General Master Engineer Hub reward

[SteveWW57]

Op is asking for a simplification where its just not needed. As said before having to work hard to engineer ships etc is part n parcel. Or everyone would be engineered then we'd plateau and it'd be like back to square 1. Engineering does increase this and that cools this overheats that etc. But its also reflective of commitment from the cmdr to better himself above others.
And that's why it's hard/tedious/grindy.

And likely to benefit a minority of CMDRs.

Steve

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

I would already be happy if all engineering grades were available in both the bubble and Colonia. Or if we could pin more than one blueprint per engineer.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

And that's why it's hard/tedious/grindy.

And yet, it could be one without the other.

Making it hard to upgrade ships with engineering would be something I'd be very supportive of:
- you start with an unengineered ship, capable (unless you're an ace pilot) of only taking on fairly basic jobs
- by doing those basic challenges, you collect some G1 and G2 materials and can upgrade your ship a bit to do tougher challenges
- do those tougher challenges and get some G3 and G4 materials, upgrade your ship again to do even more difficult tasks
- those get you G5 materials which you can use to finish off your ship and be able to take on the most difficult parts of the game without needing to be the absolute best pilot (but you've likely improved a fair bit along the way anyway, so a G5 ship + no skill probably can't do those bits either)
Maybe have the engineers themselves exist on the fringes of the law so actually reaching an engineer base involves sneaking or fighting your way past some security forces - and the better the blueprint they offer, the more heavily guarded the approach is. Maybe having an engineered ship at all would be viewed with suspicion in higher-security systems so you'd deliberately maintain some unmodified (or only subtly modified) ships for lower-profile activity there.

In that context something like the one-stop-shop idea at the start of the thread wouldn't make sense: upgrading your ship would be a challenge. Moving your upgraded ship between the engineers (and maybe elsewhere too) would be a challenge, etc.

"Tedious/grindy" is basically just "there's not a more difficult option, so do the easy thing another five/fifty/five hundred times instead". It's going to happen sometimes, especially in a game of this scope, but it shouldn't be the actual design goal.

 

[Northpin]

All of which requires engineering, which would be made easier by having one place to go. Thanks for proving my point with the original post

Nope, not really - even a combat ship can fit a gfsd booster - which imo should be the first thing unlocked after Felicity - which would greatly fix the jump range for any ship

I still remember my first visit from the Bubble, to Maia (for 1t of meta alloys) then back to Deciat in a Cobra mk3 using economy routes (cause i didnt knew any better at the time)

 

[Jmanis]

Nope, not really - even a combat ship can fit a gfsd booster - which imo should be the first think unlocked after Felicity - which would greatly fix the jump range for any ship

I still remember my first visit from the Bubble, to Maia (for 1t of meta alloys) then back to Deciat in a Cobra mk3 using economy routes (cause i didnt knew any better at the time)

This one. Nothing requires engineering.

"Tedious/grindy" is basically just "there's not a more difficult option, so do the easy thing another five/fifty/five hundred times instead". It's going to happen sometimes, especially in a game of this scope, but it shouldn't be the actual design goal.

Yeah, it's unfortunately a penchant of FD's design of most activities. Do an activity once for fun, do it a dozen times for an effect.

I'd kill for FD to instead just lean into procedural activity.