Engineers In The Beginning, 28 Light Year FSD's For My Asp Explorers Was Wonderful

Ralph Vargr

Ralph Vargr
That was before Engineers. The alt account, has a vanilla (no Horizons) 28 light-year capability. The ship is just fine. The game's base assumptions of performance have changed me. The main account has an Asp Explorer, with a 43 light-year jump. Attempts to increase this through engineering rolls, have only produced marginal returns. The ship is armed, armored, shielded, and can carry out just about any mission. It can nearly keep up with a Cobra 3 in boost, and has no problems with high-g worlds.

In the last week, I have been playing with the alt account, trying to reach more nearby destinations than Colonia. It's a good thing I can be very patient. But, the main account has spoiled me. The alt account has all the materials to G5 everything.

The alt account did get an entire first discovered system, on the way to the Pencil Nebula shipyard. But, there are no surrounding systems to sustain gameplay, once I got there. Real surrounding systems are around Colonia. But I would need to engineer the alt account to get there in less time than a month.

But, do I really want to spend another $30 USD for Horizons, and begin grinding a parallel main account? Despite my 36 personalities, only one account at a time can be used. The main account has already done the grind.

Engineers has made it difficult to justify my alt account, if I have to grind again for some serious exploration. Colonia, at 28 per jump max, is going to be a pain. And, it will take time away from my main account, which now has done all the heavy lifting to get to a Python (The bigger ships do not interest me). The Python can jump thirty light years
unloaded, further than the alt account can. True, the rebuy is much greater for the Python, and it could do many, many things once it got there. All the other sips would need to be stripped/sold. :(

The drive to collect materials, go even further across the galaxy, and keeping up with community goals/projects, have now all taken engineered ships for granted. In this fashion, Engineers has altered the game for the worse. We spend less time playing, than we do working. I bought the alt account on sale, thinking it would be great to spend time traveling, and still be able to play the main account. Engineers has shown me that even if only a few players make it to Colonia in engineered ships, they will have a disproportionate advantage.

The alt account would get slaughtered, if it even attempted to come out of solo.

With the entry of the Thargoids, and the explicit mention of new items to deal with them, the spiral has increased in speed. Engineers is a nuclear arms race.

I doubt that Frontier would allow me to merge my accounts. The alt account would make a great suicide account, but not much else. Engineered ships would reduce me to particles in nanoseconds. See all the vids for just how far PvP players are willing to go to have space supremacy in equipment.

So, Engineers have ended one avenue of play for me. Yes, I could travel indefinitely in the alt account, but it might be a once-a-month thing. And the worse the GalMap gets, further out, the less enjoyable it is.

Thanks, Engineers. I can't get the time, or money, or assets back. Enjoy my suffering. Elite is now a one account universe, for me. The main account does not feel like going to Colonia. Maybe Quince, but no further (not for the exploits, but as a jumping-off spot).

TL/DR: Engineers eats your life, but you can't get out of it unless you have been grinding for a year or more. There is no point in having a dual life, in this game, unless you really want to ruin someone's day. Not me. Real Life is Bad Enough.
 
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PhoenicianSon

PhoenicianSon
Rustnsawdust said:
Oh, it's not all bad :) I only have one account, been playing for well over a year, have never visited an engineer. My AspEx set up for exploring currently jumps a hair over 30ly and I'm having a ball out here 12 kylies from Sol.

You pays your money and lives with your cake. Or something!?

Fly happy, commander!
Click to expand...

/\ /\ /\ Half full, not half empty :)
 

Zebaoth

Zebaoth
28 light years jump range are fine, unless you want to get to the outer reaches of the milky way without spending the better part of a month going there.
 

Amargosa

A
Zebaoth said:
28 light years jump range are fine, unless you want to get to the outer reaches of the milky way without spending the better part of a month going there.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by spending a month? Each jump takes around 1 minute, that's only 1000 minutes for 28000 ly, which is around 17 hours. Crossing the entire Galaxy would only take 4 days, if you assume 7-8 hours of sleep per day.
 

Non Grata

Non Grata
I've always wanted to try exploration, but don't want to be away from the bubble in case I need a combat fix. I've considered getting a second account, but due to the issues above I haven't bothered. Additionally I have a lifetime expansion pass - if I bought a second account I'd have to keep it up to date when new seasons arrive.

So.. while it's perhaps unlikely to happen, I'd love to be able to just duplicate my existing commander and go exploring with him (perhaps for a one-off fee).
 

goemon

goemon
well, i recently purchased a third account (my secondary has no horizons).

already farseer changed the cobra into a ship with more jumprange than the first AspE i took to sag a*. after adding martuuk to it, i would have been ready to go on a galactic circumnavigation. all in 15 hours playtime from the start.

basically:

- go to pleiades, and harvest barnacles for materials (and meta alloy)
- fly via dav's hope to farseer ... collect other goodies to rank with felicity
- fit a wake scanner and scan some ships
- engineer at farseer.

farseer exploration AspE, 50 ly plotted jumprange: https://eddp.co/u/aTpeQMla

- pick up rares for martuuk
- engineer at martuuk

(adds another 0,1 ly via enhanced low power shields).

... ready to go. if your account already has CR (i started fresh) and exploration rank, i'd estimate 5 hours "grind" to get there.

actually, that experience was so impressive for me, that i intend to buy horizons for my secondary account, and move it to colonia when horizons is on sale.

but yeah, the experience of engineering spoils unengineered ships, most notably on jumprange for me, but also general speed, and heat management... for combat, i actually enjoy the challenge of flying unengineered ships.
 

Ralph Vargr

Ralph Vargr
Amargosa said:
What do you mean by spending a month? Each jump takes around 1 minute, that's only 1000 minutes for 28000 ly, which is around 17 hours. Crossing the entire Galaxy would only take 4 days, if you assume 7-8 hours of sleep per day.
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According to EDD, and my log entries, it takes 2-3 minutes to fuel, cool, scan/system the star, and repeat the cycle.

As for the second sentence, my real-life employer would object. :(
 

goemon

goemon
Ralph Vargr said:
According to EDD, and my log entries, it takes 2-3 minutes to fuel, cool, scan/system the star, and repeat the cycle.

As for the second sentence, my real-life employer would object. :(
Click to expand...

on the buckyball races pre engineers a conda (bit above 40 ly jumprange) hold the record with just below 9 hours. a pre engineering diamonback scout just below 30 lightyears jumprange took 15 hours.

as buckyballers don't do anything beside scooping and jumping, the difference in jumprange and fuelscooping speed only makes 6 hours ingame with your two accounts builds - on the distance to sag a*, and jaques is closer.

the time spend scanning, checking system map etc. does not get shorter by more jumprange or better heatmanagement, and the shave off by engineered DSS is rather small.
 

Ralph Vargr

Ralph Vargr
goemon said:
on the buckyball races pre engineers a conda (bit above 40 ly jumprange) hold the record with just below 9 hours. a pre engineering diamonback scout just below 30 lightyears jumprange took 15 hours.

as buckyballers don't do anything beside scooping and jumping, the difference in jumprange and fuelscooping speed only makes 6 hours ingame with your two accounts builds - on the distance to sag a*, and jaques is closer.

the time spend scanning, checking system map etc. does not get shorter by more jumprange or better heatmanagement, and the shave off by engineered DSS is rather small.
Click to expand...

I don't doubt you. I just won't sit on the (redacted) that long. :(
 

CMDR Ellegon

CMDR Ellegon
While 28 ly is not terrible, compare that to a fully armed and shielded Asp at 45 ly range or an Exploration-focused Anaconda (no weapons, but boost-capable, shielded, with SRVs) that jumps 62 ly.... some engineers are worth the trouble, others not so much.
 

DarthVain

DarthVain
The only gripe I've with engineering is that you can only use one option for upgrading. That is if I want an increased range fsd, I can't apply the fast boot sequence mod and the shielded mod as well because it removes the previous mod. A big disappointment.
 

[VR] Frank_G

[VR] Frank_G
There are pilots who circumnavigate the Milkyway in a Sidewinder and i know of one pilot, who flew to the core and back in a stock Eagle Mk. II... Who cares for a few lightyears jump range? Make the journey count, not the numbers.

Right on! o7
 

Zebaoth

Zebaoth
Amargosa said:
What do you mean by spending a month? Each jump takes around 1 minute, that's only 1000 minutes for 28000 ly, which is around 17 hours. Crossing the entire Galaxy would only take 4 days, if you assume 7-8 hours of sleep per day.
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I didn't write "a month", but "the better part of a month".
"The better part of" is a phrase that usually means "more than half of".

Assuming an average one minute per jump with a fuel scoop 7A+ that makes scoop stops obsolete.
28000ly would not be considered "crossing the entire galaxy", since 28000ly would get you just a bit behind sagittarius A, which is 25,899.99 ly from sol, with the entire other half of the galaxy sitting on the other side of it.
Doesn't quite count as "crossing the entire galaxy", does it?

Let's take a more ambitious destination, say Beagle Point, sporting a distance of 65,279.35 ly from sol. That's more like it.
Assuming a jump range of 28ly, with one minute each jump we're sitting at 2331(!) jumps and 38 hours of consecutive jumping.

That's doing nothing else than jumping, honking for 8 hours 5 days in a row without having to work/social life/cleaning etc.
Try to squeeze this in next to working 40h/week (like I assume most people do), family/social activities and it spreads out over the better part of a month, rather than 4 days.

Now back to my initial point: Let's say you spent some time with engineers, improving the jump range of your dbx/asp/anaconda and achieved 60ly (easily doable with any of those 3).

For 28000ly you'd need 466 jumps, or 7h45min.

For 65279.35ly that's 1087 jumps, or 18h.
Compare that to 2331 jumps and 38 hours with 28ly, quite a difference.

Now another thing to take into account are system loading times, which mainly depend on your GPU. If you got a weak one these times could increase significantly.
Setting your graphic settings as low as possible could increase these times (which I'm sure the more dedicated buckyballers are already doing).
 

CMDR Ellegon

CMDR Ellegon
DarthVain said:
The only gripe I've with engineering is that you can only use one option for upgrading. That is if I want an increased range fsd, I can't apply the fast boot sequence mod and the shielded mod as well because it removes the previous mod. A big disappointment.
Click to expand...

To avoid god builds, this limitation is pretty much a necessity. That being said, I got a 10% quicker boot as a side-effect on a G5 range-enhanced FSD mod!
 

Zebaoth

Zebaoth
CMDR Ellegon said:
To avoid god builds
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Even with the most barebones engineers tuning ships are way above anything that vanilla ships can do.
So why not go the full distance and allow multiple updates on the same module?
FD announced the engineers as "crafting" initially, actually it's dice rolling with little to no influence of the player. Not being able to combine multiple upgrades even with weakened outcome for individual parts of such a modification is rather limiting.

Well I'm sure 2.4 will bring military modules/weapons so we'll see how that goes in hand with the engineers.
Maybe jump range will increase even further with military FSDs, 100ly anaconda, here I come!
 
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