There's 53 pages of this thread, so haven't read the whole thing. But from the opening post, have gone through every one of the Extraction Layouts listed, and gotten a total of one MEF dropped out of ten bases visited. In the meantime I've picked up twice that amount (total of six) from random delivery missions picked up along the way. On top of that, certainly not getting the money originally made from scanning the Core Data Terminals. It might have been paying out 600-750k back then, but now that was giving me next to nothing - highest was 15,318, all the way down to just 6,633.
Engineers Medium Security Settlement List and Guide for Modified Embedded Firmware
- Thread starter Devari
- Start date
This one posted by JetsonRING is still great for me, picked up ~15 (45) MEF, just a couple of days ago:
Thanks for that - big help. Managed to accrue enough through random delivery missions in and around Shinartra to tide me over for a while, but will return to this for sure.
Now to go in search for the elusive Military Supercapacitors... grindy grind grind!!
I know I should be saving G5 materials for version 3.0, but I burned through all of mine (~30) recently just trying to make 2 focused pulse lasers...
I have no self control when it comes to engineering.
FYI for anyone doing these runs, they are currently only rewarding single units of data in 3.0 instead of 3x units making them not really worthwhile. I've submitted a bug report here
Unfortunately according to the 3.03 patch notes, this is a "feature" of 3.0 and not a bug: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/413563-Community-Feedback-and-3-0-3-Update/page17
RIP settlement scan runs, I guess I'll just have to stick with mission rewards and mat trading for MEF and CIF.
We now have another update and it sounds like they're actually fixing this issue for settlement data drops as it was only "intended" to reduce the mat drop ratio for Guardian settlements. They accidentally nerfed all settlement data drops in the process but didn't intend to do this for data such as MEF: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...3-0-3-Update?p=6527974&viewfull=1#post6527974
No - exactly the same thing happened to me!
I can't un-spoil those, erm...spoilers!?
Are those images dead?
Bob Lighthouse
Banned
Last edited:
You shouldn't need to do anything in particular at the Medium security settlements as long as you land your ship outside of the trespass area. Their perimeters and trespass warnings are dependent on the type of base and whether you approach it in a ship or SRV. Status or reputation with the controlling faction and so on doesn't make any difference. There are certain areas within some Medium security bases that are marked in red which will trigger a trespass warning in the SRV but these are only small areas of the base and you don't need to enter any of them with the SRV to scan the data points. The "airspace" perimieter of 1-2 km (depending on the base) which triggers warnings in the ship doesn't apply to the SRV so you shouldn't be getting fines/bounties for approaching a Medium security settlement in your SRV unless you intentionally drive into the smaller SRV trespass areas marked in red.
I just visited the Medium security Exploration settlement Hughes-Fulford Holdings at Yorua 4 to confirm and I was able to drive up to the base, scan the data points and even fire my SRV plasma repeaters without triggering any fines or bounties. Unfortunately the data drops are still nerfed and only generate one unit of data per drop so they haven't fixed that yet but other than this I haven't noticed anything different about getting any fines/bounties for doing the regular data scans in the SRV.
The only differences I've noticed (other than the drop ratios still being reduced) is that the ship trespass areas are larger (Exploration settlements used to be around 1.7 km distance and are now around 2.3 km distance) and you can no longer recall your ship while within the ship trespass perimeter. Now you have to leave this area completely to recall your ship (which was how it worked originally) but for a while this restriction wasn't present and a recalled ship could land anywhere, even on the base landing pad if the base had one (and it would often land there like it was following NPC scripting). Your unmanned ship however wouldn't trigger trespass penalties by doing this, it was only once you boarded the ship that a trespass warning would occur. You could usually board a ship that was inside the trespass area and take off before you got any fines if you left immediately so this wasn't an issue. You usually didn't have time to land and disembark in the SRV without getting a fine however so you still needed to land outside of this area when approaching the base for landing which wasn't an issue because you could select a landing site outside of the ship trespass area. Now the ship recall process has gone back to the original way that it worked which was that ships couldn't be recalled unless your SRV was clear from the ship trespass perimeter so the ships will now land outside this area again.
Last edited:
I have an update for this issue, I've just visited an Industrial and Scientific base in addition to the Exploration base that I visited. The Exploration and Scientific bases were unchanged for SRVs (other than the increased size of the ship trespass area which required landing farther away from the base) but the Industrial base I visited now has a 1.5-2 km red SRV trespass zone around the entire base and which must be what you were encountering. It looks like they significantly changed this for the Industrial bases and it's most likely a bug since the Exploration and Scientific medium security bases are unchanged from the perspective of approaching them in the SRV. Hopefully they'll fix this at the same time they fix the data drop mat ratio. In the meantime it looks like it will be necessary to stick to the Exploration and Scientific bases if you want to do base runs without getting fines/bounties.
Last edited:
Thank you for sharing this! I went to the same settlement (Hughes-Fulford Holdings at Yorua 4) and after trying out the route from TS, during night time, a couple of times I managed to get my first MEF data!
What bothers me a bit is that I went to four industrial settlements (70 Ophiuchi - Richardson - Leckie's Claim, Ayu - 1D - Escobar Reach, B2 Carinae - A5B - Alvarado Reach, Gabraceni - 7C - Ampere's Inheritance) and all four of them had a perimeter zone whilst I was driving my SRV. Could not get close to the settlement without getting shot at. I guess I'll try a couple more exploration settlements first
Thank you for sharing this! I went to the same settlement (Hughes-Fulford Holdings at Yorua 4) and after trying out the route from TS, during night time, a couple of times I managed to get my first MEF data!
What bothers me a bit is that I went to four industrial settlements (70 Ophiuchi - Richardson - Leckie's Claim, Ayu - 1D - Escobar Reach, B2 Carinae - A5B - Alvarado Reach, Gabraceni - 7C - Ampere's Inheritance) and all four of them had a perimeter zone whilst I was driving my SRV. Could not get close to the settlement without getting shot at. I guess I'll try a couple more exploration settlements first
Generally speaking the Exploration settlements tend to give the highest "yield" of MEF drops on average so I always start with those first. Then I would go with the Scientific bases although these used to have a lower average yield than the Industrial bases at this point Industrial bases aren't an option due to the large SRV trespass zone covering the entire base. I haven't been back to any Extraction layouts since 3.0 launched but they are another good source of MEF, even higher on average than the Exploration layouts, although the route is a little more complicated than for the other bases so I usually only go to these if I'm waiting for the other settlements to reset.
That's very useful information, thanks! I'd vote for adding this info to the topic start!
/me flies off to more exploration settlements.
o7