Engineers how do I unlock PROFESSOR PALIN

BTW, I tried to uprate Marco by selling commodities (it says so on the wiki), but even 400 tons of Indite and stuff barely made a dent in the progress bar. Unlocking Palin really was a pain.
 
atm he is not in my list, there is a lot of info, but not how to unlock so I can see him on my list. Thanks

Minus all the Bull-Pucky, here is the Professor Palin page from the Engineers section of the INARA website, explaining how to get an invitation from the Professor and what you need to do to unlock him, as well as everything you need to know about him, available modifications, prices, etc. Following the links will show you the other Engineers, their info, etc.

PS: Professor Palin is one of the higher-level Engineers, you will need to unlock 2 other Engineers and level-up with them before you even get an invitation from him. o7
 
Last edited:
BTW, I tried to uprate Marco by selling commodities (it says so on the wiki), but even 400 tons of Indite and stuff barely made a dent in the progress bar. Unlocking Palin really was a pain.
I unlocked Marco a few weeks ago. I was levelling him up crafting low level mods but saw I was low on sulphur so while I made a trip to a raw materials trader I picked up a load of maybe Indite too - whatever it was he was buying at a very good price, to hopefully boost my rep, like you it made no difference at all.

I levelled him up to get the info on Prof Palin but I still have to do the 5000ly trip to get the invite. Basically, given that Marco doesn't do much you can't get done elsewhere and his base is a massive trek from the arrival point I doubt i'll be going back to him.
 
Yeah, and unfortunately Palin is pretty much without alternative, in the Bubble at least.

However, his unlock still feels like a cakewalk compared to some others of different trees. Complain about MQ being 8000 clicks out? Wait til you get to unlock Liz Ryder. I don't know if the Invite missions are random, but at least I had to travel about 230,000 Ls to get it. And the one after that? Demands a rare commodity you have to get from 180Ly away.
Luckily the Wiki entry is incorrect about the allocation quota - you can buy all 50t of cigars in one swoop and don't have to make 3 trips. Not sure about the one after that.
I'm still struggling to unlock that Black Market guy. So far I got 1 out of 5 and had to pay over 50k in fines for that. Abandoning delivery missions is not the way to go.
 
I had similar with Liz Ryder, very annoying, can't remember how long the destination station was on the unlock mission but it was a long way, over 200k ls sounds about right.

I'm actually doing Juri Ishmaak at the moment. Just need to pop back into a CZ for the last of the bonds

I have a DBX set up for long haul travel/mats gathering so can probably do the 5000ly round trip in about 4-4.5 hours if I don't do any scans. I just find long journeys of constantly jumping a bit dull. I have a loose plan of hitting the rare raw material sites on my way out/back - i've been there before but they're only about 1500ly from the middle of the bubble. I can't imagine there's too many undiscovered systems 5000 ly from the centre of the bubble.

Is there anyway to find out what your original starter system was? I can't remember. Wouldn't mind popping back for a visit
 
Oh right, the 5000Ly trip. Well, seeing how there hasn't been any mention of it in this thread yet, here are some clues I took:

As destination I chose the Beta Site station in the Jellyfish Nebula. Street address Jellyfish Sector FB-X c1-5 . That's just a tad over 5000ly out from the starting region. You can dock and afaik also repair there (I didn't have any damage so not sure), although they don't have any outfitting.
I did the trip in a Hauler with G2 FSD and something like 37ly jump range, which made the one-way trip some 150 jumps. There were no serious Brown Dwarf fields along the way, fuel wasn't a problem. I did some stops for scanning and mapping along the way, and at Beta Site my data was worth some 6M.

Since I didn't feel like doing another 150 jumps to travel back, I self-destructed and chose to respawn with a Sidey back in the bubble. The downside of that was that I couldn't sell my exploration data to factions I wanted to get friendly with (like Alioth Indeps, Sirius Corp), so basically the time I saved skipping the long way home I had to invest right again in Rep grinding for those factions. Make of that what you will.

The alternative would have been taking my DBX, which would have taken just 100 jumps out, but I definitely wouldn't have sacrificed that ship so it would have had to be 200 jumps total. In hindsight, that would have been smarter for the sake of the cartography data.
 
Ignorant question... if I complete the 'you've travelled 5000 Ly from start' part of the requirement before the other stages e.g.: Unlocking Marco Qwent etc, do I have to go out and do another 5,000+ LY trip?

I ask because I'm sure to complete that long of a trip well before I spend the time on unlocking more engineers,
Ignorant question... if I complete the 'you've travelled 5000 Ly from start' part of the requirement before the other stages e.g.: Unlocking Marco Qwent etc, do I have to go out and do another 5,000+ LY trip?

I ask because I'm sure to complete that long of a trip well before I spend the time on unlocking more engineers,
NO!, Once you've offically log an excess of 5,000, your good to go. However, it must be from the system you were in when you first started to play ED. Just in case, I'd go an extra 100 just to make sure.
 
In the right panel in the info on the engineers it tells you how far you've gone when you look at Prof Palin. I plan to plot about 5000ly from where I start and then just double check when i get there. Plan then is to move a few jumps in a perpendicular direction and come back - this is to make sure the plotter doesn't bounce me through the same systems I came out through.

I can't remember where my starter system is though sadly
 
I can't remember where my starter system is though sadly
Explode yourself - look at where the free sidewinder would be - that is your starter system.

But if you're planning your 5k trip that minutely you are doing it wrong (which I guess is ok for this thread as it seems to be about 'how to unlocking engineers without enjoying yourself at all' :D ). Codex stats will tell you how many Ly you have traveled from your start point.
 
It wasn’t to do with that, I’d just totally forgotten. You can see in the prof palin info if you’ve been 5000ly away, I was just going to plot a bit over 5000 from where I am now then check when I get there

Will remember to check next time I die
 
As destination I chose the Beta Site station in the Jellyfish Nebula. Street address Jellyfish Sector FB-X c1-5 .

I once posted this here, as a possible destination, with a screenshot. That's where I went as well. Curious if that's what sent you there, or if in all of space we just happened to go to the same rock. Either way it's pretty cool :)

betamap.jpg
 
Engineers are hyper-talented people who have hyper-specific needs so it makes sense.

That being said, forcing players who want good thrusters on their Corvettes to travel 5000ly is literally psychological torture.

Corvette?
A DBX with an A-rated FSD plus PP and everything else D-rated can jump 36ly. No engineering.
If you add a 4H GFSD, you get 45ly. Plus G3 engineering on that FSD and you can jump 61 ly.
at 13 millions for the ship and a single g3 engineered module, you can easily suicide back
 
Last edited:
I did catch that tip about Jellyfish somewhere here on the forum I think, could very well have been your post but I don't remember. ^^ Anyway, good pick. :)
 
If the only thing you need from Professor Palin and Chloe is the 5000 ly to get their invites, then as soon as you cross the threshold you get their invites. Keep that in mind.

I did the partial trip out to Colonia and then self destructed to get back using the Neutron Highway.

I'm heading out to Colonia now to unlock my last 4 engineers.
 
I am almost done with my Engineer unlocks now, got Broo Tarquin today and can finally pimp my lasers. Now the only one missing (that I need) is the one who does level 5 shields (for the time being I have level 3 ones). There are quite a few others but I don't really need any of them now.
5000ly or no, Palin wasn't even the worst PITA.
 
Elvira unlocks Marco. Marco unlocks Palin.

Edit: Have a look at Inara.cz
Yea I was. I was just tired. I figured it out. -- I hate this grind b.c I have been listening to people give me all kinds of advice. now I realize it was just a gear difference. Kinda a shame I have to scrap trying to understand mechanics until I get to Grade 5.
 
Ive been to colonia and back. I have elvira Grade 5. I have sirius permit. What am I missing? Do I need to do another 5k trip? -- Just wondering before I start.
Only problem with colonia atm is that if you pin any of the engineers stuff and come back they might unpin themselves as you pin a different engineer. There seem to be one or two bugs related to this and that makes anything long distance a pain. It's annoying enough to repin within the bubble.

I started the game doing a dolphin run to heart and soul and back to get elite adventurer. So, I never had to deal with that annoyance in the same way. I do have to deal with the dangerous one though. I'm only master atm too.
 
Got back last night from the 5000 ly trip. I picked a system 5100 ly from where i was in a pretty bland looking region not on the way to anything and just headed there with fastest route plotted. Started hitting unexplored systems once I was about 700 ly out and pretty much everything was unexplored once I was further than about 1500ly. About 3 jumps before my target I got the invite from the Prof and Chloe whatshername pop up in the messages.

Bagged a few waterworlds including a pretty cool binary pair that were terraformable so with a FSS+DSS+FD bonus that should have been a decent system, didn't find any earth likes sadly. Sold all my data for 56 million, I rushed back the last 2000ly or so as I wanted to get back to the bubble and sell the data before I headed to pick Mrs B up from the airport. Off to get the sensor fragments next.
 
Back
Top Bottom