Engineer grind, thanks FD for making ED dull :(

GunnerBill

GunnerBill
Perhaps I should have expected this but after trekking to get meta alloys, then trekking back to get my Annie then trekking all the way to Deciat (~40 jumps total) I had sort of expected to have access to an upgrade.

But no. Now I need to trek to a bunch of other places to find some tin foil hats and a badgers fur Sporran.

Right now I'd happily walk away from this Engineers grind but I know that if I do my ships will become obsolete in a few months. Which to echo a sentiment voiced elsewhere: FD has now forced me to grind out this rubbish or give up on the game.

WHY?
 

Limoncello Lizard

Limoncello Lizard
It gets worse.
You'll quickly find that 600 units of random materials and 200 random data items doesn't get you many upgrades. You will need to save and carry around about 100 tons of radomly generated commodities from very occasional missions. Most of the materials for the really useful upgrades are nearly impossible to find.
 

[DOOK] Droogie

[DOOK] Droogie
Wylie28 said:
Except... they haven't. Choosing to grind is entirely up to you. You do not need engineer upgrades.
Click to expand...

Except, if you want them, you have to grind your way through multiple layers of RNG. Over and over and over. Just like power play. It's a valid complaint.

Upgrading your ship is awesome. The way they've implemented it is extremely tedious.

I've been looking for one material for 2 weeks to upgrade the engines on my FAS. It's just frustrating at this point that I can't get a mission or data point with what I need.
 
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deathcoy

deathcoy
The grind isn't so bad to be honest. Its the same for almost every MMO out there, they all have their own long grind and time investment. The only difference being those MMOs allow players to spend real life cash to progress in game and skip the grind while ED puts out a fair playing field for everyone.

No one is forcing you to grind, you can take it easy. You'll still reach your goal but just slightly later. Besides, i'm pretty sure FD will fine tune the grinding mechanic later on, make it easier to find the materials, increase drop rate etc.
 

[DOOK] Droogie

[DOOK] Droogie
Limoncello Lizard said:
It gets worse.
You'll quickly find that 600 units of random materials and 200 random data items doesn't get you many upgrades. You will need to save and carry around about 100 tons of radomly generated commodities from very occasional missions. Most of the materials for the really useful upgrades are nearly impossible to find.
Click to expand...

Yep. Be prepared to ditch your combat stuff for cargo racks so you can lug around commodities until they decide we should get storage for all this stuff.

Oh, and forget about hitting up RES until you can ditch all that stuff. Every pirate there will firing at you.
 

Wylie28

W
Droogie said:
Except, if you want them, you have to grind your way through multiple layers of RNG. Over and over and over. Just like power play. It's a valid complaint.

Upgrading your ship is awesome. The way they've implemented it is extremely tedious.

I've been looking for one material for 2 weeks to upgrade the engines on my FAS. It's just frustrating at this point that I can't get a mission or data point with what I need.
Click to expand...

Ive done zero mat hunting. Just from RES hunting and Missions alone I have gotten materials for the following upgrades:

Exploration Asp:
4x Rank 3 Lightweight mounts
1x Rank 2 FSD Range

Combat FAS
3x Rank 2 overcharged pulses
1x Rank 1 Weapon Power Distributor

Racing Eagle
1x Rank 2 Dirty Drives

Zero grinding all this is from just playing the game like I did pre 2.1 The only material I went out of my way for was a Meta Alloy

This system clearly wasn't designed for you to be going out of your way looking for things. Doing that is your own decision.
 
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[DOOK] Droogie

[DOOK] Droogie
Wylie28 said:
Ive done zero mat hunting. Just from RES hunting and Missions alone I have gotten materials for the following upgrades:

Exploration Asp:
4x Rank 3 Lightweight mounts
1x Rank 2 FSD Range

Combat FAS
3x Rank 2 overcharged pulses
1x Rank 1 Weapon Power Distributor

Racing Eagle
1x Rank 2 Dirty Drives

Zero grinding all this is from just playing the game like I did pre 2.1 The only material I went out of my way for was a Meta Alloy

This system clearly wasn't designed for you to be going out of your way looking for things. Doing that is your own decision.
Click to expand...

Specialized legacy firmware is all I need to get the engine upgrades for my FAS. I have seen exactly 0 in 2 weeks. So, I have to lug around commodities to go along with the upgrades until I get the firmware, because it can only be gained through missions. If I ditch it, then get the firmware, I'll be back to hunting for that commodity. This is the only time I've ever seen it pop up on the missions board, so I'm stuck with it.

This is a very counter intuitive system. The worst part is that when I finally get the stuff, RNG dictates whether all the time and effort was worth it. I could wind up with a worst possible mod.

I've gathered a ton of materials, too. Just nothing I need. I'm at the mercy of RNG.

The biggest issue is no storage. I'm stuck with cargo racks on everything.

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The best part is, as I said earlier, I can't do what I normally do in the FAS, because I have to carry stuff in my cargo. I can't store it. So, I'm unable to go to Haz RES until I get the engine upgrades and use up these parts.

Go to Haz RES with something in your hold.. Now you have multiple elites firing at you.
 
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Envy661

Envy661
The grind for things you actually want is massive. That's not even counting the grind for some of the insanely rare items required to even access some of the engineers in the first place.

Frontier really needs to nerf the Engineer costs, or else barely anyone is gonna be able to get them. This legitimately will be about as useful as powerplay.

Especially when this goes on top of upgrade requirements not being associated with anything but Horizons exploration. If you don't do any exploring, you're almost entirely effectively screwed from getting Engineers upgrades.
 

Bacalao

Bacalao
Droogie said:
Specialized legacy firmware is all I need to get the engine upgrades for my FAS. I have seen exactly 0 in 2 weeks. So, I have to lug around commodities to go along with the upgrades until I get the firmware, because it can only be gained through missions. If I ditch it, then get the firmware, I'll be back to hunting for that commodity. This is the only time I've ever seen it pop up on the missions board, so I'm stuck with it.

This is a very counter intuitive system. The worst part is that when I finally get the stuff, RNG dictates whether all the time and effort was worth it. I could wind up with a worst possible mod.

I've gathered a ton of materials, too. Just nothing I need. I'm at the mercy of RNG.

The biggest issue is no storage. I'm stuck with cargo racks on everything.

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The best part is, as I said earlier, I can't do what I normally do in the FAS, because I have to carry stuff in my cargo. I can't store it. So, I'm unable to go to Haz RES until I get the engine upgrades and use up these parts.

Go to Haz RES with something in your hold.. Now you have multiple elites firing at you.
Click to expand...
Commodities can be bought and sold, no? Why haul anything around? Just buy it when you need it, everything else takes up no space and has no mass...
 

Envy661

Envy661
Bacalao said:
Commodities can be bought and sold, no? Why haul anything around? Just buy it when you need it, everything else takes up no space and has no mass...
Click to expand...

Certain commodities aren't even available unless you get them from missions. They're basically engineers exclusive items.

Also, let's also add to the fact that this game has no real upgrades in engineers for mining or trading. No rigged cargo bay expansions at the cost of hull integrity for example, or high yield mining laser mods for mining as another. It's all combat and exploration-related. And exploration is literally just FSD right now.
Yet it requires farming from planets to get anywhere..... What a great design.
 

deathcoy

deathcoy
Bacalao said:
Commodities can be bought and sold, no? Why haul anything around? Just buy it when you need it, everything else takes up no space and has no mass...
Click to expand...

Some can be bought while others are mission rewards or mining/surveying. So you'll have to haul them around when you loot them unless you have all other mats too and don't mind making frequent trips back and forth from your mat hunting to engineer.
If you have a combat ship, you'll need them equipped with cargo racks just to hold these mats too, so yea, big hassle to swap in and out the cargo racks with whatever your combat module is.
As for the normal materials, honestly i ran out of space within 3 days of playing 2.1. Had to discard a few mats, also did several unnecessary modding just to clear space but honestly there are just too many mods and too many types of ingredients needed. If you own multiple ships with each ship specced for different roles, you'll need to farm a big variety of mods and their materials. Half the time when i'm hunting for the mats, i'll be forced to give up mats i know i'll need later, instead i can only carry mats i need now, such a waste if you ask me.
A storage facility will easily solve all these issues and tone down the inconveniences.
 

Spacecat

Spacecat
Limoncello Lizard said:
It gets worse.
You'll quickly find that 600 units of random materials and 200 random data items doesn't get you many upgrades. You will need to save and carry around about 100 tons of radomly generated commodities from very occasional missions. Most of the materials for the really useful upgrades are nearly impossible to find.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the thought of individually upgrading each weapon on my ship multiple times, with dubious results every step of the way, kinda makes me want to uninstall the game, lol.:rolleyes:

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Droogie said:
Except, if you want them, you have to grind your way through multiple layers of RNG. Over and over and over. Just like power play. It's a valid complaint.

Upgrading your ship is awesome. The way they've implemented it is extremely tedious.

I've been looking for one material for 2 weeks to upgrade the engines on my FAS. It's just frustrating at this point that I can't get a mission or data point with what I need.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think a more modest upgrade approach with the ability to build/find/trade/salvage upgrades would have been better.
 

Spacecat

Spacecat
Envy661 said:
The grind for things you actually want is massive. That's not even counting the grind for some of the insanely rare items required to even access some of the engineers in the first place.

Frontier really needs to nerf the Engineer costs, or else barely anyone is gonna be able to get them. This legitimately will be about as useful as powerplay.

Especially when this goes on top of upgrade requirements not being associated with anything but Horizons exploration. If you don't do any exploring, you're almost entirely effectively screwed from getting Engineers upgrades.
Click to expand...

Ugh. Yeah, it does seem like they've really gone out of their way to make it as grindy as possible...
 

Limoncello Lizard

Limoncello Lizard
Wylie28 said:
Ive done zero mat hunting. Just from RES hunting and Missions alone I have gotten materials for the following upgrades:

Exploration Asp:
4x Rank 3 Lightweight mounts
1x Rank 2 FSD Range

Combat FAS
3x Rank 2 overcharged pulses
1x Rank 1 Weapon Power Distributor

Racing Eagle
1x Rank 2 Dirty Drives

Zero grinding all this is from just playing the game like I did pre 2.1 The only material I went out of my way for was a Meta Alloy

This system clearly wasn't designed for you to be going out of your way looking for things. Doing that is your own decision.
Click to expand...
You must be pretty lucky with the RNG.
I've done a fair bit of material grinding, and I've seen no arsenic, one Heat Conduction Wiring, zero Specialised Legacy Firmware, and zero Modular Terminals. So I could manage exactly one of the upgrades you have achieved.
I've had to throw away 400+ materials, as I have long ago reached the 600 limit. I have 30 tons of mission and mined commodities that I mostly can't use yet.
I've managed a coupl of extremely rare data items that engineers don't want.
I can't upgrade anything useful to me.
.
So what am I suppossed to do?
I'll go to a couple of engineers and get some upgrades I don't need or want and discard them.
But I know full well that as soon as I throw away most of this junk, I'll suddenly find the pieces of the puzzle that I'm currently mission and then find the ones I just threw to be the impossible ones to find.
.
I'm not enjoying this RNG "gameplay".
 

Spacecat

Spacecat
Wylie28 said:
Ive done zero mat hunting. Just from RES hunting and Missions alone I have gotten materials for the following upgrades:

Exploration Asp:
4x Rank 3 Lightweight mounts
1x Rank 2 FSD Range

Combat FAS
3x Rank 2 overcharged pulses
1x Rank 1 Weapon Power Distributor

Racing Eagle
1x Rank 2 Dirty Drives

Zero grinding all this is from just playing the game like I did pre 2.1 The only material I went out of my way for was a Meta Alloy

This system clearly wasn't designed for you to be going out of your way looking for things. Doing that is your own decision.
Click to expand...

I've been doing missions, res hunting, driving around shooting rocks, and searching USS' for like 2 weeks and have squat, except a bunch of junk, so there's that.

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Envy661 said:
Certain commodities aren't even available unless you get them from missions. They're basically engineers exclusive items.

Also, let's also add to the fact that this game has no real upgrades in engineers for mining or trading. No rigged cargo bay expansions at the cost of hull integrity for example, or high yield mining laser mods for mining as another. It's all combat and exploration-related. And exploration is literally just FSD right now.
Yet it requires farming from planets to get anywhere..... What a great design.
Click to expand...

Oops. I've been literally selling anything that takes up a cargo slot...
 

Calypzo

C
The commodities needed for upgrades that take up cargo space and cannot be stored somewhere is absolutely terrible. In just about every game with a crafting mechanic, you've had somewhere to place the goods. It's just awful.
 
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