Frontier - Engineering grind is odd with too many pieces and confusing

[Galactictrader]

Science ,Engineering and Invention costs money, IRL they want cash and government grants, vehicle/ boat mechanics want cash and parts.

Engineering should've cost credits per try (The engineers time, hiring staff, buying equipment/parts) and you get either a change of better rolls or reduced costs by supplying them materials, data, parts, whatever.

It just odd that I am in deep space with SCI FI future science, space time bending intergalactic travel, aliens, nano tech trading missions, political intrigue, smuggling, etc. etc. but I need to find Iron and Sulfur to tune my engines or tweak my FSD that compresses space itself around me.

Just a thought

 

[Galactictrader]

I'm a grizzled intergalactic gun for hire I've traveled the galaxy bending the very fabric of space around me as I destroyed battle cruiser and raided planet side installations run by seedy corporations. I arrive at the Engineers my engines powered by some exotic matter can take me farther and faster, I know they can. I'm greeted at the installation by AI systems. As I approach this genius engineer she is staring at a bank of nine screens and manipulating a 3D hologram of some new model Plasma Accelerator.

"I need my engines to do MORE, I need more speed and yaw! I can offer you 2 million in cash and I have cracked firmware from industrial espionage." The Engineer looks at me with a serious look on her face, eyes staring through me while shes deep in thought "I only need some iron shavings and one of those salt licks...you know...like the one they give horses." I die.

 

[heliman001]

The gathering of materials for engineers,although a pain,is really about experiences in game.
Driving the SRV, mining,searching USS ETC.
It is like FD giving us the options of broadening our horizons(see what I did there)
If you made it credit based you would end up with another credit grind instead of a materials grind,wait a minute its the same thing just cleverly disguised as added content.
There goes another not so well thought out argument.
Perhaps the wife is right I should just shut up.

 

[Galactictrader]

The gathering of materials for engineers,although a pain,is really about experiences in game.
Driving the SRV, mining,searching USS ETC.
It is like FD giving us the options of broadening our horizons(see what I did there)
If you made it credit based you would end up with another credit grind instead of a materials grind,wait a minute its the same thing just cleverly disguised as added content.
There goes another not so well thought out argument.
Perhaps the wife is right I should just shut up.

I agree with certain aspects, I love the idea of data mining getting hacked/stolen data. The moon based stuff should not be such grind, I am cool with rare materials/metals needed to complete a project or like I said enhance results. I just dabble and just learning the basics of what I want, what an engineer does if I really accepted the best roll,just doing that I need to basically start the materiel grind over again.

 

[mung0]

Engineers went live at a time when a large number of regular players were already billionaires; if modding was introduced with only a cash requirement to get involved, these players would have gotten themselves ultimate upgraded ships in a few hours of playtime. There would have been no 'journey' and the lifespan of the new content would be drastically reduced. If the cost of modding was prohibitively expensive in an attempt to balance this, that would have shafted newer players or older ones that hadn't played to get rich, the bar of entry to getting good mods would have been too high.

Thats why we've got the system we've got. But it's a bit too far in the other direction imo. Way way too much grind doing activities the game prescribes for you - you're extremely limited in your own agency to 'do your own thing' if you want to progress with engineers; you must go around doing things the designers laid out for you to do (some consciously, others semi-inadvertently).

This is all complete anathema to the 'go forth, do your own thing' vibe of the elite we know and love, far as I'm concerned. It's kinda put me off playing the game that much these days tbh. I fell behind in the arms race, but to get back in the mix I have to do a bunch of crap playing fetch for npcs. There's 10001 trad rpg games I can play if I want to do that. That's not what elite ever used to be about, nor is it what it should be about today. Oh well, that's enough rant for one post.

 

[Dutchman141]

Gathering materials with the srv is actual fun imho.
Getting 25 modular terminals for Qwent is not.......
Ugh, I've got only eight so far and those took me way to long to be fun.

 

[tafkabb]

I've got 2000 hours logged. Palin and/or Corvette not gonna happen. I may be crazy but I'm not mad.

 

[mung0]

I've got 2000 hours logged. Palin and/or Corvette not gonna happen. I may be crazy but I'm not mad.

Palin is fine. It's qwent that's the super fun part..

 

[Dutchman141]

I've got 2000 hours logged. Palin and/or Corvette not gonna happen. I may be crazy but I'm not mad.

I'm about to give up, I just arrived at a couple close together systems who could earn me some modular terminals, if this turns out to be another blank then I'm not going to bother any longer.
Whoever thought that this is supposed to be fun must have a very dull life.

 

[CMDR Cknarf]

Aside from a few types of data being a pain in the --- to find, I don't think it's all that bad. It's much better since they got rid of commodities for blueprints. It sucked having 50 of everything, and only two commodities due to lack of cargo space.

As for the terminals, depending on your time zone, I'd be happy to donate should I come across them. Back when I was grinding Imperial rank, I always seemed to have a pile of them. I'll keep an eye out.

 

[mung0]

I'm about to give up, I just arrived at a couple close together systems who could earn me some modular terminals, if this turns out to be another blank then I'm not going to bother any longer.
Whoever thought that this is supposed to be fun must have a very dull life.

It doesn't smack of someone with a dull life as much as someone who through either indifference or pressure put in little thought to the progression criteria at all, beyond 'does the infrastructure support this y/n ok that'll do then'.

There's just no sense of love in it. Pure function. Requirement scoped, 'there must be some unlock activities', requirement delivered, 'here are some unlock activities'. A lot of hard work will have gone in, don't get me wrong, but.. If you're designing new activities for a game, chris on a bike make sure to ask yourself the question are you adding something FUN, if you neglect that simple sanity check you're in the wrong business.

 

[Essential NPC]

I just hate the RNG of it all. Tons of hard work and then I roll the dice and my module comes out worse? And the disconnect between weapon mods and "special effects" is so ridiculous. If my modification roll is average, but I get a special effect... why on Earth do I have to lose my effect if I want to roll for better general stats?

I'd much rather it be a set of slider bars that are locked to other slider bars for other stats (so if you move one, it moves the others at a proportional ratio, but you can still grab each one of them and tweak the amounts).
Then, the blueprint you create will generate a set of needed materials whose rarity is based on the extremity of your modification.
Also, all needed materials for pinned blueprints are tagged in space so you know you're looking for them when they show up (maybe with a little *).
Then you can craft your module, and use specific rare materials to apply desired special effects.
If you want to tweak your blueprint a little bit, you can re-edit it for slightly less materials, or if you want to change the added weapon effect, you need a different rare material.
Also I'd add a "rare materials vendor" in certain ports across the bubble where you can buy those rare mats for an extremely high mark up, at least around the 250k area.

 

[Dutchman141]

Well it's like FD is reading these posts and tossed me some luck.
I went to Wu Guinagi and Hip 10716, the two systems I used to become Duke, and got 20 modular terminals in an hour and a half.
Reminded me of my Duke grind though, which still gives me the shivers but I got them and will try to forget this episode as fast as I can.

Like you said Mung0, there's a severe lack of creativity in these kind of requirement efforts and they all end up in grinds, which a pitty realy, the game shines in so many other aspects.

Well, off to Qwent and give him his frickin mt's.

 

[SCSkunk]

The East India Company has a Discord Server specifically for these needs. EIC Sales Department. We sell RNGineer Commodities for Palladium. In fact I have 36 Mod Terms in my hold right now, though I'm selling 25 tomorrow...so I guess I only have 9 atm...

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

agree with engineers somewhat, what i dont agree with is as a new player to experience thargoids you will need to do the following;

travel first 300 ly (obviously you will need to first buy a ship with somewhat ok jumprange, that E class FSD aint going to get you there
go and find soontil relics, you will have to google where these are or already know the existence of and use the forums or 3rd party apps, looking for these from ingame information hahahaha good luck!
then you will have to gather sufficient materials to get your rep up to rank 3 upgrades to move on to the next engineer

Then you need to get friendly with sirus corporation, well not just friendly, allied, not to mention the permit, then you can finally meet the engineer
who will require 25 modular terminals, couple of days flying around the RNG boards here im afraid and countless google searches on how to obtain them!
then get crafting useless nonsense again!

You will then need to fly 5kly to get an invite for palin
you will also need some serious googling and forum use to understand what a unknown fragment is but more importantly where the hell they are located, good luck finding an undiscovered alien site without using the co-ords from helpful folk
then you will be able to buy a corrosive resistant cargo rack!

the whole game experience should not be locked behind engineers or modules or even having to research for 4 hours on the internet, everything should be possible with relative ease on standard non engineered stuff, and while you can carry UA, UP etc in a standard rack, they take forever to find (the UP's do) and when they fall out of your cargo rack because the cargo scoop gets damaged 40% in one hit and opens during SC.... tell me honestly you'd be ok with that?

ps ^^ you cant just go and scoop them back up they have a habit of vanishing when they fall out in SC

thats is the utter in this game right now, i really do feel for new players, for us longer serving inmates its not as bad as these bits were all added gradually meaning we were already at the top of the wall (so to speak) when they extended it, to a new player starting at the bottom that wall is pretty high.

 

[Clanky Munge]

I've got 2000 hours logged. Palin and/or Corvette not gonna happen. I may be crazy but I'm not mad.

Palin is easier than you think, you have already done the worst bit by travelling more than 5k, I'll check later but the unknown Fragments he wants are like a system away and you can find all you need in less than 30 mins....

cant recommend grade 5 dirties enough

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

Palin is easier than you think, you have already done the worst bit by travelling more than 5k, I'll check later but the unknown Fragments he wants are like a system away and you can find all you need in less than 30 mins....

cant recommend grade 5 dirties enough

marco qwent is the issue palin is a walk in the park compared to marco

 

[Clanky Munge]

Just do missions giving modular terminals as the reward, granted it will take a little longer, but not as long as a 10k round trip.

also much quicker getting rewards you need by having a decent rep with the faction giving the mission.

i think Dutchman said earlier he found them in a system he had already been grinding rank in....

You will also find that grade 5 engineers will take a bit more effort to unlock.

my original post was for Bongo, as he had been put off engineering at Palin.

i was bang up for Marco and aggravated that he only gave grade 4 power plant ��

Hera Tani was MASSIVE ballache along with all the grade 5s, but that's really how it should be if think about it logically.

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

Just do missions giving modular terminals as the reward, granted it will take a little longer, but not as long as a 10k round trip.

also much quicker getting rewards you need by having a decent rep with the faction giving the mission.

i think Dutchman said earlier he found them in a system he had already been grinding rank in....

You will also find that grade 5 engineers will take a bit more effort to unlock.

my original post was for Bongo, as he had been put off engineering at Palin.

i was bang up for Marco and aggravated that he only gave grade 4 power plant ��

Hera Tani was MASSIVE ballache along with all the grade 5s, but that's really how it should be if think about it logically.

yeah you're right but locking corrosive resistant cargo racks behind palin is stupid. - but 5kly and suicide is like 2 hours max, scouting modular terminals is down to the RNG its not definitive and would take at least 6hrs + and that's if you're lucky! and lets not forget all the pre work for faction rep if you dont have it...

but level 5 mods locked behind progressively harder engineers - Totally on board with that! level one should be accessible to ALL though!

 

[GODofDUTY83]

The key to engineering. Dont treat it as something to achieve in 1 session.
If you have to roam about with gear in your cargo for a few days, so be it. Take your time. Go about your usual buisness. Grab what you need inbetween.