Can anyone confirm this? This is news to me (came across this thread looking for explanation on why Biotech/Exquisite Focus Crystals are impossible to find via missions now).
HGE Improvement
- Thread starter Pan_O_War
- Start date
Also, this is a myth that was debunked years ago.
I spread misinformation here. I tested it after the fact. I am almost certain this was the case years ago but it definitely isn’t now. So if a system should have HGEs and you hit the nav beacon and it doesn’t, jump to another system and come back in half hour and there’s a chance it now will.
Alternatively the old school way of increasing the odds was SC out of the system to deep space and then like cruise along and USS’s would occasionally appear and they have a chance of being HGEs.
I believe that the higher the traffic in a system, the higher the chance of USS’s, but again not confirmed with science
I see. I don't think it was ever the case before, I thought perhaps it was a new change along with everything else. I just tried it myself and can confirm I'm not getting guaranteed HGE spawns.
Jumping in and out of the system doesn't need to be half an hour apart, each new visit is a fresh roll on the RNG table. (Or you can even just sit and wait to see what new signals appear while in-system.)
The 'old school' method was the only way to spawn HGEs once upon a time, and you didn't have to be in deep space - just supercruising at a speed above 30km/s was sufficient, at that time.
HGEs appear the same in very low population systems as they do any other. Like many things in Elite it's just an oft-repeated rumor that nobody took the effort to verify for themselves, and falsely attributed success to in the face of RNG placebo effects.
The way thing used to be before the recent engineering material "re-balance":
The way things are now after the recent engineering material "re-balance":
The way thing are now after the release of PP2.0:
I never bothered with chasing down HGE's after I missed the first few I tried many years, and a few thousand hours of play time, ago.
I collected materials haphazardly sometimes grabbing them, other times not. 
I engineered ships/modules/etc as far as I could without having to chase down materials. Though I would usually stop in at a Mat. Trader to get the most out of what I already had.
The way things are now after the recent engineering material "re-balance":
I see HGE in 20% to 30% of systems I travel through (ED Copilot announces them). Sometimes I'll stop and fill up, other times, much more often, I just keep going.
Recently:
The way thing are now after the release of PP2.0:
I visit the Mat. Traders more regularly and balance the amount of materials in each grade to about the same numbers across the board. So, when I receive new materials (stopping to pick them up, Laser Mining, HGE, scanning ships/wakes, mission rewards, PP Mini-Care Packages, etc...) I have room for them, nothing is full.
Eventually I'll have to change this strategy but it'll work until I get too full. At that time I'll need to look at each grade material and adjust them all near the same percentage of their individual bin sizes rather than simply balancing near a particular number.
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I'm sick of constantly having to visit the mat trader. 
Surely no-one needs to visit HGEs anymore.
Actually it is. Surely no-one needs to do missions anymore.Surely no-one needs to visit HGEs anymore.
More like "Surely nobody needs to play the game anymore"
Getting there.
This is where I'm at. Since obtaining the necessary Fed/Imp ranks (back in 2016), materials were the sole reason for me to touch missions at all. Unless I get heavily invested in minor faction BGS shenanigans, I see there being no reason at all under current circumstances. I could absolutely care less about random assortments of materials, and of lower grades, that I can already obtain directly and without randomness involved.
Very one step forward, 2 steps back change here.
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