Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering

[CMDR HollowPointPC]

To answer the main questions posed:

Yes, there should be an abundance of G1 - 3 materials (I dare say even G4 tbh) at considerably more opportunities and make them easy to come by. They're supposed to be common, not rare. Blowing up a ship in a CZ should drop considerably more of the 'common' G1 - G4 manufactured mats than it currently does for example, as should dropping into an emissions signal. Whether that's done by dropping more 'items' or making each item worth more materials is probably neither here nor there, although sometimes collecting the materials as they float into space can be a challenge in itself, especially in a CZ or pirate threat signal where you're being shot at.

I feel increasing the availability of materials as mission rewards would go a long way to fixing this grind too, getting 3 MEF for completing a mission that took an hour, is like offering 1 'buy three, get one free' tickets to see the Ghostbusters reboot from a few years ago, at the cinema, because you sat through the Oceans 8 film... give 10 for completing a mission that took an hour, especially if it's a hard one! Maybe offer 3 if your reputation with the faction is poor and 10 - 15 if your reputation is allied, something like that.

Although manufactured mats are by far the most annoying to collect (Because they're so heavily used in engineering and so mind-numbingly repetitive to gather and drop in such small amounts), I would consider dishing out encoded mats more regularly too. I dare say, that scanning a ship (any ship) successfully should dish out encoded mats readily. The whole thing of going to Jamesons crash site and relogging is horrid, but it's less horrid than just sitting outside a station scanning ships repeatedly for a decade to upgrade one module...

As for the idea of engineers dishing out materials, I don't think this makes sense from a realism perspective. Mats are their price for performing the engineering upgrades, so perhaps a slight twist to this, which could be more realistic and more engaging, would be reputation with the engineer (Separate from the current reputation mechanic tied to engineering level), earning you a discount on materials. This reputation could drop over time as well, so although you'll always have the engineer unlocked to tier 5 after doing it once, if you don't perform missions for the engineer (or sell explo data to them, or take part in engineer related CG's or something), then your 'discount rep' drops continually to neutral over time. This then encourages you to bring them a few thousand in Exploration data, or specific commodities (like they ask for to unlock them, for example) when you visit to get yourself the material discount. Not only does this create gameplay and open avenues for new content if/when FDev choose to introduce a new Engineer CG/Mission/Task but it also increases the realism factor. If I were headed to Lei Cheung for a new Reinforced Shield upgrade in real life, I'd probably expect to take him some Gold in exchange for not having to bring him any 'improvised components' (You know they basically don't exist, unless you trade other G5 mats that were hard to get for them, right?), or if I was heading to Liz Ryder for an overcharged power plant upgrade, I'd probably expect to take her a box of 10 Kamitra Cigars so that I don't need to bring her Selenium (one of the hardest things to actually pick up in the galaxy) or Chemical Manipulators (Not actually hard to pick up or trade for), but still, a discount is a discount. You could also introduce an element of negotiation to this, where you bring Liz 20 cigars and ask her to give you the G3 engineering for free, no mats, or bring her 50 like you did to unlock her and you persuade her to do the G5 tier for free, etc.

 

[James Holden]

I really like the idea of Engineer missions with generous material rewards.

HOWEVER!

Ideally, these missions should allow CMDRs to choose between three different material rewards upon completion rather than the typical mats/money/influence choices.

The most frustrating and unfun part about material gathering is the randomness. Any change giving players more control over material rewards is an unequivocally good thing.

 

[Cmdr a1f4k7]

It's fine the way it is. Get back to making ED stable enough on pc.

 

[DemiserofD]

Greetings Commanders

Now that Update 8 for Odyssey is live, we'd like to reignite the series of balancing changes that started before Odyssey's release. Now, it's time to turn our attention to ship Engineering. We recognise there has been significant feedback for on-foot Engineering too, but we'd like to approach these one at a time due to the number of aspects involved. Specifically, we'd like to look at the balancing of the Engineering grind, which largely relates to...

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased?

Similarly, Grade 5 materials can be traded down into 3 Grade 4 materials within the same category. However, Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials take similar amounts of time to gather. Should the number of materials picked up per instance be increased to account for this?

We're also aware that some materials are much harder to find than others as they are tied to rarer BGS states. Let us know which materials ought to be made more readily discoverable.

Any estimates regarding how long it took to earn a given Engineered module by gathering materials will also be helpful in addressing this aspect of balancing.

Alternate Gathering Methods​

We appreciate that the repetitive nature of material gathering may not be for everyone. Some have called for ways to earn materials while engaging in the specific types of content they already enjoy.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Some time ago, Engineering was changed so that some improvement was guaranteed with each roll. However, the amount by which your progress towards the next module grade is still random. This means sometimes the same number of materials will produce a minimal increase. Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed.

Other Feedback and Suggestions​

Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above. To keep the conversation on-topic and help us collect the feedback, this thread will be closely moderated. Please only reply with responses to the topics mentioned and keep feedback constructive. Unrelated or unhelpful posts may be removed during clean-up. If you find this has happened to your post, consider raising your points in another thread within the Dangerous Discussion section.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

O7

My only suggestion relates to random Planet Surface Sites(not the ones with sensor locations - the random spawns you see on your scanner); they could be amped up fairly significantly and still be balanced. SRV travel time is long enough that your rate of collection is always going to be relatively slow, so the rewards from each individual site could be really good and still not be overpowered.

For example, right now, finding a crashed Beacon gives you a data package worth about 5k credits. Why not make that give you a big chunk of various data mats? They're quite rare, and it would be really cool to find rare treasure troves on the surface.

Increasing the number of manufactured engineering mats around crashes would be really nice, too.

---

As far as Engineering effects themselves are concerned, there are a lot of effects that are mostly useless, and could stand to be significantly buffed. This isn't a comprehensive list, but it does cover some of the stuff that's currently underperforming. After that I'll give my ideas, but just noting which ones need help and doing your own thing would be cool too.

Multi-Servos(experimental)
Sturdy
Rapid Fire
Double Braced(experimental)
Smart Rounds(experimental)
Lightweight Armor
Reinforced Drives
Drive Distributors(experimental)
Shielded FSD
High Charge Capacity Power Distributor
Cluster Capacitors(Experimental)
Wide Angle Sensors.

Multi Servos: Currently strictly inferior to Oversized in every scenario. Given it also increases Distro Drain and Ammo Consumption, it should probably be the better, but more costly version of Oversized. Maybe a 7.5% ROF bonus, instead of where it is presently?

Sturdy: Sturdy would be okay if Efficient and Overcharged and High Capacity didn't exist. With them around, you're essentially trading 70% damage or 50% efficiency or 100% ammo for Armor Piercing and Integrity, which unfortunately just aren't as good. In addition to this, the existence of Corrosive Shell largely renders its main benefit irrelevant. What if it slightly reduced fire rate and increased damage slightly more? This would be in line with being 'sturdy', would give better ammo efficiency and DPE, without overlapping too much with other bonuses.

Rapid Fire: This is a really FUN effect, but is unfortunately neutered by the fact it makes you run out of ammo too fast, and the jitter makes it basically inferior to Overcharged or Efficient. It would be nice if it slightly extended the damage falloff distance(by perhaps 50%) to make it more effective at more medium ranges, as compared to Short Range engineering. With the combo of jitter and increased falloff distance, it would become more effective than effects like Overcharged at medium range, still be worse than Short Range at...short range...but be inferior at longer ranges(1500+).

Double Braced: It's just nowhere near strong enough. Bump it up to maybe 50% and it'll be maybe worth considering sometimes.

Smart Rounds: I just have never seen anyone actually use this effect. Maybe give it a secondary effect, like increased breach damage or breach chance? The smart round auto-targeting the subsystems or detonating while inside them or something.

Lightweight Armor: This effect is almost always worse than just taking the lighter armor with Heavy Duty. This goes for both armor and hull reinforcements. The weight reduction needs to be much stronger.

Reinforced Drives: Not a bad idea, the trouble is, the less maneuverable ship dies. Would it be possible to make it so this engineering effect still turns as fast as Dirty Drives, but just doesn't go as fast? At least then it could be useful for slower ships.

Drive Distributors: Same basic problem. in 98% of cases, Drag Drives is both faster AND more maneuverable.

Shielded FSD: The trouble is, it's not worth the inconvenience of jumping half as far just to avoid having your FSD taken out every once in a while. Not sure what the answer is here.

High Charge Capacity Power Distributor: No fight takes place in a short enough time window for a mere 42% bonus to make any difference. At the very least, remove the regen malus. Honestly, you could also probably buff the capacity bonus up to 100%+ and it still wouldn't be overpowered.

Cluster Capacitors: Same thing. For example, I set up a Challenger with four Plasma Accelerators, draining its Charge Enhanced capacitor in 31 seconds. The Super Conduits experimental increased that drain time to 37 seconds, and also continued to help beyond that. The Cluster Capacitors experimental reduced the drain time, to 30 seconds. For the two to be equal, Cluster Capacitors would need to increase the capacity by about 20%, but that neglects the fact that it would become useless once the capacitor is drained, while Super Conduits continues to be useful after that point.

---

Lastly, there are a few effects I think are simply unacceptably overpowered. I don't expect many players to agree with these, because their level of overpoweredness is quite tempting, but they're on the same level as LTDs were, so they really do deserve to be nerfed.

Corrosive Shell.

Here's a quick example. Say I've got an Asp Explorer, outfitted with 6 overcharged multicannons. Against a Type 10, I'll be doing about 43.376 DPS.

Now, I put Corrosive Shell on ONE of those weapons. Instantly, my DPS jumps up from 43.376 to 91.42; a 110% DPS Increase!

From one experimental effect!

Now, I get that the intention was to allow smaller ships to meaningfully attack larger ones, but not only does this experimental effect massively devalue weapons and experimental effects designed for that purpose(like Sturdy or Cannons), it also renders the entire concept of Armor Hardness almost irrelevant.

At the bare minimum, it needs to have its blanket 25% damage bonus removed.

I'd also like to see its effect changed from a flat +20 armor piercing, to capping out at a nice middle ground, like 45. Small weapons would get the largest bonus, while medium weapons would get less help, and large weapons would get no help at all.

Screening Shell

Screening Shell is the second most overpowered experimental effect in the game. The primary limiting factor of Frag Cannons is their reload time; Screening shell inexplicably halves this time. For example, on a C2 frag cannon with Overcharged, it increases the sustained DPS of the weapon by 86%!

Compare this to Oversized, with a mere 5% bonus. And with the added effect of almost completely blocking incoming missiles.

The reload bonus should be removed; the bonus damage against missiles is more than enough.

 

[CMDR Veldren]

Thank you for the post and the chance to offer some feedback!

* Availability and Time Required

Anything you can do to streamline this would be amazing. When I first started Elite many years ago, I had all the time in the world. Now with a family, I don't have super long play sessions though I wish I did. I'd like to be able to engineer things without massive grinds and the rather steep cost for every new thing I try. I have an idea for this in the suggestions section below.

* Alternate Gathering Methods

This seems like a really neat idea. It can be very disheartening to have a cool ship but need to stop in your tracks and go buy an SRV and spend hours driving around shooting random rocks for random materials. And while yes, I can look on the internet for more focused farming methods, I should not need to do that, and frankly that's a turn off for the entire thing anyhow. Engineer missions are brilliant. Using our specialty resources is also very smart.

* Other Feedback and Suggestions

1) Instead of buying individual modifications with materials, allow us to permanently unlock blueprint levels with materials. If I unlock FSD extended range level 5, allow me to use that forever with little more than perhaps a credit cost. With this, the material grind is more of a one-time process for each blueprint. It's a huge obstacle to trying a new ship knowing there's another massive grind to engineer it to be halfway effective. And allow materials to be sold for credits at a material trader once we no longer need them but need more credits.

2) I, personally, do not like how engineering increases a ship's stats and creates an immense gap between dedicated players that have spent hours engineering and players who have not even touched the system. The "power" of a ship should be determined by the grade of its modules, a system that has already been in place. Engineering should be applying the experimental effects. This would allow all players to compete with similar power levels, but freely try new styles for how they engage each other.

 

[Scaletho]

Why did the material gathering sources so abundant in Horizons disappear from Odyssey?? All original sources vanished.
I beg you, bring back those sources or create new ones at least.

 

[Delta_Vee]

Here's a cool idea in terms of combat rewards for engineering that can apply to both on-foot AND space conflict zones:

Spoils of War

When a conflict zone ends (either in-space or on-foot), both sides are dished out 'spoils of war' in the form of a random OR selectable assortment of materials (think a sort of 'Pick 3 of the 5 or 6 options as a reward!' style pop-up at the end of combat).

A winning side might get a large sum of low-mid tier resources and some high tier (G4 and G5) resources sprinkled in to pick from whereas a loss might only reward low-tier resources, this could include both data and material resources for engineering as well as the cash payout and also allow players to pick and choose from an assortment of items.

 

[Blevinspace]

Greetings Commanders

Now that Update 8 for Odyssey is live, we'd like to reignite the series of balancing changes that started before Odyssey's release. Now, it's time to turn our attention to ship Engineering. We recognise there has been significant feedback for on-foot Engineering too, but we'd like to approach these one at a time due to the number of aspects involved. Specifically, we'd like to look at the balancing of the Engineering grind, which largely relates to...

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased?

Similarly, Grade 5 materials can be traded down into 3 Grade 4 materials within the same category. However, Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials take similar amounts of time to gather. Should the number of materials picked up per instance be increased to account for this?

We're also aware that some materials are much harder to find than others as they are tied to rarer BGS states. Let us know which materials ought to be made more readily discoverable.

Any estimates regarding how long it took to earn a given Engineered module by gathering materials will also be helpful in addressing this aspect of balancing.

Alternate Gathering Methods​

We appreciate that the repetitive nature of material gathering may not be for everyone. Some have called for ways to earn materials while engaging in the specific types of content they already enjoy.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Some time ago, Engineering was changed so that some improvement was guaranteed with each roll. However, the amount by which your progress towards the next module grade is still random. This means sometimes the same number of materials will produce a minimal increase. Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed.

Other Feedback and Suggestions​

Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above. To keep the conversation on-topic and help us collect the feedback, this thread will be closely moderated. Please only reply with responses to the topics mentioned and keep feedback constructive. Unrelated or unhelpful posts may be removed during clean-up. If you find this has happened to your post, consider raising your points in another thread within the Dangerous Discussion section.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

O7

It would be very excellent to buff the amount of materials received from any of the material sources ingame be it HGE, LGE, any area where players have to seek out materials is very grindy if we are scanning at Jamison crash site or gathering Arsenic. I have over 1500 hours on my ps4 commander and getting all of my favorite ships to grade 5 to be able to accomplish successful PVP, PVE, or Thargoid battles is no small feat as any commander will attest to. A fun gameplay loop for any material or data is going to be a welcome addition to this game we all love so I will be more then happy to offer some suggestions in this area exclusively.
1.) Scan data is by far the easiest to get by scanning ship traffic or at Jamison crash site. But it will be nice to see a better trade rate at the scan data traders and honestly every station in the bubble should have material traders, and data traders for a nice QOL improvement.
2.) Raw materials should be a commodity in every marketplace available to buy sale and trade as well as being able to gather it on planets and mining. It should also be added to fleet carrier markets as a buyable tradable commodity.
3.) Manufactured materials should be more easily accessible also through the commodity market on all stations and fleet carriers as the grind to acquire them to advance any ship to grade 5 is honestly so game breaking it's nice to see Frontier Dev asking for community feedback on this issue.
It is my strong belief that so many more players would play the game to battle thargoids, engage in pvp, pve battles and community goals if they didn't have to grind quite literally 100s 1000s of hours to aquire endgame tools. I know this as factual because I have whitnessed it on several occasions trying to help new players and friends advance through the game and most just give up when they realize the scope of the grind to earn a Anaconda. then to get it to grade 5 is no small feat in this game.
thanks for your consideration in these matters
Regards: Rob Blevins

 

[Blevinspace]

Most defiantly. I can spend as much time grinding G1 mats as G5 mats and the G5 has a much better rate of return over time. Given limited play time (2-5hr/week), the whole aspect of engineering just prevents me from actually playing and exploring in order to just grind unlocks. But then I end up just sitting to do the grind because as events unfold I need access to engineering mats for the parts and pieces needed to keep playing.
All this just means that those with limited play time either give up or get stuck in an endless grind. I.E. Spend all my play time for 2-8 weeks just to unlock the mats needed to make an AX combat ship. Then new AX comes out, events are over, or something else changed and now I'm grinding all over again...


Again, YES!


I like this idea for those that want story/directed farming methods. But returns of mats should probably be in the 10-15 for G1 and reduce by a few for every higher grade down to 1-3 for G5. Combined with some small CR and REP/INF rewards that seems reasonable. Spending 20-60 mins on one mission for 1-5 G1-3 mats means that I'm headed back to the min/max grind that ruins the whole process.

Alternatively, you have this follow-on mission function that seems to rarely be used. Having a series of small missions that make up a mini story at random or just simply build on each other, but that unlocks a higher rate of return (more mats per reward for higher risk/more time) would be amazing. Mission 1 in the series offers 2 G5 mats, mission 5 offers 10 G5 mats but is extreme risk. Die or fail and start the sequence over. Doing a whole series would net quite a few mats along the way at a growing rate of risk.



Yes to the "Rare Item" trader above. It doesn't make sense that Carbon eng mats can't be bought or traded in a space trading economy game.

But also... Junk Yards! Lore says yes. Add visitable junk yards where we can go "mine" junk. Add a plasma cutter like the mining laser or EVA for Odyssey where we can go purge sealed containers for mats and cut apart junk ships for ship style mats. This expands the play loops and would be very cool visually!


This should have been done as part of the balancing. No reason to roll (at least that big of a spread) for something like this when the rate of return on the improvement is fixed. Maybe a small modifier or just go to a fixed amount.

O7 Commanders!

love these ideas

 

[OdyZeusX]

My thoughts, though it seems everyone already covered the most important aspects:

-Rolls should fixed and require less mats than they do today. Maybe something like 1-1-2-3-4. That would be perfect.

-We should be able to "buy" materials, what you suggested would be amazing. This could be tied to the current mat traders. Being able to "buy" mats with bounty vouchers and exploration data would be an amazing idea. For example 50000 worth of exploration data for 5 grade 5 mats of our choice, this would be heaven.

-The entire salvage system from signals needs a complete revamp, currently it's almost impossible to get some 5 grade mats. Currently we can get just get up to 15 per HGE at most, being able to get 30 or 40 would be ideal to prevent relogging. Also all materials need to get a higher spawn rate.

-Allow us to get high grade materials from low level targets, even 1 or 2 pharmaceutical isolators or something from a fallen Eagle would boost our mat collection immensely.

-Increase the choices of materials earned from missions. Increase the amount and variety depending on the mission level.

-Allow us to recycle engineered modules, and get something like 75% of the mats it required.

-Implement a new mechanic to allow us to downgrade or upgrade the grade of an Engineered module using credits and some additional mats. For example: I have a 5A power plant and I need a 4A with the same effects, so I pay x amount of credits and mats to an engineer to do it.

-Please allow us to pin experimental effects.

I think that's all for now, some of these things would immensely reduce the ship engineering grind.

 

[TheRoninX]

This might not be feasible but maybe for planet mats implement a way to mine the matts. Maybe mining drones or something that can harvest over time. Other matts like data there could be a system of setting up some sort of hacking satellite that could perform a function like the miner.

 

[Calteru]

(Answers in parentheses.)

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased? (That, or lower the number needed overall.)

Similarly, Grade 5 materials can be traded down into 3 Grade 4 materials within the same category. However, Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials take similar amounts of time to gather. Should the number of materials picked up per instance be increased to account for this? (Again, that or lower costs. Increasing drop rates can increase material bloat.)

We're also aware that some materials are much harder to find than others as they are tied to rarer BGS states. Let us know which materials ought to be made more readily discoverable. (It seems I'm shortest on data that requires a wake scanner to obtain.)

Any estimates regarding how long it took to earn a given Engineered module by gathering materials will also be helpful in addressing this aspect of balancing. (I don't know if I'm really a good model for that. I'm not so much focused on the time it takes to do something as to how much of a pain in the tail it is.)

Alternate Gathering Methods​

We appreciate that the repetitive nature of material gathering may not be for everyone. Some have called for ways to earn materials while engaging in the specific types of content they already enjoy.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually. (I love it. Go for it.)

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines. (You COULD, but historically FDev has been loathe to do much with regard to an actual player economy and I'm not sure if that's from inexperience or what. Personally, I'm in favor of anything that creates opportunity for player-to-player trade and this would do that, but is FDev ready for that?)

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Some time ago, Engineering was changed so that some improvement was guaranteed with each roll. However, the amount by which your progress towards the next module grade is still random. This means sometimes the same number of materials will produce a minimal increase. Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed. (Please remove the RNG factor entirely and set improvements to fixed-rate costs. X amount of materials = tier complete. RNG as a game mechanic lends itself best to a grind system and if a grind system is to be avoided, RNG simply has to go.)

Other Feedback and Suggestions​

Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above. To keep the conversation on-topic and help us collect the feedback, this thread will be closely moderated. Please only reply with responses to the topics mentioned and keep feedback constructive. Unrelated or unhelpful posts may be removed during clean-up. If you find this has happened to your post, consider raising your points in another thread within the Dangerous Discussion section.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

O7

(Please let me earn a dance emote and/or have a chance to get some background lore from the engineers in the process of doing things for them.)

 

[CMDR knight-owl]

Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed.

I'm excited about this idea. Too many times, I've made my way to an engineer, just sure that I had what I needed. I'm happily upgrading along and then, oh no! Did something change? All my hard work to show up with exactly what I needed didn't pan out. So, what can I do but repeat the whole process again...

Now I don't mind playing the long game and upgrading casually whenever I happen to have the right stuff. I'm not one to load everything to the max all at once. But what I do want to do sometimes is go do something in particular, a mission of my own or with a group. It's no fun when I have to say "but hold on friends, i'm not done grinding out the upgrades that will help me to do/enjoy this."

p.s. I think engineer-specific missions would be a great opportunity to add to the story of the game. I like that idea too.

 

[Technomancer55]

What if as opposed to random rolls for engineering the rolls improved a static percent each time. These rolls can also decrease the higher the grade, say 4 rolls to improve a G1 3 in the middle, and 2 rolls to improve a G5.

Being able to purchase materials with combat bonds or exploration data would be interesting.

 

[Orillian Vardel]

Greetings Commanders

Now that Update 8 for Odyssey is live, we'd like to reignite the series of balancing changes that started before Odyssey's release. Now, it's time to turn our attention to ship Engineering. We recognise there has been significant feedback for on-foot Engineering too, but we'd like to approach these one at a time due to the number of aspects involved. Specifically, we'd like to look at the balancing of the Engineering grind, which largely relates to...

Here is the first thing with materials I'd like to talk about. Why are you trying so hard to build different systems to manage the Ship vs On foot gear Materials? A single unified system that can manage both would be so much simpler, easier for the players to understand and use. You would need a single flag in the data to differentiate between a Horizons and Odyssey material. To many systems make the game complicated, but not in a useful or needed way. Do away with the duplication of concerns and unify these types of systems.

I do understand that there is separation here like the fact that Engineers were only put on planets originally because that was a Horizons only space, but the location of stored items doesn't need to be different for all of the types we have. one interface that allows us to filter by type and maybe a couple other things would be more than enough.

Frankly Engineers should switch it up a bit, some of both types on planets or stations. But that's a conversation for another time. Back to the topic at hand!

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased?

Only if we can keep more on hand, in general I have a lot of materials across a broad range of grades. I could see limiting the amount that we can store in our ships/SRV's on our persons, but there are these massive stations and settlements on planets everywhere that only seem to be able to store our ships and modules. What if we allowed each player to pick a home station/settlement where they could offload extra materials? Or even allow us to store materials at many locations like we can our ships.

What I find most surprising though is that in a lot of instances there are specific materials that are near impossible for me to find despite their grade.

For example: And I might be the only guy in the Galaxy that this happens to. I can't find Modified Consumer Firmware (Grade 1) anywhere to save my life. In total I've found about 30 of them. Yup 30 in somewhere like 800ish hours of gameplay since February. I could be out by a couple but it ain't many. I've managed to upgrade a couple laser weapons on a few of my ships and now nothing. Have not seen a single other one in months. On the flip side I see Decoded Emission Data (Grade 5) 'ALL' the time, so much in fact that for the last couple months I've been politely told way to many times that my "inventory" is full.

I know this because I only traded a couple times and never went back. The time invested in finding the materials I've collected does not seem to be balanced out well by the cost to trade them especially when a lot of them I still NEED for other Engineering.

Similarly, Grade 5 materials can be traded down into 3 Grade 4 materials within the same category. However, Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials take similar amounts of time to gather. Should the number of materials picked up per instance be increased to account for this?

We're also aware that some materials are much harder to find than others as they are tied to rarer BGS states. Let us know which materials ought to be made more readily discoverable.

It's not just BGS states. It's locked behind finding a planet with the specific material, I never find Mercury or Lead for example. Guardian items are only found at guardian sites, and to gain enough to get even a single item takes hours and hours of going through ruins.

But when you find a spot that has the materials you want/need the "gameplay" is to log in and out of the game to respawn the needed items. Relogging again and again, because you ain't going back out there again anytime quick. Which detracts a lot from the overall game. If the existing gameplay around materials is to relog, something is broken. If you know the players are doing this then either an increase in the overall number of materials across the galaxy is needed or alternate methods of acquisition are needed.

There are also a number of Materials that the game recommended option is to kill the cops. Then try and collect them while getting swarmed by even more cops because (Oblivion guards reference goes here.) Not everyone wants to play as a bad guy even if it's just for a couple materials. I'd rather have an alternative method, but also one that doesn't require I trade away all my hard fought for materials of higher "value" to get them.

That brings me to the tiered trade system currently found at the Materials traders, it's prohibitively expensive to trade up and I get the tiers provide flavour around what materials are better versions of lower grade materials, but a materials trader should just trade straight across, x amount of grade 1 for grade 5 no matter the material or tier.

Any estimates regarding how long it took to earn a given Engineered module by gathering materials will also be helpful in addressing this aspect of balancing.

With my luck I've spent 40+ hours trying to get the needed Materials for a single Guardian FSD booster to put into my Phantom. My stats so far:

HN Shock Mount's 0 of 8
Guardian Module Blueprint Fragment 0 of 1
Guardian Power Cell 42 of 21 (I'm winning here! YAY!)
Guardian Technology Component 9 of 21
Focus Crystals 162 of 24

I had most of the Focus Crystals prior to starting this quest. The rest, well It's not going so well. I had to spend hours on third party sites just trying to find out what the heck a person is supposed to do to unlock the guardian sites. I get the puzzles are cool but if the final prize was a Guardian FSD booster that I could cart back to my home station as cargo and then use...SWEET, but alas no, it's a small collection of parts that I need to spend another what...80-100 hours at this rate to collect everything I need so I can buy it from a guy that lives two degrees around the station ring from me. Oh, and if I want to get enough of them. I have to do that relog thing or as is the case for me right now. Find some time to fly out to the one guardian site I found, or more likely google another one, and fly out there and hope for more stuff. Oh, and do the relog thing. That's all to get a single item. No Bueno!

Alternate Gathering Methods​

We appreciate that the repetitive nature of material gathering may not be for everyone. Some have called for ways to earn materials while engaging in the specific types of content they already enjoy.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

I'd love to make visiting an Engineer more useful!

Heck I'd be ok if I just gained credit with the engineer that allowed me to reduce the materials needed to complete a module. Do x number of missions and you get a free upgrade even. You don't have to put the materials in my inventory just let me build credit with them! Even allow me to do certain "Harder" missions to get access to double engineered items. Let engineers "give" you modules that are currently locked behind Powerplay and BGS stuff. Not all of us want or care about those aspects of the game in their current iterations and forcing us to align ourselves for a week to be able to try an interesting piece of kit is unfortunate There should be numerous ways to get items, even if you want to keep them special to advance story (Salvation weapons for example.) But after a time there should be an engineer somewhere that can build them for you.

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.

Like I mentioned above regarding engineers, we could stockpile "favour" instead of getting credits from doing different things (allow the players to choose, all credit or x% as favour) then allow us to use that to get either materials or modules, that we can't seem to grind for.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Some time ago, Engineering was changed so that some improvement was guaranteed with each roll. However, the amount by which your progress towards the next module grade is still random. This means sometimes the same number of materials will produce a minimal increase. Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed.

Honestly if the overall materials grind is reduced, this isn't really an issue. It's odd, but somewhat understandable to say, well we did the upgrade but this time it was x percent better or worse than average, and it's kinda nice to get a full upgrade in a single pass once and a while, feels like a win.

Other Feedback and Suggestions​

Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above. To keep the conversation on-topic and help us collect the feedback, this thread will be closely moderated. Please only reply with responses to the topics mentioned and keep feedback constructive. Unrelated or unhelpful posts may be removed during clean-up. If you find this has happened to your post, consider raising your points in another thread within the Dangerous Discussion section.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

O7

Thanks for opening things up here for discussion! I look forward to seeing what comes of this!

Regards,
Orillian

 

[reidy7624]

Greetings Commanders

Now that Update 8 for Odyssey is live, we'd like to reignite the series of balancing changes that started before Odyssey's release. Now, it's time to turn our attention to ship Engineering. We recognise there has been significant feedback for on-foot Engineering too, but we'd like to approach these one at a time due to the number of aspects involved. Specifically, we'd like to look at the balancing of the Engineering grind, which largely relates to...

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased?

Similarly, Grade 5 materials can be traded down into 3 Grade 4 materials within the same category. However, Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials take similar amounts of time to gather. Should the number of materials picked up per instance be increased to account for this?

We're also aware that some materials are much harder to find than others as they are tied to rarer BGS states. Let us know which materials ought to be made more readily discoverable.

Any estimates regarding how long it took to earn a given Engineered module by gathering materials will also be helpful in addressing this aspect of balancing.

Alternate Gathering Methods​

We appreciate that the repetitive nature of material gathering may not be for everyone. Some have called for ways to earn materials while engaging in the specific types of content they already enjoy.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

Some time ago, Engineering was changed so that some improvement was guaranteed with each roll. However, the amount by which your progress towards the next module grade is still random. This means sometimes the same number of materials will produce a minimal increase. Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed.

Other Feedback and Suggestions​

Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above. To keep the conversation on-topic and help us collect the feedback, this thread will be closely moderated. Please only reply with responses to the topics mentioned and keep feedback constructive. Unrelated or unhelpful posts may be removed during clean-up. If you find this has happened to your post, consider raising your points in another thread within the Dangerous Discussion section.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

O7

It’s great that you are asking for suggestions and even better that you are offering suggestions. Thanks you.



The game is centred around gaining Elite status, which is measured in credits earned. Therefore is it possible to use credits to buy the materials needed at traders? Or use credits to buy the more common grade 1-3 type. Let’s use earned credits, or current methods with higher material numbers provided. So the focus becomes on gaining the grade 4-5 from activity or todays methods but with higher reward. I really would like to be able to gather materials for an upgrade in engineering class within 2hours.



For engineered modules could we request specific customisations rather than having default settings with benefits and weaknesses? Possibly tie the materials needed to specific characteristics and stats a commander wants from the unique module? Maybe you want a bigger FSD range and are prepared to have even more heat generation or less integrity but that requires more Arsenic?



Would it be possible to get engineered modules by completing a challenge from the engineer linked to the module? You want new thrusters. To get these the engineer will set a race challenge with them temporarily fitted, you must compete in a planet race in a given time/against NPC line up or other commanders? The challenges would not require you to provide materials to get engineering and would be a reward from the engineer. Challenges would differ for each module type. Could Galnet be used to advertise engineer challenges and the result. This gives opportunity for commanders to become recognised in Elite community as celebrities e.g. a speedster with an engineers thrusters, a fast passenger runner to highlight engineers FSD, a combat ace that single handedly cleared a conflict zone with an engineers shield and weapon modules? This has opportunity for enhancing community engagement too with commanders skills being recognised in community. There could be great community interactions to find the best in the community at an activity by setting challenges.

Appreciate the opportunity to be heard. Thank you o7

 

[JR250]

Yes to all of the above!

Is not having engineers and their mats an option? Short of of that, I've always thought being able to buy mats would be great. That would let me play my favorite role and not be forced into SRV farming, for example.

I have no problem with data and manufactured materials. Nearly all of those come incidental to some other gameplay I enjoy. Raw materials, on the other hand, nearly always requires me to hop on an SRV buggy, get physically sick from simulated motion dizziness, and hunt rocks. I can be an Admiral and King with billions of credits, own a large fleet of ships and a carrier, but I'm still required to farm rocks.

If I could buy raw materials from the market, or trade bounty vouchers for a box of minerals, that would be fantastic.

But the engineering issues don't stop there. Unlocking some engineers is absolutely and insanely boring. A few engineers have the exact same required cycle mechanics, counts of offerings, and traveling distance to get them. The only difference is that one wants maybe cigars while the other wants hybrid pets. Unimaginative, to say the least.

And yes to buffing the number of mats collected at once. Three is ok, 5 would be better. When engineering mods, don't require more than qty 4 or 5 mats per grade - I'd be happiest if it required 1 mat each.

Thank you for doing this! Not sure where this will go but just asking for feedback is appreciated.

 

[kit carter]

1) Firstly - way, way less grind.
2) Secondly tie some mats to other gameplay loops e.g. rare mats only found/synthesised on select high G planets - a piloting skill test landing on a 3G planet.
3) More rare material drops from Thargoid/thargoid space - further incentive to tackle this high-skill endgame functionality.
4) Ditto perhaps high-level NPCs could yield more rare materials - incentivise combat. But make NPCs harder.
5) When engineering auto-roll if you've got enough materials - it's incredibly dull hamsterwheeling a roll 20 times.
6) Tie some materials to Biological discoveries - so exploration joins up to the rest of the game - even some unique plants yield unique materials used in suit designs, weapon chemistry or meds.
7) Allow suit engineering to be adjusted - rather than locking in the end engineer choices - like with ships.
8) Incentivise rescue/hero missions on-foot e.g. rescue a hostage from a bandit base, defend a base from incoming attackers/thargoids. Many people find the concept of murder-for-engineering-mats repellant and at odds with the soul of Elite.
9) Treasure hunts - on-foot mission to a location , fight high-level NPCs - have a large cache of random materials in one spot - a one-off treasure mission. This gives a good risk/reward equation and would add excitement rather than grind.
10) Canyon racing rewards - have an NPC that offers a canyon-race with a material reward e.g. if a canyon-run is completed in 60 seconds. Encourage this sport.
11) Extreme range jump systems - like Rackham's peak, have a system with bases synthesising rare mats accessible only to permitted ships (not FCs) with an extreme jump range. That could provide a high-risk-high reward trade loop e.g. lightly shielded, high-range ship with high value mats vs pirates/pvp'ers.
12) Values for suit materials - as there's so many items to collect, it would be good to have an average value displayed so we know what is worth collecting, rather than a spreadsheet.
13) Make more mats tradeable.

 

[metatheurgist]

With the horrifically broken economy almost any CR substitute will be too easy to obtain to get engineering. You might as well just make them free at that stage.

Using commodities in engineering was actually part of the initial blueprint. Making some sort of return wouldn't be popular.

The current engineering process is not that bad (talking specifically about the upgrading at the engineer, not material gathering). If you removed the times when at the end of a grade of mod, your progress slowed to the point of ridiculousness, when you got less than 1% progress per set of mats that would be fine. Better yet, just make it so no roll can give less than 5% progress.

Whatever you do do not cave in to the people that want easy mode, like you did for CR making. The game has been poorer for that.

 

[PudgyElderGod]

To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased?

The rate of gathering should be increased. Make all/most mission rewards also have at least Grade 1 Material drops, even if it's only 5-10. That or increase the amount of Grade 5 Materials gained from choosing that mission reward.

Similarly, Grade 5 materials can be traded down into 3 Grade 4 materials within the same category. However, Grade 4 and Grade 5 materials take similar amounts of time to gather. Should the number of materials picked up per instance be increased to account for this?

Yes; gathering materials out in the wild can be a chore. Making drops scale with grade, such as Grade 1s dropping in increments of 5 and Grade 2s dropping in increments of 4 and so on would do wonders for reducing the grind.

We're also aware that some materials are much harder to find than others as they are tied to rarer BGS states. Let us know which materials ought to be made more readily discoverable.

Raw materials need to be more easily obtained outside of mining and planetary landings.

Any estimates regarding how long it took to earn a given Engineered module by gathering materials will also be helpful in addressing this aspect of balancing.

~4 Hours of grinding mostly materials in order to upgrade a Krait MkII's Reactive Plating to Tier V Heavy Duty + Reflective Plating. Admittedly, I was not using extremely optimised farming techniques.

We'd like to hear your feedback on the idea of unique missions offered by Engineers themselves. These could be repeatable and offer materials specific to the upgrades offered by the Engineer who issues them. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

Absolutely stellar idea so long as the missions are not too convoluted or the rewards are well scaled for both difficulty and complexity. Currently, fighting Elite enemies is prohibitively difficult and/or time consuming without already being heavily engineered, especially given that Elite enemies are rarely encountered alone. If Elite enemy combat missions were to be offered by an Engineer, the material reward would have to be pretty high in order to justify the time investment.

Another idea is to allow materials to be "bought" with items that are not obtainable at Commodities Markets. This could include things such as Exploration Data, Bounty Vouchers, Void Opals and Thargoid Hearts and would allow players to earn materials while playing within their chosen disciplines.

God yes. Tie in the type of materials to the type of playstyle and you greatly encourage people to branch out in playstyles, especially so if it's not tied to needing to do extremely well in those playstyles in order to earn materials. Implementing this with the proposed Engineer Missions would drastically reduce the monotony of the grind and would encourage and allow players to double up on the kind of farm they need.

Some time ago, Engineering was changed so that some improvement was guaranteed with each roll. However, the amount by which your progress towards the next module grade is still random. This means sometimes the same number of materials will produce a minimal increase. Should this be changed so that the same number of materials are always required to reach the next tier? This would allow Commanders to know exactly how many materials are needed.

IMO the randomisation is mostly okay. If anything, raise the minimum amount of progress gained to be ~20% just to prevent someone blasting six vanadium on a simple upgrade.

Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above.

The greatest barrier to engineering isn't the materials grind itself, but the time investment. The biggest fault in the system is how annoying it can be to get to an engineer in order to upgrade down a path you don't have pinned. The system would greatly benefit and feel substantially more rewarding if the "pinned" schematic system was either completely removed or instead tied to the type of module, such as pinning Frag Cannon blueprints allowing you to remotely engineer down all frag cannon paths. Landing on planets just kinda sucks and not being able to jump a carrier into permit locked systems makes upgrading multiple ships incredibly frustrating. Personally, I'd just love if the "pin" system was removed and you permanently had access to what you have unlocked from Engineers.

This is all from the perspective of a player that started a month and a half ago. The results of Engineering are great and allow for fun builds that can, if you avoid the meta, make your ship feel incredibly unique. The time cost feels far too steep given the amount of effort that it takes to travel to and unlock engineers, especially if you don't end up having all the materials you need to max out your reputation on the first visit. To reiterate again, removing or reworking the pinned blueprint system would make engineering far more accessible and any grind far more tolerable.