Engineers Main ideas for fixing the RNGineers.

[Kurdran]

Shamelessly copying the solutions other kind souls have posted on this thread:
(why? because of what Ian Phillips posted on this thread when he closed it)

PS: If you do like any of them please click on the links and give the actual idea-giver some +rep

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- Limoncello Lizard:
It would be OK if you could keep the previous couple of rolls, so you could choose the best out of three.

- SP4x:
There are fixed improvements that are incremental with the tier of the upgrade along with corresponding drawbacks e.g. longer jump distance but longer FSD charge time. The upgrade still costs time, credits and loot but your time isn't wasted on the roll of the dice. You know what you're going to get for your investment. If an element of RNG was still desired then perhaps only include this in the "Bonus" feature and then only have it cost credits to spin the "Bonus" roulette wheel.
- SP4x (another good idea):
Hey, maybe have both, spacecraft "Chop-shops" - "you pay's yer money, you takes yer chance sonny" and true specialist spacecraft Engineers - "Speed cost's money Commander, how fast do you want to go?"

- OP (me):
Narrow the percentages for every consecutive roll after the first: bring down the upper limit of negative effects, and increase the lower limit of positive ones; thereby providing a good simulation of how a real-life engineer goes through a constant feedback loop to provide better results. This would still require players to spend a good amount of time farming materials and components to roll the dice, but it would cut down grinding time and RNG sucktacular-ness when rolling said dice.

- Mephane:
Remove commodity requirements from engineer upgrades entirely, and replace the global material storage limit with a per-material limit (of a similar magnitude as the global limit is right now).
- Mephane (another good idea):
What's really needed is either no limit at all (apart from the technical 4 billion limitation), or individual limits. Now 600 per material, that sounds much better.

- Fractal:
Either increase storage capacity OR reduce the list of components by a good 30%. And add possibility to store some commodity outside your ship

- CMDR ColD_ZA:
My solution to engineers would be to lock the upgrades behind rep with the engineers, and make their rep harder to get. That solves the problem of getting the players to experience the new content because they will have to do missions etc to get rep with the engineer... and once you done "grinding" rep, you can purchase the mods for credits; that way the grind is a one off. Also if you pick your special then you loose rep, and have to grind a bit more rep. My suggestion falls in line with the game's current philosophy, whereas the current system feels very tacked on/out of place, in my opinion

- moose666:
A lot of the materials are tiered versions of similar/the same thing, so my suggestion would be: Add a salvage merchant/junk dealer to stations, where you can trade your materials up and down the tiers i.e. 4 worn shield emitters = 1 shield emitter and vice versa.

- Snarfbuckle:
Another idea could be that the CMDR is allowed to set the DESIRED parameters for the job. The cost for the modification will increase exponentially the better the desired mod result. The modifications must be within the engineer rating. Adding surplus materials above the minimum allows for the engineer to test the design more and reduce the chance for a bad roll

Eera:
What it will be nice, is that the equipments upgrade is based on a simulation. Before to proceed to any upgrade, we could ask engineer to use an update simulator. This simulator could show the stats result. If the player think that those stats are acceptable, then, player could ask engineer to proceed to the upgrade and then use materials. If not, player could ask a new simulation, in cost of reputation or credits (less hard to get).

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[CMDR Harmless]

The *only* major addition that I want to see is station storage.

Give us station storage so we can collect materials over time, then have enough materials to roll a few times without having to fly all over the galaxy and sacrifice materials we currently have or choose whether or not to pick some up.

Station storage! Please.

 

[CMDR Ashpoker]

I voted for no change .... i like games that are hard. blizzard gave ppl everything they wanted and they still complain. FD DON'T CAVE-IN TO THE WHINERS !!!! DO THE GAME YOU ENVISIONED. I have killed 3 days total looking for polonium, but it's ok. i wasted 3/4 of my mats to the grade 1 roll on pulse lasers to get at least some effect, when i finally got it to the blue, game decided not to give me any effect. But it's ok. I can't expect to have everything in the first week. at least few months. Live the life of the space pilot .... this game is not about achieving everything first and as fast as possible.
The only thing that could get better is space station storage .... rent some cargo containers for monthly fee, or something like it. Because i collected all the materials for few high upgrades but now i have to go fight to get the last ones. with full cargo. But i think this is mistake on my part not doing enough research before i went collecting.
It's easy to blame the devs, it's easy to complain/beg and QQ. I guess you haven't been around when first games were developed in the days where internet didn't exist and you had to figure out everything on your own. I MISS THOSE DAYS !

 

[foebits]

If you think this poll will make a difference your in a sad state of affairs. Less than 5% of Elite players are on the forums (68498 as of writing and there are 1.5million+ of copies of elite sold), even if the poll was 10,000 people (1/5th of the forum members) it'd still be a drop in the ocean and currently there are 70.
Polls are further flawed because only those invested in one side or the other usually vote, those with no strong opinion either way (who would end up preferring no major changes) rarely vote. This means that polls have to be at least 75%/25%. Realistically you want 90%+ in favour which again this one isn't.

Devs are 100% aware that some people don't like the RNG, they've mentioned it in livestreams they have said their putting a measure of player control in place soon(tm). This will probably make no difference to the outcome.
For what it's worth some of your ideas are good and I like the thought put into this, I just don't see why were even discussing it when Devs have said their working on something.

"Devs - New stuff"
"Players - Great but we don't like X"
"Devs - Ok, we'll see if we can add something in to change X so you like it more"
"players - We don't like X"
"Devs - uh, would you mind waiting for our fix before you keep saying you dislike it?"

^All guesswork

I fully support any criticism if the changes don't meet your expectations but it's like saying to a farmer "There's sheep in my garden", he starts rounding them up whilst you repeatedly tell him "There's sheep in your garden". <- He is on it, chill

Edit: Sorry if this comes across a bit harsh, there's been a flood of polls recently and it's grinding my gears a bit.

Completely understandable why you would feel that way. The real reason I started this one is that even with the "change" they have stated it won't change anything at all save for the roll on specials,, thus completely ignoring the whole underlying issue. And as this poll clearly shows that at least about 75% of the player base who bother on the forums think the current system is trash, then I'm hoping this becomes data they can quick-glance instead of having to go through hundreads of threads for the same info. Hence all the all choices.

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Considering the majority don't think a change is required I don't see this thread going anywhere.

Have those that complained actually tried using the engineers? It's controlled rng. You have to be exceptionally unlucky to get a roll than is a downgrade. Many mods have a positive only affect.

Edit - I'm not saying it makes any sense that someone who calls them self an engineer comes out with such ridiculous variation but the results are almost always better than what you started with

30% is by far not the majority bub.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Shamelessly copying the solutions other kind souls have posted on this thread:
(why? because of what Ian Phillips posted on this thread when he closed it)

PS: If you do like any of them please click on the links and give the actual idea-giver some +rep

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Limoncello Lizard:
It would be OK if you could keep the previous couple of rolls, so you could choose the best out of three.

- SP4x:
There are fixed improvements that are incremental with the tier of the upgrade along with corresponding drawbacks e.g. longer jump distance but longer FSD charge time. The upgrade still costs time, credits and loot but your time isn't wasted on the roll of the dice. You know what you're going to get for your investment. If an element of RNG was still desired then perhaps only include this in the "Bonus" feature and then only have it cost credits to spin the "Bonus" roulette wheel.
- SP4x (another good idea):
Hey, maybe have both, spacecraft "Chop-shops" - "you pay's yer money, you takes yer chance sonny" and true specialist spacecraft Engineers - "Speed cost's money Commander, how fast do you want to go?"

- OP (me):
Narrow the percentages for every consecutive roll after the first: bring down the upper limit of negative effects, and increase the lower limit of positive ones; thereby providing a good simulation of how a real-life engineer goes through a constant feedback loop to provide better results. This would still require players to spend a good amount of time farming materials and components to roll the dice, but it would cut down grinding time and RNG sucktacular-ness when rolling said dice.

- Mephane:
Remove commodity requirements from engineer upgrades entirely, and replace the global material storage limit with a per-material limit (of a similar magnitude as the global limit is right now).
- Mephane (another good idea):
What's really needed is either no limit at all (apart from the technical 4 billion limitation), or individual limits. Now 600 per material, that sounds much better.

- Fractal:
Either increase storage capacity OR reduce the list of components by a good 30%. And add possibility to store some commodity outside your ship

- CMDR ColD_ZA:
My solution to engineers would be to lock the upgrades behind rep with the engineers, and make their rep harder to get. That solves the problem of getting the players to experience the new content because they will have to do missions etc to get rep with the engineer... and once you done "grinding" rep, you can purchase the mods for credits; that way the grind is a one off. Also if you pick your special then you loose rep, and have to grind a bit more rep. My suggestion falls in line with the game's current philosophy, whereas the current system feels very tacked on/out of place, in my opinion

- moose666:
A lot of the materials are tiered versions of similar/the same thing, so my suggestion would be: Add a salvage merchant/junk dealer to stations, where you can trade your materials up and down the tiers i.e. 4 worn shield emitters = 1 shield emitter and vice versa.

- Snarfbuckle:
Another idea could be that the CMDR is allowed to set the DESIRED parameters for the job. The cost for the modification will increase exponentially the better the desired mod result. The modifications must be within the engineer rating. Adding surplus materials above the minimum allows for the engineer to test the design more and reduce the chance for a bad roll

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​

I stated right off the bat that this poll was an amalgomation of the best ideas from everyone and made no claims that they were all my own.

 

[foebits]

....I have killed 3 days total looking for polonium, but it's ok. i wasted 3/4 of my mats to the grade 1 roll on pulse lasers to get at least some effect, when i finally got it to the blue, game decided not to give me any effect.....

You just proved how much of a waste of time engineers is and tried to call it challenge? A time sink is not challenge and challenge is not what we're arguing for. We wan't some semblance of crafting like was initially promised; some agency.

 

[Sashenka]

If you think this poll will make a difference your in a sad state of affairs. Less than 5% of Elite players are on the forums (68498 as of writing and there are 1.5million+ of copies of elite sold), even if the poll was 10,000 people (1/5th of the forum members) it'd still be a drop in the ocean and currently there are 70.
Polls are further flawed because only those invested in one side or the other usually vote, those with no strong opinion either way (who would end up preferring no major changes) rarely vote. This means that polls have to be at least 75%/25%. Realistically you want 90%+ in favour which again this one isn't.

Devs are 100% aware that some people don't like the RNG, they've mentioned it in livestreams they have said their putting a measure of player control in place soon(tm). This will probably make no difference to the outcome.
For what it's worth some of your ideas are good and I like the thought put into this, I just don't see why were even discussing it when Devs have said their working on something.

"Devs - New stuff"
"Players - Great but we don't like X"
"Devs - Ok, we'll see if we can add something in to change X so you like it more"
"players - We don't like X"
"Devs - uh, would you mind waiting for our fix before you keep saying you dislike it?"

^All guesswork

I fully support any criticism if the changes don't meet your expectations but it's like saying to a farmer "There's sheep in my garden", he starts rounding them up whilst you repeatedly tell him "There's sheep in your garden". <- He is on it, chill

Edit: Sorry if this comes across a bit harsh, there's been a flood of polls recently and it's grinding my gears a bit.

The average number of players on Steam for ED for May was around 3K. Double it and add some for those like myself who don't use Steam and you have around 10K. So if they get the input of 10K people I would call that representative. I agree that forums are not usually the place to get good suggestions but I've seen a lot of good ideas lately (ie: The surface scanner helping with mats). I hope FDEV doesn't completely disregard forum feedback, among the rage there are actually good suggestions.

 

[Kurdran]

I stated right off the bat that this poll was an amalgomation of the best ideas from everyone and made no claims that they were all my own.

The "PS" line wasn't meant for you, OP. I thought that, if everyone who liked a particular idea could give some +rep to the person who came up with it, it might inspire people to keep posting them.

As far as claims go, I didn't think my post reflected negatively on your OP. Apologies if it did.

I did +rep you for the poll itself, wish I had come up with it myself; I just didn't know, at the time, that I'd be adding a solutions section to it.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Completely understandable why you would feel that way. The real reason I started this one is that even with the "change" they have stated it won't change anything at all save for the roll on specials,, thus completely ignoring the whole underlying issue. And as this poll clearly shows that at least about 75% of the player base who bother on the forums think the current system is trash, then I'm hoping this becomes data they can quick-glance instead of having to go through hundreads of threads for the same info. Hence all the all choices.

Ok that's fair, I retract my previous objection although I don't think 75% of voters thing the current system is trash. I'm sure many do given the overflow of "omg RNG" but the only thing we can say for certain is 75% of people would prefer an alternative option if they had the choice
Yeah ok, I'm being pedantic again.

Personally I don't find it at all bad since you know exactly where its going to end up, if anything secondary effects are the worst since they can push/pull the values out of the "blue zone". Sure you can get a bad roll but you know the rough area that your looking at and almost all mods are very positive compared to the base weapon/module even if you don't roll the aces

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

A lot of these options aren't mutually exclusive, they could be stacked.... IE: we could end up with a scenario whereby we get to tweak the sliders before the roll, still before the roll we get to put some extra chips on the table ahem - materials in the melting pot to lock down a couple of must have parameters, then RNG roll , and pay credits to keep the sliders where we put them before the roll but have another roll of the dice at them until we accept the basic specs then RNG for special effects or more credits to try again with another spin on the wheel of fortune special effects panel.

The result of stacking a rake of adjustments into the same basic interface for the crafting is that there is something in there that everyone likes. In my example mix of additions to the crafting RNG panel, outlined above, there was something for nearly everyone:

• FD din't have to back down too much (they must have reasons for wanting RNG) and the panel could Look the same but the sliders could be movable by the player rather than the RNG
• All players still get a lot more control over what their hard gotten materials actually get used for
• Those players with oodles of credits get to spend them on something meaningful
• Those players who have put in the effort to get lots of materials have a distinct advantage over those who haven't put in as much effort and only just gotten the bare minimum the recipe needs

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You missed a section of the poll: none of the above. No 1 is virtually what we have now already as different different types of mod will enhance different stats anyway.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The average number of players on Steam for ED for May was around 3K. Double it and add some for those like myself who don't use Steam and you have around 10K. So if they get the input of 10K people I would call that representative. I agree that forums are not usually the place to get good suggestions but I've seen a lot of good ideas lately (ie: The surface scanner helping with mats). I hope FDEV doesn't completely disregard forum feedback, among the rage there are actually good suggestions.

The average number of players on steam is around 80000 in the last 2 weeks. You are looking at concurrent players (people playing at the same time).

Double it for those that don't use steam like myself and you are looking at 160000 seperate players in the last 2 weeks.
I actually think that the majority of ED players don't use steam.

Please get your figures correct.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

30% is by far not the majority bub.

No 30% isn't a majority, but as the majority cannot agree to what they want, then you have to go for what has the most votes and in this case, it is leave as is.

 

[Electric Kite]

As someone whos played since beta i fear for the first time since i started i may have hit "The Wall"

The desire to pimp my ship is great. And its kept me doing missions, trading and bounty hunting for the last two years because i knew, once i got that cash, i could DEFINTALEY upgrade my ship to what i wanted.
Now the desire is still there..but the uncertainty of actually being able to do it at the end of all the material gathering and so forth..means im struggling to boot up the game. I just go play somethig else when i think about it.

The core game is fun. The shooting. The trading. The exploration...but nearly two years later...im doing the same thing just to get materials that MIGHT be able to upgrade my ship to what i want or even NEED?

Its a problem.

And the more i think about Frontier and their approach, Powerplay, CQC now this, the more i really start to wonder. Nobody wanted thESE elements. Nobody wanted powerplay. Nobody wanted CQC. No body wanted RNG. No one. Thats pretty incredible that we get 3 missfires back to back. And like i said i just..wonder.

 

[foebits]

No 30% isn't a majority, but as the majority cannot agree to what they want, then you have to go for what has the most votes and in this case, it is leave as is.

You can't do that either since that alienates 70% of the players. It just means that some thought might be needed on a different approach.

 

[Mosait]

Voted no change for the simple reason that It's silly doing this before the official Dev patch response. They have said they will change it and add to it. Now lets sit down and watch how they change it and how that works out before everyone gets pitchforks wanting something different.

Can't do that; might affect pitchfork sales. Unless they're engineer modded pitchforks. Those suckers are rare.

 

[Sashenka]

The average number of players on steam is around 80000 in the last 2 weeks. You are looking at concurrent players (people playing at the same time).

Double it for those that don't use steam like myself and you are looking at 160000 seperate players in the last 2 weeks.
I actually think that the majority of ED players don't use steam.

Please get your figures correct.

Oh yeah, I used Steam Charts and now see where I made a logic mistake. Oh well, all for the better then.

 

[rucky]

#3 is interesting, reminds me somewhat to Diablo3.
What I can/could think of is you need the resoures of the Mod (even more than now), but for any re-roll it would cost you only - but increasing - credits (with f.e. a 10th try would cost you in the millions, a 20th try billions.) But of course you can craft another - new - mod with the resources.

This could help a) with the problem of RNG that is finding the multiple rare components and b) with the inflationary money some people have (give them something to get their billions on)

 

[Straker]

As someone whos played since beta i fear for the first time since i started i may have hit "The Wall"

The desire to pimp my ship is great. And its kept me doing missions, trading and bounty hunting for the last two years because i knew, once i got that cash, i could DEFINTALEY upgrade my ship to what i wanted.
Now the desire is still there..but the uncertainty of actually being able to do it at the end of all the material gathering and so forth..means im struggling to boot up the game. I just go play somethig else when i think about it.

The core game is fun. The shooting. The trading. The exploration...but nearly two years later...im doing the same thing just to get materials that MIGHT be able to upgrade my ship to what i want or even NEED?

Its a problem.

And the more i think about Frontier and their approach, Powerplay, CQC now this, the more i really start to wonder. Nobody wanted thESE elements. Nobody wanted powerplay. Nobody wanted CQC. No body wanted RNG. No one. Thats pretty incredible that we get 3 missfires back to back. And like i said i just..wonder.

I'm in a similar situation, being a Kickstarter backer. I remember that incredible sinking feeling when I rolled the dice for the first time in 2.1 after spending a great deal of time trying to find materials and the result was almost insulting. It was like someone just smacked me over the back of the head and said "Your time means nothing!".

I'll say it once again - if we are going to have to spend hours upon hours collecting materials for a single shot at the dice roll then we need to have full control over the outcome, otherwise it's just plain demoralising.

 

[foebits]

Yup. I will say though, that if they do give us that control it rally would be a good system.

 

[CMDR Ashpoker]

You can't have total control. Don't you get it ? You can't have something with 100% accuracy and positive effect just because you want it now. That way you would upgrade the ship in a few weeks and then what ? come back to the forums and complain there is nothing to do in the game because you already have everything ? just play the game. also if everyone have control over upgrades we would end up again with few "best" builds meta like in pre 2.1. This RNG give each player a unique ship. Although multipurpose ships are dead with upgrades that's true, but i'm sure they will come up with something.