I dislike the Engineer changes...

[h347h]

In this scenario it will be even easier in the new system. If you can get a G5 material easily and the G3/4 material is of the same type then take it to the Material Trader. you will get many more of the one you want for the easy G5 you have gathered.

If you don't want to do the activity to get a specific material then do an alternative activity to get a lower or higher grade material of the same type and trade.

The new system adds much more flexibility.

An activity that I never had to do in the first place. See where this is going? I have to do more activities that I didn't to do to get more mats for the mats I used to need less of to mod out a ship.

That's the point of the mat broker, to make obtaining G5 easier by converting all the lower grade mats you no longer need.

That all depends on the exchange rate though. If the exchange rate is bad it literally might be better to just go farm the G5 mats.

 

[jasonbirder]

I don't know if you play with a lot of other people but pretty much everyone know has almost all grade 5 modded out ships

I think the People you play with is (by its very nature) a self-selecting Group...

I play with others...we Mod a bit here and there (FSDs normally, maybe a bit of extra power) everyone else seems to do the same...You G5 all your modules and roll for the best secondary effects...the people you Play with do the same...
It tells us NOTHING about what the "average player" does NOR does it tell us anything about Frontiers original INTENT

 

[h347h]

I think the People you play with is (by its very nature) a self-selecting Group...

I play with others...we Mod a bit here and there (FSDs normally, maybe a bit of extra power) everyone else seems to do the same...You G5 all your modules and roll for the best secondary effects...the people you Play with do the same...
It tells us NOTHING about what the "average player" does NOR does it tell us anything about Frontiers original INTENT

Intent doesn't matter, the effect the changes are going to have on players is what matters.

Across the board it is going to be a bigger time sink for every player. For many grinding is one of the biggest bugbears of the game making engineers more grindy is just going to make that more of an issue. They already tried to reduce the grind previously now they may very well make it more grindy than it was in the first place.

 

[Aashenfox]

Pretty sure Frontier originally intended Engineered Modules to be acquired Gradually as people obtained Materials organically through their normal activities...
I think they overlooked the possibility that INSTANTLY a proportion of the Player Bade would go out and do whatever in game gymnastics were needed to acquire a large number of rolls (to maximize effect) on G5 Upgrades for ALL or nearly ALL of their Modules...
Isn't this kind of nudging us back towards the original intention of slower more organic acquisition of Engineered modules?

Nail. Hit. Head. And the 'solution' makes the low level mats more relevant in a pointless and annoying way. There are too many different materials. I already made a spreadsheet so that I could see whether I should pick something up or not, so I don't waste my time scooping or space storing, mats I won't use. Now we need almost all of them again. I'm not very happy.

 

[CptXabaras]

Well i take it as a increase in lvl cap, reminds me of old time playing some MMO were we had maxed out gear, that came from grinding, just to have it become obsolete with new expansion. Personally i welcome the change, i like to thinker with my ships, material is not really a problem playing the game. Getting out of my comfort zone to do something i wouldn't usually do? I'm fine with it. Besides, the ability to change lesser material for high grade one will make the process less painful and if anything, the new mechanics behind module engineering should bring some balance.

Anyway the beta is at -1 day from being released, change and tweak are possible, let's all see how it will unfold.

my 2 cents

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I will say, having watched this, that the new system does indeed take longer. The current system takes 3 rolls to advance. Period. Even if they suck, even if they're worse than the previous, it takes 3 grade 1's to reach grade 2, and so on. It took Ed 4 or was it 5 to max out Grade 1?

By itself this isn't so bad, except... each roll costs materials. Each material must either be found or traded for - which takes time. We don't have the luxury of a ~console spawn.item.quantity command when we're out of nickle.

So no, the new system is much slower, despite efforts to make it sound faster. This doesn't mean the end-result isn't better, but it's certainly not faster.

 

[Jukelo]

That all depends on the exchange rate goes though. If the exchange rate is bad it literally might be better to just go farm the G5 mats.

Certainly the exchange rate balance will be important, but keep in mind that beyond purely looking at the numbers, there is also the frustration caused by the high variance you'll naturally get from rare drops. If item a has a drop rate of 5%, and item b has a drop rate of 50%, for a lot of people it will be less frustrating to just convert b into a, even at a rate much higher than 10:1, as a 5% drop rate makes it entirely possible even 40 attempts wont yield what you need. And you can be sure that anyone expecting one drop out of 20 attempts will grow frustrated very quickly after every infructuous bit of effort beyond what they expect (and forget every instance where they dropped the needed material in the first 5 or 10 attempts of course).

 

[shadow133]

I will say, having watched this, that the new system does indeed take longer. The current system takes 3 rolls to advance. Period. Even if they suck, even if they're worse than the previous, it takes 3 grade 1's to reach grade 2, and so on. It took Ed 4 or was it 5 to max out Grade 1?

By itself this isn't so bad, except... each roll costs materials. Each material must either be found or traded for - which takes time. We don't have the luxury of a ~console spawn.item.quantity command when we're out of nickle.

So no, the new system is much slower, despite efforts to make it sound faster. This doesn't mean the end-result isn't better, but it's certainly not faster.

Right on point. My only gripe with the current system is material storage, collection is a pain but if we had larger storages over time it wouldn’t be so bad. Now collecting will become an issue. It seems like fdev “cheating” fails to reflect gameplay style for those players (like myself) with very limited time. It’s like they play a completely different game.

 

[Aashenfox]

Certainly the exchange rate balance will be important, but keep in mind that beyond purely looking at the numbers, there is also the frustration caused by the high variance you'll naturally get from rare drops. If item a has a drop rate of 5%, and item b has a drop rate of 50%, for a lot of people it will be less frustrating to just convert b into a, even at a rate much higher than 10:1, as a 5% drop rate makes it entirely possible even 40 attempts wont yield what you need. And you can be sure that anyone expecting one drop out of 20 attempts will grow frustrated very quickly after every infructuous bit of effort beyond what they expect.

Agree. If I can exchange (for example) 1 proprietary composite (G5 material) for 5xG4 materials (for example), and then exchange a G4 materials for 5 CIF (G3 material), then that will be great, I go to any high pop system in a none state and pick up 15 proprietary composites, which will be more CIF than my ship can store. BUT, it will also completely change the balance of upgrades. What is actually wrong here, is that CIF should be grade 5 and Proprietary Composites grade 3. Simply based on difficulty to farm. Ah, I hear you say, you have inflated values there, of course 1 g5 should not equal 25 G3! OK, I say, in that case, let's go lowest possible and say a G5 is worth 2 G4, and 1 G4 is worth 2 G3. That still means an easy 15 PCs (5 canisters of proprietary composites in a USS usually), which is SIXTY(!) CIF. Balance is completely gone.

Also, will the materials broker have missoin rewards (bitech conductors? Exquisite focus crystals?) and if, so, who is ever going to do another mission for materials? So then why bother having material mission rewards? It;s all very poorly thought through. As I have said over and over again, all that needed looking at was materials gathering.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

The biggest problems I found with the current Engineers system, that cause the most grind for me are:

- The RNG on top of RNG with rubbish secondary effects wasting all my hard-farmed mats
- Finding the rarer mats in a reasonable time - chemical manipulators being my personal bugbear.
- Running out of mats before I get the upgrade I want and having to haul donkey to and from the engineer base just to get some more to carry on upgrading the same module
- Applying an experimental effect to one [weapon] and then having to rep up again to apply the same experimental effect to a second [weapon] of the same type.
- The pooled storage meaning I only ever have a limited number of rolls for a given upgrade on hand at a time, making me run out sooner.

As far as I can see from the proposed changes, all of these points have been addressed and appear to make upgrading take less time in the long run. I won't be able to play the Beta, being an Xbox CMDR, but each of the above are addressed as follows:

- No more secondary effects, especially the negative ones that waste my mats (and therefore a hell of a lot of my time), and no more worse rolls than the previous one (stopping me from hesitating to apply an upgrade).
- Material Trader gives me a place to give in all the overabundant Chemical Processors and get Chemical Manipulators in exchange - less RNG = wastes less time.
- Pinning a blueprint for a half completed grade, going out to farm the mats I need, then just rolling the upgrades at the nearest starport - saves time jumping back to the engineer base.
- Experimental effects costing materials instead of rep means I can chop and change them as and when I want without having to waste time re-rolling useless grades to rep up.
- The new per material storage cap gives me a HUGE amount of wiggle room for materials, ultimately cutting down the time I need to spend farming per upgrade.

Sure, I have to progress a brand new module through grade 1, 2, 3, 4 then 5, which is a little inconvenient* given the massive convenience of the rest of the changes, but I strongly suspect that the benefits outweigh the downsides and I'll end up with a net gain in time.

Overall, I really like the sound of the changes

*I say "a little inconvenient" because the per material storage cap and material broker mean so, SO much easier access to mats, that going through the grades each time would not end up as time consuming as it currently is, overall.

 

[GG7]

Here... Have a Cookie.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

It's good that there are 3 similar threads.

Now I can ask: how many G4 mats does it take to screw in, no, exchange for a G5 mat, and do the same conversion rates scale downwards through the levels?

 

[Aashenfox]

The biggest problems I found with the current Engineers system, that cause the most grind for me are:

- The RNG on top of RNG with rubbish secondary effects wasting all my hard-farmed mats
- Finding the rarer mats in a reasonable time - chemical manipulators being my personal bugbear.
- Running out of mats before I get the upgrade I want and having to haul donkey to and from the engineer base just to get some more to carry on upgrading the same module
- Applying an experimental effect to one [weapon] and then having to rep up again to apply the same experimental effect to a second [weapon] of the same type.
- The pooled storage meaning I only ever have a limited number of rolls for a given upgrade on hand at a time, making me run out sooner.

As far as I can see from the proposed changes, all of these points have been addressed and appear to make upgrading take less time in the long run. I won't be able to play the Beta, being an Xbox CMDR, but each of the above are addressed as follows:

- No more secondary effects, especially the negative ones that waste my mats (and therefore a hell of a lot of my time), and no more worse rolls than the previous one (stopping me from hesitating to apply an upgrade).
- Material Trader gives me a place to give in all the overabundant Chemical Processors and get Chemical Manipulators in exchange - less RNG = wastes less time.
- Pinning a blueprint for a half completed grade, going out to farm the mats I need, then just rolling the upgrades at the nearest starport - saves time jumping back to the engineer base.
- Experimental effects costing materials instead of rep means I can chop and change them as and when I want without having to waste time re-rolling useless grades to rep up.
- The new per material storage cap gives me a HUGE amount of wiggle room for materials, ultimately cutting down the time I need to spend farming per upgrade.

Sure, I have to progress a brand new module through grade 1, 2, 3, 4 then 5, which is a little inconvenient* given the massive convenience of the rest of the changes, but I strongly suspect that the benefits outweigh the downsides and I'll end up with a net gain in time.

Overall, I really like the sound of the changes

*I say "a little inconvenient" because the per material storage cap and material broker mean so, SO much easier access to mats, that going through the grades each time would not end up as time consuming as it currently is, overall.

I see what you're saying, but you haven't mentioned the negatives that have been newly introduced. Are they worth the positives?

What if I told you that all your points are solved only by removing the RNG from materials gathering AS WELL AS implementing the materials broker and they could have only done very minor tweaks to the actual engineering part?

1) Yes, too many layers of RNG, making gathering more reliable would remove one layer of RNG.
2) Obviously, this is your point that is the same as mine, make mat farming less of a lottery.
3) Agree, materials trader addresses this.
4) OK, this isn't addressed but it certainly is helped by the materials broker, just plan the 6 crafts you need to level back up and use materials broker to make sure you have them.
5) This is also addressed by more predictable materials gathering as you can decide what to hold onto t any given time because you know where you can farm (or trade) for more of anything else you may need.

This does not address a big bugbear of some folks, which were the random secondaries. I liked them if I'm honest, that's what gave the system an element of skill, which it will now lack.

Point being, there was no need to rewrite engineers in this way, only materials gathering needed 'fixing'.

It's good that there are 3 similar threads.

Now I can ask: how many G4 mats does it take to screw in, no, exchange for a G5 mat, and do the same conversion rates scale downwards through the levels?

I posted an example above showing how even 2 to 1 is going to be ridiculous under certain circumstances, cos there is no consistency in difficulty of farming per grade. Many G5 mats are easy and some G2 mats are a nightmare.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Right on point. My only gripe with the current system is material storage, collection is a pain but if we had larger storages over time it wouldn’t be so bad. Now collecting will become an issue. It seems like fdev “cheating” fails to reflect gameplay style for those players (like myself) with very limited time. It’s like they play a completely different game.

We are getting larger storage - 100 of each material type. Last I counted there were quite a few material types, so many in fact, that keeping 100 of each would be impossible.

 

[GG7]

Spawn rates of these materials and data everyone is hang wringing over can be changed you know. Not to mention the 100 capacity per each of them, which will allow players to collect them during their other activities without even trying.

Sometimes I wonder if the term BIG PICTURE is even a known concept to the Negative Nancys?

Probably not. Why let logic and actual hands on comparisons interfere with your Drama Queen antics.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Can't comment on the new system yet, but i liked the old system. I understand how the competitive players didn't like it, and min/maxers went bonkers over it, but for me it was cool.

Hmm... need to get a bit more engineering done before the change.

 

[concentric]

Also moving goal posts on what the 'best' is one of the more annnoying aspects of the change. This has happened before as well and really feels like you are wasting the time of players who worked to get things like thrusters modded out close to the limit only to have that limit moved.

That's one of my main issues with the new system, too. Alongside the fact that maxed out ships will soon be the rule instead of the exception...

 

[JesusRocks1988]

I see what you're saying, but you haven't mentioned the negatives that have been newly introduced. Are they worth the positives?

What if I told you that all your points are solved only by removing the RNG from materials gathering AS WELL AS implementing the materials broker and they could have only done very minor tweaks to the actual engineering part?

1) Yes, too many layers of RNG, making gathering more reliable would remove one layer of RNG.
2) Obviously, this is your point that is the same as mine, make mat farming less of a lottery.
3) Agree, materials trader addresses this.
4) OK, this isn't addressed but it certainly is helped by the materials broker, just plan the 6 crafts you need to level back up and use materials broker to make sure you have them.
5) This is also addressed by more predictable materials gathering as you can decide what to hold onto t any given time because you know where you can farm (or trade) for more of anything else you may need.

This does not address a big bugbear of some folks, which were the random secondaries. I liked them if I'm honest, that's what gave the system an element of skill, which it will now lack.

Point being, there was no need to rewrite engineers in this way, only materials gathering needed 'fixing'.



I posted an example above showing how even 2 to 1 is going to be ridiculous under certain circumstances, cos there is no consistency in difficulty of farming per grade. Many G5 mats are easy and some G2 mats are a nightmare.

I would disagree that there's any element of skill to getting secondary effects, which are/were entirely random. I get what you're saying, the good secondaries were very good and I liked them, but that's surely outweighed by the horrible negative ones that just waste the mats you've spent hours farming - like getting a max standard roll and then the unavoidable secondary effect dropping it down halfway.

Aside from the really quite radical changes to the Engineers interface, to me it seems like FD have only made minor changes to the system - namely cutting down the parts that relied on RNG. Just removing the amount of RNG that they have done seems to have had a cumulative effect and makes it look like a bigger change than it actually is.

Instead of having RNG material collecting, RNG positives on the standard rolls, RNG on the negatives on the standard rolls, RNG secondary effects, RNG experimental effects, THEN making you effectively reset your progress with the Engineer a little to buy an experimental effect.
Now we have only RNG on material collecting and RNG on positives. And out of that, the RNG on material collecting is mitigated by the material trader and per-material storage. Everything else is bought with mats with fixed positives and negatives.

 

[Cliffson]

I posted an example above showing how even 2 to 1 is going to be ridiculous under certain circumstances, cos there is no consistency in difficulty of farming per grade. Many G5 mats are easy and some G2 mats are a nightmare.

I'm assuming it will stay 6 up 3 down at all levels (makes sense as materials are found in 3s) and so wont be awful.

The beauty of the material trader is that for every material horrible to find there is usually an easy version to find then you just sell up down.

Any hard to find G1_2s are irrelevant if there is an easier to get 3 or 4 as you just trade down.

The worst (to my mind) mats are HighGradwSS ones. But for eaxmple in composites, high density composites are easy to find so core dynamic composites can be easily bought.

Most mats in a sequence are found in the same place (wakes obviously, firmware from planetary bases. Chemical, heat, conductive machjnery from transports) so do one activity and get all the grades and use mat broker to balance out.

Assuming 6 up 3 down you need 3 of each G5 roll material (which mean finding eah one once) to get 1 G5 roll under the new system which will be better than current average G5

 

[akaliel]

lol. For nearly two years you guys have been complaining about the Engineers and now you want them to stay the way they are. Crack me up.

I for one like the proposed changes. I think they'll improve the game overall.