Farseer, meta-alloys and new players

Infobop

Infobop
Hi!
There seems to be no in-game way to know where one can get meta-alloys. Farseer, one of the first engineers, requires some pretty early in the game. I know about Merope but newbs don't.

Other engineers give you some tips on where to aquire their required goods, perhaps something similar for Farseer and meta-alloys?
 
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Dean Demon

Dean Demon
Can't believe so many gamers just can't learn to play a game without having every little thing given to them, oh well pre internet days were just golden but these things do make me chuckle no end.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Vardaugas said:
Commodity description mentions large barnacles, which can be found following a codex entry. It's not on the nose, but the information can be found.
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Yes. There's a few other starting points in the Codex / Knowledge Base to find them, too.



It is, in fairness, still a surprisingly difficult unlock for a first-tier engineer: compare with The Dweller, who just wants a little money, or Tod McQuinn, who wants a couple of bounties you can pick up in that system. It's arguably more involved than most of the second-tier unlocks as well.

On the other hand, Farseer is mostly optional to unlock - her main G5 FSD blueprint you can get slightly more easily from Martuuk, and none of the engineers she unlocks provide anything particularly interesting that you can't get elsewhere. Early access to G3 drives is the main benefit.


Putting the word "Thargoid" before "meta-alloys" in the description would probably be enough of a hint as to which bit of the knowledge base to start looking in. It's not like it's a secret any more ...
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Yeah, starter engineers requiring meta-alloys and sensor fragments is a bit evil, though fdev are working on the starter experience. They seem to have reworked the engineer help since last time I looked (though it's still not integrated into the pilot handbook)
 

Helleborus

H
Dean Demon said:
Can't believe so many gamers just can't learn to play a game without having every little thing given to them, oh well pre internet days were just golden but these things do make me chuckle no end.
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Take off your rose-tinted glasses. Pre-internet we had entire sections of gaming magazines dedicated to these sorts of questions. Also, most games were either considerably less complex or came with actual, book-sized physical manuals which contained most of the relevant information. This is something Elite has only recently started to implement in the game itself. It's been 20 years since the days "before internet" as well.

Like it or not, ED does not have a good track record of providing player with any information. To prove a point: Aquire 5 Pharmaceutical Isolators using only in-game knowledge. Then, unlock Guardian FSD booster using only information available within the game.
 

Dean Demon

Dean Demon
Games are only as complex as the sytems that it was designed or written for, that was true for a game written in 1984 or 2019 and besides a game like ED or even ELITE you were given the tools to play the game then it was up to you how decide how to play it. Sorry but you want everything handed to you without having any knowledge of the game that you are playing, gaming knowledge and experience counts for almost everything or at least it used to but alas demands etc are all the rage these days and i genuinely have great deal of sympathy for FD or indeed any dev or creator today. CMDR signing off.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Helleborus said:
Like it or not, ED does not have a good track record of providing player with any information. To prove a point: Aquire 5 Pharmaceutical Isolators using only in-game knowledge. Then, unlock Guardian FSD booster using only information available within the game.
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Agreed that ED doesn't have a great record overall - but it has been getting better at it in the last year or so.



Pharma Isolators should be fairly easy to work out in-game nowadays:
- Pilot's Manual has enough information about signal sources to hint that you need to look at High Grade
- the description of the material (e.g. through an engineer blueprint) tells you that you need to look for Outbreak and signal sources
- map can be filtered for Outbreaks
... or
- deduce existence of material trader from map filters
- visit trader (manufactured are relatively easily to stumble across, so by the time you actually need PIs you should have found some)
- for only 5 PIs, cross-trading something else is viable



Guardian FSD Booster is still tough, but obviously the people who figured it out the first time did it with only in-game information, and less than is currently available:
- discover existence of module from Guardian Tech Broker
- note connection of Ram Tah to Guardian research (Codex or Galnet)
- visit Ram Tah, get missions to investigate Guardian sites
- use Codex to get some site locations, and then map filter for Guardian to find some more
Then there's quite a lot of trial and error needed at the sites to figure out how they work - but still, much easier than it used to be. And "trying things in game and seeing if they work" is absolutely in-game available information.



I think the key is that there are a lot of grey areas:
1 - this information is not available in-game
2 - this information is available in-game, but in practice you can't reasonably determine how to find that information
3 - this information is available in-game, and there's a reasonable way to find that out based on following clues, or investigating things you can find
4 - this information is easily available in-game if you look for it
5 - this information is prominently shoved at you even if you don't look for it.

Something like the Farseer meta-alloy requirement started out as '2' and has probably moved to '3' by now - but as a starter engineer requirement should probably be closer to '4'. Conversely, something like Bill Turner's Bromellite requirement is at '3' and as an advanced engineer can safely stay there.

Very little is actually at '1' - but anything at '2' might as well be, and so that level should be saved for things which are intended to actually be mysteries or collaboratively solved. So it was fine for the Guardian FSD Booster to start out at '2' when it was first introduced ... it's drifting towards '3' now but isn't there yet.

The problem is that some people complain information isn't "in game" when they mean it isn't at '5' - I've seen "not in game" complaints about '4's. Some people want to be able to outsource thinking about stuff - which is fine, but probably not the direction the game is really going.
 

Helleborus

H
Dean Demon said:
Games are only as complex as the sytems that it was designed or written for, that was true for a game written in 1984 or 2019 and besides a game like ED or even ELITE you were given the tools to play the game then it was up to you how decide how to play it. Sorry but you want everything handed to you without having any knowledge of the game that you are playing, gaming knowledge and experience counts for almost everything or at least it used to but alas demands etc are all the rage these days and i genuinely have great deal of sympathy for FD or indeed any dev or creator today. CMDR signing off.
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Yeah but this means nothing. You say that people want to have stuff handed to them, while several parts of the ED are notoriously opaque - I brought up the Guardian FSD Booster for a reason, since while it's possible to acquire using only the data provided in-game, it's actually so difficult that it would be a super-super-super-sidequest in some RPG. This would be normal in a single-player game in some 8bit era, but ED is at heart a multiplayer game, and Guardian FSD booster is considered the only Guardian module that people recommend newbies to even get. It's not a trivial thing.

My personal favourite is a simple thing: there's literally no way of blueprinting and concepting ship builds in the game - you have to use 3rd party tools for it - while something like combat engineering would be an IMMENSE thing in the ED universe we're seeing. Sure you can arrive to a solid engineered combat ship purely by using cold logic and seeing all effects yourself, but what would work in a single-player game does not work in a PvP area where competitiviness is a thing. And so on and so on.

There is a point in TYOOL 2019 where in-game information being difficult to decipher for an average player and easy to figure out in internet becomes a weakness. This is doubly so for activities that are meant to be relatively simple. If you just wish to talk about KIDS THESE DAYS I'M OFF (like just lol as if you were the word of God) I mean sure, go ahead, but be honest: when was the last time you checked something ED related in internet?

I really liked Ian's nuanced take on the matter, he managed to break it down much better.
 
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