Material trading needs work

Jethzk

J
The exchange rates for materials desperately need to be changed.

Consider that it takes 216 Nickle to get 1 Tellurium. This basically means nickle is next to worthless, (more so than pennies), and that people shouldn't bother with anything that isn't a top tier material.

Now let's consider that it takes 1-3 roles to be able to advance to the next tier of engineering, but roughly 10 rolls to max out G5. The most common materials are the least commonly used. Side note, I'd love if RNG was removed from advancements, it only serves to punish some players and not others.

The entire system leads people to farm G4 materials only and trade down if needed. Trading up is a huge waste of time. Your better off not even collecting the common materials as they simply aren't worth the effort. This means there are a lot of materials I don't bother to gather anymore. Their value is nil, the system has broken the ground level.

Please reconsider the exchange rates, they are quite harsh and it's only purpose is to waste a player's time. We want to play the game and have fun in an open ended sandbox space sim. Not spend our entire lives looking for materials to finish upgrading our fleet. Engineer isn't bad with only 1 ship, but with a fleet of 3-6 ships (because small ships are still fun), it's a tremendous grind. Please let the most common materials we pick up, be useful in some way.
 

Lanceor

Lanceor
I'm sure that the exchange rates were intentionally set that way to keep G5 mats valuable, yet provide a way to obtain it for someone who's really desperate or is overloaded with lower grade mats.

If all our Tellurium needs could be met by selling Nickel, nobody would bother looking for Tellurium, and another aspect of the game would become pointless.

As an added point - buyers will always want a lower price. I have never, ever heard a buyer say "this price is too cheap".
 
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TheSisko

TheSisko
Common materials are useful. Just because the conversation rate sucks doesn't mean the likes of nickel are useless, and they're a lot easier to get than top-tier materials.

Lanceor said:
If all our Tellurium needs could be met by selling Nickel, nobody would bother looking for Tellurium, and another aspect of the game would become pointless.
Click to expand...

Yep, Frontier know what they're doing here.
 
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metatheurgist

metatheurgist
You're not supposed to trade nickel for tellurium. It's just supposed to be a small convenience if you happen to have some of the adjacent materials and you need a bit more for whatever reason. It works great as that.
 

RamirezKurita

R
The common materials can easily be scooped up by collector limpets in vast numbers though, so it doesn't really matter how bad the ratio is because you will pretty much always have them in abundance. Sure, it's not worth going out of your way to pick them up with the intention of trading up, however they can be a good supplement for other materials.
 

Jethzk

J
I'm really surprised by the responses of this thread. Especially considering FD have already stated they are willing to adjust the trade ratios.

Either your not scooping with an SRV, or your trading down and getting an exorbitant amount of materials.
Clearly I am doing something wrong, so how are you farming Tier 4 materials? Please educate me, I hate wasting time.
 

Xious

Xious
I had most of everything that I needed and only needed to use the Traders a few times.

As for Tier 4... what are you looking for in particular?
 

Jethzk

J
Xious said:
I had most of everything that I needed and only needed to use the Traders a few times.

As for Tier 4... what are you looking for in particular?
Click to expand...


Everything. I am trying to engineer a small fleet of 6 ships. As of now I have G5 maxed FSD, Dirty Drives, and Charge Enhanced distributors. I'd love tips on anything because I plan to buy more ships in the future.
 

Lanceor

Lanceor
Jethzk said:
I'm really surprised by the responses of this thread. Especially considering FD have already stated they are willing to adjust the trade ratios.

Either your not scooping with an SRV, or your trading down and getting an exorbitant amount of materials.
Clearly I am doing something wrong, so how are you farming Tier 4 materials? Please educate me, I hate wasting time.
Click to expand...

I can't say for everyone, but I look at what I want to Engineer in Inara, and see if I'm short of any particular mats. Then I decide whether to trade down some valuable ones (I'm swimming with MEF's at the moment) or whether I should prospect them in the old fashioned way.

Once in a blue moon, I may trade up/across if I desperately need just one or two high tier mats to complete a modification, but I don't do this regularly because (as you pointed out) the exchange rates are terrible.
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
Jethzk said:
I'm really surprised by the responses of this thread. Especially considering FD have already stated they are willing to adjust the trade ratios.

Either your not scooping with an SRV, or your trading down and getting an exorbitant amount of materials.
Clearly I am doing something wrong, so how are you farming Tier 4 materials? Please educate me, I hate wasting time.
Click to expand...

If they make it even easier I'm not going to complain. But yeah I scoop everything, in space or on a planet. I just play the game and collect everything I see. I think the problem is people get too focussed on doing one upgrade or one thing at a time. With the new storage limits I'm basically collecting the mats for 2-3 upgrades simultaneously which is a vast improvement over the old system where I had to ignore or throw away things I knew would be useful later.
 

Blaize Meduenin

B
Been saying the same since we first found out the rates in beta.

Keeping the 3:1 down as it is now the other rates would be fairer at

2:1 sideways exchange (eg 2 grade 5 of a data type for 1 grade 5 of a different type)
4:1 up (eg 4 grade 1 of a data type for 1 grade 2 data type within the same branch, 8:1 if in a different branch, and equivlent of 256:1 from grade 1 to grade 5 in same branch, 512:1 for grade 1 to grade 5 in a different branch)

Finally add in the exchange rate for cross type trades at 5 or 6 to 1, eg trading a grade 4 data for a grade 4 raw.

This allows people to do the activity they enjoy to gain materials and trade them for ANY others at reasonable rates that are still slower than getting that same material directly, so not game breaking or making g5 mats worthless but not LUDICROUSLY slower as they are at the moment.

Last I checked this was a game and games are meant for fun and entertainment (what a concept!) so whats wrong with letting players do what they enjoy instead of being forced to farm things they dont?
 

MadDogMurdock

MadDogMurdock
Nickel is practically worthless.
10 Iron + 10 Nickel = 4 Limpets ~ 400Cr

1 Nickel ~ 20Cr

Now if Tellurium was available for ~4000Cr which the trade up rate suggests, you'd more than happily pay it.
 

Arkadi

Arkadi
I really have no issues collecting all the stuff I need. There is a lot in 3.0 that made mat gathering easyer:

* Choice system for mission rewards
* Much better spawn rate of High Grade USS
* Mat/Data/Raw Traders

combine this with the improved storage - I can't but be happy about engineering. If you are going down to a planet and scoop up some of the rarer elements from time to time and salvaging wreckages in a combat-environement also, you won't have much trouble getting everything you need.

Mat-Traders are a nice addition to optimally distribute ones cargo-stock of the mats. I really can't complain.

Granted I usually don't try to engineer more then one ship at a time.

I also think it's reasonable that a commander can not instantly upgrade six ships in one go.
 

Bortas

Bortas
Personally I'm mostly fine with mat traders. Only thing which could use a buff are cross caregory exchange rates. 6 pcs of g5 for 1 pc of another g5 is pretty useless. A 2:1 rate would be good here, so we can actually focus on doing things we like, to get everything we need.
 

Jethzk

J
Arkadi said:
I also think it's reasonable that a commander can not instantly upgrade six ships in one go.
Click to expand...
I didn't say it was fast, and I'm willing to put in the time, but that time often results in me being full on low grade materials and giving up on scooping them because it's not worth the effort. I'd like it to be worth the effort. It's like walking by the street and seeing a penny on the ground. Do you stop to pick it up? I don't....
 

Arkadi

Arkadi
I see. If you don't need them for synthesis, you are right, they don't have much worth - and theire trading value is low at the mat-traders, that's right. Maybe that's why there is 300 cargo capacity for those common materials. With this ammount there is even some use for up-trading. If those numbers would be tweake a bit in favour to the common mat's I wouldn't object too. But it's only a very minor issue for me.

For me those low level mat's are mostly "by-catch" too. With exception of some, Sulphur and Basic Conductors are always needed in my ships indoor factory ; )
 
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