Guardian or Engineering upgrades first?

Commandr Sam

C
Hi all,

A bit of a legacy player here just returning and I have a few questions I was hoping you could help me with.

1. I decided to take a hyatus the game around 2 years ago (I think, shortly after engineers were added), after not enjoying the low frequency SRV items needed to progress engineering. Has this process changed at all?

2. I have been playing the last couple of days doing a bit of core mining, a vastly improved game play, have any other areas of the game changed this much?

3. I see the thargoids have arrived, I would like to get involved with some guardian exploration, xeno killing. Are there any groups of players/discord I should find to get involved.

4. Finally, when I was previously playing I think I unlocked 3 or 4 engineers. I assume my rep will have gone with these. Am I better focusing on gurdian upgrades or engineering first? (I will do both).

5. Oh and finally how can I tell which modules I have already engineered on my fleet?

Thanks all for the help.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
1. Some think it's ok, some hate it. High Grade Emissions are rather b0rked but traders are now available
2. Exploration. Though again some disagree
3. AXI (Ant-Xeno Initiative) or Xeno killing, they have a discord, should be a thread in the Thargoids subforum
4. No - rep will still be there. Engineering itself is much nicer now (less RNG). Engineers first (at least FSD) as Guardian stuff is far away.
5. Outfitting will have the engineering symbol (hexagonal) next to engineered stuff. Which will now be marked as legacy and will be converted if you apply more engineering. A bit niche - google may help.
 

S~P

S
You now get 3 items for every material you mine, also you now how material traders which you can now trade for the material that you want. Three different traders Raw, manufactured and encoded. Not sure about the thargoids as combat isn't my thing.
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
Factabulous said:
1. Some think it's ok, some hate it. High Grade Emissions are rather b0rked but traders are now available
2. Exploration. Though again some disagree
3. AXI (Ant-Xeno Initiative) or Xeno killing, they have a discord, should be a thread in the Thargoids subforum
4. No - rep will still be there. Engineering itself is much nicer now (less RNG). Engineers first (at least FSD) as Guardian stuff is far away.
5. Outfitting will have the engineering symbol (hexagonal) next to engineered stuff. Which will now be marked as legacy and will be converted if you apply more engineering. A bit niche - google may help.
Click to expand...
What he said. For what it's worth the srv stuff (prospecting for 'raw' materials) is much better now, there is also a viable workaround to obtain any kind of data material without too much grind, but as mentioned, manufactured materials from high grade signal sources are in a very bad place, and the gameplay to obtain these is very bad and very unrewarding.

Engineers first, no question, they are absolutely essential to pve content thes days, whereas guardian stuff is either totally ineffectual to core gameplay, or absolutely required for fighting thargoids. If you don't want to fight thargoids, I wouldn't bother with any guardian stuff at all. Even the utility stuff is of very limited value (gMRP gFSD booster, etc), nice to have but singularly unimportant.
 

Ceekay

Ceekay
The Guardian FSD booster (up to 10+ ly increase on a compatible build) and shield enhancement package (more effective on resistance builds) are probably the best general purpose upgrades as the rest are anti Thargoid related.

An easy way to get to Guardian space is available every Thursday read more here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/bridging-the-gap-conclusion.513290/

The engineers page on Inara is a good place to start getting updated on the current status but in general engineering is much easier than it was around two years ago and the performance jump is significant.

https://inara.cz/galaxy-engineers/

For example here's an Anaconda armed trader build I use that capable of BH at hazardous resource extraction sites (HazRES)

https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/ana...GBzANokICMF8hRFA&bn=Anaconda ICS Valiant B+MC

Or a general purpose Python

https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/pyt...YAsICmBDA5gG2SEBGCQkKEoA=&bn=Python combat CK
 

Shiro Akai

Shiro Akai
In the end you'll want to have both; engineers and guardian stuff. From what I get - guardian stuff is somewhat an alternative to sometimes demanding engineering and a kind of shortcut to certain things. Instead of lengthy engineer unlocking you go to guardian ruins, unlock blueprint and you have a vendor that will sell given stuff. Bam, instant gratification but given as is. With engineering you have more options, more variety. But at a cost of long chain of unlocking, meeting requirements, gathering materials and such.

For starters - get guardian FSD booster as it will add nice range boost to all of your ships. Single unlock gives access to all booster sizes (unlike weapons which given weapon has different blueprints for different types - fixed and gimballed require separate unlocks. I know, suxx), combined with Felicity Farseer's G5 FSD and your farming for other stuff is now much easier.

So - get Felicity, then guardian booster first. After that - whatever you think will suit you more. If xeno hunting, I'd suggest continue with guardian stuff.
 

Commandr Sam

C
Thanks for the replies all, very useful. can always rely on the people on this forum.

Oh one more question what is with this docking computer and super cruise assist non-sence I seem to find fitted to all new ships, do we not need to fly anymore?
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Commandr Sam said:
Oh one more question what is with this docking computer and super cruise assist non-sence I seem to find fitted to all new ships, do we not need to fly anymore?
Click to expand...
As a long term player - I like 'em. Others still want to fly manually. Up to you (but I do wonder how it's going to affect new players who will only be able to drive an 'automatic'). (Then again there are whole countries who can't drive a stick shift - and they seem to do ok :) )
 

[VR] scipio_77

[VR] scipio_77
Commandr Sam said:
[...]

Oh one more question what is with this docking computer and super cruise assist non-sence I seem to find fitted to all new ships, do we not need to fly anymore?
Click to expand...

Docking computer is a waste... slow and sometimes does crazy stuff.

Super cruise assist is nice if you can afford the slot... it's not like slightly nudging the flightstick every 10 seconds in SC is "flying" to any notable degree and it makes it easier to check databases and other prep-stuff when you are travelling.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Aashenfox said:
If you do it well, manually, the assist is definitely not faster. ;)
Click to expand...
Not convinced - as Cosmic said, if you only engage them at the last moment they can be faster maybe. But I'm never that much in a rush so I mostly fly 'in the blue' manually or 'always auto' if I have it installed. Yes, I am that lazy :)
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Aashenfox said:
I approach with 5s arrival time for the last 120ls, very accurate throttle, can the assist do that?
Click to expand...
Last time I checked you could switch it on down to around 3s and it would hit the target - can you do that? (May have been 4, as I say, I don't bother doing it that way)
 

[VR] M4st0d0n

[VR] M4st0d0n
Shiro Akai said:
In the end you'll want to have both; engineers and guardian stuff. From what I get - guardian stuff is somewhat an alternative to sometimes demanding engineering and a kind of shortcut to certain things. Instead of lengthy engineer unlocking you go to guardian ruins, unlock blueprint and you have a vendor that will sell given stuff. Bam, instant gratification but given as is. With engineering you have more options, more variety. But at a cost of long chain of unlocking, meeting requirements, gathering materials and such.

For starters - get guardian FSD booster as it will add nice range boost to all of your ships. Single unlock gives access to all booster sizes (unlike weapons which given weapon has different blueprints for different types - fixed and gimballed require separate unlocks. I know, suxx), combined with Felicity Farseer's G5 FSD and your farming for other stuff is now much easier.

So - get Felicity, then guardian booster first. After that - whatever you think will suit you more. If xeno hunting, I'd suggest continue with guardian stuff.
Click to expand...

Spot on advice.
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
Factabulous said:
Last time I checked you could switch it on down to around 3s and it would hit the target - can you do that? (May have been 4, as I say, I don't bother doing it that way)
Click to expand...
No, I can't recover from 4 secs approach unless the destination is in a high orbit, in those cases you recover instantly anyway from full throttle approaches and that is definitely faster. ;)

Another vid I keep meaning to do is a comparison of sc approach techniques, cos I've never actually timed which of the manual methods is actually fastest. :)
 

MoonRacer

MoonRacer
Commandr Sam said:
Oh one more question what is with this docking computer and super cruise assist non-sence I seem to find fitted to all new ships, do we not need to fly anymore?
Click to expand...

I did both things (Docking and SC) manually, but I have the game since February 2019, so I am in no way an 'old hand'.
Here are my comments to the assist modules:
1) Docking assist, not new, works fine. I use it, the advantage for me is a bit less stress while doing missions and constantly docking at new stations. It is a bit faster too, since I keep seeing a lot of stations (on planets and in space) where I would have to find my pad. But I activate it rather late, and I am sure I could do it manually. So it is helpful.
2) Advanced Docking assist: Did try it out, but I do not need it. It assists takeoff too, in contrast to the old SC assist. It is helpful for very big ships, but not necessary. I do not use it at this time. It also is more expensive (not a problem) and does need more energy (could be a problem in some builds).
3) SC assist: Did not even try it, but I am an explorer, so I am very used to target things and SC towards them. If you want to be able to do other things during SC you will love it, I think. But the best feature - judging from comments on the forums - is that you can target a planet and are put into orbit automatically. And this I do not need, I am used to fly towards planets (for mapping them), and I am faster manually, the same goes for stations. If I have a mission I always try to fly towards stations so, that I drop out with good alignment to dock immediately, this can be done only manually. Also avoiding to be mass braked by planets while docking is better manually.

The best thing are the two new size 1 slots for all small ships, and one size 1 slot for the rest. My explorer DBX is much more versatile with the 2 size 1 slots!
So - try out the docking computer, it is not bad at all, the SC assist - try it and decide...
 
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