New Engineering system - a factual example

[The Chairmaker]

One thing to bare in mind that we will have to check tomorrow, is that while it will take more materials to upgrade a fleet to grade 5, the game changes be it those to the missions system which allows you to choose materials or money; the vastly increased data and materials cap; or the mission broker, will mean that items will naturally fill up pretty quickly.

A good example is combat zones. Blowing up a ship results in lots or materials dropping and data obtained from the scan. Currently due to the limited materials and data capacity, there is little worth picking these mats up. Going forward i can envisage me fitting a limpet controller and limpets into my FDL to get the mats quickly and efficiently, the data scans will of course fill up on their own.

The current system makes it almost disadvantageous to scan ships as this just fills up the data limit with low grade data that is of little use. Going forward scanning every NPC and player will have value, as at the very least you just visit a broker and swap the low grade data for some of the better stuff.

For me the aim of the new system is for the materials and data to just naturally fill up as you play the game. Every so often you then visit an engineer and modify what you can and also need.
It is not aimed at people who want a fleet god modded on day one.
The key for frontier though is if that is how the community at large will use engineers going forward. It maybe that the only people who would use engineers are the min maxers who demand day one god mod fleets. They will complain about having to work to get these mods. The community at large may just shrug their shoulders and be happy with the basic ship they have and just let engineers pass them by. In which case this work will have failed at its main aim of engagement of the bulk of the playerbase.

 

[Manticore]

Moderators are allowed to have opinions too, they're just not allowed to moderate on a topic they express an opinion on.

Bias taken care of.

That doesn't provide any confidence in the system of moderation.

On other topics? Possibly not a problem.

This topic?

All I've seen is a load of moaning and whining that actually started out on these boards even before the live stream had concluded.

People have strong opinions that's fine, but I haven't seen a whole lot of constructive feedback from some quarters. That includes some who chose to ignore the terms and conditions of use of this site and circumvent the obscenity filter in a thread title and OP.

A bit of diplomacy and direction from moderators considering the trolling around here would have been appreciated considering the reaction to this live stream.

As for the changes? I do't feel negative about them at all. I will try the beta and then, if constructive feedback is needed and appropriate, Ill do that.

 

[Cageman]

Another thread that is based on the old gameplay / options regarding engineers and comparing it to the new system, without counting in the new gameplay, and making predictions about the future... And... again, without TESTING it.

Totally pointless, at this time. BETA is where we can start to really discuss this. Any atempt to compare the two systems, before having true knowledge, is just a huge waste of time.

I just do not understand that grown up people are actually wasting their own time like this? Am I alone in thinking this?

 

[sgurr]

SNIP

As for the changes? I do't feel negative about them at all. I will try the beta and then, if constructive feedback is needed and appropriate, Ill do that.

There are channels for feeding back to the mods and FDev, go through them, this is not the thread for it.

See you in beta

 

[sgurr]

Another thread that is based on the old gameplay / options regarding engineers and comparing it to the new system, without counting in the new gameplay, and making predictions about the future... And... again, without TESTING it.

Totally pointless, at this time. BETA is where we can start to really discuss this. Any atempt to compare the two systems, before having true knowledge, is just a huge waste of time.

I just do not understand that grown up people are actually wasting their own time like this? Am I alone in thinking this?

Are you misunderstanding where I'm coming from?

I've presented facts as we've been given them and acknowledged they have to be tested in beta. Surely I can be a grown up and still do that

 

[Boff'in]

so you are comparing MATERIAL COLLECTION PROCESS from Horizons to 3.0

Current Engineering is Tripple RNG.

1: Material RNG
2: Basic Module RNG
3: Special effect RNG

Material RNG has been lessened by:
The Material storage has gone from 100 units to 12,000 units. (more grind? no, less jettisoning of materials during normal gameplay).
The material broker allows material conversion, so EVERY scoop of material, every rock blasted, every limpet (with new 3.0 filters on) means progress towards new equipment!
Planetary shaders are DRIVEN by the materials they represent, allowing you FROM ORBIT, see the patches of materials that will be more favourable in the planetary RNG process.




Basic Module RNG, has been reduced dramatically
So the original SOLID figures in the OP, which everyone is nodding head in agreement and shaking their head at the new system,
is politely putting it, , as it requires generous amounts of good rolls.
It was never one die which was numbered 1 to 6 it's was at least two dices going from minus 6 to positive 6.

I've blown your Optimistic material budget of 2.x engineers ALREADY by trying to get a decent roll just at grade 5 alone for my FSD and Performance Enhanced Thrusters. I'm not even counting the meh rolls between 1-4 (and I had an epically good roll at 4, which took me many rolls at grade 5 to beat with dirty engines.
and those grade five materials are REALLY hard to come by, unlike the NEW system when I can just trade for Cracked Industrial Firmware.
Instead of waiting, and testing, trying night after night attacking bases.
Now I can do a few planetary scan missions and just trade in the mass of common data for couple of CIS.




3: Special effect RNG
Yeah they just totally removed the RNG, which could even demote a god roll with RNG 2 (module engineering).
And as we saw on the live stream the purchased special effect STAYS with the blueprint through all the grades and rolls.

So the tripple RNG, has effectively just been lessened to one, the materials, And even that has been tweaked with systems and tools (filtering limpets, better planetary graphics) and promised gameplay with Mining and exploring which will have even more material searching tools.


So your conclusion is MORE GRIND?

my conclusion is Less wasted time, because it WILL take less time to get the module I want.
I can PLAN a nights activity to get materials, infact I don't even need to plan.
I can just PLAY the game, and not WAIT Literally half a week for a specific commodity to appear on a message board, or the right ROCK magically spawned after 2-3 hours of fruitless gameplay. I can just trade in my other materials for the one I want.

I don't need to even hold my breath as I roll the RNG at the engineer just incase the last 3 nights of hard work, waiting for that rock or ssc, was wasted because I got a negative roll, (even worse) a good roll, with a negative secondary effect, because in this NEW system I am GUARANTEED a better module.

 

[InlineSix]

Conversation with new player:

"Wow, great ship, what can it do"

*Explaining everything*

"Ah, so you say in 50 hours I have the money for that and I can finally do PvP"

*Explaining engineers and time needed*

"So I need 50 hours of stuff I don't want to do for the ship and an additional 250 hours for PvP fine tuning? Give me a minute"

*pause*

"Okay, that's 300 hours with about 15 hours per week I can spend on this game. That is roughly 20 weeks or 5 months until I can start PvP combat. I'll wait for star citizen then".

........... It's almost as if devs want people to quit after some time?

 

[Aashenfox]

Doesn't matter, if the materials broker is going ot give three to one for the grade below, materials collection is going ot be trivial. The new system could require ten times more mats and still be faster and 'cheaper' thanks to the mats broker.

I'll be able to trade 5 of my TONS of MEF for 15 SPF, and then those 15 SPF for 45(!) CIF. Materials are never going ot be a problem again.

 

[NeilF]

One thing to bare in mind that we will have to check tomorrow, is that while it will take more materials to upgrade a fleet to grade 5, the game changes be it those to the missions system which allows you to choose materials or money; the vastly increased data and materials cap; or the mission broker, will mean that items will naturally fill up pretty quickly.

A good example is combat zones. Blowing up a ship results in lots or materials dropping and data obtained from the scan. Currently due to the limited materials and data capacity, there is little worth picking these mats up. Going forward i can envisage me fitting a limpet controller and limpets into my FDL to get the mats quickly and efficiently, the data scans will of course fill up on their own.

The current system makes it almost disadvantageous to scan ships as this just fills up the data limit with low grade data that is of little use. Going forward scanning every NPC and player will have value, as at the very least you just visit a broker and swap the low grade data for some of the better stuff.

For me the aim of the new system is for the materials and data to just naturally fill up as you play the game. Every so often you then visit an engineer and modify what you can and also need.
It is not aimed at people who want a fleet god modded on day one.
The key for frontier though is if that is how the community at large will use engineers going forward. It maybe that the only people who would use engineers are the min maxers who demand day one god mod fleets. They will complain about having to work to get these mods. The community at large may just shrug their shoulders and be happy with the basic ship they have and just let engineers pass them by. In which case this work will have failed at its main aim of engagement of the bulk of the playerbase.

...and just imagine while docked anywhere, if you could simply hand in any materials you wish to any Engineer (who uses them) you have unlocked to in effect build up reputation/credit with them? ie: Instead of running spread sheets and having to fly to Engineer as part of a contrived faff when you think you've collected enough mats for X G1 rolls, X G2 rolls, X G3 rolls etc...

At some point in time, you realise you have a good balance/reputation with an Engineer (with all the mats you've given them), so then you fly off to him to use it upgrading modules!

Why isn't this whole thing more laid back, simple, and therefore more fun. Rather than an accounting job with spreadsheets?

 

[Aashenfox]

...and just imagine while docked anywhere, if you could simply hand in any materials you wish to any Engineer (who uses them) you have unlocked to in effect build up reputation/credit with them? ie: Instead of running spread sheets and having to fly to Engineer as part of a contrived faff when you think you've collected enough mats for X G1 rolls, X G2 rolls, X G3 rolls etc...

At some point in time, you realise you have a good balance/reputation with an Engineer (with all the mats you've given them), so then you fly off to him to use it upgrading modules!

Why isn't this whole thing more laid back, simple, and therefore more fun. Rather than an accounting job with spreadsheets?

Because mmos without math and high skill caps fail quickly, no successful mmo is without its grind. That's how smart and invested players get ahead.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Would you PLEASE shut up with the "facts" before a good amount of actual numbers numbers has been put into the game.

It's pathetic. You're pathetic. It's been said time and again that the numbers everyone is nod deducing in-depth knowledge from are nowhere near final, and yet here you are doing your stupid numerology based on nothing.

 

[Viking84]

My suggestion is to wait, until you like doing it now. Honestly, today I have been having a number of ideas that made me ROFL at the new system. It'll be WAY easier than people think. And I am starting to think it'll be way easier than Sandro thinks as well.

I like your optimism, but I can't remember a single thing being launched for Elite that turned out to be less grindy than initially feared...

Would you PLEASE shut up with the "facts" before a good amount of actual numbers numbers has been put into the game.

It's pathetic. You're pathetic. It's been said time and again that the numbers everyone is nod deducing in-depth knowledge from are nowhere near final, and yet here you are doing your stupid numerology based on nothing.

The devs have shown a clear description of how this will work. The one and only uncertainty is material spawn rates, if these have been significantly increased then that may compensate for the added G1 to G5 progression. Why should this not be debated? It's not like the Devs have a history of changing much after Beta?

 

[CMDR Carbo]

Conversation with new player:

"Wow, great ship, what can it do"

*Explaining everything*

"Ah, so you say in 50 hours I have the money for that and I can finally do PvP"

*Explaining engineers and time needed*

"So I need 50 hours of stuff I don't want to do for the ship and an additional 250 hours for PvP fine tuning? Give me a minute"

*pause*

"Okay, that's 300 hours with about 15 hours per week I can spend on this game. That is roughly 20 weeks or 5 months until I can start PvP combat. I'll wait for star citizen then".

........... It's almost as if devs want people to quit after some time?

Best post of the month.
+1

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I like your optimism, but I can't remember a single thing being launched for Elite that turned out to be less grindy than initially feared...



The devs have shown a clear description of how this will work. The one and only uncertainty is material spawn rates, if these have been significantly increased then that may compensate for the added G1 to G5 progression. Why should this not be debated? It's not like the Devs have a history of changing much after Beta?

If spawn rates are the same it will be very little difference in getting a good G5 module then what we allready do, it could actually be a lot easier.

Conversation with new player:

"Wow, great ship, what can it do"

*Explaining everything*

"Ah, so you say in 50 hours I have the money for that and I can finally do PvP"

*Explaining engineers and time needed*

"So I need 50 hours of stuff I don't want to do for the ship and an additional 250 hours for PvP fine tuning? Give me a minute"

*pause*

"Okay, that's 300 hours with about 15 hours per week I can spend on this game. That is roughly 20 weeks or 5 months until I can start PvP combat. I'll wait for star citizen then".

........... It's almost as if devs want people to quit after some time?

Well, unfortunatly that is what happens when you buy a predominantly PvE game and only want to do PvP.

 

[Aashenfox]

Would you PLEASE shut up with the "facts" before a good amount of actual numbers numbers has been put into the game.

It's pathetic. You're pathetic. It's been said time and again that the numbers everyone is nod deducing in-depth knowledge from are nowhere near final, and yet here you are doing your stupid numerology based on nothing.

Forgot your pills this morning? lol. 3 to 1 for materials trades is too much, and probably 2 to 1 is as well. How is it not valuable to point that out? I don't need to try a beta to know exactly how downgrading materials 3 to 1 will work. Believe it or not, it will mean that you get three materials of a lower grade for one of a higher grade! Whodathunkit!? I don't wanna annoy you I usually like your posts, but there is always value in theorizing, it speeds up the diagnostic process when the beta hits, as we will already have experiments in mind to try to confirm our hypotheses.

 

[Aashenfox]

Best post of the month.
+1

Each to his own I guess? Since it completely failed to incorporate the materials broker and the situation posited can't and won't happen.

/shrug

 

[Viking84]

If spawn rates are the same it will be very little difference in getting a good G5 module then what we allready do, it could actually be a lot easier.

I can see that being true for someone who would normally roll 10, 20, 30+ times for each G5 module. Personally though I never bothered with more than 2-3 rolls unless the results were absolutely terrible. Anything up towards the top 80-90% of the normal range was fine for me.

Doing that in the new system will be a royal pain in the backside. I will need to faff around with either collecting a whole host of materials I used to not care about, or I will have to visit god knows how many material traders located all over the place, and then roll my way through grades 1 to 4, before finally being allowed to do what I came for in the first place. Utter waste of time that adds precisely zero interesting gameplay.

 

[Shadowdancer]

there is always value in theorizing, it speeds up the diagnostic process when the beta hits, as we will already have experiments in mind to try to confirm our hypotheses.

There's a difference between theorising, then validating or invalidating your theories, and using that to supply criticism founded in reality, and whatever the hell is going on at the moment. It's just plain dumb. The numbers are nowhere near final, Sandro said that for every single screen they navigated through during the few minutes that they showed the stuff. Today in a week would be a good time to come up with some quality analysis of the changes.

 

[Viking84]

There's a difference between theorising, then validating or invalidating your theories, and using that to supply criticism founded in reality, and whatever the hell is going on at the moment. It's just plain dumb. The numbers are nowhere near final, Sandro said that for every single screen they navigated through during the few minutes that they showed the stuff. Today in a week would be a good time to come up with some quality analysis of the changes.

So when should we comment then? After Beta launches? A week into Beta? Things will be no more final at that point. After Beta is concluded? Once the final release is out? Too late then isn't it...

 

[Ydiss]

To help put this analysis into context, I put some analysis together on the mats required to actually complete some of the G5 blueprints, from G1 through to G5.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/401713-G1-to-G5-Analysis-on-quot-The-added-grind-quot

Those added materials aren't going to take much time to gather at all. In some cases, it'll be virtually the same time. In some cases, less (trading up). Where it is longer (some outlying materials exist), it's either trivial (e.g. passive scans, grid resistors), or only a relatively low time addition (e.g. dropping into USS whilst hunting Convoys, dropping into encoded emissions whilst hunting high grade emissions).

I encourage anyone who thinks the numbers in this thread are really bad to do the same as I did. Go look for yourself on Inara... Are any of the blueprints you want to do really going to take you longer? I think they won't. Because I think FD designed the blueprint chains this way initially.