I don't normally forum post but I really want to share my experience/thoughts/feelings so far with the engineers. I came at this with the mentality of "I will just play and see what I get." & at first had fun, it was exciting to see loot dropping off killed ships, I already had a ton of materials from surface mining, I did a chunk of the new missions too. One mission bugged & I am stuck with a message for it in my inbox. I always drop at encoded/degraded emission USSs & have only found 1 or 2 things to scan. The majority of them are illegal canisters and a few materials. After venturing to a few engineers to see what I could do, I found I couldn't do much at all. I tried to stay optimistic and went out and searched for the materials I needed. I am confused why it is so hard to find 'common' materials like arsenic but I seem to get many rare/very rare components off of destroyed ships. Today I tried to scan some data points on surface bases to get a security firmware patch. This has been the least fun I have had so far in ED. I visited a few bases and did not get anything I needed, the rest I was just simply incapable of finding all the data points or got D/Ced in the middle of doing so. I am a little flustered right now after driving around, spinning out every few seconds, trying to get 5 data points and nearly running out of car fuel because it took me so long. I never got it. I just don't find this method fun at all, and I have yet to actually see this firmware as a reward off a mission.
I still like ED, I am thrilled at the AIs competence this patch, I don't mind a little RNG or getting my feet wet doing something I hadn't normally done; I never really bothered with conflict zones but had to for some "authority" vessel loot & actually thought it was fun. I just think the material loot is spread far too thin and requires excessive amounts of very specific play types, with such a TINY CAPACITY OF 600! I can surface mine and loot USSs and destroyed ships all day, I enjoy it, but then I am stuck at this "well what am I even going to need? What should I get rid of? This common material that I can NEVER find or this very rare material I have a bunch of?" And I just really don't enjoy assaulting bases, nothing about it is enjoyable and it seems to be the only viable way to get a good amount of required materials.
I think there needs to be a higher material cap, either less randomized loot that has higher chance of dropping based on your pinned blueprints OR the ability to trade materials on a market or craft different materials using basic materials. I have seen some other pretty decent suggestions out there too. I just really want viable alternatives to acquire materials, beings the very basis of the engineers is to get many modifications to level up with them & I can't even get 1.
Pardon the rant, & thanks for reading my opinion if you did! Also if you know of some other way of getting security firmware patch besides missions/base data scans let me know.
I still like ED, I am thrilled at the AIs competence this patch, I don't mind a little RNG or getting my feet wet doing something I hadn't normally done; I never really bothered with conflict zones but had to for some "authority" vessel loot & actually thought it was fun. I just think the material loot is spread far too thin and requires excessive amounts of very specific play types, with such a TINY CAPACITY OF 600! I can surface mine and loot USSs and destroyed ships all day, I enjoy it, but then I am stuck at this "well what am I even going to need? What should I get rid of? This common material that I can NEVER find or this very rare material I have a bunch of?" And I just really don't enjoy assaulting bases, nothing about it is enjoyable and it seems to be the only viable way to get a good amount of required materials.
I think there needs to be a higher material cap, either less randomized loot that has higher chance of dropping based on your pinned blueprints OR the ability to trade materials on a market or craft different materials using basic materials. I have seen some other pretty decent suggestions out there too. I just really want viable alternatives to acquire materials, beings the very basis of the engineers is to get many modifications to level up with them & I can't even get 1.
Pardon the rant, & thanks for reading my opinion if you did! Also if you know of some other way of getting security firmware patch besides missions/base data scans let me know.
