Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering

[Fake Newts]

There are so many things to talk about here, good luck moderating it!

RNG-gating vs Skill-gating and the risks of One-Route-To-Rule-Them-All:

Some like to claim that materials are designed to be collected 'organically' through 'regular' gameplay, but if we take something like Wake data - there's (almost) no systemic reason whatsoever to fit a wake scanner unless you're specifically looking for wake data. It's not an organic route for 99% of the playerbase. If the design goal is really to have materials naturally crop up in usable quantities as a player engages with the game this kind of cul-de-sac should be replaced or supplemented with something more mainstream and integrated.

Same goes for HGEs in my opinion. Currently the only way to get, say, Pharmaceutical Isolators other than trading for them is via High Grade Emission scavenging in Outbreak systems*: Outbreak is a rare BGS state occuring for reasons beyond the ken of most casual players and HGEs being RNG means there's precious little player agency in finding these things. "Filter map, pray" is maybe not a very satisfying loop for players who enjoy having agency.

When you do find an HGE all you do is scoop 4 - 5 things in empty space and that's it. Maybe we need some skill-gated routes that can be reliably sourced for skill-focused players as well as purely RNG-gated whimsy routes for experience-focused players. Skill-gated routes could be, as you mentioned in the OP, persistent Engineer missions that reward a fixed amount of a material for completing a variety of tasks - or a way for players to negotiate whatever material reward they want from regular mission givers, with scaled quantities based on material rarity and mission difficulty.

Different players have different skill levels and different tolerances for dice-rolls and not every activity appeals to all players. This is fine in theory, but not when divisive activities are outright required to achieve universally beneficial progression.

Elite's tagline is "blaze your own trail" but so many of the engineering mechanics require players to deviate from the parts of the game they enjoy and get unnecessarily grumpy doing stuff they consider to be asinine. It can of course be good to nudge players out of their comfort zone by dangling carrots, or by creating varied feedback loops, but just to force them down one avenue is... risky.

* You can technically get G5 manufactured materials from large NPC ship kills, but it's still RNG-based, with a drop rate is so low that you could play for thousands of hours and never get what you want. So it doesn't appeal to the "agency" fans any more than HGEs do.

 

[Ulon Yuanshi]

On the note of Materials: It is a problem that most of the materials do not display accurately where they can be found.

Core Dynamics Components for example are said to be found in "Federal-controlled systems" as far as the in-game description is concerned.

There is thousands of Federal systems, but the only way to reliably find this material is to look for Federal systems in Boom state and then search for signal sources of High Grade Emissions. (High Grade Emissions should always be uniquely highlighted when encountered in SC in my opinion.)

None of the in-game Material descriptions list BGS states, if I remember correctly. I could probably come up with a list, but that would take some time.

I believe superpower faction-related materials should be guaranteed/frequent missions-reward options for the respective factions. That would also benefit the flavor/immersion of the factions

On a similarly related note, I hope that the balancing of the different engineering modifications will also be looked at. Some modifications are much more powerful than others and lead to imbalanced combat, esp. for PvP. The hull tank vs. shield tank debate is very old now for example.

 

[danlance]

It's great to see that the Ship Engineering cycle is being looked at - better late than never!

Most of the suggestions here would improve / reduce the engineering grind - which is a good thing

I have been playing the game since XBox early access, and I still find myself postponing or avoiding trying out new builds due to the grind involved - anything which can be done to convert boring and repetitive grind to rewarding gameplay, is to be applauded.

Encoded materials can be particularly frustrating to obtain - my personal bugbear is Modified Embedded Firmware - I never seem to have enough, and when I do need it, I end up driving in circles around medium security installations again and again and again, for hours on end... not rewarding at all.

I have felt for sometime that from an RP perspective, that the Engineering cycle makes little to no sense.

It strikes me, that if you have commissioned research with an engineer to upgrade a module to max level... then the next time you need another instance of the module upgrading in the same way, it should not be necessary to go through all the "research" steps again - having to grind through 5 levels to get back to the max level.

A mechanism which allowed to go straight to max G5 level for a fixed cost (whether that be existing materials or some other commodity / objective) once the research had been done for that upgrade, would be a great improvement - and would be a closer match to how Research works IRL - i.e. large up front investment of time / resource initially, then a much lower per unit cost to apply that research.

As it is, the initial upfront unlocking of upgrades is bad enough, but the repetition of the same relatively unrewarding cycle, over and over again, is an active roadblock to ongoing experimentation with new ships and builds, and can result in players getting into a rut and not wanting to play Elite at all!

 

[ubermick]

I'm at odds over this, if I'm being honest. On one hand yes, materials farming and gathering is tedious and annoying, finding certain high grade items like Pharmaceutical Isolators or Selenium is a pain in the backside, and G5 data is impossible for me to find outside of the Jameson Crash Site in normal play.

HOWEVER.

Having them be too easy to acquire basically renders engineering pointless, since everyone will be tootling around in fully engineered ships.

My take is to keep them rare - perhaps even make them rarer - but change the engineering system to match that of the Odyssey engineers where one application and its done, rather than having random "rolls". (For example, at the moment its taking me 8-12 "rolls" to complete a G5 upgrade on modules, where before it would be 6-8.)

 

[Rubbernuke]

Would it be possible to 'decompose' modules to generate mats?

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

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?

Would it be possible to balance this by making pickups of lower grade materials give more than 3 units?

I think I've suggested it before, but the materials per instance in space USS' should be increased in a way that makes relogging obseolete, instead of having one clump of materials there could be several, flying between debris fields and gathering them could still take roughly the same time, but it wouldn't require relogging and would be less RNG heavy. Ideally you could even tweak the ranges so long range sensors are more useful.

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.

I think Military Supercapacitors are the worst with this because they have the combo of a rare state and possibility of being overriden by other types of materials. There are other offenders like this too (either Proto Radiolic Alloys or Proto Heat Radiators) but they are more common in general. Having more certainty in what spawns would go a long way in making things less painful. This would probably mean only generating HGE's based on the system owners state/faction (which could lead to other problems).

Basically all data materials except for stuff found at Jamesons Crash site are in a pretty dire state too. Scanning ships gives too low grade materials, wake scanning takes too long and takes up an utility slot, doing data links with the SRV is fun, but not worth the effort.

Alternate Gathering Methods

Just yes to any new content type things.

This could be a cool new niche for piracy against NPCs or a module that increases your magic find percentage too.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements

While it's not a huge deal, it would certainly streamline the usability.

With this change would it be possible to add a "engineer this module until it's maxed or I run out of materials" button too to save on clicks?

 

[HaypocH]

As mentioned in my 'fake patch notes' from a while ago, here some suggestions to some of what is asked that I still stand by:

• Randomness of rolls has been removed. Each grade level has a fixed number of rank equal to the grade + 1. Grade one has 2 rank (50%, 100% completed), grade two has 3 rank (33%, 66%, 100% completed), etc.. up to grade five with 6 ranks (17%, 33%, 50%, 67%, 83%, 100%).
• As a consequence of the grade rank change, a lower rank needs to be 100% completed prior to unlocking the following rank.

Reference: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/elite-dangerous-only-better-fake-patch-notes.566663/

It is but one potential way, but feel like it is a quality of life with no real impact on the game: not looking for an EZ-mode, just avoiding reaching an Engineer and not having enough mats due to bad luck.

Similarly, and potentially overlapping a bit: I would still strongly love to see all 3-types material traders at the Eng bases.
Not having them only means that you need to spend a lot of time out of the game preparing (spreadsheets and the likes) and/or over-estimate your needs.
Having them doesn't really impacts the game - sure it would make the Mat Trader in existing space station obsolete, but that's not those stations only or even main purpose.


With regards to HGE, people relog anyway, so you might as well triple the number of items found in there (from 3-5 to 9-15 for example).
With regards to other signal sources, nobody uses them but if you did multiply by 4-5x then they might become more interesting to visit. Especially if you reduce the loot table spread so that you are not guaranteed but much more likely to find what you are after in specific signals.

 

[Eduds]

I really wish mats made more sense. I can see why I can't buy frameshift wake exceptions on the market, but why am I stealing epoxy glue from a random miner's bedside drawer?

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Well I have three ways of gathering mats.

Manufactured: I take my Vette and stuff it with limpets. Then I go to a CNB and scavenge ships after I blow them up.

Raw: I used to go to the Crystalline Shards. Now I just don't use raw mats anymore, I guess?

Data: I look up where to go (can't remember now), and then I go scan something, relog, and scan again, and relog, and scan ad infinitum. AFAIR it's some ship wreck.

Then I trade.

The two first are pretty decent gameplay. Actually they were excellent gameplay, but I have tried both a lot. The last one (data) is not good gameplay in any way, and it has never been. I could go and scan High Wakes, which is more fun than relogging, but it takes forever.

My methods are far from the only ones, and it might be faster to do turns at Dav's Hope, but shooting ducks in a barrel is way more entertaining than relogging. Also, we tend to do what we know is doable. You'll have to "force" people not to do that, or you could offer them something "new and exciting" instead. The Void Opal "craziness", where even hardcore gankers realized that blowing up rocks could be fun, springs to mind.

I do agree with some, that trading should be more "free" in the game, but that's also a mine field. Just look at what the economists caused back in 2024. We all remember that

 

[Pigletslastand]

We still need a reason to go the different state types or search them out so I am in favour of keeping them tied in some way to various states, the problem is that these states are often so very rare and drop so infrequently that players are near forced to 'game' the system and learn to detest the grind.

If you could guarantee a way for these states to appear more frequently and also drop more it should help. Not everyone has hours and hours to grind for little reward.

Yes also to the idea that someone mentioned of grinding down already engineered modules for mats!! Oh goodness pleeeeeeease!! that's a grind I can get behind!

 

[Rubbernuke]

Alternatively, why not get rid of the rolling, and made all modules unlocked like tech traders (i.e. you have a set list)? So mats unlock the module but you buy them from then on? Credits would then have a use too and grindy treasure hunts are at a minimum.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Maybe we need some skill-gated routes that can be reliably sourced for skill-focused players as well as purely RNG-gated whimsy routes for experienced-focused players. Skill-gated routes could be, as you mentioned in the OP, persistent Engineer missions that reward a fixed amount of a material for completing a variety of tasks - or a way for players to negotiate whatever material reward they want from regular mission givers, with scaled quantities based on material rarity and mission difficulty

Yes! More skill based stuff.

Removing the 5 material maximum for missions, especially for stuff below G5 would slightly help with this too while being easy to implement.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Guardian sites: please make it so that one Guardian unlock can be achieved through one playthrough of a Guardian site- so all the mats are there without the need to relog. That way proper searching is rewarded rather than logging in and out for pattern x data.

 

[Gordon Freeman IV]

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

 

[Fake Newts]

Re. Ship and module balancing. Quick snip to show how absurd some mods are for example:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/717838201334530098/835128220868280330/unknown.png

In this example we can see that lightweight HRPs have no reason to exist, because a combination of downsizing and Heavy Duty is significantly better in all measurable ways. Not just a little bit better, wildly better to the point that anyone using lightweight mods is a macaroon.

Modules and modifications across the board are filled with 'trap' choices that're objectively worse than the alternatives, generally speaking there's one or two 'best in class' choices for every slot and everything else is objectively terrible by comparison. Kind of a shame. 70% of module classes and mod choices could be removed from the game entirely - knowledgable players wouldn't miss them and casual players wouldn't fit them out of ignorance, helping with the following point:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/717838201334530098/792877062431703052/unknown.png

I would also suggest that having a modular outfitting system that allows for an HP spectrum ranging from ~1000 HP to ~40,000 HP within the same hull is too wide even if we pretend Elite is a traditional "level and XP" style RPG, which I don't think it is. This must make it challenging for the devs to balance content, and in practice leads to player-versus-player encounters that are enjoyable for neither party. The skill gulf between players is wide, the numerical gulf is even wider. A solution could be to redefine how ship defences are handled per hull - give them their own segment of outfitting to avoid people minmaxing to either extreme, and narrow the spectrum to manageable levels.

 

[breach_candy]

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.

Engineers should offer missions that give the player an engineer voucher of various grade. Players can then use the voucher at the engineer's base to apply any blueprint available at the engineer onto any applicable module, without using any materials. I think this is a much better solution to engineering grind than engineers offering materials for complete missions. e.g. A player completing a source a return mission for Farseer can choose a G4 engineering voucher reward. They can then use this voucher to engineer any applicable module at Farseer(i.e. FSD, Sensors, Thrusters) up to G4.

Being able to exchange bounty vouchers and thargoid hearts also sounds like a great idea, may however need a little fine tuning of how many materials you get per commodity.

 

[Spacerschoice-00]

- If adding new missions in specific locations *( I'll rate that as 3/100)
BUT
... Alternative is use the hard work that went into the negotiate mechanism and add all engineer materials as a negotiated prize. Tier 1- 3 would be easy negotiated to like 100 items. 4-5 25 if maxium negotiating achieved. (Min 7 items)
Toss in guaranteed base pay but negotiating is the bonus on top of that.
(I'll rate that 99/100 if available at all stations/outposts and ground locations.) (100/100 it'd have option to include non ship materials also)
---> Alot work went into the negotiating mechanism, and looks great. Expanding on it is encouraged.



- Just general remark, if location says/or is expected to have those type of materials it should be fairly easy to locate (visually and time wise) and have many items able to be manually collected.
(* you've already spent alot of time getting to the area.)



-Not fan of using rare drop items for crafting material rewards in any game. It just makes a farm and sell mentality, instead of encouragement of playing content.

- techbrokers could use reduction on number of certain mined goods required.

- less random please. For process of actually engineer items.

-Unlock access to engineers could use reduction / removal of certain requirements.
Ram Tah could be unlocked sooner.
Engineers that require rare goods. Could have lower number of required items.

 

[Pigletslastand]

I would just like to add that pharmaceutical isolators and data mined wake exceptions are an immense pain in the bum to get hold of unless you are willing to 'game' the system or murder a lot of civilian ships.

A lot of cmdrs who are faced with the need for DWEs go out to the Jameson' Cobra crash site and sit there relogging to force the game to give them the mats required. This isn't gameplay. if you made them appear more frequently in things like the data terminals that you hack on megaships for instance it would help, something other than just one route to acquisition. Currently if you have to get DWEs the 'right' way, you have to hang outside high traffic stations scanning every wake in the hope of getting one to drop. It's pretty mind-numbing.

 

[FlintlockEngineering]

This is an excellent topic for discussion, and I'm happily prepared to weigh in!

Material Gathering
Availability and Time Required

• Increasing the drop chance of grade 4 and 5 materials would be a great first step in opening up engineering to more players who are intimidated by the "beware the grind" scare factor that they hear from the vast majority of the community.
• broadening the spawn parameters for rare grade 4 and 5 materials would also help with this, meaning allowing materials to spawn from sources they currently don't spawn from would increase passive farming and encourage more farming during general gameplay, instead of requiring sourcing/hunting sessions for specific materials.
• I personally have played 2-4 hour sessions when searching for the perfect combination of BGS, economy and faction control for a specific material, only to come up empty handed. These are the horror stories that deter players from engineering, and likely longevity in their Elite career, as they are often paired with "but you'll need a fully engineered ship for X, Y or Z".
• Increasing the multiplier from 3 to 5 units for at least grade 4 and 5 materials would also help, as the units required have an exponential curve, given their infrequency, the amount needed to trade up to, and the number of units required to roll to max G5 level.
• Some buffs to collector limpets in regards to their travel speed would help a LOT with passive farming. having to just sit still and wait while they work is the biggest deterrent for many to farm regularly, and hinders fluid gameplay.

Alternate Gathering Methods

• In my entire Elite Dangerous career, I have never once taken or picked up a mission because it offered grade 1, 2 or 3 materials. I would suggest that either their quantity for mission rewards be increased to: 50 units for grade 1 mats, 40 for grade 2, 30 for grade 3, 20 for grade 4, and 10 units for grade 5, if I am to even consider accepting missions for rewards of the grade 1, 2 or 3 range. This would also increasing the availability of grade 4 and 5 mats, and encouraging actual participation in BGS and mission gameplay for all material sourcing.
• Adding a "Material Storage Locker" 1 ton cargo unit (treasure chest or loot box, if you will) as a findable item and/or mission reward. This cargo unit - which cannot be unlocked until taken to a station contact, shady character, or an engineer for example - would contain 10-50 random grade 3, 4 and 5 materials of ANY type. This "Material Storage Locker" cargo unit would be an exciting find during any stage of gameplay, and would always be an exciting find and highly rewarding to manually scoop. This would be an item everyone would be on the lookout for. The contents could be RNG of course, but they could also be influenced by the location you take them to for unlocking, such as a specific engineer, a BGS state, or material trader, for example.
• Currently, the material traders rip you off HARD, with an extremely unfair trade exchange rate multiplier. Lowering that multiplier significantly would help a LOT of players who are barred by time/knowledge of location spawns.
• The cross category trading multiplier is even more brutal and unfair. I would suggest using the current same category multiplier be shifted to cross category multiplier values, and reducing the multiplier for same category trading significantly.
• Those random "mission signal sources" are almost ALWAYS ignored by CMDRs, but are neat for the immersion factor. They're just not worth the time for the rewards they offer. If they were to offer, say, 25% higher material rewards than missions from the board and that "Material Storage Locker" mentioned above, for example, I imagine many more players would pay them visits when on the hunt for more mats, and would feel more immersed and rewarded for detouring from their current gameplay. After all, we need a good bit of convincing to run spontaneous missions that might require a specific ship or loadout that we'd need to go pickup, reoutfit, etc.

Rolling for Engineering Improvements

• The current system for ship engineering is rarely rewarding and satisfying, and more so frustrating and disappointing. Conversely, the current system for personal equipment is (while extremely steep in material requirements) much more straightforward, and doesn't have the capability to disappoint from a bad luck roll. Setting fixed values for each grade of engineering in the same manner as experimental effects would be much more trustworthy, and not cause frustrations and disappointment. I can't tell you the number of times that I've needed one more grade 1, 2, or 3 materials, but running out - and not being able to reach grade 4 or 5, which I have dozens of materials for. It'd be a similar frustration in which you couldn't drive your car, because you were missing 1 of 8 bolts that fastens your passenger seat to the floorboard.
• In it's current state, Grade 5 rolls are the worst, because they do not gain the reduced cost that grades 1-4 have when you've leveled up your rating with each engineer. Allowing us to rank up to gain that same reduced cost benefit for grade 5 rolls would be a great QOL improvement, if nothing else was changed.
• reducing the cost of materials needed when engineering AT an engineer base would give more reason to visit engineers aside from experimental effects, making the forced trip to visit them more rewarding.
• If the system was changed to a fixed number of materials required for the next tier, it would still be nice to have the partial engineering/randomness factor involved. For example, if 10 total materials are needed, but you only have 8 of them, you would get 8 random rolls to the stats/upgrades, but couldn't get above 80% engineered on that grade. This still give some satisfaction of the good rolls, while not bleeding you dry or robbing you of precious materials to get the last 0.004% change to your stats.

In closing, ship engineering in it's current state is intimidating on it's own, but it has a reputation among CMDRs as a long, hard, tedious and grinding road, and that scares a LOT of new players away. Reducing costs, increasing spawns and availability, and making the upgrade process more straightforward would be beneficial to all CMDRs, new and veteran alike. It may also be nice to have a balancing discussion on how these mods affect ships and the meta, what is over powered and what needs a buff, as well. Would love a dialog on that, either in private or publicly here on the forums, as I've got spreadsheets and testing galore to share findings with.

Thanks to each and every dev who is putting in the time and research to read these exhaustive suggestions from everyone! It is greatly appreciated!!

Best regards,
Captain Flint

P.S.
Adding an Engineer who solely engineers cannons for a reduced material cost to Flint's Legacy in the HIP 96402 system would probably be the best way to improve engineering, in my completely unbiased and professional opinion.

 

[Namix]

Increase the drop rate and spawn rate of materials (say 25%-30%) , make the BGS State specific mats spawn in other states or just more in general (so pharma isolators for example would spawn in say famine , outbreak and infrastructure failure and actually be there etc) and set a fixed amouint of mats per grade at the engineer themselves (say 7 roll average for a G5 complete vs the current 10 average roll range). I can't see it needing much more than this else you remove engineerings "challenge" and you might aswell just sell pre engineered items for credits at stations.

Id also start to use other signal sources and mission types to give high grade mats ...... degraded emissions, planetary scan , random surface poi's , search and rescure signals etc should all imo have engineering mats of higher grades available ...... i can only speak for myself but i barely touch these in normal play and it would be nice to have more avenues to gather high grade materials ... adding more options to farm materials is usually the best way to steamline the experience