To obtain them as fast as possible, materials within Grades 1 to 3 are typically traded down from Grade 4 and 5s. To make them worthwhile to gather by themselves, should their availability and the rate at which they are obtained be increased?
No. I fill up on them so fast, if people aren't having that problem, let us trade down. Trading down is pretty pleasant, unlike trading up or across where the math quickly makes it frustrating.
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 please!
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.
Mostly manufactured and encoded are broken with hard to find stuff. (Ignoring Guardian and Thargoid stuff which I've never looked for, but I'm aslo assuming those special materials might be exempt from most of the balancing needs)
For manufactured, I have never seen: Improved Components, Military Grade Alloys, Military Supercapacitors, Pharmaceutical Isolators, Propulsion Elements, Prot Heat Radiators, Proto Radiolic Alloys, Weapon Parts, or Wreckage Components.
Although there's a lot more I wouldn't have if relogging at Dav's Hope wasn't available. There needs to be more: Core Cynamic Composites, Compact Composites, Heat Resistant Ceramics, Precipitated Alloys, Tempered Alloys, and Thermic Alloys.
But oh my STARS are there too many manufactured mats. Raw mats have less than thirty. Manufactured mats are nearly 80 in number. I get that removing almost half the manufactured mats is probably a bridge too far for this balance path, but it's something that needs to be considered eventually.
For data, I've never seen Atypical Encryption Archives, Cracked Industrial Firmware, Open Symmetric Keys, Ship Flight Data, Ship Systems Data, Tagged Encryption Codes, or Unusual Encrypted Files.
There needs to be more Datamined Wake Exceptions, Abnormal Compact Emissions Data, and Classified Scan Fragment.
Scanning ships is just perfect as a means of collection. The Wake scanner isn't bad either. It may not be normal gameplay, but at least I don't have to spend hours to travel to random points in space, after scanning them all, to look through someone else's junk with almost no chance of getting what I want.
But listening to some music while scanning ships for 30-60 minutes is pretty close to bliss.
For raw mats, I've seen it all. Although, much less in Odyssey. Still, there needs to be more Arsenic, Boron, Lead, Rhenium, Zirconium.
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.
I first spent 2-3 hours at Dav's Hope. Then, later I stayed until almost all my mats were maxed out, and this took about 6 hours. I've spent at least 8 hours searching for signal sources, especially HGEs and came away empty and frustrated (at least for the items I wanted), and I didn't use the relogging trick for HGEs but once (where I was able to flip it only 3 times and still got nothing).
So the major problem with material gathering, is that you need collector limpets and no one trying to kill you. Is this Everquest? I thought stopping to loot items was killed off in the 00s.
I get why it's there. It seemed like an outgrowth of picking up cargo. Pirates and Miners need some balancing with modules for that. My trader takes on pirates. I would need to sacrifice at least 16 tons of cargo space to get a collector limpet controller, and then another X tons of space for the limpets, just to hope to collect materials. The timer lets me get 3-4 manually before they expire if there's no one else around. In a CZ or bounty site, forget it.
All materials should work like data, and nearly every other modern MMO loot system. When you fly near it (3-5km is near enough) you just get it. When you kill it, you just get it. Materials are spawned per player, so there's no question in cases outside of combat. Or maybe they're pre-tagged, so if a wing heads into a signal site, the total material count is the same, but they have to share. Whatever the details, materials should fly into my ship by MMO magic. The collector limpet tax to gather them is onerous and requires non-standard gameplay to go on collection runs.
You're already breaking realism by not letting us spend credits on them (more on that later), so what's a little MMO magic?
Also, please PLEASE fix surface gathering. Odyssey has just broken this. I used to be able to go to on POI and feel good about what I collected. Now I have to fly over the surface for several minutes and maybe, maybe I'll find something, anything at all, to land for, and then it's just dregs. I land (more minutes) and release the SRV for crumbs.
But the same MMO magic should apply for SRVs. Again, cargo is fine. You want to select what you pick up. But I
should not have to target and open my scoop for every single material packet.
The MMO collection magic, especially for manufactured materials, would bring physical mats in line with the ease of collecting data mats.
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.
I hate this idea. I mean, it's alright as a strict gameplay mechanic, but it makes no sense for the setting. Farseer wants Datamined Wake Exceptions to do the upgrades I want (work she does for free for some reason, if not the mats, why is the work free?) -- but she'll also reward me with them if I do missions for her? Does she need someone killed or a settlement raided? Too bad, that's already out of my wheelhouse, so the mission does nothing to improve my game. Does she need commodities or data delivered? Let's cut out the middle step and let me give her millions of credits to buy the mats she already has then!
(Actually data delivery is my favorite mission type, I would do that for her until she kicked me off world)
A better idea is to use black markets for this. Let black markets have a list of materials (maybe this depends on station & economy type, but get rid of the system state effects, which already can get confusing for black markets). They ask me for contraband and will pay materials for it. Seems simple. They don't want credits tracked or whatever. Their menu should be the materials first, each of which has missions attached. All the missions should have cargo options (of course) but I'd also appreciate data delivery. Kill missions of course work, but please don't make these the only options. Especially source and return contraband make the most sense. This can make black markets and smuggling useful on top of improving the engineering gathering game! I'll have a reason to fly my stealth black DB Scout!
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.
This just highlights how ridiculous it is we can't buy them with credits. If Material X comes from trade ships, I should be able to buy a T-9 and bust it apart in my space drive way and get the parts I want.
I've never seen a Void Opal or Thargoid Heart. I don't want the latter at all, and I'm not too keen on what it takes to get the former. I rarely get bounty vouchers (certainly not in the volume I fear they would be set for based on some of the Engineer unlock requirements already in place). The only appealing idea is Exploration Data, and that kind of works for an exchange. I can see how the Engineers might want to analyze new data on various systems.
Despite my saltiness, I understand why credits for materials is probably a non-starter. I hate it, but as a game designer seeing the credit economy, I get it. Still, there needs to be some give here.
What about all those pirates with starving children? I should be able to hire someone to collect materials for me! Do these criminals honestly only want 2 tons of Fish instead of millions of credits? Make this a timer thing. I hire a guy to get me a mat, and it takes hours for him to do the job. Could also be a black market interface or a broker option (or hey, future ship interior interface). I hire someone, pay a ridiculous sum of money, and it takes them hours, days, maybe weeks to source the mats. The time scale should determine how much I can get (even hours for 1 mat would be sad), and whether I get a a variety or a single item.
Another option: it's a "mystery box" type thing. Though in that case there should be some guarantees in either material types or grade amounts. This only makes sense for tech brokers, I think. In this case, it could be that the boxes are only available once a day or less at a particular broker (but this should be per player, not per galaxy). There could be different grades of boxes, some with larger amounts but more randomness, others more focused on specific types, but smaller amounts inside.
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. In fact, get rid of the steps. Grade 1 costs X. Grade 2 costs Y. You pay it, you get the full grade.
I do like one aspect of this: that the rolls are better when you have a better relationship with the engineer. That could go into discounts for the total cost. This way you could also make the discounts steeper (now that its a whole grade at once, the total materials might be less than the previous steps for a allied discount) and make the reputation gains slower - especially if you remove reputation from the highest grade.
Feel free to respond with other ship Engineering balancing feedback and suggestions that go beyond the ideas mentioned above.
So yeah, there needs to be a credits element OR play up the fact that these materials are illegal (like it's even illegal to remove them from your T-9 even if you bought it to break it). Leveraging tech brokers for a way to collect them is one way to go. Make the prices huge! Putting the missions in with black markets instead of engineers would highlight the illicit nature of the mats. (Though it might beg a question, why is iron illegal? Honestly, with mining and horizons surface gathering, raw mats, with a few exceptions, are the only part of engineering that's almost pleasant to gather after data mats).
A major thing that needs to be fixed is the trading math. It's
way too punishing. It's not even possible to have enough Grade 1 mats for a single Grade 5! I've rarely traded as a result (and I've only traded Data, which I know I can replenish without being punished). The screen just makes me want to give up (not the game, life). Here you have a perfect system for getting the materials we want by trading materials we don't want, but it's far too limited. Trading the same types should not be 3x or 6x up and down, 2x is the most it should be. I should be able to trade grades for 1:1 or practically 1:1 (maybe 2:3 or 5:6 at worst). This alone would solve the majority of the frustration and annoying grind. You could put 90% of your rebalance focus here and maybe not have to change anything else. If it was fair to independent pilots, instead of balanced like a perverse casino scheme trying to break wills and lives, then whatever is easy to find in our play style opens up the whole world of engineering.
