Engineers Engineering & Experimental Effects?

[Stealthie]

Just something I was wondering about.....

How important do people think it is to create mod's with an experimental effect?

I keep reading about people saying how "the best" thing is, say, a beam laser with the Thermal Shock effect, a burst laser with the Scramble Spectrum effect, a frag cannon with the Corrosive effect or a PA with the Target Lock-Breaker effect etc.

I find myself wondering how much effort these people are putting into engineering.

It's bad enough having to find a whole heap of materials because you know you're probably going to waste half of them of poor rolls before you get anything half-decent at all.
To then just bin perfectly good standard mod's and keep on rolling until you get a good roll which also has an Experimental Effect seems like it'd require an insane amount of time, effort and luck.

Seems like everybody who attacks me has a weapon with an Experimental Effect.
Am I the only player who doesn't bother with Experimental Effects and everybody else is, or is it just the PvPers who obsess about this stuff and it just seems like everybody uses them because it's only PvPers who's weapons you get to see in use?

Or, is there some straightforward way to obtain an Experimental Effect I don't know about, which makes getting them possible with no more than a reasonable amount of effort?

 

[CMDR Ahab]

Just something I was wondering about.....

How important do people think it is to create mod's with an experimental effect?

I keep reading about people saying how "the best" thing is, say, a beam laser with the Thermal Shock effect, a burst laser with the Scramble Spectrum effect, a frag cannon with the Corrosive effect or a PA with the Target Lock-Breaker effect etc.

I find myself wondering how much effort these people are putting into engineering.

It's bad enough having to find a whole heap of materials because you know you're probably going to waste half of them of poor rolls before you get anything half-decent at all.
To then just bin perfectly good standard mod's and keep on rolling until you get a good roll which also has an Experimental Effect seems like it'd require an insane amount of time, effort and luck.

Seems like everybody who attacks me has a weapon with an Experimental Effect.
Am I the only player who doesn't bother with Experimental Effects and everybody else is, or is it just the PvPers who obsess about this stuff and it just seems like everybody uses them because it's only PvPers who's weapons you get to see in use?

Or, is there some straightforward way to obtain an Experimental Effect I don't know about, which makes getting them possible with no more than a reasonable amount of effort?

I'd be interested in this too. Some effects like Scramble spectrum are very useful for piracy and fighting hull tanks to be fair. Corrosive shell is pretty much mandatory on multi or frag cannons. Others like effects on heat seekers just don't seem to be worth the hassle (most of my builds on main account don't have effects on lasers or heat seekers at all).

 

[fruitbat]

Just something I was wondering about.....

How important do people think it is to create mod's with an experimental effect?

I keep reading about people saying how "the best" thing is, say, a beam laser with the Thermal Shock effect, a burst laser with the Scramble Spectrum effect, a frag cannon with the Corrosive effect or a PA with the Target Lock-Breaker effect etc.

I find myself wondering how much effort these people are putting into engineering.

It's bad enough having to find a whole heap of materials because you know you're probably going to waste half of them of poor rolls before you get anything half-decent at all.
To then just bin perfectly good standard mod's and keep on rolling until you get a good roll which also has an Experimental Effect seems like it'd require an insane amount of time, effort and luck.

Seems like everybody who attacks me has a weapon with an Experimental Effect.
Am I the only player who doesn't bother with Experimental Effects and everybody else is, or is it just the PvPers who obsess about this stuff and it just seems like everybody uses them because it's only PvPers who's weapons you get to see in use?

Or, is there some straightforward way to obtain an Experimental Effect I don't know about, which makes getting them possible with no more than a reasonable amount of effort?

Erm, you know you can 'buy' an experimental effect once you get the roll you want, for the cost of 2 engineer ranks, essentially 18 throwaway mats (how many mats it costs to get back to g5, 3xg3 and 3xg4 rolls).

 

[Grisnir]

Erm, you know you can 'buy' an experimental effect once you get the roll you want, for the cost of 2 engineer ranks, essentially 18 throwaway mats (how many mats it costs to get back to g5, 3xg3 and 3xg4 rolls).

and getting mats for G3 and G4 rolls isn't that of a problem, thanks to Dav's Hope

 

[Codger]

I've used the "spend rep" function to get Corrosive Shell onto my multicannons, and it does make a real difference.

It's a little bit of a pain to have to re-gain the rep, but as already stated, the mats are not too terribly hard to get.

I don't PVP, so can't comment on that part.

 

[Eminor]

This may just be bad RNG on my part, but I think something's a "bit strange" as far as experimental effects are concerned. I've been getting back into engineers over the last couple of weeks - and none of the weapons modifications rolls I made this time - at least 20 of them - resulted in experimental effects...
Last time I went through a round of upgraded mods (approx. 6 months ago), experimental effects seemed to be more easily achievable.
Anyone else had similar experiences ?
And is there a knack to getting special effects ?

 

[fruitbat]

This may just be bad RNG on my part, but I think something's a "bit strange" as far as experimental effects are concerned. I've been getting back into engineers over the last couple of weeks - and none of the weapons modifications rolls I made this time - at least 20 of them - resulted in experimental effects...
Last time I went through a round of upgraded mods (approx. 6 months ago), experimental effects seemed to be more easily achievable.
Anyone else had similar experiences ?
And is there a knack to getting special effects ?

Just pure rng I'm afraid. You've obviously peed off the rng gods since last time.

 

[UnhappyDev]

and none of the weapons modifications rolls I made this time - at least 20 of them - resulted in experimental effects...

That's terrible luck. Were they G5 mods? If so the chances of getting an experimental effect are 10%, so you should have got a couple.

 

[Eminor]

That's terrible luck. Were they G5 mods? If so the chances of getting an experimental effect are 10%, so you should have got a couple.

Engineers, gotta luv it . 12 of them would have been just rolls to get to G5 (Broo Tarquin), so I'd have ignored those anyway. (Well, I might have saved a G4 with an effect). The rest would have been for G5.
Next time, I'll remember to buy an effect on a good roll...

 

[Stealthie]

Erm, you know you can 'buy' an experimental effect once you get the roll you want, for the cost of 2 engineer ranks, essentially 18 throwaway mats (how many mats it costs to get back to g5, 3xg3 and 3xg4 rolls).

TBH, I didn't know it worked like that.

I've used it before but I was under the impression it worked like a "nudge" button on a one-armed bandit - allowing you to move the experimental doodad a bit further if you were close to getting an EE.

So, we're saying that if you trot along to an engineer with, say, enough mat's for 8 G5 mod's, you might use 4 of them getting a decent roll and then you can choose to spend a bunch more to "buy" an EE?
If so, I guess that's fair enough.
At least it's not the black-hole of mat's that I thought it involved. [up]

*EDIT*

For the record, I've engineered 451 weapons and I've currently got 70 weapons with G5 mod's fitted to various ships (gotta love spreadsheets, right?) and in a year of monkeying around with engineers I have scored exactly ONE experimental effect.
Ever.

And I ended up removing that cos it was on one of a pair of lasers on my AspX and looked weird when I fired 'em.

 

[Requiem Mortis]

Look for the 'Adjust' button after the RNG completes, as said before you'll use up 2 levels of Engineering Rank on a G5.... Doing it on Grade 4 only loses 1 I think

 

[Stealthie]

Look for the 'Adjust' button after the RNG completes, as said before you'll use up 2 levels of Engineering Rank on a G5.... Doing it on Grade 4 only loses 1 I think

Great stuff.

As I say, I've seen it and used it before but I thought it just nudged the doodad around a bit further so I thought it was only for situations where you were "close but not quite".
My rolls usually land miles away from scoring an EE so I never thought the "adjust" button would have a useful effect.

So, if I'm at G5 with an engineer, I can "buy" an EE for a weapon and it'll drop me back down to G3, requiring me to pump in a bunch of G2/G3 mod's and then reject them to work my way back up to G5 again?
That's fair enough, I guess. A bit contrived but not the end of the world. [up]

 

[Requiem Mortis]

No it's 3xG3 an 3xG4 to get back quickest but you build rep with any roll.

Just do any blueprint you have excess mats for and discard doesn't need to be same blueprint.

 

[fruitbat]

So, if I'm at G5 with an engineer, I can "buy" an EE for a weapon and it'll drop me back down to G3, requiring me to roll 3 x G3 and 3 x G4 mod's and then reject them to work my way back up to G5 again?
That's fair enough, I guess. A bit contrived but not the end of the world. [up]

Slightly corrected for you and yes.

Doesn't matter what G3 and G4 mods you spam as you aren't keeping them as Mr Mortis points out [up]

 

[Eminor]

For the record, I've engineered 451 weapons and I've currently got 70 weapons with G5 mod's fitted to various ships (gotta love spreadsheets, right?) and in a year of monkeying around with engineers I have scored exactly ONE experimental effect.
Ever.

Wow, that's beyond bad luck, I think.

 

[fruitbat]

Just to add, if you do score an effect, its only the loss of 1 engineer rank to change it to another effect, rather than the 2 to apply an effect to a standard roll.