Sorry, I keep forgetting!
Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering
- Thread starter Bruce G
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Sorry, I keep forgetting!
Some engineering schemes are too OP, like shield capacity mods or weapon damage mods.
IMO, engineering should be not a "rebuilding" but "adjusting" or "calibrating" modules.
I suggest:
-make engineering less OP, require significally less materials
-significally increace insurance for ships, game is "Dangerous", after all, so there should be a risk to lose all modded modules
-require money for every enginering roll, same for experimentals
-allow to trade materials, modded modules, even completed ships between CMDRs in many ways. Enable to share credits between CMDRs.
For Odyssey:
-SIGNIFICALLY reduce the material amount for modifications.
-allow to remove or swap modifications in guns and suits
-allow barter or sell guns and suits between CMDRs
-let barmen to barter data materials
-mix materials and goods in lockers and chests. Allow to spawn both types of loot in every container. Locked chests are mostly useless right now, since they're contain useless cheap "garbage". Allow to cut maglocks on locked chests.
-diverse the "material reward" of ship and on-foot missions - Horizons and Odyssey materials may be offered in every type of mission - for example, offer "10 Ion batteries" to kill 10 pirate ships.
IMO, engineering should be not a "rebuilding" but "adjusting" or "calibrating" modules.
I suggest:
-make engineering less OP, require significally less materials
-significally increace insurance for ships, game is "Dangerous", after all, so there should be a risk to lose all modded modules
-require money for every enginering roll, same for experimentals
-allow to trade materials, modded modules, even completed ships between CMDRs in many ways. Enable to share credits between CMDRs.
For Odyssey:
-SIGNIFICALLY reduce the material amount for modifications.
-allow to remove or swap modifications in guns and suits
-allow barter or sell guns and suits between CMDRs
-let barmen to barter data materials
-mix materials and goods in lockers and chests. Allow to spawn both types of loot in every container. Locked chests are mostly useless right now, since they're contain useless cheap "garbage". Allow to cut maglocks on locked chests.
-diverse the "material reward" of ship and on-foot missions - Horizons and Odyssey materials may be offered in every type of mission - for example, offer "10 Ion batteries" to kill 10 pirate ships.
As soon as this thread is also about balancing ship engineering...
I would suggest to change it in a way to make the ships available at stock to be still considerable option. If engineers can improve ship's characteristics so much, why the companies which develop these ships could not do it in first hand?
The stock ships should be average in any characteristic, but not be bad at all of them!
Therefore any engineering option should bring significant trade-offs. There should not be option to create meta ships without sacrificing anything. Many other commanders suggest to remove G4 and G5 options at all, but maybe those high grade optimizations should just:
I would suggest to change it in a way to make the ships available at stock to be still considerable option. If engineers can improve ship's characteristics so much, why the companies which develop these ships could not do it in first hand?
The stock ships should be average in any characteristic, but not be bad at all of them!
Therefore any engineering option should bring significant trade-offs. There should not be option to create meta ships without sacrificing anything. Many other commanders suggest to remove G4 and G5 options at all, but maybe those high grade optimizations should just:
- bring more instability in modules work, like spontaneous malfunctions in the modes (when stock options or even engineered for stable work would give more predictable results)
- require much higher repair cost and significantly change rebuy cost (when the price for materials is defined and everyone can buy them at material traders)
- require more skills to control modules engineered to work at extreme modes (e.g. drifting from straight trajectory for over-engineered thrusters, thermal spikes for imbalanced powerplant requiring active pip-management, variety of drop distance from star or charging time for long jump FSD etc)
I wish there was a better in-game way to keep track of the "shopping list" of materials needed, and what they're for, and where. I enjoy going out to find it all, but I lose track of the list.
In my opinion, Engineers should have provided customizations with downside equal to upside. So you can optimize in certain areas, but with a cost. As now implemented, Engineering is almost pure upgrade power creep. Balancing cost and benefit, finding synergies between modifications to mitigate the downsides while making your build uniquely different from stock, that’s what I thought it was originally going to be about. And I think that’s more interesting than the “more is better” we ended up with.
G5 "Pattern Epsilon Obelisk Data" comes to mind. These can only be found scanning guardian obelisks and currently drop exactly once at any given ruin site. Unlocking everything guardian tech requires a combined 114 Epsilon Data, which in turn means 114 full rundowns of a whole ruin site to find the one random obelisk. The drop rate could easily be doubled, especially considering that we still don't have a Xeno material trader (hint, hint
)Yes to both, firm 100% want now yes please
. Regarding Eng missions I would prefer something like a token or voucher as reward. E.g. "Deliver this intel package for me and I do one G1 upgrade on one of your modules". And the more involved the mission, the higher the upgrade performed in return. If rolls where to be changed to be deterministic (see below) this could be accomplished via explicitly handing out the required materials.On "buying" materials: VOs, Thargoid Hearts, etc. can already be traded between players so why not go all the way and allow a direct purchase as well? Make it (prohibitively) expensive so that any other gathering activity would still be way more efficient. That would give us an option for those times we are missing only one or two materials for an upgrade.
Absolutely, yes. Under the current system, with maxed out rep with an engineer, most (~99%) full G5 upgrades can be had with 1,2,3,4, and 9 rolls going from G1 to G5. 5 G5 rolls will bring a module to somewhere around 90% completion, anything beyond that is more OCD trigger than actual improvement.
Changing this to a deterministic 1,2,3,4,5 rolls for G1-G5 would be easy to memorize and be a welcome QoL improvement.
Other Thoughts:
- The Tech Broker weapon unlocks are too much, cluttering up the brokers unlock list. Currently there are a whopping 9 separate unlocks for Shock Cannons alone, with is borderline insane. Reducing this number by either collating size or mount types into one unlock would bring that down to a reasonable amount.
- Selling engineered modules should return some of the materials used. This would encourage experimenting with different upgrades as well as discourage hoarding unused modules
- The Engineer overview UI (reachable by the right hand panel) currently always resets to sorting by rep level every time its opened. This is only marginally useful for a new player while doing nothing once every engineer is fully unlocked. At best it can bring all the EDO engineers to the top if one reverses the sorting. Short of actually remembering the setting it would still be far better to default to literally anything else.
- Xeno mat trader, where art thou?
Please make engineering materials and metals a commodity you can buy or sell, in the same way that all other commodities are. It makes no sense - to me at least, and annoys me each time I grind out a few high end materials to trade down with - that a game that professes to be about ... ahem...realism, in other areas, doesn't cut it where engineering is concerned. And engineering is a large part of the game. Chasing signal sources around systems for a handful of materials just seems silly. But if not this, then I'll gladly take any improvement over what we have now.
This goes back to my earlier posts on this thread where I suggest making rates more common, increase drop variety of manufactured materials at NAV beacons and other hotspots.
i would also add that the mission rewards should also reflect the x3 model that was implemented for scan, surface, and combat gathering. Making the missions a better source for materials will also encourage folks to actually do them.
I personally like where missions are atm with engineering and engineering as a whole. Increasing the number to reflect drop rate would just help out be less tedious.
i would also add that the mission rewards should also reflect the x3 model that was implemented for scan, surface, and combat gathering. Making the missions a better source for materials will also encourage folks to actually do them.
I personally like where missions are atm with engineering and engineering as a whole. Increasing the number to reflect drop rate would just help out be less tedious.
Engineering rebalance is nothing without economics balance.
In current situation, CMDRs are easily collect creds and they don't have any risks to lose their equipment.
As addition to other suggestions:
-involve materials in repair process according to mod levels(from 1 to last, which was installed) and experimental effects. Or increase requested amount of credits, taking in mind how much of mats were used and their price on market.
Exclusively (since engineers are exclusive suppliers of mods) engineered modules should be expensive to repair. And rebuy. Also, removing experimental effects after destruction - we can't apply them remotely, so rebuy will not too.
In current situation, CMDRs are easily collect creds and they don't have any risks to lose their equipment.
As addition to other suggestions:
-involve materials in repair process according to mod levels(from 1 to last, which was installed) and experimental effects. Or increase requested amount of credits, taking in mind how much of mats were used and their price on market.
Exclusively (since engineers are exclusive suppliers of mods) engineered modules should be expensive to repair. And rebuy. Also, removing experimental effects after destruction - we can't apply them remotely, so rebuy will not too.
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I know I'm late to this, and am also probably late for the holiday sales period to which this feedback process might have been attached and could have been targeting. Still gonna say my bit now that I have seen the thread.
At present it seems to me that it makes little sense to gather lower-grade materials for any other reason than to facilitate the system. When jumping into a new star system, there will always be a pack of G5 POIs for me, that then dry up. I assumed this was patched in as a concession to grind mitigation, either for everyone or just those with higher ranks. Best thing, no matter what you're looking for, is to just scoop up the fresh G5s, jump to a new system, repeat. I don't do it because I don't do things like that, at least until convinced, or I'd find myself wanting to quit the game right away. But I still gave up on trying to find a low-grade mat and just traded down. So yeah, in looking for lower grades, I've seen it seems to make no sense to gather them.
What purpose do random rolls serve? Would their loss really matter? You could make it so only low grades are random, but that runs you into the above problem. Right now, lower grades are basically one-and-done rolls. Randomness could be diminished on higher-grade rolls, especially successive augmentative higher-grade rolls, or removed entirely. Or perhaps instead of the current system, you could one-and-done every single tier, but have the exact numbers generated be random. So the exact numbers would bottom out at 50% or 66% of tier or something like that. This can then be augmented with successive rolls subject to diminishing returns or a count limit. Then that particular module's done. Sealed. This is more in line with usual crafting mechanics in lots of games. But I also really think that something like that only makes sense for higher grades, and maybe even makes no sense for anything below 5.
Missions for engineers for mat rewards or even just free rolls sounds good.
You mostly get raw mats from planet driving. Why can't manufactured mats be there in crashes or abandoned equipment and so on? NMS has these everywhere. Random sites like that do exist but as I recall they're pretty low-importance. 2 low grade mats and some cargo. Why can't you find a blowed-up cargo ship in a POI with a load of mat canisters full of low-grade mats?
Why can't settlements have some of this laying around? Go to a settlement, proc spawns ship hangar. Inside is a Dropship. Or maybe just ship parts, like a shield generator. Tools around. Ohh manufactured mats! Yoink! Geo lab. Raw mats. Yoink! Trash pile. Yoink!
We have trade beacons. Why not mat beacons? Like, if someone is in a system and they're farming mats, and they go back in to DSS, why not spawn a mat beacon POI that functions like a trade beacon does?
Whoa hold on there CMDR, I need to scan you. So you're scanning thing scans them in the hours-long walk they take to get to you and you notice they're looking to trade some mats. Hey, so while you're walking to me to scan me, could I take a look at those mats you want to trade? Oh sure! Be nice to get some mat trading in while I take this walk!
Basically you want to proc things based on what you think the player is doing right now, especially at higher rank/longer playtimes, and then this looks to the player like progression and functions like grind mitigation.
As for Mission board, this is basically BGS<->Mission board<->proc buildout problems. You want the proc to spawn more sights and sounds which enable a better BGS that leads to a deeper mission board.
I'm going to Colonia to haul on the CG. I'm taking a load of CG stuff with me. My original idea, seeing as I'm headed that way, was to take a passenger that wanted to go there, and this would hurt my jump distance less. Couldn't get one from the mission board when I looked due to various mixtures of reputation conditions and one not being there. Guess I could have jumped around and around until I found one but what would be the point? Maybe if there was a known jumping-off point for Colonia, because it had stuff that made sense for people headed to Colonia. Maybe if you funnelled people. Obviously Elite's a mile wide and that's good but maybe if you made these context-points or chokepoints where you could facilitate some of these systems coming together a bit better where context would appreciate, it might go a ways to making the proc more manageable and easy to build maybe. But then something like that becomes an "emergent gameplay" hotspot. Maybe something a little decentralized like a certain faction, certain region.
I like the missions for mats idea. At first blush, that seems like it could be really good. Make the trip out to an engineer, get a task which when done will certainly meaningfully advance your engineering process.
At present it seems to me that it makes little sense to gather lower-grade materials for any other reason than to facilitate the system. When jumping into a new star system, there will always be a pack of G5 POIs for me, that then dry up. I assumed this was patched in as a concession to grind mitigation, either for everyone or just those with higher ranks. Best thing, no matter what you're looking for, is to just scoop up the fresh G5s, jump to a new system, repeat. I don't do it because I don't do things like that, at least until convinced, or I'd find myself wanting to quit the game right away. But I still gave up on trying to find a low-grade mat and just traded down. So yeah, in looking for lower grades, I've seen it seems to make no sense to gather them.
What purpose do random rolls serve? Would their loss really matter? You could make it so only low grades are random, but that runs you into the above problem. Right now, lower grades are basically one-and-done rolls. Randomness could be diminished on higher-grade rolls, especially successive augmentative higher-grade rolls, or removed entirely. Or perhaps instead of the current system, you could one-and-done every single tier, but have the exact numbers generated be random. So the exact numbers would bottom out at 50% or 66% of tier or something like that. This can then be augmented with successive rolls subject to diminishing returns or a count limit. Then that particular module's done. Sealed. This is more in line with usual crafting mechanics in lots of games. But I also really think that something like that only makes sense for higher grades, and maybe even makes no sense for anything below 5.
Missions for engineers for mat rewards or even just free rolls sounds good.
You mostly get raw mats from planet driving. Why can't manufactured mats be there in crashes or abandoned equipment and so on? NMS has these everywhere. Random sites like that do exist but as I recall they're pretty low-importance. 2 low grade mats and some cargo. Why can't you find a blowed-up cargo ship in a POI with a load of mat canisters full of low-grade mats?
Why can't settlements have some of this laying around? Go to a settlement, proc spawns ship hangar. Inside is a Dropship. Or maybe just ship parts, like a shield generator. Tools around. Ohh manufactured mats! Yoink! Geo lab. Raw mats. Yoink! Trash pile. Yoink!
We have trade beacons. Why not mat beacons? Like, if someone is in a system and they're farming mats, and they go back in to DSS, why not spawn a mat beacon POI that functions like a trade beacon does?
Whoa hold on there CMDR, I need to scan you. So you're scanning thing scans them in the hours-long walk they take to get to you and you notice they're looking to trade some mats. Hey, so while you're walking to me to scan me, could I take a look at those mats you want to trade? Oh sure! Be nice to get some mat trading in while I take this walk!
Basically you want to proc things based on what you think the player is doing right now, especially at higher rank/longer playtimes, and then this looks to the player like progression and functions like grind mitigation.
As for Mission board, this is basically BGS<->Mission board<->proc buildout problems. You want the proc to spawn more sights and sounds which enable a better BGS that leads to a deeper mission board.
I'm going to Colonia to haul on the CG. I'm taking a load of CG stuff with me. My original idea, seeing as I'm headed that way, was to take a passenger that wanted to go there, and this would hurt my jump distance less. Couldn't get one from the mission board when I looked due to various mixtures of reputation conditions and one not being there. Guess I could have jumped around and around until I found one but what would be the point? Maybe if there was a known jumping-off point for Colonia, because it had stuff that made sense for people headed to Colonia. Maybe if you funnelled people. Obviously Elite's a mile wide and that's good but maybe if you made these context-points or chokepoints where you could facilitate some of these systems coming together a bit better where context would appreciate, it might go a ways to making the proc more manageable and easy to build maybe. But then something like that becomes an "emergent gameplay" hotspot. Maybe something a little decentralized like a certain faction, certain region.
I like the missions for mats idea. At first blush, that seems like it could be really good. Make the trip out to an engineer, get a task which when done will certainly meaningfully advance your engineering process.
I'd like to see a partial return to "old" engineering, one specific aspect of it at least. When I've unlocked an Engineer to G5 and we're buddies I expect him to be able to perform his best work right away. So, if I have the materials I can roll that G5 Upgrade right away, I'm not forced to go through the lower grades first. These just waste materials and cause annoyance with the occasional micro-rolls. I had to roll THREE TIMES just to unlock the G3 upgrade from G2 the other day! That's with a G5 Engineer! Bad RNG.
So, basically, with a G5 unlocked engineer I can choose the Grade I wish to apply, based on the materials I have. I might decide, for example, to go straight to G5 and do the best upgrade I can. Conversely, I might be happy with G3 for that specific module, or I simply don't have the mats for anything higher. I do the roll and get back to actually playing the game, no click click click until I finally get the upgrade I actually wanted.
This allows us to trade those easier to gather low-level mats for high tier ones and not worry about keeping a stock of them to get through the lower grades if we don't want to. The key here is that it's those lower-grade materials that I acquire just through regular gameplay, no special activities needed, no logmageddon to enable things to be collected again etc. Just back to the actual gameplay sooner.
I'd add to this that more varied material rewards would be nice too, allowing for more trading opportunities. Reducing the cross-class trade costs wouldn't hurt either.
Likely I'm way too late commenting on this topic, but thought I'd take a shot anyway.
So, basically, with a G5 unlocked engineer I can choose the Grade I wish to apply, based on the materials I have. I might decide, for example, to go straight to G5 and do the best upgrade I can. Conversely, I might be happy with G3 for that specific module, or I simply don't have the mats for anything higher. I do the roll and get back to actually playing the game, no click click click until I finally get the upgrade I actually wanted.
This allows us to trade those easier to gather low-level mats for high tier ones and not worry about keeping a stock of them to get through the lower grades if we don't want to. The key here is that it's those lower-grade materials that I acquire just through regular gameplay, no special activities needed, no logmageddon to enable things to be collected again etc. Just back to the actual gameplay sooner.
I'd add to this that more varied material rewards would be nice too, allowing for more trading opportunities. Reducing the cross-class trade costs wouldn't hurt either.
Likely I'm way too late commenting on this topic, but thought I'd take a shot anyway.
Since Odyssey has mercilessly slaughtered surface mining, raw material reward options for some missions would be helpful if nothing else were done. I still (and again) maintain that buying materials outright is the best option, and being able to loot/steal them from settlements would enhance Odyssey gameplay all around.
I would really like for the ability to earn engineering materials through combat at a faster pace. Combat is under paid in all regards including credits earned. Either that or like others have said, it would be nice to see engineering materials gone from the game altogether, and replaced with a different system instead. I feel as though it's unfair to advertise the game as a free roam sandbox MMORPG that allows the player complete freedom to choose what they want to do, because with engineers, that is not the case at all. It forces you to do activities you don't want to do. It's as if these parts of the game design go against what the game is actually advertised as. I'm finding it really hard to get back into ED for these very reasons.
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The" engineering" is just another level added for the sameness of ship builds .
Why is it most folk use certain engineering for certain modules and not the rest ?
The inconsistency of the amount of mats needed per level is a pain . 6-12 rolls for grade 5 .
Mat/data gathering as a beginner is a pain . And some mat /data are very hard to come by even when playing the game .
Some feedback from Fdev would be nice with all the suggestions from folk who actually play the game would also be appreciated .
Why is it most folk use certain engineering for certain modules and not the rest ?
The inconsistency of the amount of mats needed per level is a pain . 6-12 rolls for grade 5 .
Mat/data gathering as a beginner is a pain . And some mat /data are very hard to come by even when playing the game .
Some feedback from Fdev would be nice with all the suggestions from folk who actually play the game would also be appreciated .
Yes - increase the drop rate.
Even streamlining G1-G5 engineering rolls to be 1-2-3-4-5 rolls for each grade, Grade 1-2 materials will still be under used.
Grade 1-2 materials are the least used and have higher storage. Maybe change every material to have 300 storage as well, since they'll be easier to obtain.
Again, yes increase the drop rate for all grades. Please don't make Grades 1-3 grant ten units per collection, while Grade 4 grant five units and Grade 5 stay at three units. Keep it simple. Every material should grant the same number per collection as is today.
Hard:
Pharmaceutical Isolators: hard because they depend on HGEs for a negative state, where HGEs are harder to spawn.
Improvised Components: hard because they depend on HGEs for a negative state, where HGEs are harder to spawn.
Medium:
Proto Heat Radiators: HGE shares spawn with the same state as Proto Radiolic Alloys (which itself shares HGE with Proto Light Alloys). Seems like 50/50 chance each.
Military Supercapacitors: HGE shares spawn with the same state as Military Grade Alloys. My experience is that it's not a 50/50 chance. More like 80/20 for the MGA.
Yes, and simple 1-2-3-4-5 for each respective grade. Five rolls for a Grade 5 upgrade, which already requires higher grade materials with lower storage (see first suggestion), is probably too high, but better than the current 6-12 rolls.
Another thing I would like to add, is that I have always thought the idea of being able to loot enemy ships for their modules, would be more fun. It would give more reason to partake in the combat side of ED. It would be very cool if we could loot pre engineered modules from enemy a.i and player controlled ships. Higher grade modules being more rare but not so rare that it would take hundreds of hours to acquire. Just enough to make it feel like an accomplishment. Other games have had this feature before and made for a far more exciting experience.
One thousand and one replies, most with some really creative ideas with overwhelming support for each others since NOVEMBER.
AAAaannddd, absolutely nothing has been done. Congrats FDev, bravo. Well done. Amazing.
In before a mod comes to delete my post because they seem to be the only ones capable of doing their job.
AAAaannddd, absolutely nothing has been done. Congrats FDev, bravo. Well done. Amazing.
In before a mod comes to delete my post because they seem to be the only ones capable of doing their job.
Sounds like you have the skill and knowledge to make a game just like Elite, but better - I look forward to seeing your completed product in... a month? That should be enough, right?
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