging at all and locking engineers behind each other serves no purpose. Second the actual upgrade process with the engineers makes no sense. There is absolutely no reason you should have to gamble materials one at a time to get an upgrade and progress through the grades. Nothing felt worse than rolling for the best stats in grade 5 and being 95% of the way to max to ending up at 99%. Third fully engineering a ship should not be some long arduous process which involves bringing a ship to every one of these roulette scum lords to get the experimental effect or having to do the full upgrade process again to fully kit a ship out. What was the point in getting them to grade 5 if they make you start at grade 1 for these upgrades? Granted you can pin a blueprint but why not let us pin every grade 5 blueprint? Going back for experimental effects alone is already bad.

Besides engineering being an absolute chore to unlock and then even more of a chore to actually use, it was one hundred percent needed for the content that I wanted to engage in. Engineering served as the biggest gatekeeper and biggest time waste of the 200 hours I put into elite dangerous just to be able to effectively engage with something I wanted to do.

I think that if engineering does get changed in the fall it should be as simple as making all engineers available in one place, could even keep the same boring quests for all of them and getting rid of the gambling upgrade system entirely. I do not care that I had to relog at Jameson's crash site, or de spawn brain trees from 600m or find very specific systems to find manufactured pieces. But what I do mind is that engineering is a chore to even interact with after unlocking them all to the point that it actively reminds me that my time is not valued by fdev if they think a system like this is even remotely fun or engaging to interact with.

It is the same principle as why are there three different types of material traders? Make just one and trade all three at the same place.

 

[GroG79]

Ok to summarize:

• Great game, I set out a goal and achieved it in about 200 hours of playing
• I unlocked all the engineers I needed. This took me a lot of time
• I do not like the engineering mechanism
• I did not understand that 75% grade 5 is almost equal to 99% or 100% grade 5
• I do not mind grinding
• I do not like to grind
• I have yet to discover and try out other aspects of the game

 

[Rakk Jackham]

I agree elite has problems and I’m not a big fan of engineering. It really makes no sense in the universe.

I do want to point out 2 things, though. You were sprinting to Thargoid content, and while YouTube vids might make it seem passé, that is really end-game content. Nix that. It’s more like there was already an end game. Then they came up with engineers to give more end game, then they came up with goids to give more end game. THEN the people with 2000 hours in game kept complaining and they created the Thargoid war end game. So, thrice-over endgame content.

Second, because you were sprinting to endgame content, which you definitely should need engineering for, you probably weren’t engaging with engineering in the way you’re “supposed to” just meaning the way it was intended when designed.

I don’t believe the devs ever really expected that the DEFAULT engagement with engineering would become to farm/exploit missions or Jamison’s crash site. And I don’t know how responsible they are for the tedium someone experiences if they watch a Hawkes Games guide and just relog next to a High Grade Emissions POI 47 times in a row.

I think they expected people were just going to go about their business in the ED universe, then they’d stumble onto some random materials thy needed to get some engineering done. The player would then pop over to Deciat and play the slot machine “oh sweet! 90% toward G3 on the first try” and go back to playing as normal. They didn’t expect people to just bang their head against the Skinner box button until their eyes bled.

To be fair, I just restarted and this is how I play and it is much more enjoyable. It seems pretty clear to me that the game elements provide the best experience when you layer them all together. While FDev did a pretty poor job of making that easy. Complaining about it in this circumstance is kind of like only eating the croutons out of your salad and complaining that it was old and stale.

I agree that you shouldn’t HAVE to have engineering to make combat decisive, but FDev seems to really want fights to be grindy and drawn out. Right now using an engineered ship in PVE is the only way to feel like your huge weapon actually does anything.

 

[Rakk Jackham]

Also, I believe the scarcity of materials was meant to make more stratification in power between different players over time. Basically, a more diverse, non-meta optimized allocation of power between players. Instead, what it has become is just, players are either engineered or they’re not. They’re either in the first 100 hours of game or they’re not.

It was supposed to be “oh I thought this fight was going this way then, then turns out the guy had fully engineered thrusters so he just ran circles around him.”

Instead what it became is “the only good thrusters are dirty drag drives and if you don’t have them you have no chance of doing anything”

 

[Ameeleean2]

I have a little over 2k in-game hours collected. I had longer break when Odyssey got separated with Horizon and whole game broke past my hardware limit. The best part of any game for me is learning how to play it, discover mechanics, tweaking items (suits, ships here) so engineering is important part of game for me and I like it here (and no, grind is nowhere close to certain games I was playing in the past).
As mentioned above ships/suits/weapons do not have to be at 100% grade 5. For example difference between fully engineered Krait Phantom exploration ship on my main account and the same ship with same modules but with only FSD engineered to 100% G5 was like 2y in max jump range, so no, maximum engineering of every module is not necessary at all.

When You get tired of combat try out other aspect of the game and remember that sometimes G3 engineering is enough.

 

[Rebel Yell]

The biggest constrain behind engineering rn is that it is not possible to collect some materials from mission rewards.

For ships, i.e. many players voiced about the lack of raw mats from the rewards... but FDEV never considered the request.

Same for suits, a lot of the mats are to be obtained RNG adding more frustration / waste of time to the grind (even worse considering the small inventory).

 

[Ameeleean2]

The biggest constrain behind engineering rn is that it is not possible to collect some materials from mission rewards.

For ships, i.e. many players voiced about the lack of raw mats from the rewards... but FDEV never considered the request.

Same for suits, a lot of the mats are to be obtained RNG adding more frustration / waste of time to the grind (even worse considering the small inventory).

Imho the biggest issue is inability to sell many materials on carrier. Before odyssey and horizon separation I was able to quickly locate geotermal spots on planets and then harvest them easily. Odyssey requires me to roam in SRV to look for those ... or use ship for low altitude flight (which is where hauler is useful due to compact size). I'm missing ability to drop mining machine one the ground that would do the work for me (special limpet for ground surface mining?).
As for the suits it is true that it takes longer to collect materials but there are only 3 suit types, if You are not interested in combat at most You will need two: stealthy maveric for material gathering and exo suit for extended surface xenobiology work. Sure it takes time but You will have to do it only once.

I have also interesting experience. When I was newbie I had to get sufficient imperial rank for ship and I have found system with two stations: one federal and one imperial. Both were overloaded with mission to each other so basically I was able to get like 5-6 at the time (basically NPCs from completed missions were still on hunt for my ship). At first it looked like great find but guess what happened. After several runs I had crazy amount of interdictions (like 10+ per run) to the point even being iterdicted right before dropping out of SC mode at station. It was very flustrating and annoying but a long time later when I decided to try out neutron jumps which were supposed to be tricky...I found them pitfully easy due to all that training from those crazy interdictions before.

 

[DjVortex]

Before odyssey and horizon separation I was able to quickly locate geotermal spots on planets and then harvest them easily. Odyssey requires me to roam in SRV to look for those ... or use ship for low altitude flight

There are much faster ways to farm raw materials than geotermal spots (and it doesn't even require any cheesing): Brain trees and material traders. There are famous systems with planets stock full of brain trees. You can (completely legitimately) get your raw material inventory completely filled relatively quickly (at least compared to most other methods).