Engineering materials revamp.

[Brrokk]

My suggestions to ease material organisation and improve realism:-

1.Reduce the number of materials used for engineering in each category. Maybe two or so in each tier.

2. Make raw materials into tradeable commodities weighing one ton each. E.g. allow iron and lead to be bought and sold in one-ton lots just as copper and silver are. It makes no sense for some rare metals to be available for sale for credits while other common ones aren't for sale and are weightless.

3. Allow raw materials to be delivered to a station and banked there, for later use as credit with engineers. (Note, at some stations it might be possible to buy e.g. iron and immediately bank it).

4. Give manufactured materials weight, one ton each. When you collect them they go in the cargo hold. You can deposit them for credit in a material bank when you return to a station, for usable credit with engineers. (Note, this would make "grinding" at Dav's Hope less attractive).

5. (Tentative suggestion)... Or, as an alternative to banking materials at any station, deliver them to a bank at the engineer where you eventually want to use them? This will mean more trips to engineers which I realise some won't like, but this is a spaceship-flying game and it would look like greater realism.

6. Improve the availability of all materials. Make missions with rewards for all materials, not just an arbitrary few.

7. (Tentative suggestion)... Having made material organisation easier and availability better, remove material traders?

 

[varonica]

deleted

 

[HappyMoonMonkey]

In the current environment I'm not keen on the weight materials. The bar to engineering things is already high and this would make collection a nightmare. It would have to be coupled with very low material requirements for engineering and I don't think anyone ready for both of those aspects to flip engineering on its head.

 

[HappyMoonMonkey]

I also like the idea of banking as a concept though. It would be interesting if it could extend to commodities as well. Warehouse limits would have to be applied to stop flooding markets for BGS manipulation though.

 

[Kissamies]

I appreciate the logic of especially raw materials being commodities, but having to carry them around might be annoying for the engineering rounds. You'd have to possibly replace one of the modules you wish to engineer with a cargo rack so you can engineer. I of course sometimes already have this problem with the fuel scoop, but most of my builds have it anyway. Banking the materials at the engineer is one solution, of course, but would make the logistics convoluted. Another thing (and probably why they made it like this in the first place) is that it would undermine the usability of SRV a bit.

6. More mission reward materials, definitely. That was my suggestion as well.

Another thing I would like if you could do missions for the engineers and they would give vouchers for X amount of free rolls as a reward.

 

[Greasetrap42]

Additional idea not directly related to organizing the engineering materials, but how they get used.

Engineering materials required should scale with the size of the modules.

This would make it easier for new players and more challenging for experienced players (who know what they are doing) engineering the big ships. And it would make more logical sense too.

 

[Kissamies]

That is not a bad idea either.

 

[DemiserofD]

1.Reduce the number of materials used for engineering in each category. Maybe two or so in each tier.

The big issue with this is that it eliminates the concept of rarity. If you want to be able to engineer lower tiers, then these must be relatively common, but a certain portion of players find great joy in finding rare drops. Personally, the many subtypes has never been an issue. If you collect stuff regularly, you'll have an even distribution of materials, anyway. But finding Biotech Conductors or any of the rarer G5 mats is always exciting and makes me happy, and I wouldn't want that experience removed.

2. Make raw materials into tradeable commodities weighing one ton each. E.g. allow iron and lead to be bought and sold in one-ton lots just as copper and silver are. It makes no sense for some rare metals to be available for sale for credits while other common ones aren't for sale and are weightless.

3. Allow raw materials to be delivered to a station and banked there, for later use as credit with engineers. (Note, at some stations it might be possible to buy e.g. iron and immediately bank it).

4. Give manufactured materials weight, one ton each. When you collect them they go in the cargo hold. You can deposit them for credit in a material bank when you return to a station, for usable credit with engineers. (Note, this would make "grinding" at Dav's Hope less attractive).

Allowing trading for credits basically eliminates materials as a concept. At that point, they may as well not exist at all, you'll just be forcing everyone to farm for credits and then buy them. Not a good idea. Adding weight is likewise not a good idea; they tried doing that when engineering started, and everyone hated it.

5. (Tentative suggestion)... Or, as an alternative to banking materials at any station, deliver them to a bank at the engineer where you eventually want to use them? This will mean more trips to engineers which I realise some won't like, but this is a spaceship-flying game and it would look like greater realism.

Honestly, how is this any different from currently? All you've done is added an unnecessary step of hauling it to the station.

6. Improve the availability of all materials. Make missions with rewards for all materials, not just an arbitrary few.

Should missions really be the default way of getting materials? I see them as a backup source.

7. (Tentative suggestion)... Having made material organisation easier and availability better, remove material traders?

Well, you haven't, really. By adding weight you've made them both harder to organize and less available, since you'd still need the same raw number of materials, just with less variability and greater difficulty of collection.

 

[GraphicEqualizer]

My suggestions to ease material organisation and improve realism:-

also, enable engineering mods to be dismantled - say if you decide the mod is not giving you the kind of thing you were hoping for, allow the mod to be broken back down to recover most of the materials. The time sink with engineering should be more geared toward actually tinkering and trying things out, not just the one-way grind needed to collect bits and pieces.

 

[khalismur]

6. Improve the availability of all materials. Make missions with rewards for all materials, not just an arbitrary few.

All your suggestions I can get behind with but seriously, if they had to pick one single point, this one ^ would be already enough to make things better... How hard can it be FDev