Engineer unlock requiremets (the rares....)

[Xevyr]

This needs to be changed.
Example.. Hera Tani requires 50 tonnes of Kamitra Cigars (don't ask why... no one in the universe knows how she's planning to smoke all that).

The problem is, these are rare goods so they only come in limited numbers (currently they give 8 at a time for example). And by the lovely mechanics that we have, even if you wait around for the station to produce more, they simply do not sell you more than the 'allowed' maximum in your cargo hold.. so why 50? Why not 1?
Now let me explain a bit what's the issue here. It's not that it's 'hard'.. it's not.. It is simply pointless and genuinely feels like the biggest waste of time..
Performing a task 7 times instead of 1 doesn't make it harder or more challenging.. and definitely NOT more fun..

Given that when this was 'designed', the people responsible were well aware of the fact that you can only get so much at a time and even if your ship is able to carry 200 tonnes, you're going to have to 'suffer' and do a bunch of additional trips back and forth, so to me.. this comes across as the biggest 'middle finger' a game designer can ever point towards a player.
To add insult to injury, obviously the two bases are ~150 LY apart, so we're not even talking about a neighboring system.

Okay, so you might be thinking this isn't such a big deal and that there are plenty of other instances in the game where you have to grind to get something.. That is true, but none of them feel so pointless as these..
When I went to Colonia on a passenger mission, with a ship that could barely jump 25 LY, yes.. it was a grind.. it was boring.. but ultimately it had a purpose and it felt like a challenge on some level, especially when making the decision to finally set off.. THIS however.. rather gives me the feeling to simply ask for a refund or cut my losses and move on to a different game.. since while I'm hauling these 'cigars' to Hera Tani.. I am constantly asking myself 'why?'... I'm sitting in a ship that can transport 184 tonnes of cargo.. who came up with this silly idea?..

Long story short, this is not an over-reaction.. this is purely bad game design and there are a number of threads on this forum where people agree to that (to quote one: 'the person who thought this would be fun and engaging should be fired').. And yes, I can do it and I will.. but I still won't see the point.

My suggestion is the following: reduce the amount to 1-5 tonnes for all these engineers who require rares.. If Felicity Farseer can do with a single Meta-Alloy.. I'm pretty sure Hera Tani would be happy (or not) smoking a single tonne of cigars instead of 50.. The initial locating of the goods is 'interesting' (in a weird way).. but hauling those back and forth in these limited numbers just kills your desire to play this game.

The only people who would disagree with this are the following: The ones who used the 'call a friend' 'exploit' (since technically it's an exploit having a friend keep buying and jettisoning for you, they're supposed to be limited per cargo hold after all) to get it done.. The ones who did it the hard way but are not 'nice' people so they want others to suffer as well ) Masochists..
I think any other sane person would agree that something's wrong with this

Cheers!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The ones who used the 'call a friend' 'exploit' (since technically it's an exploit having a friend keep buying and jettisoning for you, they're supposed to be limited per cargo hold after all) to get it done.

Since Frontier sets their rare trading CG tiers on the assumption people will do just that, and could easily have stopped it if they wanted to, I doubt they consider it an exploit. Creative use of the rules, possibly.

Another option: wait for Kamitra to be in Boom state where they'll sell you considerably more cigars at once, and do the whole thing in two trips. That's what I did.

 

[Xevyr]

Since Frontier sets their rare trading CG tiers on the assumption people will do just that, and could easily have stopped it if they wanted to, I doubt they consider it an exploit. Creative use of the rules, possibly.

Another option: wait for Kamitra to be in Boom state where they'll sell you considerably more cigars at once, and do the whole thing in two trips. That's what I did.

I mean.. it's not so much about me at this point.. I'm doing it right now, while being bored out of my mind and hopefully I'll be done with both of them in a couple of hours..
Also, yea I know it would be so much faster during boom time.

And well.. from a technical point of view it is an exploit, since the game has active mechanics implemented to prevent you from having more than their theoretical limit Now the very fact that people found a creative way to go around this rule is pretty much the cut and dry definition of 'exploiting' Granted, I agree it's not a major one and it could be quite fun.. (certainly more interesting than hauling them 8 at a time)

I simply listed it here, since I find it to be bad design.. and pretty much every new comer who wants access to those engineers will have to go through the same thing, which is why I hope they change it to be more reasonable in the future..
It definitely deserves to be at least looked at imo..

 

[alphakomodo]

I’m currently refining 500 tonnes of ore for some lady who thinks only miners deserve to have their hunks of alloys reinforced with her witchcraft engineering, and I am totally fine with it and here’s why. FYI ) I’m relatively new and not a masochist nor am I mean. Also if you can get a friend to help mine 500 ore for the love of Christ tell me how.

These menial tasks make perfect sense. Game wise these engineers are revered for their skills and often have a following of fans and helpers who make up their bases, and to top it off you are trying to earn their trust enough to have them take time to personally see to it that your ship is modified to your liking. These engineers are also so few in a galaxy scotch full of humans it’s a wonder they don’t ask for huge sums of cr on top of the current tasks! Some do! And another point- perhaps these engineers want to ensure you are dedicated to their services and thus want you to spend the time and energy proving it? I’m fairly certain the lady I’m working for now knows exactly how excruciating miming is and I bet you 5mil credits that’s one of, if not the main, reason I’m doing it. I think the reason it may seem so awful to you is because you are focusing too much on the devs point of view and less on the RP and immersive point of view. If the goal is to offer a service that can drastically improve a ship’s performance for nothing more than some rare materials, I think as a developer it would make perfect sense to make accessing this service a feat of its own.

Just my two cents on the matter. Also 150ly apart is nothing get a DBX and fit it with 8t cargo space (size 3 right?) and max the jump range. Pretty cheap and i bet with some jumponium, if it’s that big a deal, you could get there and back in 4 jumps. Complaining about something being too far away in a game that’s emulating the Milky Way galaxy on a 1:1 scale seems a little silly to me lol

 

[Mr_sukebe]

Yes it's a grind, but so what, so is much of the rest of the game.
Would you like someone to do it for you?

 

[Xevyr]

I’m currently refining 500 tonnes of ore for some lady who thinks only miners deserve to have their hunks of alloys reinforced with her witchcraft engineering, and I am totally fine with it and here’s why. FYI ) I’m relatively new and not a masochist nor am I mean. Also if you can get a friend to help mine 500 ore for the love of Christ tell me how.

These menial tasks make perfect sense. Game wise these engineers are revered for their skills and often have a following of fans and helpers who make up their bases, and to top it off you are trying to earn their trust enough to have them take time to personally see to it that your ship is modified to your liking. These engineers are also so few in a galaxy scotch full of humans it’s a wonder they don’t ask for huge sums of cr on top of the current tasks! Some do! And another point- perhaps these engineers want to ensure you are dedicated to their services and thus want you to spend the time and energy proving it? I’m fairly certain the lady I’m working for now knows exactly how excruciating miming is and I bet you 5mil credits that’s one of, if not the main, reason I’m doing it. I think the reason it may seem so awful to you is because you are focusing too much on the devs point of view and less on the RP and immersive point of view. If the goal is to offer a service that can drastically improve a ship’s performance for nothing more than some rare materials, I think as a developer it would make perfect sense to make accessing this service a feat of its own.

Just my two cents on the matter. Also 150ly apart is nothing get a DBX and fit it with 8t cargo space (size 3 right?) and max the jump range. Pretty cheap and i bet with some jumponium, if it’s that big a deal, you could get there and back in 4 jumps. Complaining about something being too far away in a game that’s emulating the Milky Way galaxy on a 1:1 scale seems a little silly to me lol

This thread is specifically meant for engineer requirements that have to do with rare commodities.

The mining one is actually a fun one compared to these.. and the point isn't that it's a grind.. it's that these items aren't available for you to take them in the quantity required.. You can mine mine and refine 700 tonnes if your cargo can hold it.. you have options, you can choose to build a big miner ship or to mine it in small sections with a smaller ship.. The very problem with the above mentioned rares is that the game simply cuts off all your options of going about them and forces you to take a single one.

And while 150 ly may not seem as much in a ship with a decent jump range, but this is actually ~2k ly since you have to do that back and forth 7 times if you can only get 8 item at a time.. Now if it was 2k ly away, but you could get the items in one go, that would actually make sense, it would require planning.. it would open up choices.. but just going back and forth carrying 8 items at a time will murder your fun

So tell you what.. go unlock Hera Tani and Broo.. THEN come back and comment as I'm pretty sure you'll wish the lovely lady back who just wants you to refine 500 ore, not to mention that you get a bunch of money from that mining trip, while on these you'll only be spending

Oh and btw I already done them, so like I said it's not about me... but I seriously don't want other new players having to go through the same couple of hours .. And guess what.. the way I did it in the end makes you feel even sillier.. as I switched to a ship that can actually carry 432 tonnes.. just to carry 8 tonnes at a time for a bunch of trips

 

[Evoflash]

With the rares I simply bookmarked their location and then went about my business. Whenever I was in the region of Kamitra or Fujin I dropped in and collected a load of goods and took them to their respective engineer.

Honestly I didn't feel the grind.

 

[racer1]

This needs to be changed.
Example.. Hera Tani requires 50 tonnes of Kamitra Cigars (don't ask why... no one in the universe knows how she's planning to smoke all that).

The problem is, these are rare goods so they only come in limited numbers (currently they give 8 at a time for example). And by the lovely mechanics that we have, even if you wait around for the station to produce more, they simply do not sell you more than the 'allowed' maximum in your cargo hold.. so why 50? Why not 1?
Now let me explain a bit what's the issue here. It's not that it's 'hard'.. it's not.. It is simply pointless and genuinely feels like the biggest waste of time..
Performing a task 7 times instead of 1 doesn't make it harder or more challenging.. and definitely NOT more fun..

Given that when this was 'designed', the people responsible were well aware of the fact that you can only get so much at a time and even if your ship is able to carry 200 tonnes, you're going to have to 'suffer' and do a bunch of additional trips back and forth, so to me.. this comes across as the biggest 'middle finger' a game designer can ever point towards a player.
To add insult to injury, obviously the two bases are ~150 LY apart, so we're not even talking about a neighboring system.

Okay, so you might be thinking this isn't such a big deal and that there are plenty of other instances in the game where you have to grind to get something.. That is true, but none of them feel so pointless as these..
When I went to Colonia on a passenger mission, with a ship that could barely jump 25 LY, yes.. it was a grind.. it was boring.. but ultimately it had a purpose and it felt like a challenge on some level, especially when making the decision to finally set off.. THIS however.. rather gives me the feeling to simply ask for a refund or cut my losses and move on to a different game.. since while I'm hauling these 'cigars' to Hera Tani.. I am constantly asking myself 'why?'... I'm sitting in a ship that can transport 184 tonnes of cargo.. who came up with this silly idea?..

Long story short, this is not an over-reaction.. this is purely bad game design and there are a number of threads on this forum where people agree to that (to quote one: 'the person who thought this would be fun and engaging should be fired').. And yes, I can do it and I will.. but I still won't see the point.

My suggestion is the following: reduce the amount to 1-5 tonnes for all these engineers who require rares.. If Felicity Farseer can do with a single Meta-Alloy.. I'm pretty sure Hera Tani would be happy (or not) smoking a single tonne of cigars instead of 50.. The initial locating of the goods is 'interesting' (in a weird way).. but hauling those back and forth in these limited numbers just kills your desire to play this game.

The only people who would disagree with this are the following: The ones who used the 'call a friend' 'exploit' (since technically it's an exploit having a friend keep buying and jettisoning for you, they're supposed to be limited per cargo hold after all) to get it done.. The ones who did it the hard way but are not 'nice' people so they want others to suffer as well ) Masochists..
I think any other sane person would agree that something's wrong with this

Cheers!

I agree there are some dull unlock tasks.

They should have missions to unlock them.

 

[alphakomodo]

I will^^ I’m a little busy atm but I’ll unlock them for ya^^ also 2k ly is nothing. If you got a ship with that much cargo just for this engineer that’s poor planning. How about this. You finish unlocking this engineer and using them and when you are done engineering what you need to come comment back and tell me if it was worth finding 50t of cargo. Also 50t in elite (I may be wrong) is size not weight cause 50t gold is much less space than 50t aluminum by weight. These cigars likely are for everyone on that base too. I think it’s a reasonable request lolol

 

[MadDogMurdock]

There's a bit of a disconnect between FD's expectations of how people play, and what players tend to do.
I think they expect you to bimble around the bubble doing a bit here and a bit there, gradually contributing to multiple unlock requirements as you go.

Of course, we mostly tend to be goal focused and do whatever is needed to complete it one go instead.

 

[Xevyr]

I will^^ I’m a little busy atm but I’ll unlock them for ya^^ also 2k ly is nothing. If you got a ship with that much cargo just for this engineer that’s poor planning. How about this. You finish unlocking this engineer and using them and when you are done engineering what you need to come comment back and tell me if it was worth finding 50t of cargo. Also 50t in elite (I may be wrong) is size not weight cause 50t gold is much less space than 50t aluminum by weight. These cigars likely are for everyone on that base too. I think it’s a reasonable request lolol

No, like I said, I switched to that ship as a reaction, since that one can jump 55 ly.. but it just felt more silly that I have all that empty cargo space
Also.. I have already unlocked these.. and they're all grade 5 and all.. it's not about 'if it's worth it' or not.. like I said, it's simply bad game design and was pointing that out and I agree with racer1.. missions would've been much more interesting, even if they're harder to do than the current ones.. these simply don't make sense, that's all.. it feels like it was thrown in there due to lack of imagination / time..

 

[Xevyr]

There's a bit of a disconnect between FD's expectations of how people play, and what players tend to do.
I think they expect you to bimble around the bubble doing a bit here and a bit there, gradually contributing to multiple unlock requirements as you go.

Of course, we mostly tend to be goal focused and do whatever is needed to complete it one go instead.

That is probably true.. and it probably even worked out for a while when they introduced them and people were still discovering them.. But yes, currently what's happening is that people usually don't bother with 'another' engineer until they realize they need something from him / her.. and then of course they want to do it in one go, which will make it a pain.