It has occured to me that Engineered Modules should be FOR SALE!

[Werewolf13]

Engineered modules should be for sale in the station outfitting area or at a new type of market. Here are my thoughts on why:

I don't know about the rest of you but I sometimes sell or exchange (though mostly store) my engineered modules. Lets not get into the why of that - suffice it to say I do sell them.

So now the station shipyard I sell the engineered module to has an engineered module just layin' around on a shelf somewhere. What does it do with it? The obvious and most business savy thing to do is move the inventory and you do that by putting it up for sale in the outfitting screens. That way it doesn't sit on a shelf somewhere forever waiting for the right ship configuration to come along on an insurance rebuy that uses just that specific module engineered the way it was before. And they could mark the price up (way up! HEY! I'd paid CR 116M for an 8A power supply once) depending on the upgrade and the module.

Why that might even be a source of a new type of transport mission. Carry a load of engineered modules to the nearest engineered module market. Pirates would definitely be on your butt from the get go at both ends of your trip. Or you could decide you could make more money selling 'em on the black market, find a rogue engineer to install 'em for you (hey - new type of engineer!). Of course not completing the mission because you absconded with the goods would come with being wanted and a very hefty fine now making you a target of more than just pirates. Yay!

Oh! And some of those modules are pretty big and unless there's a rogue engineer on site to install it for you or you have the cargo space to load it you're up scheise creek without a paddle. What to do? Whaaat to do. Why, store where ya bought it of course. Go to your local rogue engineer's base and pay to have it transferred there for installation. Or you could just go pick up what ever transport ship with the tonnage capacity to carry the new modules you bought (choice of last resort though - think about it - you'll figure out why)

Which leads me to wonder just where in the h.ell do the shipyards get the engineered modules to use on that rebuy you just did (does Merlin have a continuing contract to create them out of thin air)? Huh? Where? Maybe from pilots like me who sell 'em? Ya think?

FDEV created the material markets. Shouldn't be all that tough to add an engineered module market to that. ONE that takes CASH or trade, of course.

Which begs the question: Why can't we move materials to the engineers that use them and sell the things to 'em. What's wrong with those prima donnas? Do they find it distastefull to participate in the galactic economy or something? Are they closet socialist utopians who eschew the very concept of money?

That way those of us who hate the damned grind to collect materials and then fly half way across the bubble to see the right engineer and a lot of the time have to evade the gankers hanging about because they know people are coming can avoid all that and just go to the nearest engineered module market (which may or may not have what you're looking for).

And those that do enjoy the current grind - why they can keep on keepin' on doin' it.

That's called CHOICE and choice IS always GOOD! 'Cuz then we get to play ED the way we want to!

Thoughts? Comments? Flames? It's all good.

 

[Schmack]

I don't see a reason to sell engineered modules. It's just a buff to the current modules, which the lettered ratings already offer. Also there are so many different types of engineered modules, so many different levels of engineering (maybe not everyone wants G5, based on power draw or other aspect or they want a different special effect). Imagine how many modules there would need to be in the station menu.

As for hauling them, it would just be another name for a commodity in your hold, you can call it anything you like, but it wouldn't change anything about the game to simply have "engineered modules" in the inventory list instead of "biowaste". Pirates would react basically the same way for the tasty cargo.

Instead, I would like to simply be able to unlock engineering the same way you do with Guardians and Powerplay goodies. Then you can buy the module you've created as many times as you like, but you cannot buy one with a different type of engineering until you unlock it first.

I feel the grind for materials is extreme, and let's face it - engineered ships aren't the bee's knees anymore. They are basically standard equipment now. The days when the engineers were these shadowy nerds who could illegally outfit your ship, push your modules to the breaking point and squeeze some performance out are over. Now it's just a selection at almost every station if you've pinned the blueprints.

There should be reasons to continue visiting the engineer's base, some type of collusion between the player and the engineer to affect the system they are in, or a nearby system so that the political leanings of the engineer, the axe they have to grind, is dealt with. In return they will continue to provide you with the latest updates on the ships you're using to do their dirty work.

It would also be cool if you could hire a ship mechanic like you do with NPC crew members. You pay the mechanic a portion of your earnings to engineer your ship or make suggestions you have to approve, based on your inputs for how you want to use the ship. Then the engineer would be doing the repairs to your ship in flight instead of the AFMU or repair limpets. The outcome would be basically the same except you'd have some sense of having company on your ship doing repairs, an engineering officer.

Stuff like that could go a long way toward adding dimension to the "stuck in the ship or SRV" feeling.

 

[Bill Clement]

You should be able to bypass the stupid and frustrating material gathering process, I don't care how, just end the pain, now!

After grinding my Asp off for the last five months I've maxed out around a third of the materials available, have huge reserves of another third and hardly any of the rest, because RNG is exactly what it says on the tin...

Which means every time I try to engineer something new I discover YET ANOTHER bloody material I have to stagger off to hunt down . Don't even get me started on 'traders'. Never mind the fact that you need third party tools just to find them, or that they only deal in an arbitrary third of the materials available, the exchange rate is obscene!

I don't care whether the game considers mat x to be rarer than mat y- it takes just as long and it's just as dull, boring and repetitive to get a pile of either. So when the trader decides that they'd like scores or even hundreds of mat x for a single mat y?

The whole system sucks!

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

I don't see a reason to sell engineered modules. It's just a buff to the current modules, which the lettered ratings already offer. Also there are so many different types of engineered modules, so many different levels of engineering (maybe not everyone wants G5, based on power draw or other aspect or they want a different special effect). Imagine how many modules there would need to be in the station menu.

As for hauling them, it would just be another name for a commodity in your hold, you can call it anything you like, but it wouldn't change anything about the game to simply have "engineered modules" in the inventory list instead of "biowaste". Pirates would react basically the same way for the tasty cargo.

Instead, I would like to simply be able to unlock engineering the same way you do with Guardians and Powerplay goodies. Then you can buy the module you've created as many times as you like, but you cannot buy one with a different type of engineering until you unlock it first.

I feel the grind for materials is extreme, and let's face it - engineered ships aren't the bee's knees anymore. They are basically standard equipment now. The days when the engineers were these shadowy nerds who could illegally outfit your ship, push your modules to the breaking point and squeeze some performance out are over. Now it's just a selection at almost every station if you've pinned the blueprints.

There should be reasons to continue visiting the engineer's base, some type of collusion between the player and the engineer to affect the system they are in, or a nearby system so that the political leanings of the engineer, the axe they have to grind, is dealt with. In return they will continue to provide you with the latest updates on the ships you're using to do their dirty work.

It would also be cool if you could hire a ship mechanic like you do with NPC crew members. You pay the mechanic a portion of your earnings to engineer your ship or make suggestions you have to approve, based on your inputs for how you want to use the ship. Then the engineer would be doing the repairs to your ship in flight instead of the AFMU or repair limpets. The outcome would be basically the same except you'd have some sense of having company on your ship doing repairs, an engineering officer.

Stuff like that could go a long way toward adding dimension to the "stuck in the ship or SRV" feeling.

I actually think that this thread's opening post contains the basis of what would be a good idea. There are a couple of key themes to the OP, one being a rework of modules and making them haulable commodities, another is a rework of NPC crew, and then there is a rework of the engineering relationship. So I'll break the OP into sections in this admittedly lengthy reply.

Since you get nothing for nothing, and given how many, some times sanctioned, "gold rushes" there are credits are effectively null and void. But since the game is going to get a lot of new players when the BIG 2020 NEW ERA update drops; we need to do something to stop those new to the game from being at a huge disadvantage. I mean if all engineer unlocks takes lets say 1000hrs it would be reasonable to expect it to take all but the most determined grinders to take a year to have full engineering access. Stack on another couple of hundred hours game play for the tech broker unlocks, and there is well over a years gameplay to get level equipment with current established players. BUT, if they had a way of using sanctioned gold rushes, and could spend some of those credits on buying engineered modules for example, they could have an accelerated ramp up period.

Equally so we need to make sure the noob streamlined engineering doesnt urinate on the breakfast cereal of the players who spent months getting god rolls, or tech broker unlocks, so I'd say only make a lower grade maybe G4 upgraded modules available to buy for credits. And make them mail order, so you order them and a couple of weeks later you get a message that your new g4 module is now in storage, so if you were in a real hurry for the bits you could go and get a module and a stack of materials and spam roll its way up to G4, or you could blow a rake of credits on a mail order module and go play other apsects of the game while your whatsits are crafted for you.

Crew - that has always been focussed on pew pew and grind, thanks sandro. However there is so much more potential scope in there, essentially having a ships engineer onboard is an excelent idea, and those engineers could have different specialisations, a shields specialist might be able to tweak the frequencies of the shield to get more resitance and recharge quicker, while a thruster tech might be able to squeeze another couple of percent multiplier out of the thrusters etc etc. It is frankly absurd to think that a 170m federal corvette for example can be crewed by two, a fighter pilot and a CMDR. Such a frigate ought to have engineers and gunners / tactical officers. So anything that adds to the crew requirements and abilities is a boost to the game in my opinion, provided we can get out of this (lazy design paradigm) of the crew getting remunerated with such a sizeable percentage of their CDMR's earnings, even when the CMDR is flying single seaters doing data deliveries. I honestly think I would quit the game if we had yet another tier of crew to suck a sizable percentage of my earnings out of every transaction.

I've often wondered why I cannot put a 7A thrusters into my cargo hold, bought at an LYR discounted station and sold at a full price station, obviously the 15% of 51million thrusters as a margin would be game breaking, but if we had 10% or 12.5% depreciation on "previously owned" modules it would still be viable. Heck, there could even be missions to haul a class eight powerplant from an industrial station to a high tech one, which would require empty module space, not cargo racks but fully empty module. Riddle me this, how do our ships and modules get transferred from station to station? It isnt by teleportation, so why not let players run those missions as well?

Before this turns into a fully blown great wall of text, I'll skip to a TLDR, the OP has a few good ideas there, but please for the love of randominous, no more percentage based npc crew.

 

[SpeakerToAliens]

Materials, Engineers and the grind were introduced because too many CMDRs had made far too much many credits using exploits so any advanced tech they sold would be snapped up by them, greatly disadvantaging poorer players. By introducing the new form of economy - materials and engineers - they levelled the playing field for all existing players.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Materials, Engineers and the grind were introduced because too many CMDRs had made far too much many credits using exploits so any advanced tech they sold would be snapped up by them, greatly disadvantaging poorer players. By introducing the new form of economy - materials and engineers - they levelled the playing field for all existing players.

I see they really learned their lesson then, heres looking at you void opal mining at 1.6Mcr per unit

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

Being able to buy engineered modules at stations where CMDRs just happened to sell them would add a little life to the game. It would be completely luck of the draw to even find one, let alone one you need, or one better than what you've already got, and EDDB and Inara wouldn't be able to tell you where they are.

It would be nice to have an organic player driven commodity.

 

[Tikanderoga]

It would be nice to have an organic player driven commodity.

Or any player driven market place to begin with. Sell engineering mats for example for those who don't want to go farming, instead prefer to do mining & turn their cash into mats and others who like farming mats vs mining.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

Or any player driven market place to begin with. Sell engineering mats for example for those who don't want to go farming, instead prefer to do mining & turn their cash into mats and others who like farming mats vs mining.

Exactly. Materials would show up in the commodities board if a player happened to sell theirs there, and you could get lucky and spot some at a station.
I think also that even if a player sells a non-engineered module at a station that doesn't normally stock that module, then it should be made available for sale regardless, until the stock runs out. So if 5 players sell their 2A FSDs at a station that normally doesn't stock it, then there will be 5x 2A FSDs in stock there until sold out.

 

[Tikanderoga]

So if 5 players sell their 2A FSDs at a station that normally doesn't stock it, then there will be 5x 2A FSDs in stock there until sold out.

That would be a great help if someone bought a new ship and a friend wants to help out with a better module that has been purchased elsewhere.

 

[Lestat]

Or any player driven market place to begin with. Sell engineering mats for example for those who don't want to go farming, instead prefer to do mining & turn their cash into mats and others who like farming mats vs mining.

So if we took my Mining python and the Extream levelling from Penniless to Elite in less than a day. Then add player driven market. I could have a Max Engineered ship in less than a day. Ya, I don't think so.

 

[Tikanderoga]

So if we took my Mining python and the Extream levelling from Penniless to Elite in less than a day. Then add player driven market. I could have a Max Engineered ship in less than a day. Ya, I don't think so.

If someone is willing to part with their time sink modules for 1Cr, be my guest. I do enjoy engineering, but my modules wouldn't go for cheap, that's for sure. So get out there and start mining.

 

[Captain Willard]

Ummmmm. NO

 

[Lestat]

If someone is willing to part with their time sink modules for 1Cr, be my guest. I do enjoy engineering, but my modules wouldn't go for cheap, that's for sure. So get out there and start mining.

If you think I am kidding read my last Topic. An Elite Trader way too fast. You can understand how fast I can earn credits.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

If you think I am kidding read my last Topic. An Elite Trader way too fast. You can understand how fast I can earn credits.

Your ability to earn credits quickly does not translate to someone else's willingness to part with their highly engineered modules for credits. Credits are easy to earn, but engineering modules necessarily takes a lot of time and effort. It takes less time and effort to mine for void opals, so any player would rather do that than to engineer modules to sell to stations, which probably won't pay out enough to be worth the trouble.

Realistically, having this feature would only result in players occasionally getting lucky and finding an engineered module they could use, which would almost certainly be sub-optimal, otherwise the player who took the time to engineer it wouldn't have sold it.

 

[Maolagin]

There's a few different ideas going on here. But at a high level, the available evidence pretty strongly suggests that the devs do not want the credits economy mixing with the materials economy. So I think an option to straightforwardly buy engineering upgrades with credits is a non-starter, full stop.

That said, I think it would add some neat flavor if some stations had the equivalent of a junkyard or used starship lot, where you could buy ships in other than stock condition. Balanced such that, if you just blindly buy stuff off the lot you'll get robbed blind. But the shrewd and discerning buyer might find a great deal, possiblity including some low-mid range engineered parts.

 

[Morbad]

I see they really learned their lesson then, heres looking at you void opal mining at 1.6Mcr per unit

The credit had already been devalued as a unit of account, so they don't have to be particularly careful with the faux credit economy. Hard to pollute a cesspool and all.

They have retained a much tighter, though far from perfect, level of control on material acquisition...which is why I highly doubt they'll allow them to be bought with credits.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

That's called CHOICE and choice IS always GOOD! 'Cuz then we get to play ED the way we want to!

Generally yes, but not always. And what is good for the goose isn't always good for the gander.

 

[Werewolf13]

So if we took my Mining python and the Extream levelling from Penniless to Elite in less than a day. Then add player driven market. I could have a Max Engineered ship in less than a day. Ya, I don't think so.

Ahhh...
Geez.

Maybe... If you've got the credits. If so then so what? You earned those credits whether by hook or crook.

But if you're talking about a new player: (ignore what follows if you're not) then I'm sorry - I don't know a nice way to say this but - that's the most asinine thing I 've read on the ED forums in a very long time. I don't care how smart one is - no one new to the game is going to go from penniless with a sidewinder to ELITE in anything in a single day. Sorry not gonna happen. Even if the changes were made that you were responding to. NOT - GONNA - HAPPEN.

And ya know what even if some new player with a harmless rating could go from that to elite and owning a freaking Corvette in one day - SO WHAT? If they're that good why should they have to spend months or even years getting to where you are when they can do it in days. Why? My guess is because you had to endure the grind so everyone else has to also. Yeah. That's probably the driver.

 

[Schmack]

I don't see Frontier Developments ever allowing player transactions that could be done offline with real cash. I could imagine someone wanting to sell a fully engineered module and doing so offline and then just transferring it online. In fact that would become a business for some.