Engineering is even worst than I thought

BlackSpaceCowboy

BlackSpaceCowboy
I'm sorry if everyone already knows this. I had not played much at all in the past two years before Chapter 4. I've been playing a lot lately because the game is so much better after Chapter 4.

1. I thought there were about 10 engineers. There are 24 most of whom have to be unlocked?

2. I went to pin some blueprints and was shocked to find that I can only pin one blueprint per engineer. Why?

3. I pinned a blueprint, gathered some materials, then did grade 1 and was shocked that it didn't unlock grade 2. I have to go to the engineer to unlock grades.

Why do they want players to travel to the engineers again to upgrade? Why not just one visit and the rest can be done remotely? It seems that they just want to make the process as painful as possible.

Engineers could be a fantastic part of the game. I would love experimenting with different builds and engineering upgrades to make specialized optimized ships. But the process is so cumbersome that it makes it impossible. And this causes people to stay away from Open because they're not engineered enough to compete.

Is there much community support for overhauling this tedious process and making it fun to experiment?

Allow us to pin as many blueprints as we want
Allow us to unlock levels in remote workshops
Unlock all the engineers
Make it easier to find required materials
 
Last edited:

Deadlock-3000

D
1. Yeah. 24 people in a population of trillions. They are like elves or whatever. A few of them are in Colonia and are repeats of the same stuff in the Bubble for those frontier types, and a few in the Bubble aren't worth much either, so you don't literally need them all.

2. No reason. Just literally to make life harder and more tedious in the name of "trail blazing".

3. Yep. Again, no sane reason for it. Just sheer artifical grind mechanics, naked and obvious as the day they were born.
 

thistle

T
BlackSpaceCowboy said:
3. I pinned a blueprint, gathered some materials, then did grade 1 and was shocked that it didn't unlock grade 2. I have to go to the engineer to unlock grades.
Click to expand...

If thats the case, it's a bug. It's not a bug I've seen, I remote upgraded from scratch to G5 since the last patch. Unless you don't have grade whatever access.
 

S~P

S
Things are a bit easier now that you have material traders, before that it was really a headache get those Grade 5 mats.
 

Vedmo

Vedmo
Being able to pin one blueprint (doesn't rank up & can't apply special effects) was a QoL change for those already done with the ranking process, and a welcome one.

You're complaining about the updated easy system!
 
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Factabulous

Factabulous
Always better to read up on how things work rather than assume the devs would have followed your choices :) Currently unlocking engineers and leveling up my 4th CMDR, it's pretty nice now :)
 

Brrokk

Brrokk
BlackSpaceCowboy said:
...
Is there much community support for overhauling this tedious process and making it fun to experiment?

Allow us to pin as many blueprints as we want
Allow us to unlock levels in remote workshops
Unlock all the engineers
Make it easier to find required materials
Click to expand...

No, I wouldn't support those changes. The combined effect of them is "Make it so that I never have to visit engineers and can have all the stuff immediately".

I find it fun to experiment. I bought a Krait Phantom yesterday and I'm still missing about with the build.
 

m0rl0ck

M
BlackSpaceCowboy said:
I'm sorry if everyone already knows this. I had not played much at all in the past two years before Chapter 4. I've been playing a lot lately because the game is so much better after Chapter 4.

1. I thought there were about 10 engineers. There are 24 most of whom have to be unlocked?

2. I went to pin some blueprints and was shocked to find that I can only pin one blueprint per engineer. Why?

3. I pinned a blueprint, gathered some materials, then did grade 1 and was shocked that it didn't unlock grade 2. I have to go to the engineer to unlock grades.

Why do they want players to travel to the engineers again to upgrade? Why not just one visit and the rest can be done remotely? It seems that they just want to make the process as painful as possible.

Engineers could be a fantastic part of the game. I would love experimenting with different builds and engineering upgrades to make specialized optimized ships. But the process is so cumbersome that it makes it impossible. And this causes people to stay away from Open because they're not engineered enough to compete.

Is there much community support for overhauling this tedious process and making it fun to experiment?

Allow us to pin as many blueprints as we want
Allow us to unlock levels in remote workshops
Unlock all the engineers
Make it easier to find required materials
Click to expand...
Yeah engineering is a blight on the game, the one thing (not counting various bugs) preventing it from being truly great.
The worst thing about engineering is the pve / pvp gap that prevents cmdrs meeting as equals. With engineering, obsessives, sociopaths and the unemployed have an upper hand that the mentally healthy and those with actual lives will never be able to match.
With engineering, Frontier have hit on a sure fire method to make sure that ganking and griefing will always be a part of the game.
I would happily pay 60 USD more for Elite sans engineers and i bet i wouldnt be flying around alone in the new alternate engineer free galaxy.
 
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Deadlock-3000

D
You just have to remember that you're not really playing a space game.

Engineers are like those special wizard elf blacksmiths that live under a mountain, the missions board is the inn, outfitting is like that shop in Twilight Forest where you have to bribe them with those bloody fish it took you an hour to catch and you now hate forever, etc. etc.

Nobody has anything sane in the context of space empires, such as a way of signing a mission contract by space radio or finding out how much space toasters sell for in the system next door, because none of those things exist. It's all a spectral dream conjured up by a gnome illusionist and you're still in your garret in a mediaeval slum, drooling with your eyes rolled back into your head.
 
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Vedmo

Vedmo
m0rl0ck said:
Yeah engineering is a blight on the game, the one thing (not counting various bugs) preventing it from being truly great.
The worst thing about engineering is the pve / pvp gap that prevents cmdrs meeting as equals. With engineering, obsessives, sociopaths and the unemployed have an upper hand that the mentally healthy and those with actual lives will never be able to match.
With engineering, Frontier have hit on a sure fire method to make sure that ganking and griefing will always be a part of the game.
I would happily pay 60 USD more for Elite sans engineers and i bet i wouldnt be flying around alone in the new alternate engineer free galaxy.
Click to expand...

That's a horrible post. You don't need to make disparaging remarks about people's lives to make a point about your opinion of a video game.
 

m0rl0ck

M
Vedmo said:
That's a horrible post. You don't need to make disparaging remarks about people's lives to make a point about your opinion of a video game.
Click to expand...

Its a horrible game mechanic that caters to the worst in human nature and its much, much better than it used to be.
 
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CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
1) You don't need most of them. I have all the bubble engineers unlocked, but I only visit 5-6. Not bothering with Colonia. Too far!

2) It's annoying. Lol
FD should know by now, most players upgrade their modules in bulk. We don't do regular visits.
Remote engineering was a good step, but we should be able to "earn" the ability to pin more blueprints per engineer by increasing our reputation or something.

3) It's bugged.
I had a multicannon upgrade pinned. But I could only do grade 5 remotely.
Not 1-4. Lol
 

Auronio

Auronio
Interesting.

In the old system you had to run through all levels before you could engineer G5.

I could imagine that you still need to upgrade until G5 locally at the engineer before you can do it remotely. Haven't tried cause all my unlocked engineers were already at max engineeer grade level.

I'm torn.
The new system is much easier and more convenient than the old one. It's still a massive grind, but better than before. On average better rolls (better than most old god rolls). Way easier to store data/mats/elements and you can trade them.
Old system had random rolls and hence provided some unique results I preferred cause it made the system more special. But way more tedious than now.

In general I like the idea of engineers. It provided some nice lore, you have to do some nice quest like tasks, you will visit many nice systems/areas within the bubble most players otherwise never would see. Upgrades transfer good ships in overpowered supervessels.
Yes, I like balance, but I like being op even more...

o7
 

ibmalone

I
BlackSpaceCowboy said:
3. I pinned a blueprint, gathered some materials, then did grade 1 and was shocked that it didn't unlock grade 2. I have to go to the engineer to unlock grades.
Click to expand...

thistle said:
If thats the case, it's a bug. It's not a bug I've seen, I remote upgraded from scratch to G5 since the last patch. Unless you don't have grade whatever access.
Click to expand...

It wouldn't be the first time in the past week that I've seen a thread where somebody had confused progressing a module with the need to unlock grades with the engineer...

It seems an unplanned consequence of the pinning blueprints combined with not communicating how it works to people well. Result, players unlock the engineer, go there, apply upgrades they have materials for, go away to get more for the last grade they unlocked, max that somewhere else, bingo! You've progressed a module to the top of a grade without unlocking the next one.
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
BlackSpaceCowboy said:
I'm sorry if everyone already knows this. I had not played much at all in the past two years before Chapter 4. I've been playing a lot lately because the game is so much better after Chapter 4.

1. I thought there were about 10 engineers. There are 24 most of whom have to be unlocked?

2. I went to pin some blueprints and was shocked to find that I can only pin one blueprint per engineer. Why?

3. I pinned a blueprint, gathered some materials, then did grade 1 and was shocked that it didn't unlock grade 2. I have to go to the engineer to unlock grades.

Why do they want players to travel to the engineers again to upgrade? Why not just one visit and the rest can be done remotely? It seems that they just want to make the process as painful as possible.

Engineers could be a fantastic part of the game. I would love experimenting with different builds and engineering upgrades to make specialized optimized ships. But the process is so cumbersome that it makes it impossible. And this causes people to stay away from Open because they're not engineered enough to compete.

Is there much community support for overhauling this tedious process and making it fun to experiment?

Allow us to pin as many blueprints as we want
Allow us to unlock levels in remote workshops
Unlock all the engineers
Make it easier to find required materials
Click to expand...


I don't mind the number of engineers in the game.
I do think some of the unlocking procedures are terrible. f.e. having to fly x times to the same engineer with a crate of rare liquor is atrocious.

The blue print mechanic is terribly cumbersome. A lot has been said about it already. We should be able to pin any blueprint of any engineer at any time once we already visited the engineer, no matter where we are, because the blue prints are already downloaded to our ship's computer. Perhaps there could be a limit of pinning 2 or 3 at the same time.

I do not like the concept of remote engineering. I do not mind having to fly to the engineer's base to do the actual upgrade. To me that is the logical way to do it.
 

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
BlackSpaceCowboy said:
Is it a bug? I read that you can't improve your relationship with engineers remotely. So, when I do grade 1 I'm not earning any reputation with the engineer.
Click to expand...

Mine was a bug anyway.

I'd upgraded 3 multicannons at Tod's base, to grade 5.
Pinned the blueprint.
Flew off to gather more materials.
When I docked in a different system to remote engineer my remaining stock multicannons, I could only apply grade 5. Not 1-4. Lol
 
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