Engineers Entirely Useless Blueprints

[Misty_Dark]

I do not contest that we have several blueprints that are useless, and the reason for this is as often brought up here, there are no real reason to use them. Take the whole DD och CD blueprints to thrusters. Despite the name and description, CD are not working as what most player would expect them to work. and thus, you think putting CD on you ship that overheats sounds like a good measure and the realize that it did not make any noticeable difference, and that going DD works almost the same, except you are now faster... that is counter intuitive.

This is also tied to looking at what classes for modules.
We have the
E - Who uses these, just the default modules on a ship, at minimum people changes to D
D - Lower weight, so useful in many situations for that reason
C - Yup, who uses these?
B - Almost the same as A, but double integrity, hull tanks tend to likes those...
A - Most heat efficxent modules and also the highest power, speed, jump range etc. The #1 choice if D (or B) is not suitable.

So why even have E and C? Before we had a reason for these as stepping stone until you had the money to buy the wanted class. now money is not any problem for most players and thus this use have become mostly obsolete.


So the issue is the same as with blueprints, make more choices more viable, instead of simply not being used at all.

Play with stats, perhaps gives less used blueprints a buff to other areas. Perhaps combine this with the use of other modules, so that you might get a buff to damage if used with C class powerplant and power distributor. Opening up for more fun and whacky builds. FSD, why are the so very few reasons for players to choose anything that increased range? What if we gave all blueprints increased range of various degrees, but add other effects that are suitable for different tasks. What if you create a hauling mod, that if you have more than 50% of compartments (and more than 50% of potential cargo capacity) as cargo racks, you get a bonus to jump range if laden? Do the same for HRP/MRP on combat ships. etc, etc.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

Clean drives are so silly. The point of them is to keep your ship cold...But you cant even use Clean drives on most ships unless you have a high grade overcharged power plant. And having an overcharged power plant adds to your heat so basically they cancel out...

Huh? I run G5 clean drives on my Python and G1 low emission A plant (with some side-effect RNGing to make plant a small power bonus instead of penalty).
The rest of modules are also rolled to include enough of lower heat & lower power side-effects.
This only way I've stopped excessive overcooking on max DPS with all these incendiaries and railguns.

For railguns the piercing is irrelevant (they already have maximum piercing), and the Thermal Load reduction can be obtained by rolling and rerolling low-grade Long Range. Because Rails have nasty damage falloff, and Long Range gets them around that, it's usually considered better. -50% or better Thermal Load reductions can show up as secondaries on Long-Range, so what I've seen most CMDRs do is just farm up lots of G1 Long Range and do that.

Sorry, but no. Have you considered that you can get *both* thermal load reduction from Sturdy Mount *and* extra low thermal side-effect? This allows massive reduction in heat generation (as much as halving it) - which Long-Range never will be able to achieve. Try it for Imp Hammer and feel the difference.
I generally don't care about being unable to be within 1km when I need to use my railgun max damage. So I've tested both long range and sturdy and found sturdy vastly superior.

P.S. its largely pointless trying to bring attention of FDev which mods are "useless", which are "OP", etc. They already have complete stats of how many people fitted what (remember, server knows everything about your ships and how you use them). They've already tweaked some mods & effects using that information.

 

[Alexander]

To start off with I entirely agree with Gostu that there are some truly horrific and mind-numbingly badly balanced blueprints out there, and that he's got his math right about the stated blueprints.

But to add to his list I'd also include tcertain experimental effects available for certain weapons and a couple more blueprints:

Wide Angle Sensors: Did anyone even bother with wide angle sensors? No, well I did and damn are they just underwhelming. You'd think that with that huge increase to powerdraw (20 % more at G1 and 100 % more at G5) and loss of sensor range you'd get some amazing effect. Say something like the ability to target lock seeker missiles and torpedoes at a wide angle? Nooo!, what you get is the ability to target and scan the modules of targeted ships behind. Something that can literally be done with no significant effort normally if you just boost and turn your ship. Even the use of it in SC is awful as to make use of that shorter time to aquire the module/ship info you'd still have to face or be behind them to interdict the ship.

Sturdy Blueprint:
Here I entirely disagree with Cmdr. Numa and RidingTheFlow. If you want to get a thermal reduction for your rail guns then go long range and roll for thermal reduction as a secondary. 40 % reduction is possible with even a G1 long range blueprint!!!

The mass for integrity ratio is fine IMO, but what truly bothers me about the sturdy blueprint is that it fails entirely at opening up the use of small-sized weaponry with a naturally low piercing value (Think class 1 pulses with 20 armor piercing or cytoscramblers with 1 armor piercing as compared to class 1 rail guns with 100 armor piercing). Instead of being a percentage-based increase to the weapon's armour piercing it should instead increase it is a flat value. Something like +4 armor piercing for each grade up to +20 armor piercing at G5.

With this change you'd make the sturdy blueprint fill the role of "up-sizing" small thermal weaponry to perform like or better than a non-modded medium thermal weapon with less thermal load.

high charge capacity is useful for exploration builds where you're trying to keep weight down. It means I can get my 5D dirty drives to boost on a 4D distributor - yes, only once, but if I'm dropping a bit too fast on a high G planet, that will probably be the difference between pulling out, and a re-buy screen and a free 49k LY trip back to the bubble.

It's not all about combat - though I do agree with a lot of your views here. I'm convinced a lot of the "useless" mods are there for easy rep advancement with an engineer, as they usually use mats that are easier to find.

Z...

Here you're coming up short with the use of the High Charge blueprint for your distributor. Not only does it require rare data like cracked industrial firmware to get the respectable G5 High Charge Capacity, but you could get 10 % more engine charge capacity and 20 % engine recharge rate with a G3 Engine focused blueprint instead. Even without experimental effects then the G3 mod of the engine focus is just straight up better value for less materials. It is something I would recommend for lightweight exploration builds with downsized power distributors who'd like to boost at all and more often.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

Sturdy Blueprint:
Here I entirely disagree with Cmdr. Numa and RidingTheFlow. If you want to get a thermal reduction for your rail guns then go long range and roll for thermal reduction as a secondary. 40 % reduction is possible with even a G1 long range blueprint!!!

Oh, great, 40% reduction, whoa.
I will get that, *plus* 30% from Sturdy. That'd be 70% reduction, tvm.

 

[GoStu]

Oh, great, 40% reduction, whoa.
I will get that, *plus* 30% from Sturdy. That'd be 70% reduction, tvm.

As much as -50% Thermal Load is available as a secondary on any blueprint. While it's true that this could show up on a G5 Sturdy to add it to the maximum-possible -30%, it's a hell of a lot easier to find materials to roll and reroll the G1 mod over and over looking for a good secondary, than it is to find tons of technetium and molybdenum to try your luck on the G5 sturdy secondary-hunting.

I think you're really undervaluing how good the elimination of damage fall-off is for Railguns as well. Their damage falloff is brutal; at 1500m you're losing about a third, by 2000m you're only dealing half damage, and beyond that the railgun barely does a thing. This is aside from the fact that as a fixed-only hitscan you actually have an advantage when engaging at longer range (if you have longrange weapons) as targets can't move as much relative to you. Sitting comfortably at >3k landing full damage railgun shots is very, very strong.

You also mentioned Imperial Hammers - that railgun variant is actually kind of a dubious sidegrade to a standard railgun. Not only is their thermal load a bit over 50% more than the standard class 2, their distributor draw is around 20% higher and the damage increase is only about 9% over standard when the whole burst lands.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

As much as -50% Thermal Load is available as a secondary on any blueprint. While it's true that this could show up on a G5 Sturdy to add it to the maximum-possible -30%, it's a hell of a lot easier to find materials to roll and reroll the G1 mod over and over looking for a good secondary, than it is to find tons of technetium and molybdenum to try your luck on the G5 sturdy secondary-hunting.

I think you're really undervaluing how good the elimination of damage fall-off is for Railguns as well. Their damage falloff is brutal; at 1500m you're losing about a third, by 2000m you're only dealing half damage, and beyond that the railgun barely does a thing. This is aside from the fact that as a fixed-only hitscan you actually have an advantage when engaging at longer range (if you have longrange weapons) as targets can't move as much relative to you. Sitting comfortably at >3k landing full damage railgun shots is very, very strong.

You also mentioned Imperial Hammers - that railgun variant is actually kind of a dubious sidegrade to a standard railgun. Not only is their thermal load a bit over 50% more than the standard class 2, their distributor draw is around 20% higher and the damage increase is only about 9% over standard when the whole burst lands.

Interesting theoretical analysis. However, as I've mentioned, I've actually *tried* both Long Range and Sturdy and found that
a) I didn't have much difficulty combining secondary with primary sturdy reduction to produce excellent thermal results
b) Long range didn't allow the same amount of sustained fire as sturdy without overheating
c) I didn't find hitting target at >3k easier than at 750m, the whole notion of this is ridiculous. Yes, it does "appear" to move "less" on screen - but that because its far! It does not make it moving slower relatively to your "hit ray" at such large distance - you can barely see it at 3k, not to mention hitting it all the time. The only what easier is avoiding agile ships circling you - but its only an issue if you don't know how to use FA off turns (and/or have sluggish ship yourself)

Therefore these blueprints are not useless, a lot of people (like me) use them, and posting they useless are pointless - because FDev can see exact stats of that many people, in fact, use them and will keep them as they is.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Interesting theoretical analysis. However, as I've mentioned, I've actually *tried* both Long Range and Sturdy and found that
a) I didn't have much difficulty combining secondary with primary sturdy reduction to produce excellent thermal results
b) Long range didn't allow the same amount of sustained fire as sturdy without overheating
c) I didn't find hitting target at >3k easier than at 750m, the whole notion of this is ridiculous. Yes, it does "appear" to move "less" on screen - but that because its far! It does not make it moving slower relatively to your "hit ray" at such large distance - you can barely see it at 3k, not to mention hitting it all the time. The only what easier is avoiding agile ships circling you - but its only an issue if you don't know how to use FA off turns (and/or have sluggish ship yourself)

Therefore these blueprints are not useless, a lot of people (like me) use them, and posting they useless are pointless - because FDev can see exact stats of that many people, in fact, use them and will keep them as they is.

Where would you pull the info from how many people use certain blueprints?

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

Where would you pull the info from how many people use certain blueprints?

FD must have this, otherwise they couldn't have punished the players who were using the G5 exploit.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

Yes Lizard is right, sorry I wasn't clear.

All engineering happens server-side, and FDev actually mentioned before that they collect lot of stats across the playerbase who uses what how often, etc.

They also tweaked plenty of effects during past year to reduce the "OP" blueprints which everyone was using and make usage distribution more even. If they see something truly under-used they will either tweak it or remove.

 

[Ca$hback]

I find the higher end "Faster FSD Boot Sequence" is a great mod when your secondary allows you to consume more fuel per trip. Perfect for smugglers, assassins and other combat builds mostly as its unexpected.

I use G1 and 2 clean drives to get more maneuverability from the secondary effects. By G3 the penalties override any benefit to maneuverability. At that point DD is the way to go. I definitely agree that clean drive needs its heat and power consumption looked at and tweaked.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

nice discussion

can someone tell me with 100% proof that clean drive does not reduce how much capacitor it draines per boost?
i mean, the biggest advantage of that mod is that you generate less heat while boosting... so it would be nice if a secondary effect would be that i CAN boost more often.
just out of interest.


and since i have learned that just recently:
Up there somewhere someone started to argue that sturdy increases the damage of smaller weapons, comparable to other mods, and then only compared it to overcharged
i would want to point at "focused" lasers that have longer range + higher pierce, effectively dealing more damage after 500m

 

[baqar79]

nice discussion

can someone tell me with 100% proof that clean drive does not reduce how much capacitor it draines per boost?
i mean, the biggest advantage of that mod is that you generate less heat while boosting... so it would be nice if a secondary effect would be that i CAN boost more often.
just out of interest.

MJ required for boost is actually tied to the ship itself and is independent of the thruster size/power distributor. So whether you put on a bigger or smaller engine, you don't get any addititional/less boosting from it.

In my case both my Python and AspX use 5D thrusters, yet I require a 6D Power Distributor in order to boost in the Python, but only a 3D Power Distributor to boost in the AspX (edited, since I posted 4D, which is what I use, but only a 3D is actually required).

Pretty old now, but this is where I think it started but it is now built into the coriolis ship builder:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-Coriolis-io?p=2551483&viewfull=1#post2551483

 

[GoStu]

nice discussion

can someone tell me with 100% proof that clean drive does not reduce how much capacitor it draines per boost?
i mean, the biggest advantage of that mod is that you generate less heat while boosting... so it would be nice if a secondary effect would be that i CAN boost more often.
just out of interest.

Clean does not affect the capacitor draw of a boost, nor does Dirty. As far as I can tell that's simply baked-in for ship/thrusters and not affected by any blueprint.

It's a neat suggestion, but I'd personally prefer an improved Optimal Mass alongside a couple tweaks to power draw and a small performance bump. That would make Clean have a clearly defined role as the blueprint for an Enhanced-Performance Thruster ship, aka a lot of small ultralight combat builds. I think they'd become more relevant in the overall combat meta if they got to run still very fast, but also quite cold.

and since i have learned that just recently:
Up there somewhere someone started to argue that sturdy increases the damage of smaller weapons, comparable to other mods, and then only compared it to overcharged
i would want to point at "focused" lasers that have longer range + higher pierce, effectively dealing more damage after 500m

I ran that math for Sturdy vs. Overcharged because it was quite easy. The numbers vs something like Long-Range or Focused vs Overcharged/Rapid Fire are a lot harder because it depends on engagement range; a number that rapidly changes over the course of a fight, and which probably won't be the same twice. There are a lot of pilots that like to claim that they don't have trouble staying within 500m all the time, but I call . Even my most maneuverable ships usually vary between 0m to 1500m throughout a fight.

However, you're right that Focused offers significantly better performance boosts over Sturdy. The piercing bonus is better and getting around some of the damage fall-off can also be a tremendous boost to DPS. Focused coming with a slight Rate of Fire penalty though makes it tough to analyze relative to some other blueprints. Also, it still has fall-off, just over a longer distance. This is in contrast to Long Range, which does not fall off at all. If you have a Focused Weapon with a range of 6km firing at a range of 3km, it'll compare very favourably with any blueprint that's not modified for range, but still falls off relative to Longrange.

Anyway, the short version: anyone picking Sturdy for the piercing bonus on an energy weapon might as well take Focused instead for better results. If they're picking Sturdy for the piercing on a kinetic weapon, they're less likely to be getting a significant bonus (kinetics pierce better, to the extent the a Large cannon never needs any piercing bonus on any target) and they're missing out on something amazing like Overcharged. Sturdy Mount comes off as pointless in either case.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

MJ required for boost is actually tied to the ship itself and is independent of the thruster size/power distributor. So whether you put on a bigger or smaller engine, you don't get any addititional/less boosting from it.

that doesn't mean that there can't be such an effect

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

Clean does not affect the capacitor draw of a boost, nor does Dirty. As far as I can tell that's simply baked-in for ship/thrusters and not affected by any blueprint.

It's a neat suggestion, but I'd personally prefer an improved Optimal Mass alongside a couple tweaks to power draw and a small performance bump. That would make Clean have a clearly defined role as the blueprint for an Enhanced-Performance Thruster ship, aka a lot of small ultralight combat builds. I think they'd become more relevant in the overall combat meta if they got to run still very fast, but also quite cold.




I ran that math for Sturdy vs. Overcharged because it was quite easy. The numbers vs something like Long-Range or Focused vs Overcharged/Rapid Fire are a lot harder because it depends on engagement range; a number that rapidly changes over the course of a fight, and which probably won't be the same twice. There are a lot of pilots that like to claim that they don't have trouble staying within 500m all the time, but I call . Even my most maneuverable ships usually vary between 0m to 1500m throughout a fight.

However, you're right that Focused offers significantly better performance boosts over Sturdy. The piercing bonus is better and getting around some of the damage fall-off can also be a tremendous boost to DPS. Focused coming with a slight Rate of Fire penalty though makes it tough to analyze relative to some other blueprints. Also, it still has fall-off, just over a longer distance. This is in contrast to Long Range, which does not fall off at all. If you have a Focused Weapon with a range of 6km firing at a range of 3km, it'll compare very favourably with any blueprint that's not modified for range, but still falls off relative to Longrange.

Anyway, the short version: anyone picking Sturdy for the piercing bonus on an energy weapon might as well take Focused instead for better results. If they're picking Sturdy for the piercing on a kinetic weapon, they're less likely to be getting a significant bonus (kinetics pierce better, to the extent the a Large cannon never needs any piercing bonus on any target) and they're missing out on something amazing like Overcharged. Sturdy Mount comes off as pointless in either case.

thanks for the clearer answer

 

[Goose4291]

You can run out of PD ammo? You would have to sit with glitched missiles around for about an hour to let your PD spend that much.

I did it once a LONG time ago.

I spent way to long in a CZ

 

[CMDR Cylixx]

Awesome work GoStu.

Was really hoping to see a dev chime in here, as these have all been issues for a very long time. People have enough complaints about engineers being awful, without many of the modules being completely redundant anyway.

Although my faith that anything logical will be applied here is very poor; its been this way for so very long. I highly doubt Fdev give a rats.

 

[GoStu]

I did it once a LONG time ago.

I spent way to long in a CZ

If it was that long ago, it might have been when PDTs had magazines of 50 shots instead of 12; it takes even longer to run out now!

I actually don't think point defence turrets are very good though, particularly when engineering is taken into account, but that's outside the scope of this thread.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

If it was that long ago, it might have been when PDTs had magazines of 50 shots instead of 12; it takes even longer to run out now!

I actually don't think point defence turrets are very good though, particularly when engineering is taken into account, but that's outside the scope of this thread.

nothing else fights of a hatch breaker limpet of a very anoying npc pirate that is after your bait cargo...

 

[Nova Hett]

The only use for Lightweight Hull Reinforcement is ona Calss one module. Otherwise, Heavy Duty on a lower class will spit on a Lightweight on the higher class.