Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering

[Brrokk]

My complaint about engineering isn't grind, it's unnecessary complexity. Why do there have to be so many different materials, wouldn't a dozen do the same game function?

From a realism point of view I'd also question why copper, silver, gold and platinum are commodities, but sulphur, lead, selenium etc. are weightless.

 

[szymciu07]

Some more feedback:

Engineering has become mandatory to play the game. So it's now a chore we players have to do to enjoy the game. Try fighting a Thargoid in an unengineered ship. So since you made it mandatory make it as painless as possible.

I don't want to have to jump 50 times to buy a new combat ship. Make remote engineering more advanced and allow us to apply experientials and use all unlocked blueprints instead of just the pinned ones.

I don't want to have to jump 100 times around the galaxy to gather materials, to be able to jump around 50 times to get a new combat ship.
Material gathering is so inefficient that players came with exploit-level methods to minimize the time wasted on gathering materials.

What I do want it to have fun, I have limited time available to play the game, so I want to jump into a wing and have giggles with my friends rather than jump 1000 Ly, and then spend 40 minutes in Supercruise to get raw materials.
Go to the person who figured out that going for raw materials has to be a punishment and have him fill all raw materials to 100%. He will hate it.

And so do we. Why do crystalline forests appear only in a system that makes you spend a significant amount of time WATCHING SPACE DUST?

Just why? Why can't they have been discovered in the bubble? This type of cancerous get design makes up most of Elite's flaws as a game.

Punishing players for wanting to play the game isn't right.

 

[Koben]

Bruce, good morning!

As I have finished engineering all my ships long time ago, honestly I have no idea how bad the current grinding loop for ship/modules engineering is... in my limited understanding, it is not that bad (on-foot suits/weapons is very bad).

But what have been concerning me a bit is having double-engineered modules made available from tech brokers... Frontier shall decide from where we'll get upgrade modules... from engineers or tech brokers and stick to it, improving upon that game loop... not creating another loop on top of the existing one.

Same goes to unclocking Guardian Weapons... now we have new tech brokers selling Salvation's "upgraded" version of existing Guardian AX weapons... this is crazy. Please, or we are able to mildly engineer our Guardian AX weapons or not, but don't sell the same stuff again elsewhere... even in outfitting screen they have the very same name, making it quite hard to tell them apart (have to look at the weapon stats to know what's what).

If the AX community feels like engineered AX weapons are "cheezy", you can adjust Thargoid resistances accordingly and claim the Thargoids are now evolving/adjusting as humans do (this was the justification for nerfing AX missiles and other AX weapons at the begining).

Cheers!

 

[The Chairmaker]

I think the mission system could be used to assist players in getting some of the rarer types of mats, im thinking ones requiring wake scanning which at present require rather boring gameplay.

It would make logical sense from my viewpoint to have a mission to scan a navigation beacon in a system controlled by a rival faction. Doing so would then offer the opportunity of gathering useful types of data materials. It also gives a further use for Nav Beacons and an opportunity for players to be corralled in certain areas of space to generate emergent gameplay opportunities. Wrinkles could be added such as system security attacking your ship for trying to obtain data.

A further variation could be have Spy missions like above but which ask you to monitor a trade convoy. Such missions could be built to benefit ships built for stealth such as the diamond back scout, as builds taking advantage of low heat signature would allow a player to get more data before being detected.

The above activity would also be linked to the BGS.

Another suggestion would be to allow fleet carrier owners to purchase a materials market. The fleet carrier owners could then put out Buy and/or sell requests for certain types of material. This would allow player to player trading in a controlled manner, that would presumably be easier for Frontier to monitor and adjust as needed.

 

[szymciu07]

Yet another feedback on engineering:

Guardian grind is intentionally created relog gameplay loop.
I have to go to a guardian site and complete It a few times.
So I HAVE to relog to do that.
Why?
Why can't I unlock all sizes and types of Guardian weapons with a single blueprint? Why do I have to unlock all types and sizes separately? That's a few dozen relogs!
That's not reasonable at all.

Also collecting insane amounts of guardian data is... Just insane. On top of that Guardian materials are not available at material traders.

As a cherry on the top you decided that synthesis of guardian ammo requires materials obtainable only by relog mechanisms, so then AX combat of higher level Interceptors requires people to go and relog to gather materials for ammo synthesis.

Quit creating relog gameplay loops!

 

[John Guevara]

i would of course like to do without grinding, i would rather get engineering improvements via exciting and alternating missions. But grinding is not always bad either, sometimes you want to relax a little with monotonous work, and I would rather do something meaningful and as alternative and optional path, as I mentioned here before https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/potential-science-mini-games-for-humanity.353024/#post-9574140 , I would rather donate the time to our society and maybe in the game a little bit of progress. grinding for science.

 

[Alaska Sædelære]

I would find it only logical if manufactured materials could be synthesized out of raw ingredients. This would solve balancing at least in one category and add a tinge of realism to the gameplay loops.

 

[Rip_Steakface]

2. Engineers No longer ask for Materials to perform services.
- Every Engineer now has a unique quest line with up to 5 different goals to complete. Make them fun and interesting - Players have to DO a thing, solve a mystery, rescue a hostage, etc. no more collect-a-thons. These quests should be treated like a main quest in an RPG and have voiced dialog, memorable characters and be THE MAIN QUEST LINE for the lore of the game.
- Each goal completed unlocks a grade of engineering, and is only completed ONCE. These are story based missions. Maybe Felicity Farseer needs you to bring her daughter's ashes to Sag A because they always wanted to go, but never got around to it. Maybe Domino Green's story is about over coming drug addiction. Tell human stories. Hit CMDR's right in the feels.
- Transactions are completed with - Credits or Uber Currency. - You did the quest and earned their trust and thanks - Money's good enough from here on out.

A hundred times yes!
FDev, please start thinking outside of your regular Elite box. Sit down in a brainstorming session and ask the question: What kind of mission would actually be FUN? What would make the player feel like they're interacting with an actual human being, not just another bland cardboard engineer?

I know these kinds of missions are harder to program than "fetch amount x of ressource y". But on the other hand, your programmers had enough time to create dozens of life forms and space anomalies that 90% of players will never lay their eyes on. Why not put that kind of effort into creating something actually entertaining? Some storylines could be poignant like DEFkon's examples, others more light-hearted. Maybe a swarm of space amoeba enter the bubble, and one engineer develops an interest in their biology, so he sends you out to investigate their mating rituals. Your ideas are as good as ours!

 

[GroG79]

A simple fix for foot engineering:

At the moment the NPCs in the concourse give very uninteresting missions rewards. Have them give out interesting stuff that is actually useful for engineering.

 

[CMDR Charybdis]

Alternate Gathering Methods
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.

Packs of materials purchased by chosen discipline "currency"​

The fundamental problem that I see in the gameplay loops is that certain materials are "locked" behind specific loops (BGS state being one, SRV gathering being another). This reinforces the grinding nature (I'm doing something I don't enjoy so much). Using currencies from other activities to convert into mats would be perfect.

Each gameplay loop would be broken down into a number of packs that could be purchased by "currency" from a different discipline. The packs might be:

• Materials found by discipline (guaranteed number of items, but may not guarantee a specific material/data item)
  • Materials found by destroying <ship type>
  • Materials found by scavenging <site>
  • Materials found by mining <asteroid field type>
  • Data found by scanning ships
  • Data or materials found on Odyssey settlements
  • etc.
• Selectable from a list
  • Chose a quantity of one <material type> from tier 1 through 5 (e.g. Capacitors)
  • Choose a quantity of one <material type> from a fixed tier (e.g. Tier 4, raw materials)

Mission rewards give selection from a range of materials, not a single material type​

The material/data rewards for missions are very specific (a single type of material at a single tier).

Providing a mission reward pack that allows for selection of the material type would choose missions relevant to the player's specific needs. Missions would not be skipped because it was the "wrong" tier of material type, nor would it force a trip to the material trader.

The packs could be the same as those set up for a chosen discipline "currency", e.g.

• Choose a quantity of T3 raw materials (from SRV harvesting).
• Choose a range of materials from Composites tier 1 through 5.

 

[kilvenny]

Way to go FDEV this is a really interesting move. I have minimal engineering because I couldn't be bothered with the grind. Can I add some further suggestions.

Increase the number of levels that a module can be engineered to. (Increasing the spread of options without increasing the spread of effect)

When you visit an engineer you should be able to purchase the blue prints of the engineering mods the engineer supplies. Each blue print does one level of mod. Increase the number of engineers so you can spread the module blue prints around. (Increases the game play of unlocking engineers but gives you the unlocked blue print)

Megaships should have a purchasable engineering module that armed with a blueprint and the blue print requirements should allow you to gain the mod level of the blue print, providing the module being engineered already is at the level below. No roll at a megaship, so rolling at an engineer may give a slightly better effect.

Build the engineering materials into a hierarchy so that you can make materials from other materials. Make the low level materials easy to obtain.

Engineers role extended to provide material engineering blue prints for purchase. Blue print details materials needed to make a material.

Megaships should have a purchasable material manufacturing module that armed with the material blue print and its requirements should allow the player to make the material.

This would give additional purpose to megaships and would also provide a reason to visit engineers and give opportunities to players to get engineered modules without the horrendous grind.

 

[Simmo137]

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?

Yes, for both mission rewards, ship drops and signal sources. I think Higher grade items should still be slightly rarer and better overall, but the way the game is currently, things like lower grade mission rewards and degraded emissions just aren't worth it. Trading down from Grade 5 to Grade 1 pays 81:1 - Why would you bother doing a mission that is going to give you 5x of a Grade 1 material (the quantity of lower grade materials obtained, should be significantly higher).

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?

I think it's right that higher-grade materials are worth more and are rarer. I think the issue with gathering from HGE's (for example) is that finding the materials you need is a bit hit and miss, even if you know where to look because some states override others. An example of this (there are several) that springs to mind is Military Supercapacitors. They tend to be found in the same kinds of HGE as Military Grade Alloys. Because the Military Grade Alloys are much more common, you tend to fill up on those but are forced to go and find a broker and trade down/across to make room when continuing to search for Military Supercapacitors. If you don't, you end up finding more Grade Alloys that you can't collect (either way, it feels like wasted time).

What makes this worse as well, is the penalty (x6) for trading across categories is far too severe in my opinion. The penalty makes sense if trading up, but Grade 5 materials, should hold a similar value, regardless of what category they are. perhaps even a broker fee (in credits) to supplement the transactions. This would help when some players who enjoy more specific activities, to more effectively trade away/exchange their surplus.

Also, merge the broker types and allow trading across different categories including Guardian/Thargoid. You could still have some categories e.g. a Trader who deals in Raw, Manufactured, and Encoded. Another that perhaps deals in both Guardian and Thargoid (combining all might be difficult to balance).

A player-driven materials market integrated with Fleet Carriers could be interesting.

Generally, I think I would like to see more Standardised material traders that can trade in multiple categories of items, but and that also charge a reasonable fee for each exchange/trade. I think it would be good if credits could be used, but high-grade/rare items should be much more expensive.

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.

The obvious ones for me are Pharmaceutical Isolators (Think I only ever found one in a HGE, although that was quite recently, so maybe it's been improved?). Military Supercapacitors are another, as mentioned above.

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 believe the amount of materials required is quite fairly balanced if I'm honest. The first few tiers provide the majority of the stat increases and cost a fraction of the overall cost e.g. IIRC Tier 4 is around double the cost of engineering from Tier 1 to 3. Tier 5 is double the cost of Tier 4. Granted, going all the way to Tier 5 starts to get really expensive, especially if you want multiple ships. But, I honestly believe lower-level engineering at least is more accessible than is often portrayed.

For me, the biggest issue is the hit-and-miss (or solitary) nature of finding some of the specific items and the prohibitive costs of cross-trading across categories.

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 think this is a brilliant idea and would be a welcome alternative or accompaniment to the gathering of materials. I would love to see more multi-staged missions with increasing difficulty vs reward. I think it would also be good if there were more variety in terms of reward options for each mission e.g. Pick from 2 or 3 Grade 5 Material categories. I think the

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.

Again, another really welcome idea that would enable players to progress at a reasonable rate however they choose to play the game, rather than driving players towards specific 'optimal' or 'singular' activities.

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.

I think a fixed cost would be preferable. But you do sometimes save a bit if you get a good roll. However, rolling every part of the upgrade does start to get feel a bit repetitive when upgrading multiple modules.

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.

Just a few other ideas.....

I really liked the enhanced on-foot upgraded and engineered modules you can buy in the store (for a much-increased cost). Would like to see these be a little more common than they are currently, so there is a little more variety. Gives you a good reason to pop into a store when you land at a station to see what they have. Maybe there is an opportunity to introduce something similar around ship modules when outfitting?

In general, I think there are a number of modules upgrades that need a bit of TLC, especially some of the utility items:

• Fuel Scoops Faster scooping, or perhaps a specialised upgrade that allows scooping from some otherwise non-scoopable stars
• Jump Drive Less single Jump Range but spins up faster, or has more improved fuel economy (significantly increasing overall range before refuelling)
• Limpet Controllers Upgrades that improve the specific functionality of the various Limpet controllers e.g. More active limpets, better range, better speed, etc.
• Mining lasers Mine faster (at cost of increased heat or distributor power drain) or perhaps the opposite (so you can equip more mining lasers overall). Maybe a specialised upgrade that significantly increases the raw materials extracted, but at the cost of being much less effective with commodities (an alternative to just surface prospecting).
• Refinery Improved efficiency (e.g. increased materials per ore collected) or increased number of commodity slots.

Thanks for the opportunity to feedback. I've seen some great ideas from other players in this forum.

 

[Born2Kill4Fun]

About G5 mats. At first should be fixed that once you found a system with certain needed state and then a signal related to that state it should spawn correct related g5 material. Not else. Then to make it less grindy and encourage not to desktop exit to respawn materials a gameplay may be added to high grade signal source. For instance ince dropped to signal and first batch gathered, crate mechanic to find next batch of material within the same signal after, travellig to next point, scan, destroy sth, defeat npc, tjen next and next to be able to fill whole material within hour or so workig with single found correct signal buth then multiple connected activities inside.

 

[jacklul]

The game is getting older and older and I think the engineering should be sped up a bit to allow newer players to catch up with others faster.

I personally think the quantity you get from one harvest point should be upped from 3 to 5 for all grades OR made that the higher the grade the less you get from one harvest point - something like:

• Grade 5 material - 1 harvest = 3 units, perhaps 10% chance for one extra unit?
• Grade 4 material - 1 harvest = 4 units, perhaps 20% chance for one extra unit?
• Grade 3 material - 1 harvest = 5 units, perhaps 30% chance for one extra unit?
• Grade 2 material - 1 harvest = random 6-7 units
• Grade 1 material - 1 harvest = random 7-10 units

Please make Biotech Conductors droppable, currently they are mission reward only. Increase drop rate of Exquisite Focus Crystals from destroyed ships.
Finding Pharmaceutical Isolators and Datamined Wake Exceptions without using material trader is the worst chore in the game, drop rate should be increased significantly.

Since the Odyssey removed the effective way of filling up raw materials (no more easy crystal shards sites) we might need an alternative.
(Was this addressed after release? Haven't been looking into it so correct me if I'm wrong here!)

Perhaps players could pay at the station to unique contact to obtain navigation data to a signal source that will contain specific manufactured/data material of their choosing, similar to how mission signal sources work.

Perhaps Engineers could offer a missions that reward you specific/random blueprint upgrade then follow-up missions to up the grade on that upgrade.

 

[CMDR Melissa Payne]

Make the traders cheaper so that going from grade 1 trading up to grade 5 is more reasonable. Make trading one grade 5 to another grade 5 a one for one trade. Or be able to buy materials from traders with in game credits. Or increase the drop rates, for goodness sake DO SOMETHING. as it stands when I finally got my corvette my first thoughts weren't wow this is cool my first thoughts were "oh no I've now got to engineer it!!!"

 

[Pigletslastand]

Yeah sideways trades should at the worst be 2:1 not 6:1 flipping painful!!

 

[Born2Kill4Fun]

Increase spawn rate of rocks giving materials while scouting in srv. Include hot spots to certaing materials, mix with scannable beacons, fossils.

 

[Lokyar]

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

Honestly this game in general is too grind-heavy. We could use an increase in the rate of all currency and materials, including engineering mats. Also binding engineers to specific planets just means an irritating travel for no real reason, just give us full access from stations.

 

[Alaska Sædelære]

Introduce on-foot mining for raw minerals, like something akin to this game with a finder and an excavator tool. The deposits found this way should be a power of ten bigger on average than from the pling-pling game shooting tiny chips off rocks on the surface. Players might like doing this alongside with exploring.

 

[slim pickins]

my opinion the gathering is good as it is, to make things easier to get would diminish the value of the gameplay, cmdrs need to be wise about mat gathering methods and trading. i think what would be a better idea is to offer avenues of ease if cmdrs desire to gather faster, like davs hope for example, its an option for cmdrs to quickly gather stuff. jamesons crash site is another example, if you so desire you can relog to no end and fill up. the shard sites should be put back in odyssey as a start.