Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering

[Arthur Spooner]

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

Although a bit late - considering what players are moaning about for years now (SCNR) - I'm really happy to see first steps to an overhaul to the whole engineering/materials gathering mechanic.

I haven't read the whole thread, so sorry if my suggestions were already made.

I especially like the idea of dedicated engineer missions, but I'd take a different approach to this. After the invite, give each engineer a series of 5 special missions, each to unlock one grade of modifications at this given engineer. These missions must be taken progressively and have to start really simple for grade 1 and become more and more complex for the higher grades. Maybe these missions also involve gathering different materials, but now, instead of trying to find totally different randomly generated stuff somewhere, the mission aims at certain materials, tells you where to go and what to do to gather them and they will actually spawn there in a rate so that you don't have to re-log or do other stupid stuff for hours on end! And then after you have completed any of these missions, you can just buy any modifications with the just unlocked grade from the engineer for credits.

Actually, now that I read this again, this is quite similar to the Guardian tech broker mechanics...only with dedicated missions instead of simple material grind. Although the Guardian material grind actually IS a bit of a special mission, as it is quite unique from the other materials in the universe.

What I'm trying to achieve with this concept is to still have a good amount of effort to get access to engineered modules, but to not have to have this effort again and again for the same stuff. It's important to me, that after you have made the effort to achieve an unlock, you can keep it and get modifications for credits. Credits can usually be earned with any activity the player likes. And after all, why shouldn't the engineer sell you stuff for money after you have helped her/him out and she/he is your buddy now? ;-)

Not sure if there are any big flaws in this concept...

A good balance of the complexity/difficulty of the missions is crucial here of course.

 

[Screemonster]

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.

On this front, honestly, I'd love to see the "rolling" moved to developing your blueprint and once you've perfected that blueprint it's a done deal and you can do it at the remote workshop, and have that replace the concept of pinned blueprints.

As in, you want dirty drives. You start out, you go to Farseer. You do some rolls, you get your Grade 1 dirty drives blueprint up to a decent level, then you work on grade 2, then grade 3. This unlocks the respective grades of Dirty Drives in the remote workshop - but if you didn't complete your blueprint, then, well, you'll only be able to apply it up to the point where you left off. Farseer doesn't do thrusters any higher than grade 3, so if you want to improve your blueprint you'll need to find another engineer who does. Likewise, if you find you want to put Clean Drives or Drive Strengthening on something for some reason, you'll have to start that blueprint up from scratch, you won't be able to just engineer your FSD up to grade 5 and then go "oh I'm rep 5, I guess I can slap grade 3 dirty drives on these thrusters straight away"

Essentially, each blueprint is levelled up once and then you just... have the blueprint. No need to visit them to pick and choose pins, you work with them enough and your cmdr is able to replicate their work. You work with the engineers as consultants to improve your craft until you can make them yourselves.

 

[SparkS116]

i know it will sounds weird but i like to spend some time in my srv on some planet and collect materials. But why i CAN'T sell them ??? ((( Unfair !

 

[Ed hunter]

I think we should also be able to barter the none usable Materials. we have a huge list of Materials not used in any material recipes, at the moment only sold at the bar lets have them be more use.
with the engineers could we have the standard recipes but be able to bulk them up with other mats? So example need 5 grade 5 mats but only have 4 could the remaining one be substituted with 2 grade 3s?

 

[Elpapo]

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?

Yes, it would be nice. This is easiest to implement as well I belive. Change it from 3 to 5 and done. It would certainly reduce time needed to fully G5 any modules even without any other changes, but if other changes would be done, this would be not as much neccecary.

Also exchange rates should be more fair on material traders, where its really unfair when it comes to trade materials from diffrent groups.

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.

There is actually 2 of them wich quite more difficult to find compared to rest of g5 mats. Some of G5 mats can be also obtained from npcs ships wich is nice on its own, so these wont be listed here.

1) Military supercapacitors - these unlike Military Grade alloys cant be obtained from npcs ships and HGE at War states are seems to favor to spawn Military Grade alloys as well for most of time.... for 10 HGE's at correct BGS state, I could get 7 or 8 with Military Grade alloys rather than supercapacitors.
2) Improvised Components - Same as above. HGE's at correct BGS states are more likely to spawn something else than this.

I think most easiest fix for that would be adding those materails to "loot" table that ships can drop these as well, like it does with other g5 materials. I would note that currently g5 materials drop chances from npcs are fine as it is.

Alternate Gathering Methods​

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

Im fully into that... but I would like to be able to buy materials as well by credits... the way I see it, it would work same as with location specific Commodities such as power transfer bus or exhaust manifold wich are only obtainable from certain systems wich produce those. So it would be possible to buy for example a Pharmaceutical isolators from place where those things are actually produced. Make it really expensive, such: 200k-800k cr per unit.

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.

Yes, upgrade rates should be fixed, not random... G5 blueprints should be maxed at 5 or 6 rolls. Currently problem is that when G5 module is nearly completed, when its at 75%, often costs requires more 5-7 rolls to finish last few % of upgrade. This is more issue with blueprints mentioned above.

 

[jnTracks]

Personally, I think changing the mat trader rates to be less punishing, and making rolls fixed (and reduced) would solve it pretty much completely and not need any other changes.

I think this is favorable since fewer changes means less complication and easier development, and less chance for random new bugs to be introduced.

If fixed 1 spent recipe per grade isn't acceptable, perhaps it could be 1 roll for grades 1 and 2, 2 rolls for grades 3 and 4, and 3 rolls for grade 5.

But generally, the random amount of boost doesn't make in-game sense and so it's a prime target for changing. Significantly reducing the mats needed to 1 recipe or so per grade would single-handedly reduce the grind, and making trade rates more favorable would further help while also solving the issue of certain mats being hard to find because they are tied to a BGS state, for example.

Doing this simply is VERY favorable for players and devs! Don't change everything a little; change these two things a lot instead.

 

[EdzUp]

Tldr, the whole engineer thing is weird for me. Basically I have to go shopping for xyz so they can upgrade my engine etc. Why not make it credit based and you have to do something specific or interesting. For example:to overcharge the engine the engineer requires a nitrous boost injector, 500000Cr and x hours with ya engine. The injector can be bought from x system and there ya go.

No faffing around, no fluff just go buy it and bring it back. Now with colonia we could send people out there to get x item for the upgrade instead of shopping it would be meaningful content.

 

[Kerrash]

Simply put, reduce the randomness.

The fact that you need to ask players for a estimate on the time it took them to unlock something, should be alarming enough to make you realise that the gameplay needs to be more consistent.

 

[CMDR Bloomingwind836]

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

Thank you for reaching out to the community Bruce.

I think that these are good ideas you bring to the table with Engineer missions, probably more generous rewards from station missions.

1) Rebalancing trading, especially 'uphill' trading of mats might be a good idea
2) Jiggering which manufactured mats drop from what ships, and perhaps bumping the up from 3 mats per item to 5 mats per item might be helpful. I feel guilty going to an anarchy tourist site and seal clubbing Belugas.
3) Perhaps create a couple of new 'Dav's Hopes' with a good number of mats to harvest but with a different variety.
4) Raw Mats from Mining works really well right now, maybe a bump up in G3s.
5) Perhaps a greater frequency of data mats from scanning ships. I haven't scanned wakes in a while.

I would not nerf certain sites like Dav's Hope, the Jamison Crash Sites or the Crystaline Shard Forests. Those are a special part of the lore of the game.

Perhaps more ubiquity with HGEs and bigger drops in them.

Pharmaceutical isolators are as common as hens teeth.

o7

Huck

 

[Jaxon Draco]

Just in general i think the grind for material gathering needs to be calmed down a bit. Someone else put it great on this forum... that this level of grinding (or committment to gameplay) to obtain the necessary materials isn't realistic for a large group of players that may only have a few hours to play a week. Requiring that much work can alienate a group of players that simply can't commit that much of their time to gathering materials to engineer a single ship or suit. These players actually want to spend their time engaging in the gameplay that brought them to Elite Dangerous, not a potential multi-day campaign of rinse-repeat material grinding.

I love this idea!!

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.

Bugs related to material gathering
Please please please please fix the raw material mining bug. Whenever i am asteroid mining the raw mats don't eject properly from the asteroid, they get stuck right where the mining laser makes contact and any limpet that goes after it fails.... this bug has been present since at least update 6 or 7.

there is also a bug that prevents you from scooping materials with your cargo scoop down. OR it will prevent limpets from collecting items that a different ship drops.

 

[Drelthar]

Scanning planets could grant data materials, bonus if they are able to be used for exploration related engineering (if no materials make "sense" for a planet scan, grant something else that exploration engineers will exchange directly)

Why does Palin require a 5000Ly trip to nowhere in order to unlock him, so you can get thrusters that make your ship faster? This is essentially a combat upgrade. There are other things that don't seem to make sense like this in terms of unlocks too.

Ideally, an engineers unlock requirement should fit both their specilisation, and the engineering types they can do. (and, even more preferably, organically gain you some materials for at least a couple of upgrades.)

Engineers interested in thargoids and gaurdians should take thargoid/guardian materials either in trade for others, directly for upgrades, or as "wild card" materials.

Gaining materials from using a wake scanner would be a great idea, if the wake scanner had more gameplay use.
The design cannot have been for people to sit in one spot scanning wakes - the idea MUST have been for commanders to use a wake scanner in normal gameplay and organically gain materials from it.

Add in new ways to gain these materials (they could be inside the odyssey data ports in place of some of the "useless" data)

Preferably, modify and expand the gameplay of various mission types to increase the normal use of wake scanners (bounty hunting/assasination/piracy, could all use the thing to follow/track targets - a mission type could be created to simply follow a ship without letting it get suspicious, for corporate espionage reasons, or for a pirate faction to learn a traders new route)

Materials found on planet surfaces. THIS is a big one.

Yes, you can now gain them from mining, and this is good, but you don't gain them very fast, or many if any of the higher grade ones this way.
Allow scanning planets for specific materials, preferably by improving the recent update to the DSS, or adding an extra later of gameplay to do this.

Having to check the percentage of a planet materials is fine, but then having to use the now near useless "heat map" and just hope to randomly find what you are looking for is pretty bad. Somewhere between useless heat map, and specifically pointing to a location (Which any way, you aren't sure has what you want) would be good.

Missions/scenarios can be leveraged to help - save a guy in a distress signal source? instead of "thanks bye" how about "thanks, I don't have many credits, but here's the location of a stash of materials I had to leave behind commander"

Pick up a black box? Computer analysis shows the location of a crashed ship commander - get there, it has a stash of G5 mats in it.

Same thing for completing megaship scenarios - or protecting a ship in a conflict zone (sometimes they could just transfer data materials instead of giving a location to go to)

The biggest, best thing you could ever do though, is allow commanders to actually ask mission givers for -specific- materials from the mission board.

Also, remove the limit on pinned blueprints, and allow "grandfathered" modules to be converted to the new system using remote engineering.

(Also allow full trading of every single item in the game, for every single other item in the game, via carriers.)

That's a few things off the top of my head.

Thanks for looking at it.

 

[Xae]

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.

By module is pretty hard.

I would estimate 100 hours of gathering to engineer a ship with ~20 modules that need engineering. This estimate is difficult through because I have huge stockpiles of some materials and can trade them. Starting from zero I would say 200+ hours, depending on how much research someone is willing to put in to find some of the rarer materials.


If we're counting foot stuff in this I would say 50 hours for G1->G5 and mod a single suit or weapon

 

[kit_far_traveller]

My son and I have not played much for a while. What is lacking in general is Story and personal builds of outposts. One idea we would love to see is player outposts. Build outposts on planets that have materials and have a material mining and sales operation for example. There are Fleet Carriers that park around material planets already doing this but what if there were planet side outposts you could build instead. Add on foot mining to drive the reasoning as well. I could even see pioneers defending their claims with planet side defenses and more.

 

[[VR] Zakk]

The entire concept behind engineering and material gathering is pretty poor, as far as I am concerned.

The idea that there is an endless amount of commodities that, while being high in demand and commonly available, cannot be traded in-game and can be stored (where exactly?) only in fixed capacities per commodity, is immersion-breaking. It simply doesn't make any sense and screams "we had no better idea".

I don't need to mention that it forces you through endless repetitive grind cycles - that's why this thread is here.

Personally, I never grinded for the sake of grinding. Whenever I engaged in combat, I picked up what the destroyed ships left behind. When I made a delivery mission that offered a commodity I was short on, I chose the commodity instead of more CR. And I frequently visited material traders and traded away those commodities that I had in full supply.

I would prefer an aftermarket for space ship components. Instead of trading in nonsensical commodities to buy static stat increases, you could offer a large variety of OEM and third-party add-ons and parts for space ships. Aftermarket dealers could become part of space and ground stations. Some of them specialize on certain manufacturers, others offer a highly random choice of tuning parts from third-party suppliers.

Anarchy and low-sec systems could even sell handcrafted steampunky parts that deliver extra effects, but won't last forever. A superbooster for your rail gun may give you a certain edge - until it breaks down mid-combat, leaving your ship crippled.

Top-shelf gear could be subject to previous missions - hand in combat bonds, exploration data, what have you.

And I would strongly recommend to limit the envelope in which you can upgrade your ship. Tuners should have to decide which aspect of their ship they want to boost, but should not be able to boost them all at once.

And every boost should come with a catch. Want your weapons to deliver some extra punch? Okay, but that will make your ship slower. Want to turn your already-tanky ship into a flying fortress? Sure, but it will reduce your cargo capacity.

Every possible configuration should be placed inside a triangle, with the apexes being a) durability, b) agility, c) firepower. However you move your sweet spot inside that triangle, you can move closer to 1 or 2 apexes, but not all 3. A highly agile fighter won't be durable. A fortress with lots of firepower won't be agile. And an agile fortress won't be able to support firepower.

Engineering via aftermarket parts would allow you to push one apex of the triangle a little further out. Only within reason, though. And only 1 apex per ship, not all 3 of them.

Engineering in its current form is a linear, repetitive and (sorry) boring feature. Removing the entire material trading part and replacing engineers with a non-linear aftermarket system would be a lot more immersive.

It would be a big change, though. FDev probably have much smaller tweaks in mind.

 

[Poonjabby]

Anything that gets me out of the (Raw) Crystalline Forrest, (Encoded) Jamison Crash Site logging in and out of the game and (Manufactured) Logging in and out of High Grade signal sources I would be a fan of. I currently have about 80 Grade 5 engineered ships some go all the back to 2016 before engineering was changed. I will spend about a day at the crystalline shard sites farming grade 5 raw materials. I'll spend another day farming selenium, another full day logging in and out at the Jamison cash site and flying back and forth to the material trader and then depending on RNG I can spend up to a week farming high grade 5 manufactured materials. When im done and all materials are full I have enough to fully engineer about 5 ships.
I would like to make another suggestion. Once your triple elite can we have all the engineers in one place so we don't have to fly all over the bubble. By the time you hit triple elite you've earned your stripes and the grind just isn't fun anymore.

 

[uraniborg]

Thanks for taking feedback on this issue! I love engineering and enjoy doing it, including the material farming. Some aspects are very frustrating however and could be improved.

Material Gathering

Availability and Time Required​

I really like the material trader system. I don't feel the numbers are that off, but maybe you could stockpile greater numbers of the higher grades to make down trading easier. Right now going out and targeting grade 1 mats (carbon, iron, etc) is pretty useless, so yes getting more per instance might help with this. Having more POI sites like the famous "crystalline shard forest" for raw mats would be cool, these are a useful happenstance. Data farming sites like Jamesons Crashed ship are handy and efficient but fairly boring. Having more variety of data sites like this would be helpful, maybe they are different crashed ships or abandoned bases, mega ships, installations, etc. You can already use mega ships and installations but they aren't very rewarding, possibly improving the yields from these sites would make them viable. Likewise Dav's Hope is fun for collecting mats and a little data, but maybe allowing higher grades to randomly spawn would improve them, and having more variety of locations to make it interesting. Then there are the high grade emission signal sources, the concept is really cool being tied to system state and hunting them down. But I find it is too hard to find the HGE to start with, plus certain materials are impossible to find (Pharmaceutical isolators being the worst). To improve, maybe make them more abundant or make them last longer, and make the rare materials occur in more system states, or maybe allow some bonus materials that are random to spawn along with the rest. Increasing the number of units or the number of instances you pick up could also balance the HGE. Right now the Encoded and Degraded emissions aren't useful, maybe if they held a greater number of materials they could be better. There is the issues of menu logging vs quitting to desktop that's a thorny issue, and I'd rather not have to log out over and over again to make it efficient.

Alternate Gathering Methods

Yes! Improving and varying the existing methods as I mentioned, like more Dav Hopes, better mega ship looting, etc. The most annoying type of mat collection is when doing combat in Resource Extraction Sites (RES) you get all these mats that drop but it's not really practical to collect them. We don't want to outfit combat ships with Limpet collectors and Cargo racks with limpets, and scooping manually is terribly inefficient. A few ways to solve this: 1) allow turning in the bonds to give equivalent materials instead of credits, 2) give a special limpet collector that doesn't require a cargo rack, it can hold a few limpets itself which can be used to scoop up mats, 3) make the cargo scoop suck up materials that are close by dredger-style, maybe this could be an unlocked item tied to the Scriveners clan? 4) have an SLF that acts like a garbage truck collecting mats for you, or 5) the mats don't drop as a bunch of small items, they drop as one large "viable combat salvage" that holds a bunch of mats inside it, so you scoop one item to get a bundle.

Missions from the Engineers would be quite cool. There are already normal missions that give certain mats are rewards, so special Engineering missions could be fun. Maybe they want a number of low grade mats and they will upgrade them for you 1 for 1? Maybe they inform you of secret locations where there are caches of materials you can go get? Maybe they want your exploration data, thargoid hearts, void opals, etc. and will reward you with mats for them?

Rolling for Engineering Improvements​

It's frustrating that you can be very close to completing a roll but it seems to become harder and harder to hit 100%, I think if you roll within ~95% of the max it should automatically finish. I've seen rolls that look to be done but they are missing a tiny fraction of a percent so it shows 15% out of 15% for example, but it's still not "done", which must have to do with significant digits or something? Being a completionist I can't leave these alone and end up "wasting" rolls trying to finish out the 0.01% that's remaining. I don't mind the rolls being somewhat random but you should be protected from uselessly wasting rolls to get that last tiny bit.

Unlocking engineers deserves some consideration. I like that it is varied and they all want different things that involve different elements of game play. However the couple that want the Rare Goods which you can only buy in small amounts are very annoying. Hauling 50 units of Fujin Tea back and forth 15 units at a time seems pointless and frustrating, it could be changed to one or two loads maximum.

The engineering pinning system for the remote workshop is very nice, however it still requires you fly out to visit them for experimental effects. Could be have a new way to add experimental maybe? I different type of contact or location, maybe it costs more and/or uses different/rarer items to do it remotely than in person?

Thanks FD!

 

[sharpq]

I see only two options:

1) scrap engineering - that's going to bring balance in game between PVP and PVE modes. Sure, some adjustments must be done to make all ship became viable in some way. With this option we eliminate grind from the game.

2) keep engineering in the same form but add possibility to buy from black market materials and modules using credits. In this option we keep grind element in game but because of possibility to buy elements and materials from black market - we reduced this significantly. Product can be in rotation (weekly) to make sure that when commanders discover nice modules to purchase - is going to be available for short time, not permanently.

 

[CMDR-NOBODY]

Just one bit, while increasing the availability of the materials, increase the blueprint pins per engineer please! I just beg one more pin per engineer ( of course more is always welcome) .

 

[GC13]

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.

All of my yes on this. Being able to fund my engineering with stuff I had already been getting anyway would be a lot more fun than having to stop and let my collector limpets work every time I pop a ship.

Just don't balance the expenses too high. Yes, some people will keep playing longer if you make things take longer to get, but other people will just drop out entirely. There's always another ship to engineer, so don't worry if it doesn't take as long as you could make it take.

 

[Kailoren]

Fix the 100% raw materials sites in Odyssey, and add a way of gathering G5 manufactured in the same way and then leave it alone.

Engineering is only time consuming or "difficult" if you gather materials the intended way. That's why Odyssey engineering is an absolute joke and hardly anyone actually does it. Ship engineering materials have been able to be acquired in large quantities of G5 in a very short space of time and the balance is pretty good to be honest.

The only thing i'd maybe suggest is a community driven marketplace within the stations. So an "auction house" of sorts where people can engineer modules or sell old ones they no longer need. There can be a set list of commodities or just straight credits to trade for but the price is "fixed" per module within a certain boundary range (the same way the Forza Horizon auction house works) to stop people charging billions for G5 weapons. Colonia and the bubble would each have their own market network, but only accessible from megaships/stations (not FCs)