Need help locating mat's

[Stealthie]

I like the new system. It's more realistic and you get better at it over time. It's especially great for the exobiology loop. I find it quite immersive.

I can still find all the mats I need. Those mesosiderites and metallic meteors etc. matter again, too. Don't even need geologicals.

Get with the new program I say

See, I can't agree with any of that.

It's not "realistic" that mineral deposits are strewn randomly around a planet's surface.
We have mines specifically because there are areas where various minerals are found in high concentrations.

And then we've got our ship's sensors, which are (apparently) capable of telling us precisely how many different minerals a planet has but aren't willing to tell us where they are - even though they must know or they wouldn't be able to give us the existing data.
As these things go, that's about as "gamey" as it gets, for me.

I honestly haven't even looked at "exobiology" in EDO because I've started a new CMDR and I'm busy building spaceships.
What I do know is that building ships takes a lot of mat's and If I have to drive around a planet's surface, finding them one at a time, like we used to have to years ago, I'm done with ED.

I'm all for adding modules to give ships additional capabilities and, as a result, allow me to build more specialised ships.
If FDev were to create mat' hotspots (either by reinstating geo/bio POIs or via some new feature) and then give me some kind of "mining sensor" module, which could locate them, I'd quite happily go for that.

I'm just NOT going to go back to driving around a planet's surface, for hours on end, shooting at rocks one at a time though.

 

[varonica]

What makes you say that showing Geo/Bio POIs was an "interim solution"?

I'll grant you that the sites already existed but FDev gave us a new FSS and a new DSS which gave us the ability to pinpoint the location of things within a system - including Geo/Bio sites.

Are you REALLY saying that you prefer the idea of flying/driving around, attempting to find these sites by eye, rather than having the ability to navigate to them?

I mean, I guess it might give you a feeling of satisfaction to find them but, in terms of using for mat' gathering, it's just a garbage-tier timesink.

Because we always knew the new planetary tech was coming and that FDEV always intended to place features on the planets based on the underlying geology, that's what they told us.

As I said you just have to learn how to find them, I can drop down onto geo sites first time most times because you can tell by the geology where they should be. Fact is the POI system was ludicrously silly, at time you would have bodies with a single volcanic site and that was silly. Yes even if it makes things harder I would prefer that FDEV attempted to make a realistic system as opposed to an "I win" button.

Not everything is meant to be easy, but in fact it is indeed quite easy as long as you learn how to read the planet geology.

 

[varonica]

See, I can't agree with any of that.

It's not "realistic" that mineral deposits are strewn randomly around a planet's surface.
We have mines specifically because there are areas where various minerals are found in high concentrations.

Meteorites are indeed randomly strewn, but volcanic sites aren't randomly placed, they are placed according to the underlying geology.

And then we've got our ship's sensors, which are (apparently) capable of telling us precisely how many different minerals a planet has but aren't willing to tell us where they are - even though they must know or they wouldn't be able to give us the existing data.
As these things go, that's about as "gamey" as it gets, for me.

The ship sensors do in fact tell you where they are using a location map, you know that blue part, there be volcanism! However in an area that may be hundreds of square kilometers of volcanic activity it would seen silly to try and pinpoint each and every volcanic feature, you would end up with tens of thousands of POI markers.

 

[Stealthie]

The ship sensors do in fact tell you where they are using a location map, you know that blue part, there be volcanism! However in an area that may be hundreds of square kilometers of volcanic activity it would seen silly to try and pinpoint each and every volcanic feature, you would end up with tens of thousands of POI markers.

So, when a company like Esso or Shell hires geologists, they go and do their surveys and then they give the company a map with a gigantic area marked in blue and say "your gas/oil/coal is somewhere in there"?

That's not how it works.

Granted, the depiction of hotspots as a cluster of things is a bit crude but, in the absence of any kind of subsurface mining mechanic, it's about as good as can be expected.

Also, it's a bit of a straw-man to suggest that it's "silly to try and pinpoint each and every volcanic feature".
Simple fact is that if your sensors can tell you how many types of volcanic feature a planet has, they must've scanned all those thousands of features.
But I digress.
I'm not suggesting sensors should pinpoint every volcanic feature.
I'm suggesting they should continue to pinpoint large deposits - as they have done since we got the FSS and DSS.

 

[Codger]

Well, sorry you're unhappy. I'm having a great time, so all I can do is shrug, I guess.

 

[FrogsFriend]

Just fly to any blue highlighted area, look out the window and you'll find them.

 

[Stealthie]

Just fly to any blue highlighted area, look out the window and you'll find them.

Find what?

A single fumerole or meteorite?
Do the clusters of fumeroles/geysers etc (as found at Geo' POIs) still exist?

According to EDDB, Tethys, in Sol, now has the highest concentration of Selenium, at 3.8%
The vast majority of the surface is, apparently (although I might be mistaken) "where I can find Selenium".
I spent 3 hours trundling around, in my SRV and found several tier 1 mat's and a couple of tier 2 mat's.
I did see a couple of lone geysers and metallic meteorites but they, too, only yielded low-tier mat's.

By contrast, after logging back into EDH, I went to Wolf 587 4ea, looked at a couple of Geo' POIs from orbit, until I found one with decent terrain, landed and collected 24 lumps of Selenium, 12 lumps of Ruthenium and a variety of low-tier stuff in the half-hour it takes to pillage one of the POIs.
Overall, the trip took just over an hour, which I think is a reasonable amount of time to collect mat's for one or two mod's - especially since you are almost guaranteed a result due to the minimal application of RNG in the process.

Now, if similar results can be achieved in EDO, as a result of deductive reasoning rather than blind luck and/or simply going to a known-location, I'll be happy to be shown how to do it.

 

[Florenus]

Previously you had geological and biological POI, so all you needed to do was to land there.
Now we have a reason to actually explore some of the planet to find those things. It's a good change imo.

I'm not sure about material distribution or amounts you can get from a single geological spot - i've not needed to gather raw mats in a long time, so I haven't done this in Odyssey - so maybe this is something that needs closer examination, but I like general principle of the new system.

 

[Sysmon]

What makes you say that showing Geo/Bio POIs was an "interim solution"?

I'll grant you that the sites already existed but FDev gave us a new FSS and a new DSS which gave us the ability to pinpoint the location of things within a system - including Geo/Bio sites.

Are you REALLY saying that you prefer the idea of flying/driving around, attempting to find these sites by eye, rather than having the ability to navigate to them?

I mean, I guess it might give you a feeling of satisfaction to find them but, in terms of using for mat' gathering, it's just a garbage-tier timesink.

Yes. If the features are distributed in a logical manner. They are now. So the system works, if simplistically so. The Horizons version was just silly in comparison: We went from having to spend hours and days searching for them to having a handful pointed out to us on each planet, with big blue markers.

S

 

[Codger]

Now, if similar results can be achieved in EDO, as a result of deductive reasoning rather than blind luck and/or simply going to a known-location, I'll be happy to be shown how to do it.

I don't think that's the case, though. They've redesigned things. If all you care about is mat gathering, then it's probably a negative design decision on FDEV's part, because it's going to take longer. But mat gathering is just one part of the equation. The new design enhances the overall planetary experience, and makes exploration and exobiology more interesting (imo).

I could make a pretty long list of design decisions FDEV has made that I disagree with. This one, I like.

 

[Drelthar]

Yeah, seems like it's missing an intermediary scanning element.

They went from too much instant info, back to too little.

Mostly because the heat map is pretty bad as they changed it from having levels of heat to just being binary.

Would be good if you could orbit and get more info by being closer in.

 

[Stealthie]

I don't think that's the case, though. They've redesigned things. If all you care about is mat gathering, then it's probably a negative design decision on FDEV's part, because it's going to take longer. But mat gathering is just one part of the equation. The new design enhances the overall planetary experience, and makes exploration and exobiology more interesting (imo).

I could make a pretty long list of design decisions FDEV has made that I disagree with. This one, I like.

I mentioned this before, although I didn't really go anywhere with it.

I genuinely don't have a clue what's involved with "exobiology" in ED, or what makes it fun and challenging.
All I know is what I've heard from listening to a couple of podcasts.
I guess that, if you're having your fun by searching planets for the "stuff" they have, it'd probably be a bit of a buzzkill if every planet had POIs you could navigate down to in order to find that stuff.

Trouble is, I guess, that the stuff FDev are now using as objectives in a "treasure hunt" is the same stuff players need for engineering - on an almost industrial scale.

On my original account, I was pretty much finished with engineering completely.
I have 2 fleets of 30-odd ships and they're all G5-engineered.
Even my alt-account, even though I only have a couple of ships, had enough mat's that it's taken me until now to discover this.

If you're an "established" player, who's just hunting mat's for engineering the odd module every so often, you're probably not going to be too concerned about the new system.
For somebody who's still in the process of building ships, or somebody who gets their jollies from building new ships, the new system is (as far as I can see) a really, really bad change.


Just to put things in perspective, I've just gained enough fed' rank to unlock the Corvette so I've blown 75% of my alt-account's credits on buying and outfitting one.
I've spent today gathering enough mat's to complete a G5 mod' to it's FSD and make a G4 mod' to it's thrusters.
Doing that (in Horizons) was fairly enjoyable and was a fairly "organic" process, although the fact that I've already made the effort to bookmark sources of mat's (which any player can do with a bit of savvy) means that success is assured.

That's just one completed module (maybe closer to one and a half) after a day of play, though.
There's 30 modules on my Corvette which I want to engineer so, playing a couple of hours a night and weekends, it's probably going to take me a month to finish the build.
In Horizons.
Doing stuff that I consider to yield a reasonable reward for the amount of time I invest.


If Odyssey is significantly worse than that, that's just a show-stopper.
I get my jollies from building ships and if it's going to take me more than a month to build one, ED is no longer the game for me.

Seems like what FDev need to do is find a way to separate the process of engineering from any of the other new stuff they've put into Odyssey, either by creating new sources of mat's which players can collect for engineering or by revising the stuff needed for engineering so it doesn't overlap with any other activity.

Fundamentally, what they need to be looking at is how long it takes to complete the engineering of a module, in EDH, and then come up with a system that can either allow for similar achievements in Odyssey or, if they feel inclined, improve on them.

I spent 2 years driving around planet surfaces in an SRV, looking for mat's and it was, by far, the lousiest thing I've ever done in ED.
If FDev want that to become a thing again, I'm out.

Don't get me wrong.
I realise all this "doom" is contingent on the new system being as lousy as it appears to me.
If it isn't - if it's possible to reliably collect 20-odd of a specific high tier mat in an hour - then I'll live with it.
If doing that involves simply trundling around planet surfaces in an SRV for an hour, waiting for the RNG to do it's thing, I won't enjoy it but I'll live with it.

 

[Codger]

Seems like what FDev need to do is find a way to separate the process of engineering from any of the other new stuff they've put into Odyssey, either by creating new sources of mat's which players can collect for engineering or by revising the stuff needed for engineering so it doesn't overlap with any other activity.

Well yeah, they need to fix Engineering so it isn't so grindy. And there is a thread right now where they are asking for feedback on that.

Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering

Greetings Commanders Now that Update 8 for Odyssey is live, we'd like to reignite the series of balancing changes that started before Odyssey's release. Now, it's time to turn our attention to ship Engineering. We recognise there has been significant feedback for on-foot Engineering too, but...

forums.frontier.co.uk

If they fix the underlying problems, then we'll all be much happier.

 

[Stealthie]

Yeah, seems like it's missing an intermediary scanning element.

They went from too much instant info, back to too little.

Mostly because the heat map is pretty bad as they changed it from having levels of heat to just being binary.

Would be good if you could orbit and get more info by being closer in.

That's the thing.

People are calling the mechanic a "heat map" but what we have, in EDO, isn't a heat map.

By way of analogy, it's kind of like having a "heat map" of Britain that just.... painted almost the entire country in blue to indicate where human-beings were present.
That isn't how a heat-map works, though.
A heat map uses different colours to denote density as well as presence of a thing.

When I went to Tethys to look for Selenium, the entire planet was just completely coloured blue aside from some hilltops.
That means that, based on the "heat map" ED uses, it's telling me there's around 1.3 million square miles of terrain which is all just as likely to yield Selenium as anywhere else.

 

[Sysmon]

I mentioned this before, although I didn't really go anywhere with it.

I genuinely don't have a clue what's involved with "exobiology" in ED, or what makes it fun and challenging.
All I know is what I've heard from listening to a couple of podcasts.
I guess that, if you're having your fun by searching planets for the "stuff" they have, it'd probably be a bit of a buzzkill if every planet had POIs you could navigate down to in order to find that stuff.

Trouble is, I guess, that the stuff FDev are now using as objectives in a "treasure hunt" is the same stuff players need for engineering - on an almost industrial scale.

On my original account, I was pretty much finished with engineering completely.
I have 2 fleets of 30-odd ships and they're all G5-engineered.
Even my alt-account, even though I only have a couple of ships, had enough mat's that it's taken me until now to discover this.

If you're an "established" player, who's just hunting mat's for engineering the odd module every so often, you're probably not going to be too concerned about the new system.
For somebody who's still in the process of building ships, or somebody who gets their jollies from building new ships, the new system is (as far as I can see) a really, really bad change.


Just to put things in perspective, I've just gained enough fed' rank to unlock the Corvette so I've blown 75% of my alt-account's credits on buying and outfitting one.
I've spent today gathering enough mat's to complete a G5 mod' to it's FSD and make a G4 mod' to it's thrusters.
Doing that (in Horizons) was fairly enjoyable and was a fairly "organic" process, although the fact that I've already made the effort to bookmark sources of mat's (which any player can do with a bit of savvy) means that success is assured.

That's just one completed module (maybe closer to one and a half) after a day of play, though.
There's 30 modules on my Corvette which I want to engineer so, playing a couple of hours a night and weekends, it's probably going to take me a month to finish the build.
In Horizons.
Doing stuff that I consider to yield a reasonable reward for the amount of time I invest.


If Odyssey is significantly worse than that, that's just a show-stopper.
I get my jollies from building ships and if it's going to take me more than a month to build one, ED is no longer the game for me.

Seems like what FDev need to do is find a way to separate the process of engineering from any of the other new stuff they've put into Odyssey, either by creating new sources of mat's which players can collect for engineering or by revising the stuff needed for engineering so it doesn't overlap with any other activity.

Fundamentally, what they need to be looking at is how long it takes to complete the engineering of a module, in EDH, and then come up with a system that can either allow for similar achievements in Odyssey or, if they feel inclined, improve on them.

I spent 2 years driving around planet surfaces in an SRV, looking for mat's and it was, by far, the lousiest thing I've ever done in ED.
If FDev want that to become a thing again, I'm out.

Don't get me wrong.
I realise all this "doom" is contingent on the new system being as lousy as it appears to me.
If it isn't - if it's possible to reliably collect 20-odd of a specific high tier mat in an hour - then I'll live with it.
If doing that involves simply trundling around planet surfaces in an SRV for an hour, waiting for the RNG to do it's thing, I won't enjoy it but I'll live with it.

That's the odd thing about Odyssey surface stuff:

The stuff that has received a lot of work and looks absolutely stunning, by showing a meaningful connection between volcanic feature and landforms - as well as meaningful landforms - have very little return on interaction and is the bit that has most of the bugs. The overlays we have were simple during alpha and have been watered down to near-meaninglessness in the launch (beta) version.

The stuff we do get some new interaction with, the fauna, looks like a simple overlay on the Odyssey PoI system with some very simple elements that is hardly worth calling game-play elements. It is like someone at FD got excited about yet another game-app for phones and decided to lift elements of it into ED.

That being said, if one drives around shooting rocks and scans the occasional fumarole or two, the materials bins take care of themselves. I haven't tried hunting directly for these in ages. Like anything in ED: Going for the grind = going for boredom really fast.

S

 

[Stealthie]

Well yeah, they need to fix Engineering so it isn't so grindy. And there is a thread right now where they are asking for feedback on that.

Focused Feedback - Balancing Ship Engineering & Material Gathering

Greetings Commanders Now that Update 8 for Odyssey is live, we'd like to reignite the series of balancing changes that started before Odyssey's release. Now, it's time to turn our attention to ship Engineering. We recognise there has been significant feedback for on-foot Engineering too, but...

forums.frontier.co.uk

If they fix the underlying problems, then we'll all be much happier.

Uhuh.

I am, genuinely, terrified to see what FDev do to "fix" this.
I fear that, at best, they'll render engineering utterly meaningless in the same way they've done with credits or, at worst, it'll cause me to quit playing ED.

I kind of have the same feeling I had before FCs were released, where players were absolutely hammering mining because they were terrified it'd get nerfed before they had the credits to bankroll an FC.
Now, I have the feeling that people (like me) will be deliberately hammering the Horizons server to get as many ships built as possible before the Odyssey planet tech becomes the only game in town.

That's not a healthy attitude to be provoking in players of what's supposed to be entertainment.

For me, what FDev need to do is get a bunch of players, follow along with them as they build ships and take a heap of notes regarding stuff like how long it takes to collect mat's for each mod', how diverse the gameplay is, how much of it is "organic" and how much of it is arbitrary (such as visiting the Jameson crash site for scans etc) and then go away and find ways to match, or improve upon, the current game-loops.

I can only speak for myself but I don't really care how I obtain mat's but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to reliably collect enough mat's for a single mod' in about an hour and if they can make that enjoyable as well, I'll be happy.

 

[Drelthar]

I mentioned this before, although I didn't really go anywhere with it.

I genuinely don't have a clue what's involved with "exobiology" in ED, or what makes it fun and challenging.
All I know is what I've heard from listening to a couple of podcasts.
I guess that, if you're having your fun by searching planets for the "stuff" they have, it'd probably be a bit of a buzzkill if every planet had POIs you could navigate down to in order to find that stuff.

Trouble is, I guess, that the stuff FDev are now using as objectives in a "treasure hunt" is the same stuff players need for engineering - on an almost industrial scale.

On my original account, I was pretty much finished with engineering completely.
I have 2 fleets of 30-odd ships and they're all G5-engineered.
Even my alt-account, even though I only have a couple of ships, had enough mat's that it's taken me until now to discover this.

If you're an "established" player, who's just hunting mat's for engineering the odd module every so often, you're probably not going to be too concerned about the new system.
For somebody who's still in the process of building ships, or somebody who gets their jollies from building new ships, the new system is (as far as I can see) a really, really bad change.


Just to put things in perspective, I've just gained enough fed' rank to unlock the Corvette so I've blown 75% of my alt-account's credits on buying and outfitting one.
I've spent today gathering enough mat's to complete a G5 mod' to it's FSD and make a G4 mod' to it's thrusters.
Doing that (in Horizons) was fairly enjoyable and was a fairly "organic" process, although the fact that I've already made the effort to bookmark sources of mat's (which any player can do with a bit of savvy) means that success is assured.

That's just one completed module (maybe closer to one and a half) after a day of play, though.
There's 30 modules on my Corvette which I want to engineer so, playing a couple of hours a night and weekends, it's probably going to take me a month to finish the build.
In Horizons.
Doing stuff that I consider to yield a reasonable reward for the amount of time I invest.


If Odyssey is significantly worse than that, that's just a show-stopper.
I get my jollies from building ships and if it's going to take me more than a month to build one, ED is no longer the game for me.

Seems like what FDev need to do is find a way to separate the process of engineering from any of the other new stuff they've put into Odyssey, either by creating new sources of mat's which players can collect for engineering or by revising the stuff needed for engineering so it doesn't overlap with any other activity.

Fundamentally, what they need to be looking at is how long it takes to complete the engineering of a module, in EDH, and then come up with a system that can either allow for similar achievements in Odyssey or, if they feel inclined, improve on them.

I spent 2 years driving around planet surfaces in an SRV, looking for mat's and it was, by far, the lousiest thing I've ever done in ED.
If FDev want that to become a thing again, I'm out.

Don't get me wrong.
I realise all this "doom" is contingent on the new system being as lousy as it appears to me.
If it isn't - if it's possible to reliably collect 20-odd of a specific high tier mat in an hour - then I'll live with it.
If doing that involves simply trundling around planet surfaces in an SRV for an hour, waiting for the RNG to do it's thing, I won't enjoy it but I'll live with it.

There just needs to be other decent ways to get those raw materials.

Adding it to mining was decent - but is... not great.

You should be able to get them from derelict ships, megaships, and caches of materials - so you don't have to do the surface searching thing.

 

[Stealthie]

That being said, if one drives around shooting rocks and scans the occasional fumarole or two, the materials bins take care of themselves. I haven't tried hunting directly for these in ages. Like anything in ED: Going for the grind = going for boredom really fast.

S

See, that's exactly how I felt, until I realised how things currently seem to be in Odyssey.

If you already have the ships you want, and you're busy doing other stuff, you're probably not even going to notice the changes and, if you're lucky, you might even have enough mat's for one or two ships should you feel like building one.

It's all very well saying "It's up to you if you decide to grind XXX" but, thing is, it's just human nature to try and optimise whatever you're doing.
If it wasn't, we'd still be living in mud huts instead of building skyscrapers and space-stations.

Again, I can only speak for myself but if I choose to "grind" something in ED then it'll be because I know what I hope to achieve, I know what I need to do to achieve it and I'm okay with the level of effort and repetition required.
There's a big difference between a "grind" that will reliably yield results in a predictable timeframe and one that's open-ended and will take lord-knows how long before you achieve an objective.

 

[Sysmon]

See, that's exactly how I felt, until I realised how things currently seem to be in Odyssey.

If you already have the ships you want, and you're busy doing other stuff, you're probably not even going to notice the changes and, if you're lucky, you might even have enough mat's for one or two ships should you feel like building one.

It's all very well saying "It's up to you if you decide to grind XXX" but, thing is, it's just human nature to try and optimise whatever you're doing.
If it wasn't, we'd still be living in mud huts instead of building skyscrapers and space-stations.

Again, I can only speak for myself but if I choose to "grind" something in ED then it'll be because I know what I hope to achieve, I know what I need to do to achieve it and I'm okay with the level of effort and repetition required.
There's a big difference between a "grind" that will reliably yield results in a predictable timeframe and one that's open-ended and will take lord-knows how long before you achieve an objective.

That's why grinding should be at least a little bit interesting. It's impossible to have an MMO or RPG or whatever without grind or some other sort of time-consumer, or people will simply be done and leave quite quickly. They don't do so in the case of ED(O), so FD is doing something right. But the grind mechanics, so to speak, are very lacking.

I'm perfectly happy to go out hunting for whatever I'm missing (usually arsenic and polonium), and I don't mind spending time on it. I just like to know that there is a way to optimise the process without abusing game mechanics. If that means I have to be a little bit smart about my process, just the better. However, if there is no indication I'm on the right track, I won't like it. Even in my professional life in mineral exploration, there is usually signs when we are getting close to what we are looking for. In ED, it has long seemed rather either it is there or not there, and not much difference, if any, between those extremes.

S

 

[Stealthie]

That's why grinding should be at least a little bit interesting. It's impossible to have an MMO or RPG or whatever without grind or some other sort of time-consumer, or people will simply be done and leave quite quickly. They don't do so in the case of ED(O), so FD is doing something right. But the grind mechanics, so to speak, are very lacking.

I'm perfectly happy to go out hunting for whatever I'm missing (usually arsenic and polonium), and I don't mind spending time on it. I just like to know that there is a way to optimise the process without abusing game mechanics. If that means I have to be a little bit smart about my process, just the better. However, if there is no indication I'm on the right track, I won't like it. Even in my professional life in mineral exploration, there is usually signs when we are getting close to what we are looking for. In ED, it has long seemed rather either it is there or not there, and not much difference, if any, between those extremes.

S

That's pretty-much the best I could hope for in ED.

If FDev decided to, basically, abandon the current methods of gathering raw mat's entirelyre (or, perhaps, leave them as a "fallback" method, if a player is desperate) and replace them with something else I'd be fine with that.

I'm also fine with it taking time to gather mat's.
I don't really mind how long it takes (within reason) but success needs to be assured, rather than being left to the whim of an RNG, and efficiency should be predicated on knowledge and skill.

I'd like to think FDev can manage that but they seem to have a habit of making things more laborious and convoluted whenever they try to "revise" them.