Engineers G5 Dirty Drives made me quit

[Nerwan]

An Imperial cutter with 8A perfect roll DD5 drives does what? 300 cruise/400 boost? Thats not even remotely close to what my small ships can do. A well-engineered 2.2.03 Viper mk3 can cruise at 500m/s and boost well over 600m/s.

Mine has a perfect roll (+secondary bonus). Fully kitted out with a size 8 prismatic and a size 8 SCB it does about 457 boost. But in chase cutter mode with smaller shields and just weapons you can get it to boost above 500 which puts it in the same territory as all the medium ships (FDL/FAS) and certainly a little faster than the Python can go with DD5.

 

[Rowander]

To those that are "not wasting their time engineering", I would like to say that I enjoyed "the grind" very much, and I did it for the sake of doing it, not because I need it. I don't even enter Open at all, as I'm a hardcore Mobius fan.

Look at Engineering not as a grind, but as a chain of missions. You need to get specific things from specific places, including enemy ships, trader ships in anarchy systems, SRV scavenging in very specific worlds... for me it was not a grind at all, it was fun!. I have bookmarked the worlds where I got my materials from, even though I have my full fleet engineered to a "good enough" level. I've decided on keeping my RNG to a minimum, and settling with most first try results if they're not horrendous, so engineering my 6 ships was not that hard. You don't need the perfect RNG result to get an impressive boost to your ship.

It also helps if you've been mission running previously in a decent sized ship, as many materials would probably be in your cargo hold already.

It definetly is way more fun to do all those varied things, than bulk trading or jumping for 5 hours straight... but hey, to each his own...

 

[StiTch]

iClippers are not agility kings. To anyone here equating its pitch speed with strong manoeuvrability, please go back to pilot training.

Yes you can pitch quickly but iClipper inertia control is almost as bad as the iCutters, and that pitching doesn't make you any better at getting out of line of fire, so no OP should not have been able to dance around a modded iCutter. Truth is while many Fed players like to indignantly complain about how OP Imp ships are, they're riddled with flaws.

OP, yes running from an iCutter was a stupid idea. In any ship. But the moral of this story is that engineered ships are better. Sorry about that.

 

[Turmoil]

To those that are "not wasting their time engineering", I would like to say that I enjoyed "the grind" very much, and I did it for the sake of doing it, not because I need it. I don't even enter Open at all, as I'm a hardcore Mobius fan.

Look at Engineering not as a grind, but as a chain of missions. You need to get specific things from specific places, including enemy ships, trader ships in anarchy systems, SRV scavenging in very specific worlds... for me it was not a grind at all, it was fun!.

It's still a grind that forces people to play in a way that they don't really want to.

I don't mind having to get items for upgrades, but I really don't want to spend hours mining or driving around on planets for items that should be readily elsewhere.
Why can't you just go to a station to get something as common as carbon, iron, nickel, phosphorus, or sulfur? I would even be willing to fly to Hutton Orbital if they were available there.
The rarer items, like chemical manipulators, would be great if you could purchase them from other engineers that you've unlocked and gained reputation with. Treat it just like regular rare goods where you can only get a certain number at a time from one.

It would be nice if they had an alternative way to get the upgrades from the engineers by doing missions for them and getting rep and then being able to buy pre-modded modules for X amount over the already way overpriced base.

Overall I don't like the randomness of the engineers. It doesn't make logical sense when you look at it technically. You have someone who is supposed to be a specialist they should be able to create consistent results.
It would be something like, "The default control software on the FSD runs operations under spec to ensure safe and consistent operations. I can remove some of the safeties and upgrade this default component with a much better quality version that'll give you a 10% jump range and go from a fuel usage of only 5.2 to 5.9."
Instead of the, "I have a hunch that if I throw this piece of carbon at your FSD, it may improve the jump range between 1-10% and may increase the fuel usage from 2-15%. I don't really know what will happen. It's not like I've already made modifications thousands of times for many other pilots so I should have some sort of understands how this thing works."

 

[SushiCW]

To those that are "not wasting their time engineering", I would like to say that I enjoyed "the grind" very much, and I did it for the sake of doing it, not because I need it. I don't even enter Open at all, as I'm a hardcore Mobius fan.

Look at Engineering not as a grind, but as a chain of missions. You need to get specific things from specific places, including enemy ships, trader ships in anarchy systems, SRV scavenging in very specific worlds... for me it was not a grind at all, it was fun!. I have bookmarked the worlds where I got my materials from, even though I have my full fleet engineered to a "good enough" level. I've decided on keeping my RNG to a minimum, and settling with most first try results if they're not horrendous, so engineering my 6 ships was not that hard. You don't need the perfect RNG result to get an impressive boost to your ship.

It also helps if you've been mission running previously in a decent sized ship, as many materials would probably be in your cargo hold already.

It definetly is way more fun to do all those varied things, than bulk trading or jumping for 5 hours straight... but hey, to each his own...

All of this is true, but it's also true that making all of this a prerequisite to even having a chance in PvP scenarios is really frustrating and un-fun for a lot of people.

 

[Evil_Merlin]

No, one ton of cargo slows you down as much as one ton of HRP. Its just that tradeships can carry hundreds and hundreds of tons of cargo, whereas combat ship have far less additional armor.

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A conda, unloaded, with 7A thrusters with perfect roll DD5, will pitch at 37d/s. This is a conda without weapons, cargo, utilities. A stock Vulture with 5E drives, unmodded, will pitch at 43d/s. Worst case scenario you were +-16% more agile. In normal combat conditions you'd be +-33% more agile with an A-rated vulture versus a perfectly modded conda.

The reason you could 'barely outmanouver' him is because he was a better pilot.

I doubt he was a better pilot, he had real issues understanding spatial movements in space... that has nothing to do with the fact that two hits rocked my shields hard, and that was from a non-line of site hit...

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To those that are "not wasting their time engineering", I would like to say that I enjoyed "the grind" very much, and I did it for the sake of doing it, not because I need it. I don't even enter Open at all, as I'm a hardcore Mobius fan.

Look at Engineering not as a grind, but as a chain of missions. You need to get specific things from specific places, including enemy ships, trader ships in anarchy systems, SRV scavenging in very specific worlds... for me it was not a grind at all, it was fun!. I have bookmarked the worlds where I got my materials from, even though I have my full fleet engineered to a "good enough" level. I've decided on keeping my RNG to a minimum, and settling with most first try results if they're not horrendous, so engineering my 6 ships was not that hard. You don't need the perfect RNG result to get an impressive boost to your ship.

It also helps if you've been mission running previously in a decent sized ship, as many materials would probably be in your cargo hold already.

It definetly is way more fun to do all those varied things, than bulk trading or jumping for 5 hours straight... but hey, to each his own...

The problem is in order to do Engineering properly, you will need a properly longer range FSD, i'm running a 4D in the Vulture, because all my RES are in the same area as home, less than .13 LS away (don't quote me, but its VERY close, they are in the rings of the planet my station is orbiting) and some cargo space (again, I'm not 100% sure of the need for cargo space), but the Vulture isn't a cargo ship, and moving to be able to carry cargo means the loss of Hull Reinforcements... which makes the pew-pews a bit harder.

 

[Helvellyn]

The problem is in order to do Engineering properly, you will need a properly longer range FSD, i'm running a 4D in the Vulture, because all my RES are in the same area as home, less than .13 LS away (don't quote me, but its VERY close, they are in the rings of the planet my station is orbiting) and some cargo space (again, I'm not 100% sure of the need for cargo space), but the Vulture isn't a cargo ship, and moving to be able to carry cargo means the loss of Hull Reinforcements... which makes the pew-pews a bit harder.

It's not doable with all modules (FSD being the most obvious one), but one partial way around that is to have another long-range ship to take the modules to the engineers along with the cargo needed, then swap them with your short-range ship when you get back.

 

[Mikey2305]

@rowander... not allowed to say you are enjoying it!

 

[SCTrojanbulldog]

When I got my G5 Dirty Drives on my cutter I realized...... I'm playing this game FOREVER!!!!!


Now, where was that community goal again...[rolleyes]

 

[Evil_Merlin]

It's not doable with all modules (FSD being the most obvious one), but one partial way around that is to have another long-range ship to take the modules to the engineers along with the cargo needed, then swap them with your short-range ship when you get back.

Yeah. I'm sooo not a cargo pilot though... its a whole new learning experience, and one, I honestly, don't enjoy.

It really is locking down Engineering to those with cargo bays that don't mind long, often boring, runs, with ships that can actually FSD those jumps and have the cargo bays to spare.

I suppose I could just get an Adder...

 

[Flimley]

I must say, I stopped at grade three dirty drives and really can not motivate myself to go any further. I carry out a few missions for the Sirius Corporation every now and then and am only half way through 'Cordial'. With Davy station being ten thousand light seconds from its main star I don't relish the idea of repeatedly carrying out missions for the permit.

And apparently once you have thrown tons of materials at Qwent and his rubbish upgrades. Palin's jump through the hoops circus is even worse.
I am rarely critical of Elite Dangerous, but achieving grade five dirty drives is something I'm in no hurry to obtain.

Flimley.

 

[SCTrojanbulldog]

I must say, I stopped at grade three dirty drives and really can not motivate myself to go any further. I carry out a few missions for the Sirius Corporation every now and then and am only half way through 'Cordial'. With Davy station being ten thousand light seconds from its main star I don't relish the idea of repeatedly carrying out missions for the permit.

And apparently once you have thrown tons of materials at Qwent and his rubbish upgrades. Palin's jump through the hoops circus is even worse.
I am rarely critical of Elite Dangerous, but achieving grade five dirty drives is something I'm in no hurry to obtain.

Flimley.

I agree, the process sucks... BUT.............. GV DD more than compensate you for the work... especially if you're rocking a BIG or a Python. The Cutter with GV makes it the only ship you want to pilot...

 

[Mikey2305]

@flimley, i thought that but it wasnt too bad when i tackled it. Probably took a couple of sessions for the both of them if i remember. L3 dirty drives are great but L5 are better!

 

[Moritz Norman]

I must say, I stopped at grade three dirty drives and really can not motivate myself to go any further. I carry out a few missions for the Sirius Corporation every now and then and am only half way through 'Cordial'. With Davy station being ten thousand light seconds from its main star I don't relish the idea of repeatedly carrying out missions for the permit.

And apparently once you have thrown tons of materials at Qwent and his rubbish upgrades. Palin's jump through the hoops circus is even worse.
I am rarely critical of Elite Dangerous, but achieving grade five dirty drives is something I'm in no hurry to obtain.

Flimley.

Qwent is the worst part. That said, here's my recommendation:

Go exploring for one week (you need 5kly for Palin anyway)
Sell the data to a Sirius controlled station -> there, you are allied
Tackle the Modular Terminals leisurely while doing BGS or just purchase the Modular Terminals from the Teamsters

The Unknown Fragments are easy, it only takes an hour.

o7

 

[Brownshortz]

I must say, I stopped at grade three dirty drives and really can not motivate myself to go any further. I carry out a few missions for the Sirius Corporation every now and then and am only half way through 'Cordial'. With Davy station being ten thousand light seconds from its main star I don't relish the idea of repeatedly carrying out missions for the permit.

And apparently once you have thrown tons of materials at Qwent and his rubbish upgrades. Palin's jump through the hoops circus is even worse.
I am rarely critical of Elite Dangerous, but achieving grade five dirty drives is something I'm in no hurry to obtain.

Flimley.

I can certainly relate to that. It's just a crazy game mechanic......I mean I know G5 DD's are awesome and all but why torture your customers to the extent that they become so bored they end up quitting? Surely you could make getting access to the upgrades both challenging AND fun?? (I'm thinking mission based stuff here). I work full time and don't get all that much time to play, so when I do I want to partake in stuff that is fun and challenging not boring and monotonous. The Engineers update was a great idea very badly implemented.

 

[Ziljan]

OP, it's not about the dirty drives. Dirty drives make every ship more enjoyable to fly, not just because of speed but because of the increased agility.

The REAL ISSUE is that the Cutter is brokenly OP in terms of speed. The top upgraded speed needs to be nerfed about 80 m/s imo. It would still be the fastest large ship in the game by a large margin at 403 m/s. But 483 m/s??? That is beyond the pale.

 

[Flimley]

@Mortiz Norman.
Thanks man, I may give that a go! Saves doing all those missions I guess/hope.

Flimley

 

[urFOOLISHNESS]

Yeah engineering has made this game open up to me and grown my earning potential. I am now looking to make some different setups like a sweet exploracobra or keelback. Or a racing sidey. Love it

 

[Brownshortz]

My perfect scenario for how the Engineers should have been would go something like this. I'd rock up to say Todd the Blaster and request a level 1 upgrade for my MC's....he would say listen there's these 2 pirate Lords that have been giving me grief if you can get rid of them for me I'll give you access. Or an explorer orientated Engineer would ask me to go and scan a particular system for her. And as you go up the grades the missions would get more difficult. That would at least give you a concrete goal to achieve. FD really didn't put much thought into the mechanics....which is a shame because the idea had heaps of potential.

 

[Mikey2305]

I think they put a massive amount of thought into the mechanics. Unfortunately what they came up with does not resonate with a large part of the player base.

Your idea has merit but would also have caused some negative feedback. If i was asked to take out a couple of pirate lords frinstance then that would stopped level 1 weapons for me right there. And even us non combateers would like to have some weapon mods just because. Im chuffed to bits with my low weights which means that my annie has a full loadout for around 8t in weight