Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering

[Donald Duck]

Question 1: Why are personal weapons and suits not modded like weapons and hull/interior of space ships?

It seems obvious - minding this very discussion - that the present attempt to offer a different grind for personal stuff has gone wrong. If that's the case, I understand that there could have been some intention to offer variety. However, all of a sudden a modular system is replaced by a designated. Where is the logic I can't use a scope on different weapons, e. g.

Additionally, might be a bit far fetched, tho... NEVER in the history of mankind this kind of system has been used by any culture, not even sovjet communism! Nobody since the old Sumerians 5000 BC has had a gathering, producing, manufacturing, upgrading system like the present. As it is completely inefficient. Feel free to research this, believe me or think about it for a second. Or I missed something in the lore, where the homo lost its sapiens to a Thargoid virus or so...

So if there is something to change, imho it should be this. Same modding, upgrading, equiment-system with modular possibilities.
I do of courseunderstand that this is not a simple change.

Question 2: How to ease the material grind

Give Bob the Barkeeper the 'permission' to trade everything. Or Jaques, so everybody has a reason to go to Colonia.

Cheers and o7.

 

[jaton666]

I like it how it is now to be honest. But I can see why others don't. Anything that brings more players back is a good thing.

I like the idea of Missions to get mats and handing in rare commodities in exchage sounds cool. But the Engineer themselves offering this service doesn't really make sense as they're the ones asking for the materials. If they already have some why ask you for more? Maybe link it into the material trader?

 

[Haradrim]

As someone that has all the needed engineers, combat engineering has not done the game any favors. Right now, your ship is basically just upgraded beyond the capability of any npcs which means you shut out 90 percent of the game universe and everything is too easy. Combat has no real challenge. I would enjoy it much more if combat engineering went to sidegrades instead of pure upgrades. If you make multiple viable sidegrades that aren't just auto "make me better" decisions, you make combat much healthier because people have a wider range of weapon/armor/shield styles to use. As it is, you can tell how stagnant combat is through "hard" enemies in CZ just being bullet sponges, and how for years now the only serious pvp build is a single ship, the FDL, with a very limited set of usable weapons. We've essentially been stuck on the single combo of FDL, PAs, and rails for over 5 years now, ever since engineers released around 2016. That is not healthy combat and it's only going to lead to more people ignoring open mode because the variety is so limited and boring. I'd like for the combat to live up to the game's namesake and really be dangerous.

 

[Jumpingjim]

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

I'm not sure where the logic for changing the balance on collection comes from. Grades 1-3 are easy to find. The reason for trading down appears to be so that one can collect as many as possible as fast as possible. I normally will trade up from low to high, which is an outlier opinion. The basic problem I see (mainly from the ED Reddit), is that people want the biggest items (ships, engineering) without actually playing the game. There are already lots of mat drops from say, exploring. Or combat. Or raw from mining. It appears to me that player expectations against the game itself need to be re-balanced. That will also be an outlier opinion. Missions from the engineers would be a welcome change though, instead of it being the static situation it is now.
But the rng roll for the engineering item itself! I for one would certainly love to see that changed. A flat rate of increase so that material quantities could be known in advance would be most welcome.
I'm not aware of the actual time spent acquiring a specific engineering upgrade. I'm over 1,000 hours in now and it seems relatively fast for me. I would estimate that if I went for a module from new to fully engineered would take me 2-3 hours. That could be considerably off as I know how to acquire what I need quickly now, but I may have forgotten how hard it is to find certain items. Hopefully someone will actually check that as it would be interesting to know.

 

[SciTrekker]

Encoded/Data needs to be easier to gather, especially the higher grades.

Put a vacuum/suction device under the SRV to suck up all the mats underneath. Stop the insanity of driving back and forth and having to select each item.

Mats should drop at a rate based on their grade. Why are some grade 3 mats harder to come by than any grade 5?

I'm in favor all the suggestions in the OP and generally all the great suggestions posted thus far by my fellow players.

 

[CMDR Correa]

This is a little silly.
Just make missions reward all kinds of grade 5 mats, and raise the quantity rewarded to 10 or 15... that along with increasing the quantity of mats looted per signal source would probably fix the grind.

Or make missions reward a basket of G5s instead of just one kind... that would work too...

 

[DOCa Cola]

The thing i'd like to see improved most is the availability of the recipes from remote locations/stations. I somewhat dislike the current bookmark system which to me feels more like a band-aid feature.

The issue with Bookmarks:
As a player you bookmark the "best" recipes. Niche and less used recipes are made even more niche and less used because the "best" recipes are already much more accessible through the bookmarks. Flying long distances to/from multiple engineer bases to upgrade un-bookmarked ship systems or get certain special affects is one of the least fun/rewarding activies.

What i'd probably like to see is therefore an improvement to this system. Probably abandoning the bookmark system altogether and allow in one way or another access to all available engineer recipes from other/more locations.

Here are two examples how an alternative implementation could look like:

Option 1: Through a special engineer workshop that is available as a service on certain stations (similar to material traders) where you can access all engineer recipes that you have globally unlocked (including special effects).

Option 2: Globally unlocked engineer recipes (including special effects) are available at all engineer bases.

 

[rootsrat]

My ideas:

1. Allow for ALL materials (both ship and foot engi) to be traded between players, similar to some of the Odyssey ones that can we currently trade.
2. Allow for ALL materials to be sold via Fleet Carriers (either via existing Commodities Market or via new purchasable module - Material Market).

 

[CMDR Correa]

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

While you're on that could you check the salvaging gameplay as well?

 

[NathanKerbonaut]

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!

I love this idea for mat gathering! A few ideas building off this:

• When a war/civil war ends, CZs turn into persistent (at least temporarily) junk yard sites. The more intense the zone, the bigger the debris field and better grade mats you could find, but also the more likely hostile scavengers will appear.
• Now that we have ships fighting at surface CZs, previously-attacked settlements could be surrounded by the debris of crashed ships, which could be similarly salvaged.

 

[Toshio]

Availability and Time Required​

G1, G2, and G3 are relatively easy to gather in my opinion, for manufactured you just need a ship with cargo and some collection limpets, for raw either mining or with a rover at any random landable planet, third-party tools also help (maybe integrating that in the map ui might help).
Together with the fact you only require a few to upgrade to G1, 2 and 3, I don't see need for a change there.

G4 and G5 are harder AND you actually need more, and I suggest something like:

• For raw materials, make it as easy as it was in Horizons (in crystalline shards), I have to switch back to it to gather them as it seems they are not easily found in Odyssey.
• For manufactured and encoded, give a higher amount as mission rewards, max as of now is 5, give at least 10 for the hardest missions, and reduce accordingly the credits reward. Also provide more variety, possibly even within the same system, or make it consistent to what doesn't change over time, for example Economy and not state.
• For ALL MATERIALS, make every type equally easy to get per level, there are some materials that are harder (i.e. selenium for raw) to find, because it requires a specific system status/alignment/economy or other uncommon factor.
• At engineer shops and pinned blueprints, add in the description clear information on how you could gather those materials (missions, locations, etc.), this can't be based on player feedback on forums, it should be in-game stuff.

Alternate Gathering Methods​

As a general rule, a way to gather materials more or as efficient as the relog "exploits" should be put in place, all the following should serve that purpose, and it SHOULD BE MADE CLEAR that once this is improved all other relog methods will be fixed and not allowed anymore.

• Allow trading with other rare commodities, exactly as you proposed, is a nice improvement. Guardian material traders could be an option there too.
• You could make destroyed ships (i.e. pirates) drop the material types needed to get the engineering level they have, not the whole amount needed to get to the level of engineering they are, but a fraction.
• ALL gathering methods should still be harder/more expensive the higher the grade, I believe it should still require some knowledge, experience, effort to be able to fully engineer a ship. For example, if you want certain manufactured materials you'll need a capable combat ship or a good exploration one, or reputation with a faction.
• Specific missions too are a good idea. Maybe something similar to what Ram Tah does give, but in different fields, either by exploration, combat, mining and some trading/couriering related activity. I know it won't be possible for now, but it would be awesome to have mixed on-foot missions for this too... at least for the suits and weapons.
• Mission rewards for engineering specific missions could be all 3 materials of g1-5 level, with higher level at higher threat/difficulty instead of reputation/credits/influence.
• Guardian unlock missions, a special type of mission that unlocks a specific weapon/module as a reward, no matter what you collect during the mission, you get a blueprint of your selection unlocked.
• Dismantle existing engineered modules/weapons/utilty, that is an interesting suggestion from another CMDR that I am copying here. Give back at least a percentage, maybe between 50% and 75%.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

About the random increase I do hate that, but do not make it like tech brokers to increase 1 level, if I need 3 sulphur to max out G1, give 33.33% for each. In other words, make the increase consistent.

Time requirements
In order to engineer a combat build, large ships overall, require huge amount of time.
Consider a typical build:

• 4-6 shield boosters
• 0-6 hull reinforcement packages
• up to 9 hardopoints
• together with the always present core modules and almost every present shield

For my corvette I think I spent at least 1 week, that for a normal player could extend to 2 or 3. I play some 18h per week.

 

[SushiCW]

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?

No strong feelings, but sounds good to me.

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 wouldn't fight it, but I think the "engineer missions" idea is a much better way to solve the problem.

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

I'm very much in favor of this.

. Let us know what you think of this idea and how many materials this might offer relative to gathering the materials manually.

I think it should be comparable in efficiency to focused material grinding. (But more fun and not requiring as much out of game knowledge for how to go about it, since the mission will be right there).

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.

Don't forget mission reward commodities that you can't buy. But yes, this sounds good too. And it gives you something to do with those commodity rewards besides selling them for credits you probably don't need anyway.

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.

IMO it's fine, but this wouldn't be unwelcome.

Other Feedback and Suggestions​

What I like about engineering in general:

• Collecting materials as a side effect of regular activity, and using that to improve and customize my ship, always has felt good.
• I enjoy being able to take an "underpowered" ship, like the Keelback, and tune it into a formidable fighter. (Unfortunately, the overpowered ships like the FDL benefit from it even more).

What I dislike:

• Engineering broke PvP for me: I enjoyed it before engineering, but it made for huge power disparities between ships and it just stopped being fun. It exacerbated and magnified many balance problems, making the min-maxed meta even more powerful. Not to mention raising the barrier to entry.
• Engineering caused some nasty power level creep. Conflict zones are a great example: used to be I could dive in with a simple A rated Viper and do fine. But now they're tuned assuming everyone going into them has an engineered Corvette, and even the small ships are ludicrously tanky.

Overall, I think engineering is way too powerful and far too much of an upgrade (vs a side grade), and that it benefits most the ships that need it least (vice versa would be preferable). But I also recognize that it's far too late at this point to change that.

 

[Becky]

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

Alternate Gathering Methods​

Hi Bruce,

I'm going to be straight forward here - Time Required for material gathering, specifically Manufactured items is what made me quit Elite Dangerous; it got to the point where it felt like trying to gather manufactured materials was causing psychological self harm and it got to the point where even logging in gave that same reaction.

I love engineering, the new crafting system introduced is brilliant after you guys got rid of the random slot machine mechanics; but the material gathering, specifically manufactured materials is nothing but PAIN.
I have a bunch of ships to engineer; got all the raw materials, all the data - then the manufacturered material gathering made me quit the game.

I'll start with the good points.
The introduction of biological sites for raw materals and jameson's crashed ship for data were very good additions to the game; whilst annoying they at least gave an promise of materials gathered per hour - so you can just put aside a weekend and get them done.

Now for the bad points.

1. firstly, the quit to desktop game loop is THE WORST GAME LOOP EVER - this gave me a migrane every time - it should not be the "FDEV approved game loop" for collecting manufacturered materials - it means your game is broken and you need to fix it.

2. Manufacturing is still subject to all the random caused by the BGS where materials jump around system to system per day, so you never know where they are going to be and they USSs don't respawn nearly fast enough. They used to, but this was patched out somewhere down the line.

3. The material traders are far far far too costly
- If you want to fill up a Tier5 material you need to empty FIVE other tier5 materials and then go farm those all over agin.

• this means that if there's something you need then you need to hunt for something else FIVE times so you have for one thing that's missing.
• there are many many tier 5 manufactured materials that are unobtainable during normal gameplay - so you end up farming 15-20 times more materials than you should do.

4. "but our stats say that people are collecting materials so there's nothing wrong"
- Well good for every body else; but if I spend an entire evening looking for a material and didn't even get a single bloody one, then the fact that things are dropping for other people means NOTHING to me.

• all complaints historically have been readily ignored with the "stats say things are working blah blah"
• do you keep stats on hours spent by players not finding materials? of course not so how can you say it's working?

5. Dav's Hope is the land of false promises.
- it was good before the changes to engineering and the introduction of material traders.
- now it's it's a time sink for substandard rewards.

6. Limpets need a revamp. give them ammo or just get rid of them with space magic.
- It's about time we had a thargoid tractor beams to collect materials
- how long have thargoids been known to use tractor beams for collecting limpets?
- how many years have aegis had to reverse engineer these things?
- why aren't they built into the ships by now?

7. Collecting during normal game play
- the idea that this is true in ELITE DANGEROUS complete nonsense.

In Star Trek online, you get a collection of R&D materials every time you finish a combat zone; you get lots of common ones, a hand full of rare ones and a few premium ones - all you have to do is keep doing the content and you end up with lots of everything - you don't have to think about doing specific activities and the random nature of materials means you get a bit of everything every time and end up with plenty of everything.
This is what "collecting during normal game play" means.

In Elite Danegerous - you have to go out of your way to get materials; you have to find systems in specific states, with specific planets and stations, and government types and ecconomies and populations. Then if you're lucky you'll be able to find a USS that you're looking for if you're super lucky they'll be a few; and then because they don't respawn... you end up waiting until the next tick cycle and have to start all over again because the damn system states changed and everything has moved.
Finding what you're looking for is a nightmare and then having it move around the next day is even more

Manufacturered material gathering
- Score:
Collector Limpets for anything except mining
- Score:

7. I'm glad I didn't pre-order oddysey: the emptiness of game play and the even more extreme bar raising required for engineering not to mention the fact it needs 50GB more hard drive space which is double what horizons needed on top of horizons. And the fact that the entire game play seems to revolve around "find some innocent scientists and then murder them". No thanks.
- Score:

 

[M4RTH4]

If it hasn't been suggested yet, hows about just letting us buy the engineering materials with credits?

With the right know-how and practice, a player can easily get themselves a decent handful of credits. Might take a while to balance out, but just that convenience would eliminate a lot of the headaches that come with having to gather the materials anyway.

Regarding the rolls as current ship engineering is now, having them be 'bought' like experimentals or on-foot equipment engineering is a good bit step in the right direction, as well. I'd rather spend a flat 5 amount of a grade 5 thing for the last tier of an upgrade rather than a chance of spending only 3 of that thing or upwards of 8. Current state, it's gambling, plain and simple.

Y'all should play the game yourself, like an hour a day of the retail product. You don't have to be the best, and you don't gotta go looking for bugs and issues, just play it like how we do. The Engineering Grind would be quick to feel, even for those new to the game as it's essentially a requirement.

 

[GraphicEqualizer]

I like the idea of tinkering with ships modules suits and guns for your particular gameplay, but very much dislike the very one-way nature of it.

Example: In real life you might tinker with your car or pimp up your house, you collect or buy some bits, some from a store, some online, some from a second hand thrift store, you also design some bespoke things, do some diy and crafting (i.e. lots of different ways), and try them out, and then you might decide to change them, take them apart again, re-use bits, upcycle, trade in things to get other things instead that might work better based on the whole experience. Rinse and repeat.

In ED you have to spend most of your time gathering materials often in only one way, often very repetitive, to engineer something without really knowing if it is going to be worth all that effort. Then you are just stuck with it. You cannot recycle it all back down to reclaim a good (say 90%) portion of the materials used to spend on tinkering with something else instead. You have to start from scratch. It is infuriating. And this annoyance is x10 for Odyssey on-foot stuff that currently does not even allow you to swap out modifications. It actively DISCOURAGES people participating in the engineering - being able to engineer should be 90% disconnected from the current grind just to be able to do it, instead make the time spent tinkering itself be the time sink. A lot more people would spend a lot more time with engineers and testing out their mods if every interaction did not involve one-way use of time and materials.

 

[TScal12]

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

"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".

I love this Bruce, the idea is to allow us to get the mats by doing the activities we love, same as for on foot, maybe add dynamic events throughout the galaxy that we can partake in to get materials to prevent monotony. For me personally, I only begin to enjoy the game and play it the way I want to after I engineer my ships or on foot weapons. (The process of getting to that state via engineering is not fun for me).

Same as for on foot, the character I want to roleplay as (Blaze your own trail) needs modded and engineered weapons (To reduce sponge, and I dislike weapon switching and plasma weapons). So in order to begin having fun and playing this character, I unfortunately need to grind (Not having fun) in order to start enjoying your game. Thanks!

Oh and big thumbs up on this too Bruce!!!
"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. This would potentially allow players to earn materials while playing within their own chosen discipline."

 

[Prenihility]

I read some posts and honestly, I have a general sense of what engineering is like. I've engineered ships for countless hours but I can't speak from experience admittedly regarding on-foot engineering. That can be addressed afterwards though. If we are discussing ship engineering, then that's what we can focus on for now. A previous post said we should do away with materials for engineering altogether. I can't exactly think of how an alternative would work from a gameplay design perspective straight away but the one thing I can say is that the grind simply needs to be addressed.

Gathering materials for crafting and synthesis only is perfectly rationalized. Utilizing materials for both synthesis, crafting AND engineering is overkill. Especially when you take into account that we have another issue that acts as a catalyst of sorts that exacerbates the problems with engineering's design as-is. As do other things in Elite. But as I said, we can talk about everything one at a time. What am I talking about? The artificial barriers introduced in the form of maximum material capacities is one thing that makes the grind ever-more painful. If you want to invest time into gathering an exorbitant amount of materials and that's your prerogative you should be able to. Gathering materials and utilizing them for synthesis makes far more sense than it does for engineering. It also helps increase that sciency feeling Elite has about it in snippets and I have to say not nearly enough of it is present.

Rolls on every engineering grade is yet another artificial barrier and design surrounding engineering that can only be summarized by a question mark. Purchasing engineering grades outright is simple and acts as a sound solution, as one fixed price addresses the mega-grind issue and makes life easier for players. Secondly, this is one thing I want to add. On the subject of grind, Elite's engineering grind is not only grindy from a time perspective, but also a psychological one. I can't stress this enough. It has made me as well as some friends i've introduced the game to either stop playing for long periods of time or quit completely, never to return to Elite. The thought of continuing ship engineering can be nauseating. It is that bad. Furthermore, this can be a great, GREAT opportunity to plug in new game design if engineering were to be redesigned. Instead of grinding materials we could perform tasks (missions?) for engineers that would unlock further engineering grades and acts as stepping stones for a different way of thinking and designing gameplay. I really, REALLY want to say more but it's off-topic. The short version would be; mission rewards = Tried, tested fun. Always has been. Always will be when it comes to game design. I really hope a general game design thread is up next. If not, i'll have to start it.

Back on topic. Engineering ultimately is excruciatingly grindy. The grind needs to be addressed and the artificial game design aspects need to be killed off. They serve to extend a process that players are burdened with instead of are engaged in willingly. The question of unique missions in general - not just of the engineer variety - is basically a rhetorical question. I'm in no way being argumentative, just stating the obvious if it has to be pointed out for whatever reason. EVE Online is a game that for example relies purely on player-to-player interaction to create its "content" and whatever is actually tangible for players to interact with is in a very, very reduced state. Voiced, modeled, unique NPCs giving unique missions is a paradigm of gameplay design that only Odyssey could have allowed Elite players to experience it. For obvious reasons. Ambulative gameplay is what Odyssey introduced. Once again, engineers offering unique missions is yet another stepping stone for this paradigm in gameplay design. The next steps being; unique environments with more unique NPCs. Environments relating to the differing factions or organizations in the Elite universe. Seeing them from this new, first person perspective.

 

[zantetzou]

have a similar mechanic to asteroid mining but in the form of ship grave yards, we can "mine" the derelicts for all grades of materials, the higher grades being harder to find and to make it more fun add scavengers/pirates amongst the derelicts waiting for victims makes much more sense in my opinion

 

[villamafia]

Let raw materials drop from mission rewards similar to encoded and manufactured

This would be a nice addition. I can’t spend too long in an SRV without having to shut the game down and lay down or vomit due to the motions sickness I get in it.

 

[Ultra Fluffy]

I probably have the opposite problem to everyone else. I'm an explorer and exobiologist. I visit so many planets and moons that I have a full complement of all the planatary mats, even the rare ones. I only use them up when I am forced to inject the FSD to traverse sparse areas of the galaxy. If I am travelling areas with lots of stars I don't bother to inject the FSD because it a) takes time and b) requires manual plotting of routes and c) I often want to visit as many systems as possible rather than jump as far as I can. If we could have a more automatic way of injecting the FSD to get further jumps or some way of being able to use mats out in the black, then that would be great. At the moment I have a full complement of planetary mats and no real use for them until I reach the next gap between the galaxy arms. I can't sell them (no facilities at the fleet carriers I visit) and nothing in the list of synthesis items that I want. The SRV is auto repaired with no need for mats. Now if I could repair the hull after a bumpy landing or was forced to use mats for repairing the SRV then it would make deep space exploring a little more interesting. At the moment it involves planet scanning and searching for rare plants, which can get a little tedious. I can't do any upgrading because there are no engineers out here.

When I was back in the bubble, I did find material collecting a bit of a grind. Having said that I have done full upgrades on all that I want to get a good FSD that is capable of 63ly jumps.

So I would suggest making mats easier to find, but countering that with more uses for them.