The Engineers promote a variety of gameplay activities to get specific components and encourage players to do different things in the game. We currently get specific components for the following various activities:
- Destroy combat ships: RES hunting, kill pirates.
- Destroy military/authority ships: Combat zones.
- Elements/Minerals: Mining and surface prospecting.
- Planetary data: Base assault.
- Bulletin board materials: Mission running.
- Signal Sources: Exploration-like.
While it can certainly be argued at how effective or fun each of those elements are, they make sense in "promoting" various existing activities. There are two that doesn't make sense to me however:
1) Drops from hauler-type ships. What activity is this supposed to encourage? Murder? If you want to be an effective pirate, you DON'T kill the ships you are attacking: you get their cargo via diplomacy, or hatch-breaker limpets or damaging their cargo door. Destroying cargo ships nets you nothing (until now) and is against your profession goal. So what activity is promoted with this?
2) Wake-scanning: Why? What gameplay elements are you pushing the player toward? It doesn't mesh with any existing job that I can think of. Is it to promote "wake-scanning" as an activity by itself? If so, why? It's an activity that carries absolutely no risk (it's best done in view of a station), no challenge and has no benefits of any type besides the data (No reputation change, no background simulator interaction, no credits, no nothing). Unlike other activities, you have to go out of your way to get materials/data from this one: you have to fit a Wake scanner on a precious utility slot, and you have to take the time to travel and scan these Wakes. Even if you carry a Wake scanner with you, the only times you are going to see Wakes at all are while you are leaving a station, or if you are hunting a Nav Beacon (and then only occasionally and spread over a 40km area): Wakes are very rare in RES sites, and non-existant in any ground activity, exploration and out-of-res mining. Is sitting near a station and watch the traffic go by what was intended with Wake Scanning or was there a goal I'm missing entirely?
- Destroy combat ships: RES hunting, kill pirates.
- Destroy military/authority ships: Combat zones.
- Elements/Minerals: Mining and surface prospecting.
- Planetary data: Base assault.
- Bulletin board materials: Mission running.
- Signal Sources: Exploration-like.
While it can certainly be argued at how effective or fun each of those elements are, they make sense in "promoting" various existing activities. There are two that doesn't make sense to me however:
1) Drops from hauler-type ships. What activity is this supposed to encourage? Murder? If you want to be an effective pirate, you DON'T kill the ships you are attacking: you get their cargo via diplomacy, or hatch-breaker limpets or damaging their cargo door. Destroying cargo ships nets you nothing (until now) and is against your profession goal. So what activity is promoted with this?
2) Wake-scanning: Why? What gameplay elements are you pushing the player toward? It doesn't mesh with any existing job that I can think of. Is it to promote "wake-scanning" as an activity by itself? If so, why? It's an activity that carries absolutely no risk (it's best done in view of a station), no challenge and has no benefits of any type besides the data (No reputation change, no background simulator interaction, no credits, no nothing). Unlike other activities, you have to go out of your way to get materials/data from this one: you have to fit a Wake scanner on a precious utility slot, and you have to take the time to travel and scan these Wakes. Even if you carry a Wake scanner with you, the only times you are going to see Wakes at all are while you are leaving a station, or if you are hunting a Nav Beacon (and then only occasionally and spread over a 40km area): Wakes are very rare in RES sites, and non-existant in any ground activity, exploration and out-of-res mining. Is sitting near a station and watch the traffic go by what was intended with Wake Scanning or was there a goal I'm missing entirely?
Last edited:
