Newcomer / Intro Help Getting Heat Resistant Ceramics

[aioun]

Hey,
I'm in need of 15 Heat Resistant Ceramics. I've searched around all over for how/where to get these but I can't make heads or tails of it.

One poster said to "go to Robigo and do passenger or Evac missions" .... ok. So I can get zero missions there at all. Maybe I need to "rep up" but there are literally zero missions. The passengers all want to go 37gazillion lightyears away, and there are absolutely no evac missions. I checked all 3 stations in Robigo. So that's a dead end.

Then someone else said to "get mats from Dav's and then trade down"... I've been to Dav's, have a ton of stuff, and I'm guessing 'trade down' means to use my existing mats at a mat trader to get what i want? Except I've been to 5 mat traders and none of them have any "heat resistant ceramics" to 'trade down' to. I've tried searching for a way to find a mat trader that has them, so that's a dead end too.

Also I read that you can get them " from Ship salvage (Military & authority ships)" How do you "salvage a ship and where do you find these ships?

Then I found this little gem of advice:
"Alternatively, farm HGE's for Core Dynamic Composites, Proto Radiolic Alloys, and/or Imperial Shielding (3 easiest g5 manufacture mats to specifically farm, imo) and cross trade to other g5, then trade down for what ever you need. "

I have no idea what an HGE is or Core Dynamic Composits... or how to "cross trade" or where to do any of that.

I don't mind putting in some effort, but everyone uses acronyms and assumes knowledge that I lack. Can anyone offer some simple advice on how I can go about getting these things? I'm close to Robigo.

 

[aRJay]

HGE is High Grade Emissions one of the various Unknown Signal Sources, they tend to have some of the highest grade manufactured materials which are most useful at a materials trader who deals with manufactured materials as you can swap them for larger numbers of low grade materials.

Core Dynamic Composites are another type of manufactured material.

When you get to a material trader the things he deals with are laid out in a grid, the materials in each row have a similar function and the columns are the grade or scarcity, cross Trading is where you trade items you have in one row for items you want in another row it is less efficient than trading items in the same row.

Trading down is where you swap one grade 5 (scarcist) item for 200+ grade 1 item in the same row.

 

[aioun]

HGE is High Grade Emissions one of the various Unknown Signal Sources, they tend to have some of the highest grade manufactured materials which are most useful at a materials trader who deals with manufactured materials as you can swap them for larger numbers of low grade materials.

Core Dynamic Composites are another type of manufactured material.

Hey, thanks.
1) Where can I find a HGE?
2) Where can I find a materials trader who deals with manufactured materials?

I've tried searching for both and am at a dead end.

 

[aRJay]

Hey, thanks.
1) Where can I find a HGE?
2) Where can I find a materials trader who deals with manufactured materials?

I've tried searching for both and am at a dead end.

Nearest manufactured materials trader is at Young Dock in Torno. I looked it up on Inara

I don’t know the system states that trigger HGEs to appear rather than any of the other USSs I just use the FSS to scan the system to see what is there you can pick up lower grade manufactured materials from the other emissions sources and trade up but that takes longer as you have to find more items.

 

[aioun]

Nearest manufactured materials trader is at Young Dock in Torno. I looked it up on Inara

I don’t know the system states that trigger HGEs to appear rather than any of the other USSs I just use the FSS to scan the system to see what is there you can pick up lower grade manufactured materials from the other emissions sources and trade up but that takes longer as you have to find more items.

Ok ... cool.
So..... what kind of system has HGE? Once I get to that system I scan the USS? Then what? Do I attack ships, or collect cargo with the scoop or fight ships, destroy them and collect their wreckage?

 

[amcb10]

Use this site, it is invaluable for finding materials and where the HGE's are located. Be sure to scan the Nav beacon in your arrival system then go to supercruise and view your contacts tab, all the Emission sites will show there and you need the High Grade ones. The site also has a video explaining how it is done but you will need to search for it. https://www.edtutorials.com/material-finder/

 

[metatheurgist]

Heat Resistant Ceramics are "salvaged" from Trade ships. I believe the in-game data is actually wrong in this instance. You "salvage' them by shooting them until they blow up and leave bits in space. You can do this legally by shooting wanted smugglers - they count as trade ships.

HGEs are more likely found in high population systems, their contents depend on the faction and state attached to them, but if you're trading for such a low end material it doesn't really matter what you use to trade for them.

 

[amcb10]

Known to be salvaged from signal sources (HGE) in anarchy systems.

 

[Ashnak]

Let me go back a little bit.
Heat resistant ceramics are a low grade engineering material. You can

• try to find them as mission rewards
• try to find them in signal sources (HGEs are one kind of signal source)
• shoot trade ships and pick through their remains
• find any other manufactured material from the same branch and trade up or down within that branch at a Manufactured Material Trader
• find any manufactured material and trade across branches at a Manufactured Material Trader

Trying to find them directly is somewhat tediuos, as it's hit-or-miss, so usually people recommend trading them. Trading down from a higher grade material is ok, as that will give you lots of the lower grade material, trading up from a lower grade material is expensive (you only get a few higher grade mats for a lot of lower grade mats), trading across branches is a last resort, as the cross-branch exchange rates are criminal.
Shooting ships (or picking through wreckage signal sources) requires that it's actually you who shoots the ship - ships killed by NPCs don't drop anything. Just go into any bounty hunting zone that suits your interest, shoot wanted ships, then pick up anything they drop (ok, not stolen or illegal goods, in case they drop cargo - and no goods at all if you want to stick around, those attract pirates who will attack you). If you fly a large ship, some collector limpets can be useful. You don't need to find a place where you can legally shoot ships - but shooting/killing them illegally has some disadvantages.
Signal sources (and HGEs are one type of SS) will show up in any inhabited and a lot of nearby uninhabited systems. You can scan the nav beacon, that will reveal all currently existing signal sources, or hit your FSS and scan for transient signal sources (left edge of the spectrum). Signal sources have a timer - you need to drop into them before that timer expires, or they'll disappear (and another SS may appear somewhere else in the system). So going after that HGE that is 50,000 ls out and has 3 minutes left to live is pretty much futile. Most signal sources will have some materials floating in them - the higher the grade of the SS, the higher the grade of materials. Also the rarer the chance of finding such a SS and the farther away they will likely be. Some signal sources will have neutral ships in them (and no mats), some signal sources will have hostile ships in them (usually, but not always, indicated by that SS's threat level - threat level 0 is empty, threat level 1 can be anything up to a harmless Anaconda, threat level 4 may be a couple of dangerous Vultures and so on).

Basically, I'd suggest you pick up any materials you can find, then look for a manufactured material trader and see what he offers.
There are (as I think you discovered) two other types of material traders - for data (you get from scanning other ships, wakes or datapoints) and for raw (which you get from collecting them planetside or, to some extent, mining asteroids).

 

[Hawk of Battle]

For further information, on material traders, the wiki is useful; https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Material_Trader

and for general material acquisition guides, this thread is the go to on this forum, though when I was recently farming for manufactured goods I found some of the HGE info a bit off, like Pharmaceutical Isolators not spawning basically anywhere.

Basically though, if you want to get a ton of manufactured goods, the easiest way to do it is to find a high population Empire system with no current state (like Boom or War etc), use the FSS to scan for HGE, and any that say "State; None" will spawn grade 5 Shields. Scoop them up, then go to a trader (I keep 1 of each type bookmarked, rather than try to find the nearest one each time) and trade those for whatever you need.

Don't ever bother trying to find lower grade stuff on its own, and don't bother trading stuff up a grade, it's such a massive waste of time and resources. You can get 100 grade 5 materials in about 30 minutes if you know where to look, and 3 of those traded down (which is basically just 1 unit pickup, since they always give you 3 at a time) will almost completely fill your grade 1 bin in that same category, and something like 9 will fill your grade 2 and so on. Even if you need to cross trade a grade 5 mat for another grade 5 mat it's not so bad, 100 of 1 becomes 16 of the other, which is probably enough to see you through whatever engineering task you're doing.

Once you know where each type of grade 5 spawns, you can easily fill most of those bins and then trade down and fill the rest.

 

[aioun]

Thank you for those detailed explanations. I think now I know how to begin hunting for what I'm looking for and learning how to figure it out. Also appreciate giving me the basics, so I can get started and do some trial and error on my own and learn how it all works. Really appreciate all the information, especially the last two detailed replies. It really helps!