Material gathering suggestion!

[CMDR Tsubdai]

Had a thought the other day about making gathering materials a little easier without making it too easy!

So currently we have areas like davs hope and crashed ships where we are able to gather lots of materials but it requires repeated relogging to “farm”, i thought that one way of adding material farming without using what I’d call poor design to increase numbers of available materials would be to have more available in one place.

what about having in systems in a war state the majestic class vessels crashed into landable planets? With a huge debris field. Like a long trail in a crater that the ship has left.

You could have ships defending the area of the downed ship meaning it wouldn’t be too easy to collect the materials, and you’d first have to clear the area of enemies before setting down to collect materials.

this would have added gameplay for both horizons and odyssey players..

Perhaps on the crashed ship there are panels that can be cut open containing higher grade materials with ground forces guarding them.

this may all be too much make believe, also frontier may already have something similar planned for the expansion.

this is just a thought to making collecting materials less of a chore and more of an engaging play loop..

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Certain tip-off missions lead you to a wreck with cargo racks which contain materials.

More short-term POIs like that, but dependent on BGS state rather than a fixed timer, would be a good thing even if not all of them contained materials

 

[Vetinari]

Anything! Ill like anything that increases Mat drops. They used to be 1 per drop now its 3, simplest is just to randomly give bonus drops of 6 or even 10.

fav idea I saw was a 'shoot something over here' which then triggers a 'cargo pod over there 3-5km away' and you have to drive there to pick em up. Could start with 20 Mats degrading every minute to 15, 10, 5, 0 so the quicker you get there the more you get. Different terrains different challenges.

 

[Northpin]

They did said they are not happy with relogging to get materials and it's a thing they will look at (this year)

For the moment we have Crystalline Shards - one can top up a type of G4 raw without relogging and the spawns take a lot of time to recover
Same goes for other bio sites like Brain Trees, although one cannot top out anything of a single Brain Tree bio site

 

[varonica]

Rather than relogging I took the opportunity to do a tour of abandoned settlements where you could collect materials from, it was fun and interesting and I got to visit a lot of places I had only heard about but never seen!

 

[Speedcuffs]

Surface wrecks of Capital ships...
I like that.
Could be good for Odyssey too.

 

[CMDR Tsubdai]

The most time consuming and not fun or enjoyable gameplay is farming materials I need to make my ships fully engineered, I don’t really fly anything that isn’t engineered for it’s purpose, and so I typically fly through materials to achieve this.
My experience with grinding materials so far is fly to jamesons crash site and repeatedly relog to scan nodes. Fly to high pop imp system drop into hge and if it’s imperial shielding repeatedly restart the game and collect till cap, now I don’t really have a problem with the loop for raw materials because it’s a solid gameplay loop that doesn’t require me to exit the game, thus making it smooth and although it’s repetitive it is gameplay!
I’m assuming that these tip offs you mentioned are kind of one off? Or again you can religion to keep collecting something I’m suggesting we make a thing of the past..

I think that state dependant material gathering is good as you can search it out using in game tools, (little more info on certain materials would be good) but it’s the numbers that get me frustrated, why not even change the material cost? Grade one requires 3 x grade 1 materials, grade two requires 3 x grade 2 materials. The system as it is requires at lease in my case either hours looking through and writing on a pad in game or use of external websites to make it all easier.. and not infuriating or overwhelming..

 

[varonica]

The most time consuming and not fun or enjoyable gameplay is farming materials I need to make my ships fully engineered,

Then why do it if it's not fun or enjoyable?

 

[Northpin]

For my Epic account (latest alt):

For Raws i did runs to Crystalline Shards and Brain trees

For Manufactured - i have collectors on my combat ship and pick any leftovers, i do hge loops between 3-5 systems with the states that are interesting, i do run missions for the G5 missions reward (2x manufactured and one encoded)

For Encoded i have the most troubles, but scanning wakes and ships every time i exit the station, i do missions for Mef (as mentioned above), i do pop in encoded uss if they are in my way, i scan ships in supercruise, and not at last i might do a top-up at jamesons.
Using recon limpets to scan installations and megaships will also help but i kinda skip on this

All in all - for me personally the encoded are the most troubling

So yea, i welcome any changes that could improve material gathering, especially for Encoded.

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

They did said they are not happy with relogging to get materials and it's a thing they will look at (this year)

For the moment we have Crystalline Shards - one can top up a type of G4 raw without relogging and the spawns take a lot of time to recover
Same goes for other bio sites like Brain Trees, although one cannot top out anything of a single Brain Tree bio site

I'm very sad to hear that among all the problems this game has, they seriously are going to 'look at' this. Something only a few forum malcontents have a problem with it seems.

I'm still in the "constantly buying/engineering new ships" phase and the amount of materials a new ship needs to get up to G5 feels crazy at times. Their solution better do something about this if they are seriously going to fix relogging (for no reason).

The reason people relogg is that there's just way too many material categories and types. You could spend a month hunting them all down, or you can just fill up on the G5's and G4 raw's and trade them down at a trader. It's a no brainer.

All in all - for me personally the encoded are the most troubling

So yea, i welcome any changes that could improve material gathering, especially for Encoded.

That's interesting because for me I seem to be going to the Manufactureed trader WAY more than Encoded. I guess I'm wrong, but it just feels like most modules I'm upgrading need very little Encoded mats by comparison.

 

[Bigmaec]

I suggest using the suggestions subforum for suggestions.

Edit oh OP did.
Doubleposter
Also the number of replies in the subforum is the expected zero.

 

[Northpin]

The reason people relogg is

... because it's the fastest and the laziest and because people recommend doing that in guides and on YT channels

 

[Northpin]

That's interesting because for me I seem to be going to the Manufactureed trader WAY more than Encoded. I guess I'm wrong, but it just feels like most modules I'm upgrading need very little Encoded mats by comparison.

That is very true - once my XB account topped all encoded bins - i really never need to do any hunting for a loong time and i still dont need them
The fact that now i rarely engineer a ship on XB probably helps too (have about 32-34 engineered ships)

 

[Dillon Fallon]

My vote is for something analogous to the crystal shards, so you need a bit of knowledge and an engineered ship in the first place to get there and collect, but with a good payoff. Something has to change if a significant amount of players find that relogging on HGEs is the meta.

Although I'd argue that encoded is fine IMO, but then I practically live in Haz RESs and CZs.

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

... because it's the fastest and the laziest and because people recommend doing that in guides and on YT channels

Have you ever been on an endless hunt for an HGE only to find it has a few minutes left? I get you want to call people lazy but please understand some of us can't dedicate 24 hours a day to play Elite. It would be nice to spend some time actually playing the game, as apposed to chore-like activities related to Engineering.

But nope, people have to keep pushing this complaint about relogging that harms nobody, doesn't cause any balance issues, and that FDEV declared long ago it to be not an exploit.

Then there are the pharmaceutical isolators which unless you just hate yourself, you are going to trade for and just save yourself hours of time wasted.

 

[Vetinari]

Something only a few forum malcontents have a problem with it seems.

?

and that FDEV declared long ago it to be not an exploit.

I thought the opposite that restarting the game for HGEs specifically is an exploit as defined by Frontier? You got a source as you brought it up as fact?

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

I think people make the mistake of wanting to go from no engineering to fully engineered in one go. They then feel compelled to 'grind' or whatever.

If you have enough mats to engineer to level one, great. If you don't have enough to get to level 2, ah well, keep playing the game, they will come along. It is not mandatory to reach level 5 in one session.

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

?

I thought the opposite that restarting the game for HGEs specifically is an exploit as defined by Frontier? You got a source as you brought it up as fact?

I'll try to dig up the statement, but I've seen it said over and over again from different sources that FDEV confirmed relogging is not an exploit.

I know people here say it is, but it's not. It's working as intended and not an exploit. It may feel cheesy, sure, but I'll take that over wasting hours of my life chasing dozens of materials.

 

[Starshot_Jigawatts]

I think people make the mistake of wanting to go from no engineering to fully engineered in one go. This then compiles them to 'grind' or whatever.

If you have enough mats to engineer to level one, great. If you don't have enough to get to level 2, ah well, keep playing the game, they will come along. It is not mandatory to reach level 5 in one session.

I would agree with you but some builds only become viable with G5 in something, especially the distributor. Or power plant (Vulture etc etc).

Also some people cough are very goal-oriented and can't stand unfinished tasks.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Could this even be as simple as tweaking the numbers on mat drops from NPCs so deadly and elite ships always drop 1-2 g5 mats?

Any suggestion that I'd be waiting for FDev to dial this up slightly and in the usual manner of these tweaks result in 50 g5 mats being dropped would be entirely spurious.