Newcomer / Intro Engineering and The Grind

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Then I guess with the new system (at least what I have been able to find) you must do "Grade 1" X Number of times and you can't specifically pick which Grade 1 you will get. So You may get the Grade 1 Faster Boot or Shielded upgrade a couple of times (but only counting once) before you might get the Range Increase...THEN you can move to Grade 2 and start over again.

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No, that is totally incorrect.
You choose which mod you want beforehand.
Rolling multiple times always results in benefit to the same aspects; eg range, boot time OR integrity.
 
...And from what I am reading, this doesn't carry over to other Mods of the same type (i.e. 4A FSD requires the same grinding as a 5A does). So say you have 3 ships with a 4A, 5A, and 6A FSD, you have to grind out all 3 FDS's say 20 times or more to get each of them to Grade 5. (If I am wrong on this part it's because I wasn't sure on the info)

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The initial unlock/modification to G5 will require significantly more mats/rolls to complete.
All subsequent modules done at the same engineer, whether the same mod or not, will be much less.
 
Just checked EDDB for meta-alloy. It seems my quest may be coming to a grinding halt. Darnielle's Progress (from what I am assuming) is the ONLY place in the entire galaxy to buy them. Currently, they have none for sale. ....................

Remember, there are two Darnielle's Progress - the one in Maia is your friend and EDDB figures are not to be relied upon.
 
Remember, there are two Darnielle's Progress - the one in Maia is your friend and EDDB figures are not to be relied upon.
Wow, wasn't aware there were two of them. Learn something new every day!

Both EDDB and Inara were reporting no meta-alloys for sale anywhere in the galaxy yesterday, on that regard the OP was correct. I checked after he posted and it surprised the heck out of me.
 
Agreed. EDDB is mostly fine and helpful, but if it had told you to self destruct, would you self destruct? Take everything on the internet with a huge pinch of salt. :LOL:

Remember that Chris Simon is sponsored by Cerebos and Saxa so take.......

We interrupt this post to remind you that the health industry campaign against tasty food advocates reducing the salt content of your diet especially if you visit the DD and News forums.


The issue in general with EDDB and Inara is that their data comes via players running certain apps visiting stations with not everyone running the apps the data can become outdated.
 
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@CMDR Maymo, I was about to type the very same thing.

Failing that, you can gather your own. See this thread for more info:


Larger thread here, not sure which has more current sites off hand:
 
No one suggested she does, but she wants Soontil Relics.

Since those are right next to where Farseer is, and you'll have to fly right by them when returning from the Guardian sites, might as well "kill two birds" as it were.

That's how I always suggest the initial unlocks should go.
Ngurii is 148LY away from Deciat, even further away from Maia.
 
No one suggested she does, but she wants Soontil Relics.

Point being those are right next to where Farseer is, and you'll have to fly right by them when returning from the Guardian sites, so might as well "kill two birds" as it were.
Ngurii is 148LY away from Deciat, even further away from Maia.


That's like 3 jumps with a modified Asp, which would be complete after that first phase.
 
I advocate starting right from the Sidewinder.

Do your legal and BM trade down to Diaguandri, to unlock Dweller and Lei Chung.
Maybe do some missions there and get a DBX.
Hit Dav's and the Bug Killer.
The go to Maia for meta alloy.
Then traders near Deciat.
Then Farseer.
Then Guardian booster unlock.
Back to Ngurii.
Then to Kuhn.
Then you can do mods with Lei and Dweller at your leisure.

It all makes for a nice, easy and extremely productive loop.
 
Thanks for the info everyone. So Jaggid, from what I am reading, to get Repped up to Grade 5, I am looking at a minimum of 17 times of"enter what ever it is I am doing here" and possibly 1 to 3 more just because of the RNG.

Now my mind is blown...not for the grind part of it, but for the fact that there are Commanders out there who have EVERY module on their ships modded out to G5, plus Guardian Mods, plus any other thing that they can mod up...THAT is DAYS (as in actual 24 hours of playing) worth of Searching for Mats, Destroying ships to get Mats, Data mining, etc.

My hat goes off to them, but it seems a lot of work for it. And from what I am reading, this doesn't carry over to other Mods of the same type (i.e. 4A FSD requires the same grinding as a 5A does). So say you have 3 ships with a 4A, 5A, and 6A FSD, you have to grind out all 3 FDS's say 20 times or more to get each of them to Grade 5. (If I am wrong on this part it's because I wasn't sure on the info)

Well, for the last week I have been harvesting materials, FSD wake data, and Manufactured components...I went to INARA, copied their Cargo Inventory to Excel, and created a manual check sheet to update my component lists. So far, I have everything to at least get me up to Grade 5 except for Arsenic, but that is just a matter of finding it on a planet list and go search for it.

Last night I was sitting in a High Res site, picking up component bits while everyone is buzzing around me blasting at each other...Hey, gotta get it where you can! Not in a rush, so I will continue to fill up the coffers so that I know I have all the stuff I need before I get started. I'd rather do it all at one time and be done with it.

Nah, not really. When you find a mat, you'll get three of them in your inventory. You can trade downwards at a rate of 1:3. So if you find a single g5 mat, you'll have three of them in your inventory and you can trade them for (3*3)^x, with x being the number of grades you go lower. So those 3 g5 mats will trade for over 200(!) G1 mats, enough for hundreds of g1 rolls.

The high-end rolls will have some rare stuff, but the lower grades are ultra easy to spam just by trading with the stuff you get no matter what you do.

Imagine an item costs one Yen, one Zimbabwian Dollar and one Venezualan Bolivar. It would be a grind to travel the earth and find these currencies (though a great journey no doubt!) but you could also find some pocket change in the couch and exchange it at the bank. :)
 
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Thank you all for the great information. I am learning that EDDB is not the be-all end-all information site. Yes, it is good for getting pointed in the right direction (like looking for moons with Arsenic), but don't take everything it says as gospel.

Over the weekend, I was able to get everything I needed to do the FSD range upgrade (except for the MetaAlloy, haven't headed to Maia yet). I have enough stuff now that I should be able to have the upgrade performed and have mats leftover. I am going to take the suggestion of mapping worlds in the various systems on the way to Maia, then back to Deciat. I'll sell the data there, and use what I get to help Rep up Farseer and then top off with other stuff as needed.

I did see something odd this weekend though. I was cruising around this moon hitting Geo sites, and off in the distance I saw what looked like a chunk of rock or something floating in the sky. Thinking that this was odd (as this isn't No Man's Sky, which LOVES floating rocks) I headed over in the SRV to see what it was. As I got closer, the rock resolved itself to be an Orca. I was able to target it with the SRV and it was an NPC. The ship was hanging in about a 40 degree down angle, pointing at the surface, about 600 meters above the surface.

As traveling to this oddity caused my ship to launch, I called it down and boarded. Taking off I slowly approached the Orca. It just sat there, firing its maneuvering thrusters periodically. I came within 5 meters of the ship...nothing. Orbited around the ship...nothing. Deployed my mining laser (the only 'weapon' on my DBX)...the Orca deployed its hardpoints, but other than that...nothing. I tried to nudge the ship...no effect. Finally I flew back to the Geo Site I was mining and went back to work. The Orca stayed there the entire time.

I then go the another Geo Site, and this time, a Hauler comes in. Same thing...Same positioning. I flew around it a couple of times, then landed. It stayed until I finally left.

First time I have ever seen this happen. Thought it was odd and at first thought I was going to be attacked by them, but they acted like I wasn't there.

The strange stuff you see when you are in space.

Take Care and Check Six Commanders! o7
 
I am going to take the suggestion of mapping worlds in the various systems on the way to Maia, then back to Deciat. I'll sell the data there, and use what I get to help Rep up Farseer and then top off with other stuff as needed.

This works great. I chime in in every related thread with this advice, but you're the first one to actually say they will use it :)

Just be sure to unlock Felicity first, before selling the data to Farseer Ic. It might be that you cannot sell it until unlocking. Not sure.

Just yesterday I got around to unlocking Ram Tah. I mapped several earth-likes on the way. I unlocked him with the encoded data he wanted, then sold exploration data until grade 5. This meant that each grade of modification used the least amount of mats. So grade 1 was a single-mat roll. I actually applied G5 lightweight to a 1A limpet controller. Massive gains! :)

But to me it's such a smart way to do this. Earlier in this thread it was recommended that you just do throw-away mods to raise access rep. But that is burning mats for negligible gains. Sure, G1 mats like iron or phosphorous are common, but why not trade explo data instead, get paid for doing it and saving mats along the way?

And as I mentioned, it's espeically handy if you unlock one of the listed engineers but do not have all mats necessary to roll through G5. The explo data fueled access rep means you can pin the G5 blueprint and then complete it remotely at your leisure.
 
And one more thing, due to the idiosyncracies present in Elite, sometimes the access rep as shown does not immediately keep pace with the actual value. Sort of like how permits sometimes don't show right away. A re-log will correct it if it doesn't seem to be progressing as you'd expect. I believe I spent around 6 million to go G5. I do know that 2 million took me to G3 access rep.
 
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Thank you all for the great information. I am learning that EDDB is not the be-all end-all information site. Yes, it is good for getting pointed in the right direction (like looking for moons with Arsenic), but don't take everything it says as gospel.

Over the weekend, I was able to get everything I needed to do the FSD range upgrade (except for the MetaAlloy, haven't headed to Maia yet). I have enough stuff now that I should be able to have the upgrade performed and have mats leftover. I am going to take the suggestion of mapping worlds in the various systems on the way to Maia, then back to Deciat. I'll sell the data there, and use what I get to help Rep up Farseer and then top off with other stuff as needed.

I did see something odd this weekend though. I was cruising around this moon hitting Geo sites, and off in the distance I saw what looked like a chunk of rock or something floating in the sky. Thinking that this was odd (as this isn't No Man's Sky, which LOVES floating rocks) I headed over in the SRV to see what it was. As I got closer, the rock resolved itself to be an Orca. I was able to target it with the SRV and it was an NPC. The ship was hanging in about a 40 degree down angle, pointing at the surface, about 600 meters above the surface.

As traveling to this oddity caused my ship to launch, I called it down and boarded. Taking off I slowly approached the Orca. It just sat there, firing its maneuvering thrusters periodically. I came within 5 meters of the ship...nothing. Orbited around the ship...nothing. Deployed my mining laser (the only 'weapon' on my DBX)...the Orca deployed its hardpoints, but other than that...nothing. I tried to nudge the ship...no effect. Finally I flew back to the Geo Site I was mining and went back to work. The Orca stayed there the entire time.

I then go the another Geo Site, and this time, a Hauler comes in. Same thing...Same positioning. I flew around it a couple of times, then landed. It stayed until I finally left.

First time I have ever seen this happen. Thought it was odd and at first thought I was going to be attacked by them, but they acted like I wasn't there.

The strange stuff you see when you are in space.

Take Care and Check Six Commanders! o7
I'd have an authorized dealer check the oxygen filter's on your ship. Somebody has obviously spiked your O2 with something. LOL.
Seriously, I've had almost the same thing happen on rare occasions also.
 
I did see something odd this weekend though. I was cruising around this moon hitting Geo sites, and off in the distance I saw what looked like a chunk of rock or something floating in the sky. Thinking that this was odd (as this isn't No Man's Sky, which LOVES floating rocks) I headed over in the SRV to see what it was. As I got closer, the rock resolved itself to be an Orca. I was able to target it with the SRV and it was an NPC. The ship was hanging in about a 40 degree down angle, pointing at the surface, about 600 meters above the surface.
If you see a landed or hovering NPC, you can bet your house on there being a nearby random human POI like some cargo, or some mining rigs.
 
This works great. I chime in in every related thread with this advice, but you're the first one to actually say they will use it :)

Just be sure to unlock Felicity first, before selling the data to Farseer Ic. It might be that you cannot sell it until unlocking. Not sure.

Just yesterday I got around to unlocking Ram Tah. I mapped several earth-likes on the way. I unlocked him with the encoded data he wanted, then sold exploration data until grade 5. This meant that each grade of modification used the least amount of mats. So grade 1 was a single-mat roll. I actually applied G5 lightweight to a 1A limpet controller. Massive gains! :)

But to me it's such a smart way to do this. Earlier in this thread it was recommended that you just do throw-away mods to raise access rep. But that is burning mats for negligible gains. Sure, G1 mats like iron or phosphorous are common, but why not trade explo data instead, get paid for doing it and saving mats along the way?

And as I mentioned, it's espeically handy if you unlock one of the listed engineers but do not have all mats necessary to roll through G5. The explo data fueled access rep means you can pin the G5 blueprint and then complete it remotely at your leisure.

I can verify that this does work! At least with Farseer...I went from LHS 20 to Maia. I took the slow route (Economic jumps) to get there. At each system on the way there, I honked it, and if it had planets I ran an FSS on the system. If there were ELW's or WW's (I found a total of 5 on the way) I would go Surface Map them. When I got to Maia, I picked up the MetaAlloy and then changed to Fastest Routes to get there. My reasoning, the less I have to stop for refuel, the less I have to worry about getting bounced by pirates. I did have one try to interdict me just as I was jumping, hope it blew out his Hyperdrive Converter! ;) If I popped into a system with NO stations or ships, I would move up above the orbital plane, do a FSS, and then jump out.

Once I got to Deciat, I went to Farseer Inc. and after giving her the MetaAlloy, I had access to the Cartographic system. I was able to sell her 11 Million in System Data. After the sale, I checked and I was Grade 5 certified. Then it was a simple process of going from Grade 1 to Grade 5 on the FSD Range, and I added an Experimental Effect of Deep Charge. Since I was there and had the extra Mats, I also did the Grade 1 Overcharge on the Power Plant. Might as well get it while I could.

After the FSD upgrades, I now have a 56 LY jump range (Laden). Jumped back to LHS 20 from Deciat in 3 jumps...Exploration will be so much nicer now.

Commander Sinisalo, Thank You for the information. And to others wanting to save some mats on the end of the MetaAlloy run, try Scanning your way to Grade 5 Access!

Take Care and Check Six Commanders! o7
 
Hello
Reading this topics I note that :
"For a new engineer, plan to need the following rolls for each grade (1 through 4) to get access to the next grade up:
Grade 1: 2
Grade 2: 4
Grade 3: 6
Grade 4: 5"
Today i have two engineer access F Fareseer rank 4 and E MARTUK rank 2
I have all items for all craft 1 to 5 regarding FSD increase range and thruster improvment
I'm not able to access to the 5 rank for felicity Farseer
I have 3 vessels: sidewinder, cobra mk3 and asp explorer even if I applied changes to these 3 vessels i'm not able to apply 6 time the rank 3
your advice will be appreciated
 
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