My Honda Civic has a small fuel tank...

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I was under the impression that the "each upgrade will be better than the last", simply meant that a grade 4 will always be better than a grade 3, and grade 5 better than 4, and so on.

If we can incrementally increase our stats and never go backwards, we'll all just end up with God rolls eventually.
And IMHO, that's bad, except for competitive PvP, because then everyone is equal again, provided they have done the grind first. Lol

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[MadDogMurdock]

One of the forthcoming improvements is that each Engineering roll will be better than the last.

I've got this feeling that this is one of those things that will gather enormous amounts of salt.
I expect FD's first iteration to be that the primary stats will always improve but the secondaries will still be random.

Cue a whole bunch of people not paying attention and swapping out for something worse.

 

[Stealthie]

I was under the impression that the "each upgrade will be better than the last", simply meant that a grade 4 will always be better than a grade 3, and grade 5 better than 4, and so on.

Does that really address the issue most people are annoyed about though?

Okay, so you sometimes get people (such as the OP) moaning 'cos they've got a G4 upgrade and they went to the effort of finding some G5 mat's and the result of the G5 upgrade turned out to be worse than their existing G4 but it's not that common and, besides, if you collect enough mat's for 2 or 3 G5 rolls you probably ARE going to end-up with an improvement.

What most people seem to be hacked-off with (as far as I can see, anyway) is that they can spend hours collecting mat's for a dozen rolls for a specific thing and they can burn through them all and not get any improvement over what they already have.

If the idea of this change is simply to ensure G5>G4>G3>G2>G1 then it's a solution to a problem which very few people complain about.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Does that really address the issue most people are annoyed about though?

Okay, so you sometimes get people (such as the OP) moaning 'cos they've got a G4 upgrade and they went to the effort of finding some G5 mat's and the result of the G5 upgrade turned out to be worse than their existing G4 but it's not that common and, besides, if you collect enough mat's for 2 or 3 G5 rolls you probably ARE going to end-up with an improvement.

What most people seem to be hacked-off with (as far as I can see, anyway) is that they can spend hours collecting mat's for a dozen rolls for a specific thing and they can burn through them all and not get any improvement over what they already have.

If the idea of this change is simply to ensure G5>G4>G3>G2>G1 then it's a solution to a problem which very few people complain about.

Have FD ever solved a problem for the majority?

I get frustrated too, when I get several consecutive bad rolls, especially when the Engineer (Palin) is a long way off.

If it's not "G5>G4>G3>G2>G1", and "each roll being better than the last", perhaps it's simply "each roll in sequence will be better than the last"....?

So if you save up for 10 rolls, then roll 2 will be better than 1, 3 better than 2, etc etc. But if you stop and switch modules or ships or whatever, then you're back to the beginning,..? I dunno.

I basically have no idea what it's going to be. Lol

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I guess it depends on your interpretation of what was said.

Agreed.

If a garage tells me that every upgrade they fit to my car will be an improvement on the last, I expect it to mean exactly that.
If they fit a Jetex exhaust I expect that to improve my car in some way.

Agreed

If they then fit a Irmscher exhaust, I expect that to improve my car even more.

If it didn't, and they tried to tell me that the Irmscher exhaust wasn't considered an "upgrade" to the Jetex exhaust, I'd assume they were con' artists and I'd be asking for a refund.

But you are not asking for that. You are asking them to fit another Jetex exhaust on to the car and expecting it to be superior then the one you just fitted, but even that is wrong in the way engineers work. What the engineer is doing in ED is not replacing parts but modifiing your existing parts with specific materials. I assume that the specific materials are different in quality and that is the reason for the variation. So if you replace those materials used in the upgrade you will still have that variation in the quality of the new materials resulting in a different result, some part may be better, others worse.

You might be right but if that's the case then it certainly needs clarifying before it's implemented so people know they stand to lose top-tier mod's on the assumption that subsequent rolls WILL be improvements on what they currently have.

I am sure it will all be explained before it gets released with examples. I am also assuming that there will be a beta phase to test these out. I have no idea whether I am right or not, it just to me seems to be the more logical way forward.

 

[Stealthie]

I basically have no idea what it's going to be. Lol

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

We're all in the same boat.

Ideally, it'd be nice if FDev came along and explained what they were considering improving, provided 2 or 3 different options and then listen to the feedback they get.

More realistically, it's probably just going to get dropped on us and then there'll either be praise or there'll be wailing.
And then, if it's the latter, it might get changed again.
Eventually.

This is one of those times where, really, all you can do is voice an opinion and hope that somebody takes notice of the consensus BEFORE making any changes.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Does that really address the issue most people are annoyed about though?

Okay, so you sometimes get people (such as the OP) moaning 'cos they've got a G4 upgrade and they went to the effort of finding some G5 mat's and the result of the G5 upgrade turned out to be worse than their existing G4 but it's not that common and, besides, if you collect enough mat's for 2 or 3 G5 rolls you probably ARE going to end-up with an improvement.

What most people seem to be hacked-off with (as far as I can see, anyway) is that they can spend hours collecting mat's for a dozen rolls for a specific thing and they can burn through them all and not get any improvement over what they already have.

If the idea of this change is simply to ensure G5>G4>G3>G2>G1 then it's a solution to a problem which very few people complain about.

That is what I thought the main issues are with engineers mylsef. The fact that a G4 can be better then a G5 sounds just wrong. Any G5 roll is good, there are no bad rolls, it's just that some are better then others. Not a problem for me. I think I have a G5 roll with a 28% increase. It's enough for me, would I have prefered it if it was more, sure, but it sure isn't the end of the world and it is far better then the stock FSD i had.

 

[Stealthie]

I am sure it will all be explained before it gets released with examples. I am also assuming that there will be a beta phase to test these out. I have no idea whether I am right or not, it just to me seems to be the more logical way forward.

Well, I doubt there's anything really controversial about a straightforward G5>G4>G3.... change.
I wouldn't be opposed to that, I guess, but it just seems like they're fixing a problem which doesn't really exist, except in edge-cases.
And it's certainly not THE problem which most people are moaning about.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Well, I doubt there's anything really controversial about a straightforward G5>G4>G3.... change.
I wouldn't be opposed to that, I guess, but it just seems like they're fixing a problem which doesn't really exist, except in edge-cases.
And it's certainly not THE problem which most people are moaning about.

Most people seem to complain about the grind in finding materials. Hopefully that will change with the new scanner mechanics in the beyond Q4 update. We shall see. Maybe they get this bit in first as it shouldn't be too tough to do, then they do the material gathering part later.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I think people will wail regardless. Lol

A lack of overlap between grades is a good QoL feature really.

Element Material gathering is actually not too bad.
The planets list their contents (once scanned), so all you need to do is drive around and find it. It's a bit hit and miss, but it's mostly hit.

Manufactured materials are usually harder to find, because some are exclusively mission rewards, and others are dropped at very specific High grade USSs, which no one really knows the combination to, and then some just fall off every ship you shoot. Lol

Data is equally as awkward to find to most rare manufactured materials.

The best (IMHO) solutions to manufactured materials are;
A) junk yards and wreck mining. Basically space (and possibly surface) equivalent to elements on planets. You scour these vast debris fields looking for what you need. Some junk yards have better yields than others. You find a wreck, and shoot it or mine it.
B) broker, as detailed by Sandro. Trade up/down materials.
C) Add more information to the material, in order to understand where the USS will spawn, so we don't have to guess.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[Blackcompany]

Exactly.

I guess FDev are trying to avoid being too "derivative" but engineering should really work a lot like the character generation process in most RPGs, whereby you get some "base stats" and then you can swap them around to buff your character in specific ways.

The UI can pretty-much already do the job required.
We just need to be able to adjust the sliders ourselves.

You want a more powerful weapon?
You crank up the damage slider.
As you do that, the heat slider, the ROF slider and the energy slider change accordingly.

Maybe you want an efficient weapon?
You dial back the energy slider.
As you do that the other sliders change accordingly.

Maybe you're trying to create an FSD for your exploration ship?
You crank up the range slider.
As you do that, the fuel-consumption and heat sliders change accordingly.
I'd also add a "charging time" slider too, so that distant jumps would take longer to charge (thus placing your ship in jeopardy for longer) and people would have the option of building combat ships with lousy jump range but could jump out of trouble in a few seconds.

But, yeah.
They can leave things mostly as they are but just make it so the sliders are manually adjustable and I reckon it'd be a big improvement.

This is the way it SHOULD work.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

I appreciate some people struggle with this game, but is really that hard for some to understand the stats? The primary stat to look at is optimal mass. Am struggling to believe the Op had a roll worse than stock.

It's simply not intuitive. Never was.

What am I supposed to do with "Optimal Mass" or "Optimal Multiplier", other than of course realize their basic value.
Run the Formula which the Game doesn't even provide? Calculate the Mass increase of the Engineered Equipment into it then, again with the Formula that isn't even visible in the Game?
I want to know a JumpRange or speed, and exactly so. After all, I'm supposedly at an Engineer place and not at a "do-it-yourself fortune teller".

All that was ever needed was this single, critical additional Variable. The one that should be shown on top of all others.
FSD Range mod : Current JumpRange Before - After
Thruster mod : Current Speeds Before - After

Can't be that hard, since the Outfitting screen has these figures. It only tells you after the fact, which is the whole problem.
And no later when re-rolling and going into the tight area of optimization, it's virtually impossible to see of a 0.9% +Optimal Mass/-0.8% Optimal Multipler/+11.2% Mass on some FSD is going to be a mild improvement or not.-

-------------------

The whole underlying issue is that the "Engineers" Update was concepted by someone
- devoid of any common sense
- lacking any understanding of which numbers are critical and which are less important (but still useful or critical for advanced Players)
- completely clueless as to what the term "Engineering" actually stands for and what Players will rightfully expect from a Game Element carrying that title

And I'm not even going into the whacko specials / balancing nightmare it all brought along.
Clearly, someone had completely forgotten the MultiPlayer balance aspect. Or was clueless in that area as well. At this point, impossible to tell the difference.
They even had to give Stations a massive, huge buff. Stations for heavens sake. That alone would be all one needs to know.

 

[Siranui]

One of the forthcoming improvements is that each Engineering roll will be better than the last.

Assuming that the 'last' was a lower grade. I don't think there are plans to make every roll literally better than the last.

 

[Taranis Dekker]

I've just spent a few frustrating hours trying to find certain materials for the gods of RNG. Most of which from Dav's Hope, including almost 40 CIF from the data point that I hardly need. Those man-made mats were fairly easy.

It's the natural ones I have issue with. I needed zirconium and antimony. I found two planets with both mats. Antimony at 1.7 and Zirc at 2.8 I think it was. Other planet was 1.1 Antimony and Zirc was higher than the first planet (can't remember exactly). I found far more antimony far quicker on the lower % planet that I did on the first. How does that work?

As others have said, the total absence on the RNG screen of information showing the before-after statistics is one of the strangest omissions I've seen in ED.

 

[777Driver]

It's simply not intuitive. Never was.

What am I supposed to do with "Optimal Mass" or "Optimal Multiplier", other than of course realize their basic value.
Run the Formula which the Game doesn't even provide? Calculate the Mass increase of the Engineered Equipment into it then, again with the Formula that isn't even visible in the Game?
I want to know a JumpRange or speed, and exactly so. After all, I'm supposedly at an Engineer place and not at a "do-it-yourself fortune teller".

Like I said, some people seem to struggle, others don't. I have never had an FSD upgrade and been confused by the information being displayed, all I focus on is an increase in opt mass, secondary max fuel is just a bonus, any increase in module weight or power consumption is a negative. Not exactly astronautical engineering now is it?

 

[Stealthie]

It's the natural ones I have issue with. I needed zirconium and antimony. I found two planets with both mats. Antimony at 1.7 and Zirc at 2.8 I think it was. Other planet was 1.1 Antimony and Zirc was higher than the first planet (can't remember exactly). I found far more antimony far quicker on the lower % planet that I did on the first. How does that work?

Personally, I'm usually okay with the way mineral deposits appear.

I just tell myself that I'm going to keep at it until my SRV is nearly out of fuel and, by the time it is, I feel like I've usually collected at least a dozen of whatever I'm looking for.
Not sure if this is correct or not but I tend to find rare elements come in dribs and drabs and then you get a couple of big scores and then it's back to dribs and drabs.
As a result of that, once I've had a couple of big scores, I tend to call it a day immediately.

Conversely, it's the manufactured stuff that irritates me.
Doing Dav's Hope, for example, I'll regularly pick up heaps of conductive polymers and yet almost no conductive ceramics - despite the fact that CPs are supposed to be rarer than CCs and, allegedly, their drop-rate is the same at Dav's Hope.

And then there's the issue of "nested RNG" with regard to manufactured mat's at USSs.
Your first run-in with the RNG is whether or not the right sort of USS spawns at all.
Then you get another spin of the wheel to decide whether the appropriate USS actually spawns the mat's you're looking for.
And then there's another roll of the dice when it comes to deciding whether the engineer will create a useful upgrade with those mat's.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Like I said, some people seem to struggle, others don't. I have never had an FSD upgrade and been confused by the information being displayed, all I focus on is an increase in opt mass, secondary max fuel is just a bonus, any increase in module weight or power consumption is a negative. Not exactly astronautical engineering now is it?

It becomes one if your follow-up roll is a mere 0.1-0.2% ahead of existing ones. Or a -1.2% Optimal mass but a 1.8% Additional Fuel per jump. You accept it but lose 0.1LY instead of gaining anything.
Doesn't take astronautical Engineering to see that this is a very basic common-sense issue.
And it's not like that hasn't happened countless times already due to that very core issue - especially one which would be dirt easy to fix, making its intentional omission even more bizarre.

 

[777Driver]

It becomes one if your follow-up roll is a mere 0.1-0.2% ahead of existing ones. Or a -1.2% Optimal mass but a 1.8% Additional Fuel per jump. You accept it but lose 0.1LY instead of gaining anything.
Doesn't take astronautical Engineering to see that this is a very basic common-sense issue.
And it's not like that hasn't happened countless times already due to that very core issue - especially one which would be dirt easy to fix, making its intentional omission even more bizarre.

Why would anyone in their right mind accept optimal mass that is a reduction? Optimal mass is the primary factor, max fuel per jump is just a bonus.

Mate I completely understand where you are coming from, have the devs display jump range on the main page, however it really is a non issue if someone takes a few minutes to understand optimal mass.

Just as a side note, if I get an amazing grade-4 roll, I'll stick it in a less used ship and upgrade for that god roll grade 5 on a fresh FSD. It's a win win situation.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

It's the natural ones I have issue with. I needed zirconium and antimony. I found two planets with both mats. Antimony at 1.7 and Zirc at 2.8 I think it was. Other planet was 1.1 Antimony and Zirc was higher than the first planet (can't remember exactly). I found far more antimony far quicker on the lower % planet that I did on the first. How does that work?

Did you consider the body type?

As others have said, the total absence on the RNG screen of information showing the before-after statistics is one of the strangest omissions I've seen in ED.

Seems this would solve most of the confusion.