Now with the new system (and the old one as well) it still looks as if the engineers had dementia. You roll up a 3A pulse laser to Grade 5, but you can't apply this very upgrade to every other 3A pulse laser in your ship. This feels wrong to me. Also some other things feel wrong, like rolling multiple times for an upgrade, slowly getting it to its maximum just to get access to the next tuning level. Also the individuality in the module tuning gets lost. This is bad, after all engineers should help you to tune your ship to your needs and they should be specialists that can serve any customer individually.
I would rather have a system like this:
The setup (the role of an engineer):
Imagine an engineer is your business partner, they have the knowledge, you have an idea what changes you need for your build and your needs are very special.
They will offer you multiple tuning stages for a module, but you have to pay for your individual R&D. You, as a customer, deliver some specs, they will engineer something that meets your specs and return you a blueprint that requires a list of materials to be applied. of course there are limits to what is achievable.
Some engineers will not charge you anything for their blueprint, as the way you had to unlock them is the way they make their profit, others have contracts with the military or a local militia and will offer the blueprints they've created for you to them (may open the option to find a blueprint in some ship salvages).
How it would work in the game:
1) You can craft your module with the engineer, i.e. you pull a bunch of sliders (range, weight, thermal efficiency, etc..), but you can't max out everything, just like with the power distributor, if you pull up one slider, the others will go down, if you push down another, the rest will move up. You make your laser sturdy and powerful, it will become less power efficient and heavier. You make your FSD lighter and add range and max fuel - it will become brittle, boot more slowly and require more power. It's your choice how to balance this. There is no "efficient weapon" blueprint anymore - there is just your individual blueprint,
chose any name for it.
2) Once crafted, the engineer will give you a list of required mats and a blueprint based on your requirements, you chose the name of the blueprint it will be saved in your document stash. This blueprint you can apply to every compatible* module at any station that has an outiftting facility in a high tech system or directly at the engineer's base.
3) Once a module is tuned according to this blueprint, you can go to any engineer that is specialized on tuning these modules and craft a next-grade blueprint, which basically starts as a copy of your previous blueprint with a bit more reach on the sliders. And again: Once crafted, you can keep this blueprint and have it applied to any compatible* module you have at any capable station, given you have the required materials.
This means that you can only engineer a grade 2 blueprint for a 3A pulse laser, if you already own a 3A pulse laser, that is tuned using a grade 1 blueprint.
This also means that if you have a grade 5 blueprint for 3A pulse lasers, you can buy a new 3A pulse laser and apply this grade 5 blueprint directly, after all - you have already paid the R&D and you have enough information on how to implement the lower grade mods.
As a third consequence it means that if you only managed a grade 2 upgrade to your 3A pulse laser and you sell this very pulse laser and later on decide you would like a new grade 3 tuned 3A pulse laser, you'd need to buy a vanilla 3A pulse laser, apply your grade 2 blueprint to it, take it to an engineer, and craft a grade 3 blueprint based on your grade 2 mod.
4) A compatible module is a module of the same type, size and grade, ignoring any applied blueprint. So a 3A Pulse Laser blueprint is is compatible to any other 3A pulse laser regardless of its tuning, not to any 2A or 3C pulse laser nor any 3A beam laser. You can't just apply a 3A mod to a lightweight 3C module - these are different constructions and need different blueprints.
This means that in order to have three 3A pulse lasers and one 3A beam laser tuned to grade 5, you need to engineer and apply each grade 1, 2, 3 and 5 blueprint for one 3A pulse laser and apply the grade 5 blueprint to your second and third 3A pulse laser and you need to engineer and apply each a grade 1,2,3,4 and 5 for your only 3A beam laser. Engineer just once, apply as many as you like. No dementia.
5) Blueprints don't add on another. Applying a blueprint is like reverting a module to it's original state (removing any existing mod) and then applying the new mod, still you need the base of a lower grade mod and a module to work on in order to create a better blueprint (see above).
This way you can build your individual module, RNGesus is not involved and no dementia is evident and it's still not trivial to gather all the materials for a grade 5 upgrade to every module, you still need to work your way up for every type of module, but once you have the knowledge you can re- apply it.
I feel this makes much more sense.
I would rather have a system like this:
The setup (the role of an engineer):
Imagine an engineer is your business partner, they have the knowledge, you have an idea what changes you need for your build and your needs are very special.
They will offer you multiple tuning stages for a module, but you have to pay for your individual R&D. You, as a customer, deliver some specs, they will engineer something that meets your specs and return you a blueprint that requires a list of materials to be applied. of course there are limits to what is achievable.
Some engineers will not charge you anything for their blueprint, as the way you had to unlock them is the way they make their profit, others have contracts with the military or a local militia and will offer the blueprints they've created for you to them (may open the option to find a blueprint in some ship salvages).
How it would work in the game:
1) You can craft your module with the engineer, i.e. you pull a bunch of sliders (range, weight, thermal efficiency, etc..), but you can't max out everything, just like with the power distributor, if you pull up one slider, the others will go down, if you push down another, the rest will move up. You make your laser sturdy and powerful, it will become less power efficient and heavier. You make your FSD lighter and add range and max fuel - it will become brittle, boot more slowly and require more power. It's your choice how to balance this. There is no "efficient weapon" blueprint anymore - there is just your individual blueprint,
chose any name for it.
2) Once crafted, the engineer will give you a list of required mats and a blueprint based on your requirements, you chose the name of the blueprint it will be saved in your document stash. This blueprint you can apply to every compatible* module at any station that has an outiftting facility in a high tech system or directly at the engineer's base.
3) Once a module is tuned according to this blueprint, you can go to any engineer that is specialized on tuning these modules and craft a next-grade blueprint, which basically starts as a copy of your previous blueprint with a bit more reach on the sliders. And again: Once crafted, you can keep this blueprint and have it applied to any compatible* module you have at any capable station, given you have the required materials.
This means that you can only engineer a grade 2 blueprint for a 3A pulse laser, if you already own a 3A pulse laser, that is tuned using a grade 1 blueprint.
This also means that if you have a grade 5 blueprint for 3A pulse lasers, you can buy a new 3A pulse laser and apply this grade 5 blueprint directly, after all - you have already paid the R&D and you have enough information on how to implement the lower grade mods.
As a third consequence it means that if you only managed a grade 2 upgrade to your 3A pulse laser and you sell this very pulse laser and later on decide you would like a new grade 3 tuned 3A pulse laser, you'd need to buy a vanilla 3A pulse laser, apply your grade 2 blueprint to it, take it to an engineer, and craft a grade 3 blueprint based on your grade 2 mod.
4) A compatible module is a module of the same type, size and grade, ignoring any applied blueprint. So a 3A Pulse Laser blueprint is is compatible to any other 3A pulse laser regardless of its tuning, not to any 2A or 3C pulse laser nor any 3A beam laser. You can't just apply a 3A mod to a lightweight 3C module - these are different constructions and need different blueprints.
This means that in order to have three 3A pulse lasers and one 3A beam laser tuned to grade 5, you need to engineer and apply each grade 1, 2, 3 and 5 blueprint for one 3A pulse laser and apply the grade 5 blueprint to your second and third 3A pulse laser and you need to engineer and apply each a grade 1,2,3,4 and 5 for your only 3A beam laser. Engineer just once, apply as many as you like. No dementia.
5) Blueprints don't add on another. Applying a blueprint is like reverting a module to it's original state (removing any existing mod) and then applying the new mod, still you need the base of a lower grade mod and a module to work on in order to create a better blueprint (see above).
This way you can build your individual module, RNGesus is not involved and no dementia is evident and it's still not trivial to gather all the materials for a grade 5 upgrade to every module, you still need to work your way up for every type of module, but once you have the knowledge you can re- apply it.
I feel this makes much more sense.
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