Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering

[lesscode]

Haven't read the entire thread yet, but my thoughts:

Why not just make all materials part of a genuine player-driven economy? Some mats could still be super-rare, and people who enjoy hunting, prospecting, mining and salvaging will do that and profit from it, while those who just want to engineer for other gameplay purposes will buy what they need with credits or trade goods. Everyone is doing what they enjoy.

On the hunting side I think the goal should be to eliminate the relogs and farming sites. Put some real gamecraft into finding the valuable stuff. Don't have certain mats only found in a single place/BGS state. All mats should have at least some probability of being found in every signal source, but the probability distribution is determined by location and BGS state. Have opportunities to stumble across a "mother lode" of hundreds of mats (eg a destroyed capital ship). Have the ability to find manufactured, data and raw mats in every signal source (ie any debris field could have anything in it, determined by the probability distribution of the location/faction/BGS state variables). Visiting a signal source would be exciting because you could find literally anything.

On the usage side I'd agree that the material costs should be known and fixed. Maybe the material cost is only for unlocking the blueprint, then credits for purchasing a module upgraded to specification. Maybe even the ability to upload a "custom ship requisition request" from Coriolis theory-crafting that can be "delivered" to your fleet carrier after some in-game time and a massive amount of credits...

 

[Tom Swan]

We should have a proper Cmdr to Cmdr trade option. I can drop feets materials to my friends, while cumbersome, it works and has saved many hours of tedium. A similar option for ship materials would be welcome. Less work (?) than a proper ui transaction, but a proper built for the purpose UI would be fantastic.

Three thumbs up. Let us list and purchase from an in-game market. Set your in-game price for your goody - too high and no one buys. Make each entry part of the BGS so it's available equally to all.

 

[Carthbet]

Suggestions to redress the issues stated above and help bring Small ships up to parity will widely impact the way combat functions in Elite, and could include the following:

• Massive reductions to HP pools / reduced effectiveness of stacking Shield Boosters and Hull Reinforcement Packages / adjustments to Shield Cell Banks
• Removal of Permaboosting capabilities for Medium and Large ships through either adjustments to the Charged Enhanced blueprint, the Distributors themselves, or both
• Reductions to out-of-Blue-Zone rotational rates of Medium and Large ships
• Increases to the boost duration of most Small ships
• Reductions to the Distributor Draw for boosting in most Small ships
• Increases to the strength of vertical / lateral / retro thrusters of most Small ships (particularly lightweight Smalls)
• Removal of the rotational rate increase from boosting / ability to ignore the flight model from boosting
• Adjustments to the percentage gains on higher-class modules to keep the increases more in line with ones from lower classes

I would also add Damage to big ships that are making to sharp Manouvers.
So lets say Your FDL or corvette has that ability because your Engines and Cpacitor is upgraded to Max with specific upgrades.
The Ship itself is not designed to do manouvers like that therefore there should be some "shering effect" that would significantly damage the hull for Too Fast and Too Sharp manouvers.

Actually I wouldn't mind if Some upgrades would go Beyound the limitation of certain modules but I think good Idea would be unforssen consequences of those upgrades.
With above example, lets say you also upgraded your Hull for more hitpoints. Therefore your ship is even heavier so more damage from Sharp manouvers, uncontrollable spins during those manouvers and engine malfunctions if you fly with Flight Assist ON because your computer is not able to handle data force those forces and is trying to compensate by putting to much power to thrusters.

I think extra stuff like that would cretae some resposibilities with engineering upgrades.

 

[HighballxDevil]

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 like the ideas FDev. Like some others here, I haven't even started the engi grind and I dont plan to. Its boring. Just reading what I have to do and how tedious it is I dont think I ever will. Yes, I want to buy the mats and trade them, and yes get rid of the rng rolls. They add nothing to the gameplay other than more grind. Its really that simple.

Unfortunately this grind, which I am sure you are aware of, I mean you created it, is a symptom of a fundamental issue with elite. Theirs not much content besides ship stuff. Thats what this game is about mainly but that has changed with landable planets and on foot stuff. The next logical step is something to do on the planets. Ship interiors. Atmospheric plants. Yeah you got settlements and they are fine but all planets are barren. It really seems the reason all this grind was created was because all the content at one time was within the ship and you had to create content around that. Theirs only so much things you can do in a ship. I guess thats why planets became landable and we can walk now, the game is expanding. And with that, all the grind because eveything was in a ship was created because there little content to be derived from a pilots seat.

You had to create gameplay with a ship and to your credit you did a great job. Theres lots of diverse stuff to do with a ship. But the grind was created to keep people playing and to stretch out what little content you had. Engineers are a direct result of trying to flesh out more ship gameplay, but all it did was create more grind. But it looks like your willing to change and I am hopeful because I would play more again if I could buy mats, I'm done with the grind. I've done in countless games and there not gameplay, its just boring.

And not to get any lofty ideas but the problem with exploration is theirs nothing to explore. We need planets with stuff on them. There are so many cool planets in the game right now players see with water and clouds we wish we could go down and visit. Imagine a mission were you go down to a mission giver on the planet, fly out and find your targets in a cave, in a forest, etc. But I dont expect those things to ever be added. Just saying a big issue stemming from the engi grind is elite lacking in so many other areas. Ship interiors

 

[SilverwoIf]

• G1 to G3 materials should be much more plentiful via standard activities. Raw from mining, manufactured as scrap from destroying ships (pirate farm), encoded from doing FSS and similar scanning.
• G4 to G5 more readily available as options from mission rewards.
  • Raw stuff is honestly quite easy, if you go to the Crystal Forests (Aside from Selenium). Problem is the Crystal Forests are ~1,500LY from the bubble. Similar Crystal Forest (or similar) sites closer to / inside the bubble, and same for Selenium, would go a long way to making Raw mat farming less of a hurdle.
  • Been doing the G5 manufactured farm last couple of weeks. Most have not been to bad, but guaranteed spawn of 2+ HGE within the relevant systems / system states would go a HUGE way towards making this much less painful.
  • Everyone knows the Jameson Crash Site encoded farm site. We need either a) similar sites for all G5 encoded, or b) other ways to find 'spawns' of G4-5 encoded mats more readily, similar to the system allegiance / state targetting we can do for Manufactured.
• Get rid of the Engineering RNG. Fixed amount per roll.
• Allow cross-class trading of materials. Your an explorer and hate combat? No worries, do all your scanning stuff, get your encoded mats, then go "sell" encoded mats for equivelent raw or manufactured (1:1 trade for same grade etc).

And so, the the elephant in the room. Everybody knows the current 'fix' to spawn mats for Dav's Hope, Jameson's Crash Site, or HGE's is to close the game and re-open. This is an example of players finding inventive ways to "fix" bad design (to be blunt). This means that IF we can find the right type of HGE currently, and if we can find it with 20min+ left on it by the time we get into it, we can gather 100x G5 mats of that time within 15-20min of finding the HGE.

If we allow for time to locate the system with right combination of Allegiance + Current State, travel to it, find the HGE, GET to the HGE, and complete the process, lets say it currently takes (assuming HGE is located on first attempt with enough time remaining) AT THE VERY MOST 1hr to collect 100x the target G5 manufactured material.

If we average current travel time out to the Crystal Forests + time on the ground at each relevant site (Taking lets say ~30min / site to collect G5 Raws), then again, rough time 'acceptable' to collect 100x Raw G5 is ~1hr, this time NOT requiring the same game client relog as Manufactured and Encoded. These then are your benchmarks to work from.

What am I getting at here? Find a way to create "sites" for gathering Manufactured and Encoded materials that work the same as the Crystal Forests do for Raw materials (There are 100+ materials available on entry to the instance, and you just have to spend the ~30min gathering them). So, how do we do this?

• Manufactured: Keep HGE's as the target.
  • Guarantee 1+ HGE spawns active at any given time per special state in the system except for "None" (no state).
  • Within a SINGLE HGE, have 100+ of the target manufactured material (no longer need to relog to complete).
  • Maybe have the materials in dead "hulls" of ships, or similar, that have to be shot up / destroyed first to 'release' the materials needed (A poor mans "salvage" mechanic), instead of just already floating loose in piles of wreckage. Or some other similar "minigame" that puts it on a similar level to the Raw material Crystal Forest farm, instead of just drop into single HGE and deploy 100x collector limpets.
• Encoded:
  • Similar to HGE farming, provided guaranteed encoded spawns to be scanned based on current system Allegiance / State?
  • ...yeah my creative thought processes are failing me at present, but you get the idea - something that we the players can look for that tells us "I can search for this, go to the location, and know that I can spend ~30min doing X and have 100x Y G5 encoded material" (WITHOUT needing to relog).

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I have another suggestion-allow us to "Mine" wrecked ships for Raw and Manufactured Materials.....especially the rarer varieties. If we were able to Mine ships for Materials, Modules and Commodities, you could open up a fun new career within the game....the Salvager.

 

[SilverwoIf]

I have another suggestion-allow us to "Mine" wrecked ships for Raw and Manufactured Materials.....especially the rarer varieties. If we were able to Mine ships for Materials, Modules and Commodities, you could open up a fun new career within the game....the Salvager.

Yeah, I mean HGE's would be much more interactive if we had something like this

Re-skinned "asteroids" that look like a heavily damaged ship (Or even capital ships!!). Have to equip "Salvage" lasers instead of Mining lasers. Go to system, find HGE(s), go to location, and "salvage" the ship, use collector limpets to gather the materials as they come off the ship.

You could get really "fancy", and actually have specific sections of ships be salvaged for specific materials - and include a guaranteed count of G5 materials from a given item of salvage, with a mix of more lower grade stuff as well.

 

[szymciu07]

It's my 10th post here I think in this thread.
That's an indicator that I care

I have some engineering experience:

Spoiler: My stats

NUMBER OF ENGINEERS USED	25
NUMBER OF UPGRADES GENERATED	7,397
GRADE 1 UPGRADES GENERATED	1,123
GRADE 2 UPGRADES GENERATED	850
GRADE 3 UPGRADES GENERATED	1,253
GRADE 4 UPGRADES GENERATED	1,535
GRADE 5 UPGRADES GENERATED	2,636
TRADES COMPLETED	994
MATERIALS TRADED	47,037
ENCODED MATERIALS TRADED	11,052
RAW MATERIALS TRADED	13,061
GRADE 1 MATERIALS TRADED	11,546
GRADE 2 MATERIALS TRADED	8,860
GRADE 3 MATERIALS TRADED	10,001
GRADE 4 MATERIALS TRADED	11,122
GRADE 5 MATERIALS TRADED	5,508

Before module increase to 200 I had 4 Type 10s in my carrier filled with engineered modules that acted as a shelf.

After upgrade I still have them, I can just engineer more without buying another Type 10.

And that's because I like to experiment with my ship builds. Because playing the game is fun.
Engineering isn't fun, the process as a whole is tedious.

I usually have full stock of Exquisite Focus Crystals, Biotech Conductors, and Modified Embedded Firmware from doing BGS missions, so I can try to trade them for what I need, but let's say I want to engineer a ship from scratch, basically all modules, all Grade 5, I am a this kind of person who fills the rings to 100%.

Filling on raw materials:

I need to jump 100 times to a crystalline forest to fill on materials,
then fly 40 minutes in supercruise for absolutely no reason at all they have to be that far away,
then proceed to fill them up, tough crystalline forests are kind of fun and the only aspect of engineering I kind of liked,
when you finally get to them.
Crystalline forests trip is approx. 4 hours of gameplay, that's a day or two spent on getting raw materials.
If they were closer players could fill up on raw materials using material traders, but no, we have to grind Charge FSD button to get there.

This is the most efficient way of collecting raw materials. I don't have time to search for selenium on surface prospecting, and I rarely do so. And I don't enjoy mining to exchange Nickel for 200:1 ratio.

Gathering manufactured materials I need:

Now this is TEDIOUS, just bad. I don't always fly with collector limpets to collect random stuff that falls out of pirates, and even if I did, I have to waste 2 module slots to have limpets. Make limpets controllers have hangars like SRV's and Fighter bays.

But not all manufactured material types falls out of every ship, so I end up having to go to material trader with insane exchange ratios, or go to farm HGE, again I have 40 minutes today to play the game. I AM going to spend 15 min to exit the game and reload it (god bless PS5 loading times) and I AM going to fill up on a G5 material to trade it down. Preferably I will fill up on the one I am missing.

That's another one or two hours of MINDLESS roaming around, using 3rd party websites to help me find what materials I need (god bless INARA), and to help me where to find them and exchange them.

Gathering encoded materials I need:

I am NOT going to scan wakes to search for Datamined Wake Exceptions. I am just not doing it. You do it. I scan ships in supercruise, I scan ships in combat zones and pirate hunting.

And it should be enough. It isn't, so after watering down my MEF supply I'm headed to Jameson Cobra because again my time is valuable.
I have my sweet spot to land and to place SRV, a neuron for rotating turret while it still deploys to make it point in the right direction.
And I have finally made the encoded materials I need for my new engineered toy.

Time to get encoded materials:
Another hours or two.

Sum of gathering materials: Couple of days worth of game time, given I have to go through all steps.

But that's not enough:
Oh nononono.
Now I have to make approx 1000 Ly (One thousand Ly) trip and land on 8 planets just to get my modules done.

So I open a 3rd party website, an Excel freaking spreadsheet, and I figure out which engineers I need to visit to apply experimentals and which engineers I have to visit as I don't have a blueprint pinned. But that gives me 5 options to do so.
Then I go to another 3rd party website that will plot those 5 alternative routes for me, which I will compare and choose the one with 700 Ly instead the 1500 Ly.

But wait, my new Corvette has 15 Ly range.
So I put all modules I can can in my Jump-a-conda, and plot my carrier jump to Kuk, where I will engineer Armor.
And I proceed to make the 800 Ly trip with my Anaconda doing modules.

Thats another day or two engineering the ship.

SUM: A few days worth of not playing the game just to play the game with a new toy. Which doesn't have to be what I though it will be. Because it was an experiment. So I need to reengineer some weapons.


Thoughts:
Make us be able to do 100% of engineering from fleet carriers or stations.
Ditch the pinned modules and just let us do it.

As for the materials, you already are going in the right direction, theres a ton of feedback here

 

[CMDR Robb Macruz]

I say YES to all suggestion, really. Anything that aliviates the grind is welcomed. I've pretty much only engineered my FSD, (and some other modules but just with the materials I have at hand) and never actively grinded for anything more than the FSD drive. And, this is why I don't do much outside Space trucking and exploration, I would love to go thargoid hunting or taking higher risk bounty and assassination missions, but since I don't want to put up with the grind, I've only engineered my exploration modules.

Now, for my own suggestions:

- As other CMDR suggested, make a "lootbox" item that can be dropped by enemies, found in wreckage, settlement and mission rewards that gives you an assorted number of mats depending on quality, of the lootbox. Say a very common box gives you 10 mats, an uncommon 50 and a rare one gives you 100, sure it's still loot RNG, but it adds a valuable RNG and a reward factor for high risk missions.

- Engineered missions that use the mission link functionality, not only for mats but for outright upgraded modules (assorted values and experimentals) so it's worthwile to visit engineers after completing your build. Make it randomized mission that relate to the engineer, I don't think anyone would have a problem having random modules, since it can lead to people making hybrid and fun wacky builds just to try everything out, and of course make them engage with different gameplay loops since there's an explicit valuable reward.

- Let us buy mats outright with cash. Sure this might be an unpopular suggestion but, having the option never hurts. Make it so specific system types sell certain types of mats and some even to permits and reputation with various factions. Hell, change the mats being sold depending on the BSG even. Like honestly, it has always bugged me that in an universe where we can fly to one end of the galaxy to the other, fight aliens and outright blow up Space Ubers for the fun of it we still have to prospect and mine for common stuff like Iron.

If I need copper wiring irl we don't need to go with a pickaxe and shovel to the Congo and open a copper mine, we just order it on Amazon... Having this as an option on top of everything else is always good, sure some would like to gather stuff, some get them through missions and others would take the easy way and pay for them (I'm not against selling the G5 items at a markup tbh, after having the ships you want cash pretty much is only good to pay for rebuys anyway)

 

[Akey2]

Having recently started afresh as I moved from PS to PC, I set myself the challenge of staying in Odyssey, so over the weekend I set about gathering the materials required for the double engineered FSD (5a one currently available). Please please, one of the CMs do this as a challenge from fresh to see just what this is now like in EDO. First the easy bit, Manufactured and data, both are fairly easy to gather within a couple of hours, but its tedious. No for the real pain - Raws.

Using spansh and some other tools I identified a body with Tellurium and headed over, DSS the planet and it show 3 geo sites (ok so far), no POIs showing, and the heat map is just a single colour across the whole planet - OK, lets head down and see what we can see. By flying close to the planet you can see the volcanic activity, so away we go. Picking up reasonable amount of materials (but no Tellurium), after a couple of hours of this I finally find a single chunk of Tellurium (I need 10)! My options at this point are to re-log to desktop 10 times to get enough, or to keep trying at the current rate of maybe one chunk every hour - 2 hours.

Engineering materials as a reward from the engineers - yes, but in significant amounts please, we don't need 10 missions to get to a single G5 upgrade for a single module.

Please please please fix the Raw mat gathering in Odyssey, both the locations of sites and the drop rate - the crystal forests were a great way to set yourself up, and we even had community trips out to the location to gather materials as a group.

I haven't even started on the Odyssey engineers yet. I know its a tough balance between players who have been in game for years and new starters or even account resets, but Raw mats certainly seem to be way out of balance in Odyssey.

 

[CMDR Robb Macruz]

I say YES to all suggestion, really. Anything that aliviates the grind is welcomed. I've pretty much only engineered my FSD, (and some other modules but just with the materials I have at hand) and never actively grinded for anything more than the FSD drive. And, this is why I don't do much outside Space trucking and exploration, I would love to go thargoid hunting or taking higher risk bounty and assassination missions, but since I don't want to put up with the grind, I've only engineered my exploration modules.

Now, for my own suggestions:

- As other CMDR suggested, make a "lootbox" item that can be dropped by enemies, found in wreckage, settlement and mission rewards that gives you an assorted number of mats depending on quality, of the lootbox. Say a very common box gives you 10 mats, an uncommon 50 and a rare one gives you 100, sure it's still loot RNG, but it adds a valuable RNG and a reward factor for high risk missions.

- Engineered missions that use the mission link functionality, not only for mats but for outright upgraded modules (assorted values and experimentals) so it's worthwile to visit engineers after completing your build. Make it randomized mission that relate to the engineer, I don't think anyone would have a problem having random modules, since it can lead to people making hybrid and fun wacky builds just to try everything out, and of course make them engage with different gameplay loops since there's an explicit valuable reward.

- Let us buy mats outright with cash. Sure this might be an unpopular suggestion but, having the option never hurts. Make it so specific system types sell certain types of mats and some even to permits and reputation with various factions. Hell, change the mats being sold depending on the BGS even. Like honestly, it has always bugged me that in an universe where we can fly to one end of the galaxy to the other, fight aliens and outright blow up Space Ubers for the fun of it we still have to prospect and mine for common stuff like Iron.

If I need copper wiring irl we don't need to go with a pickaxe and shovel to the Congo and open a copper mine, we just order it on Amazon... Having this as an option on top of everything else is always good, sure some would like to gather stuff, some get them through missions and others would take the easy way and pay for them (I'm not against selling the G5 items at a markup tbh, after having the ships you want cash pretty much is only good to pay for rebuys anyway)

 

[Dale Franks]

Here’s my opinion.

1. Unlike almost every other game I’ve ever played, I don’t really know how many materials it takes to complete an upgrade, because the rolls are random. Will it take 6 rolls? 7? 9? I dunno, so I don’t know how many materials I actually need. Fix the materials amounts to eliminate the rolls. N number of materials should achieve a known upgrade. I mean, experimental effects already work that way.
2. Reduce the punishing conversion rates at materials traders. Trading a Grade 4 material for another Grade 4 material is a 6x conversion? C’mon. Pull the other one.
3. I have Cr3 billion in my pocket, and another Cr27 billion sitting on my carrier. Money that I don’t really have anything to spend on, because I also own every ship in the game. Let me BUY materials, for cripe’s sake. At least I can spend money. I mean, I’ve made Cr1 billion in a day doing wing massacre missions, and I just shove that cash into a Fleet Carrier whose weekly upkeep fees are now funded for nearly 12 years. Charge me through the nose in credits for engineering materials at the mats trader. Or let me buy upgrades directly from the engineer. Charge me whatever you want in terms of credits. You say a class 5 FSD with G5 Range and Mass Manager costs Cr40,000,000? Shut up and take my money. Let me CHOOSE MY GRIND. Let me grind for money, if that’s what I want, or materials if that’s what I want. Make credits mean something.
4. Performance improvements should provide a fixed amount of improvement, not a percentage amount. We need to fix things like heavy-duty lightweight armor that adds X% weight to armor that weighs 0. (X% x 0) + 0 = 0.
5. Also, I think the engineering improvements are completely OP. A lot of this is because the percentage-based improvements can offer up to, like, a 600% improvement on the module’s performance. That’s just crazy. Maybe max out at double the original stats, at maximum. And maybe double is just too much.
6. Don’t make me take 2 trips out to HIP 33601 because I’m out of G5 materials. How’s about occasionally dropping some G4 and G5 mats when I’m out mining Platinum or whatever?

Oh, and hey, here’s a pro tip: Grinding is not engagement.

 

[Kayrox]

Personally I enjoy gathering material, that doesn't mean that sometimes it gets repetitive. Alternate methods of gathering is a must IMO, there is a lot of potential with orbital installations and horizon settlements. Also having better defined ways to obtain specific materials would be a welcome improvement IMO.

Regarding T1 to T3 materials, IMO the issue is that you get them the exact same way as the T4 to T5, in the end why would you bother to get T1 to T3 materials when you can get exponentially more in less time by collecting T4 and T5 materials and trading them down. Making them more abundant and easier to find may give players a reason to go collect those T1 to T3 instead of going through the hassle of getting the T4 and T5.

I think that having a fixed amount of rolls is a must, the amount of times that I ran out of materials with just 1% or 2% remaining is infuriating and, IMO, the most frustrating part of ship engineering. I don't mind having to fly across the bubble just to get materials, it adds a level of immersion and physicality to the game, but having to fly across the bubble just to get that last 2% is just too frustrating to me.

Another suggestion is adding material trading between players. Not exchanging materials, but selling them to other players for credits, an interesting way to do this could be through carriers. That would add a lot to the game, I already can see anti thargoid groups having people collecting guardian materials and resupplying those CMDR in the battlefield, same with regular combat groups. Not only that, explorers creating networks across the galaxy distributing materials for the wary traveler.

Also, regarding collector limpets, as far as I had experienced it, collector limpets will expire after collecting 1 material, I expected it to behave as it does with material chunks, collect everything it can in the lifetime of the limpet. Having to collect them manually contributes to the tedium of material collection.

 

[Jmanis]

Briefly, I'd also make the following anti-suggestion.

Do not allow the wholesale purchase of materials for credits.

If this gets achieved in some indirect way by going "Well, let's allow players to get materials by trading non-market goods such as Thargoid Hearts", that'll create a bit more player incentive, but frankly those non-market goods deserve a bit better treatment than that.

First and foremost reason not to do this is it directly contradicts what you're trying to achieve with this. That is,
-To make (G1-3) worthwhile to gather by themselves by changing availability and time required
- Implementation of alternate gathering methods

Credits and the general economy of the game is wholly unbalanced, and the previous rebalancing in January failed to address this adequately. As such, there is no sane value that can be afforded to materials that does not create an imbalance elsewhere in the game. Too high and you'll just make credits the preferred grind, too low and credits no longer become a sought thing, and all value is measured in # of materials. Intuitively, you might go "but there's some middle ground right?".... correct, but that middle ground is not a good position to find; that middle ground puts materials in a very high price bracket, which has major knock-ons for the rest of the game.

Right now, the game values G5 materials at ~200k/ea (iirc). This can be observed through missions, as this will deduct that much per-G5 from the credit reward, for that reward option. That is, a 1.2m credit installation scan mission will reward that much, or 200k + 5 x G5 materials.

At that cost, collecting any materials makes no sense when compared against some of the unbalanced cash-cow activities out there; it simply doesn't make any economic or efficiency sense. At most, it's an ancilliary bonus alongside your core earner, but far from the focus of the activity. Since one of the goals seems to be making materials worth collecting in their own right, setting the purchase value of materials too low does not make sense.

At the other end of the scale, if we pump the puchase price of materials too high, it starts to break things significantly. For example:

• The credit value of the "scrap materials" falling out of an asteroid starts to outweigh the value of the asteroid itself, and so things like Void Opals are eclipsed in value by things like Sulfur.
• Missions are stuck in the position where they massively over-reward... giving 5-6 million base if we put G5 materials at, say, 1m credits each... or we massively nerf missions by comparison to all other activities by not buffing their reward, and reducing material issued as reward to match price point. Further, if we simply don't price match the other reward aspects, all other reward choices stop making sense (why take a 2m credit reward when you can get 5m in materials, or if we keep the balance, 5m in some dump-cargo.
• Some vessels will now produce salvage worth more than the value of the ship itself, and suiciding to an alt suddenly becomes a more financially viable alternative to gathering materials.
• The earn rates of other activities go even further out of whack. Suddenly exploration, xeno research, smuggling (which still earns a loss due to an outstanding bug) and further activities (NPC piracy anyone? Megaship looting?) suddenly become worthless table scraps, which is a shame given dedicated mechanics are set up for these activities.

In short, setting prices too high results in a simple substitution of credit grind for material grind.

So, there's really no good way out. "But Jmanis! Why does reward matter! Just let people do what they enjoy! Who cares if reward is unbalanced!" is a great way to bury your head in the sand and ignore a substantial issue around cognitive dissonance. Some argue that considering cognitive dissonance in a universe of fictional technologies is silly; but avoiding cognitive dissonance in that environment is about maintaining internal consistency. Having an agent reward either 2m credits or 10m credits worth of materials for the same work done makes no sense, and isn't even susceptible to the nuances of "science fiction"... and that's without going near ideas like ships dropping "damaged scrap" worth more than the value of the ship itself.

Isn't just a matter of making the things remunerate correctly... balance also matters in helping guide what people enjoy. For instance, smuggling is not fun in it's current state where, at the end of it all, you're rewarded with a loss instead of a profit, where a basic A->B route with much less effort would earn a substantial profit. When the effort required for one activity is disproportionately rewarded for the effort of another, one of those is inherently not fun, because it's not seen as worthwhile. Something something incentivisation.

Lastly, is the rest of the game balanced? No way... but that's no excuse to make it even worse.

tl;dr carte-blanche purchasing of materials for credits would be a disaster.

 

[lyndeb]

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

How about making suit where you can change mods instead of having a mod you dont like and having to build an entire new suit along with the mods you do like? Keep the suits seperated like mods for only dom suit and mods for only mav suit so you can say change night vision for bigger pack pack, or battery tool reduce. That would help a lot.

 

[Ruella]

My ideas:

- BEST IDEA I've read so far: add Engineer-related missions with some narrative, Skyrim-style. Make us infliltrate an intricated base with mutated monsters. Free up some trapped scientists and escort them out while the base systems are failing and we need to keep them online, make us kill some unique Big Boss in missions that mix ship and on-foot fighting (right now ship and onfoot gameplay look too much like 2 separate games). Have some puzzles to be solved and at the end let us find a BIG BOUNTY of grade 4 and 5 materials. This game is too procedurally generated and lacking skyrim-style NARRATIVE.

- Allow players to build and manage their own settlements with their own problems (Sim City style or like Millenium 2.2 on Amiga, I am sure you can implement Amiga-level gameplay easily and quickly on modern PCs) where they can have facilities that mine certain materials and sell them to other players. Even allow the sale of engineering services.

- Just increase the material mission rewards. It's dull to take up a mission that requires 30 minutes to complete and get only 2-3 materials that I am gonna burn thorugh in an instant.

- Change Material Exchange rates. It's just impossible to get Grade 5 materials by exchanging them with lower grades. The rates are too punishing.

 

[Ruella]

Also you coud add discounts on required materials based on the player rank. For example: Felicity farseer could ask full price if you're an Aimless Explorer, but give a cumulative 5% discount for every subsequent rank, so an Elite explorer who has already done the SAME GRIND a million times needs to pay much less materials and spend much less time on the grind at 70% discount.

 

[avow555]

Start with drops of ten of everything.
Better trade rates also.
Allied missions should return significant tier 5 materials.

 

[Ruella]

- Allow players to build and manage their own settlements with their own problems (Sim City style or like Millenium 2.2 on Amiga, I am sure you can implement Amiga-level gameplay easily and quickly on modern PCs) where they can have facilities that mine certain materials and sell them to other players. Even allow the sale of engineering services.

Aaaaaaand, if players could create their own settlements, other players could raid them on foot\SRV to steal the materials, even in groups of players so you would need to prepare appropriate defences etc. This would create great teamplay \ PVP opportunities.

 

[beigbeider]

I propose to think about the idea. If the engineer issues missions for which the player will be able to upgrade a ship part for free without the necessary materials.