Loving Engineers!

Galdatron

Galdatron
I made a post a couple of weeks ago about being a returning player and happy credits are easier to come by now, and how it opened up a lot of different avenues especially in the ship department. Many folks warned that whilst credits are easy, the real grind was engineers.

Wait till he finds out that he needs to engineer the crap out of it to bring it up to task.
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I have to admit, the prospect of starting down this path was daunting and putting me off, and after getting owned by some NPC's then realising engineering is a must, I got that sinking feeling and started to question whether coming back was a mistake. 'Do I have the time, energy and patience for engineering?' I asked.

All the advice was to start with FSD, and after MUCH reading and watching many YouTube you tube videos, what was initially very confusing started to make sense. Mat gathering, which initially seemed complicated, became straight forward, and going out to do the various tasks that netted the required mats was really enjoyable.

In fact, it really added to the game. It gave me something to do, something to focus on and a purpose. Before, SRVing around on a planet seemed like a gimmick, but now I'm doing it with purpose, and I LOVE exploring planets.

I'm under no illusion that some engineers are harder to unlock than others, and some mats harder to obtain, but hey, I'm taking it slow and just enjoying the process.

So in short, whilst I initially thought engineers made a fairly simple game unnecessarily complicated (and an excuse to make planets viable), in reality, I'm loving it :)
 

Cmdr. Numa

Cmdr. Numa
Galdatron said:
All the advice was to start with FSD, and after MUCH reading and watching many YouTube you tube videos, what was initially very confusing started to make sense. Mat gathering, which initially seemed complicated, became straight forward, and going out to do the various tasks that netted the required mats was really enjoyable.
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Right on CMDR. I have 24 fully engineered ships meanwhile. I get most fun out of first identifying which ship could best fit which role, then engineer it to a finely tuned piece of machinery for the set purpose.
 

Wimmer

Wimmer
I love engineers too!
They gave me the opportunity to survive hard PvP players encounters! Earlier I was simply blown up in 20 seconds! 🥰
 

Retropolitan

Retropolitan
When I started a second Commander I knew right from Day 1 that he needed to gather materials all the time. So he targeted every ship I ran across to gather their Encoded materials; he visited planets with volcanism to collect raw materials; he bought a wake scanner as soon as he could afford it and scanned wakes wherever he went; and when he engaged in combat he always scooped the mats.

The result was that when he started to unlock engineers he always had almost all the mats he needed. He just had to get (or trade for) the missing ones.

At the same time, my experienced Commander wanted to buy, outfit, and engineer two new ships. And since his stores of materials were low by then, he had a terrible time collecting everything.

The thing I saw after doing those things in tandem was that engineering is paced pretty well for a new player. You unlock the engineers one at a time, and you want to engineer just one or two ships: so the challenge is a pretty reasonable one. It's not easy, but it isn't overwhelming either. Where we get into trouble is when we're at the point where we want to engineer entire ships all at once and right now. But it's something that shouldn't be easy - it's a case where we want to do something big in a short time.

So as irritating as it can be, and as tired as I get of trying to accumulate those G5 manufactured materials, I can't really say that it's wrong or imbalanced. We just need to accept that we make trouble for ourselves when we set a mid- or long-term goal and then treat it like a short-term one.
 

Maymo

Maymo
Galdatron said:
I made a post a couple of weeks ago about being a returning player and happy credits are easier to come by now, and how it opened up a lot of different avenues especially in the ship department. Many folks warned that whilst credits are easy, the real grind was engineers.



I have to admit, the prospect of starting down this path was daunting and putting me off, and after getting owned by some NPC's then realising engineering is a must, I got that sinking feeling and started to question whether coming back was a mistake. 'Do I have the time, energy and patience for engineering?' I asked.

All the advice was to start with FSD, and after MUCH reading and watching many YouTube you tube videos, what was initially very confusing started to make sense. Mat gathering, which initially seemed complicated, became straight forward, and going out to do the various tasks that netted the required mats was really enjoyable.

In fact, it really added to the game. It gave me something to do, something to focus on and a purpose. Before, SRVing around on a planet seemed like a gimmick, but now I'm doing it with purpose, and I LOVE exploring planets.

I'm under no illusion that some engineers are harder to unlock than others, and some mats harder to obtain, but hey, I'm taking it slow and just enjoying the process.

So in short, whilst I initially thought engineers made a fairly simple game unnecessarily complicated (and an excuse to make planets viable), in reality, I'm loving it :)
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Exactly how I’ve always felt about engineering...

Even light engineering can really make a big difference, g1 long range lasers for example...
 

baqar79

baqar79
I love engineering!

I understand though that it is an obstacle for certain players (and I do sympathize with PvP players who don't really have a choice in the matter), but for myself it is a big part of the gameplay. I love taking a stock ship and tweaking all of the parts to the max; it's the best way to make a ship feel like it's really mine in my opinion.

But I'm saying this as someone who has long since passed the rage inducing process of unlocking all of the engineers, although collecting certain materials in sufficient quantities for engineering will still induce me to a frothy rage (Proto Radiolic Alloys.....).
 

Speedcuffs

Speedcuffs
baqar79 said:
I love engineering!

I understand though that it is an obstacle for certain players (and I do sympathize with PvP players who don't really have a choice in the matter), but for myself it is a big part of the gameplay. I love taking a stock ship and tweaking all of the parts to the max; it's the best way to make a ship feel like it's really mine in my opinion.

But I'm saying this as someone who has long since passed the rage inducing process of unlocking all of the engineers, although collecting certain materials in sufficient quantities for engineering will still induce me to a frothy rage (Proto Radiolic Alloys.....).
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I'll swap you 100 Proto Rads for 50 Pharmas.

Oh. Wait... :(
 

baqar79

baqar79
Speedcuffs said:
I'll swap you 100 Proto Rads for 50 Pharmas.

Oh. Wait... :(
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I'm low on those as well (and improvised components). I know Proto* is pretty common in Boom systems, but generally I need about 80 or so per ship for all the lightweight engineering I do, and they often contend with G5 Proto Heat Radiators or even only G4 Proto Light Alloys at HGE's in Boom systems. But I understand the pain having recently had to trade a lot of other G5 mats for Pharmaceutical Isolators (at that ridiculous 6:1 ratio).
 

ADAMtheWELSHMANz

ADAMtheWELSHMANz
Another big positive is now you have an end result for your engineering (maxed G5) whereas before you could roll infinitely in the slim hopes of getting a "god roll"

Having a finish line certainly encouraged me to engineer different ships for different roles once the previous one had been "completed"
 

Chris Simon

Chris Simon
B1rdy said:
I wasn't specific, because it affects both. But since PvP is not integrated into the game, I think, the issues it brings are more severe for PvE.

Edit:
Come on, you know what I mean.
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Honestly, I don't think so.
There is a natural "food chain" of ships as you progress through. Engineers only shifted the spectrum. Weak ships don¨t have to be THAT weak, but strong ships can be even stronger. Nothing really changed.
The notion that you NEED engineering to survive is not accurate. Only high-rank enemies have engineered ships. I have an account without Horizons on my laptop and I'm playing just fine.

So if you mean "balance" like for example enemy scaling in Skyrim, then no, it's not there and never was.

So I think you ARE in fact talking about PvP. Well, my main reason to dislike it is that if you make everything "balanced", you will also make it boring for PvE. That's why Diivision 2 has normalization (or how it's called) and doesn't allow PvP in its open world section.
 

Chris Simon

Chris Simon
Replicant said:
Chris I think more people care about PvP than you realize man.
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Of course I hyperbolized the "nobody" part. :)
I know there are a lot of dedicated PvPers. It's just that they are such a minority that IMO it's not worth the trouble to break the game for everybody else because of them.
 

B1rdy

B1rdy
Chris Simon said:
Honestly, I don't think so.
There is a natural "food chain" of ships as you progress through. Engineers only shifted the spectrum. Weak ships don¨t have to be THAT weak, but strong ships can be even stronger. Nothing really changed.
The notion that you NEED engineering to survive is not accurate. Only high-rank enemies have engineered ships. I have an account without Horizons on my laptop and I'm playing just fine.

So if you mean "balance" like for example enemy scaling in Skyrim, then no, it's not there and never was.
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But at least the progression system was better working. Now, when you engineer some medium ships or a Clipper, overall rather cheap ships, you cannot die in PvE but due to your own mistakes. If you ships goes past 450m/s, you will outrun every NPC (but Thargoids). If you have 1500 shield with decent resistances, not NPC (but Thargoids) can harm you.

Chris Simon said:
So I think you ARE in fact talking about PvP. Well, my main reason to dislike it is that if you make everything "balanced", you will also make it boring for PvE. That's why Diivision 2 has normalization (or how it's called) and doesn't allow PvP in its open world section.
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I also think, mixing PvE and PvP brings some fundamental problems, that can't be solved without some fundamental restrictions.

Edit:
Chris Simon said:
Of course I hyperbolized the "nobody" part. :)
I know there are a lot of dedicated PvPers. It's just that they are such a minority that IMO it's not worth the trouble to break the game for everybody else because of them.
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Maybe, just maybe, there would be more people interest in PvP if the required grind to Engineers was less off-putting?
 
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