Engi Commodities: They'd make good Modifiers

[VR Golgot]

Hello lovely devs!

Just want to highlight this Reddit suggestion by NeoTr0n.

The problem:

[Commodities were] purely a timesink. There was no difficulty, no significant cost, no anything except a cost of time. It was unnecessary and very punishing, especially for smaller ships and combat ships. Module transfer also has limits - it doesn't work on ship armor or thrusters for example (drives have a maximum mass). I had to fly 4 times to Maia to mod thrusters on my fleet. That was of course made worse with having to haul commodities on each trip. There's no shipyard there so I couldn't even transfer ships.
So yeah it's not "insigificant". It wasn't hard necessarily but it also didn't add anything.

The solution?:

The correct way to use commodities is a modifier to make the result better. Make these harder to get... like mission only or even things like salvage. The should be optional and could, perhaps, make the rolls slightly better, or give better chance for certain roll / secondary etc. Make it an interesting bonus addition instead of a requirement and it would be much nicer.

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Playing without Commodities has been joyous since 2.2.0.3. They always ended up as a roadblock to freeflow fun for me. (I get the idea of piggybacking on all the different professions, but Engis already involve plenty of perfectly valid transit. Adding this 'trade' layer became a begrudged tangent which seriously stalled more enjoyable and player-led ones for me).

It would be a shame to lose the bespoke stations which generate these items, but perhaps a rationale could be: Have the manufacturers refuse to sell to individuals. Then provide access via missions with factions and loot options in the vicinity. If a player chooses to pursue them the location becomes a web of related distractions in its own right (and we wouldn't begrudge the diversion because it involves more gameplay facets and was undertaken when it fitted with our intentions).

Obviously it's a big chunk of work to devise and balance something like modifiers, and to reinvent Commodities as more than just a trade item. Please do consider it though! The game flow would be a ton more enjoyable