New Engineering system - a factual example

B1rdy

B1rdy
Stealthie said:
Absolutely opposed to the idea of any kind of "one upgrade a week" mechanic but that is the only thing that's going to stop people maxing out their upgrades in one go.
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That is what I wanted to say. It shows that the progression idea is just not working as intended.
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
Seems like the fanboys and apologists are losing the plot now trying to justify this crap. One weapon a week? What the holy hell are you people on?
 

GraXXoR

GraXXoR
Steed said:
The new system is objectively better for the first ship and it's core internals and shields:
Bulkheads, drives, powerplant, fsd, distributer, life support, sensors, shields

Old system = 288 mats
New system = 268.8 mats

That is better.

However, the new system takes more materials, and therefore time, for any subsequent G5 already done, particularly when you take duplicated weapons or modules into account.

Eg For a new player's first Cobra mk III with 4 MCs with special effects and 2 different utilities it's only a little worse:

Old system = 477 (288 + 36 + 36 + 54 + 21 + 21 + 21)
New system = 510.4 (268.8 + 33.6 + 33.6 + 43.6 + 43.6 + 43.6 + 43.6 )

But for each subsequent Cobra mk III (or equivalent):
Old system = 174 (72 + 9 + 9 + 21 + 21 + 21 + 21)
New system = 510.4 (the same as the first ship)

That is, for this example a second ship and beyond (see what I did there ;) ) the new system will require over 3 times the materials of the old system, and that ratio will get worse the more duplicated weapons, utilities, internals are used.

Whilst it will probably give a more reliable outcome it will be far more time consuming for a player's fleet, however you go about getting the materials (mat broker etc)


See the spoiler for the working. (Feel free to say if I've made any mistakes)

Sandro has stated (livestream last year) that under the new system each level will take an average of 2.8 rolls ( I had to laugh when it took them 5 last night ;) )

Old system material use, first ship:

Allowing for 3 grade 5 rolls it will take:
Grade 1: 3x1=3
Grade 2: 3x2=6
Grade 3: 3x3=9
Frade 4: 3x3=9
Grade 5: 3x3=9

A total of 36 mats per module.

Allowing for core internals and shields:
Bulkheads, drives, powerplant, fsd, distributer, life support, sensors, shields

Gives a material cost of for a base ship of 288 mats

Old system, second and subsequent ships:

Grade 5: 3x3=9

Allowing for core internals and shields:
Bulkheads, drives, powerplant, fsd, distributer, life support, sensors, shields

Gives a material cost of for a base ship of 72 mats

New system material use, first AND subsequent ships:
Grade 1: 1x2.8=2.8
Grade 2: 2x2.8=5.6
Grade 3: 3x2.8=8.4
Frade 4: 3x2.8=8.4
Grade 5: 3x2.8=8.4

A total of 33.6 mats per module.

Allowing for core internals and shields:
Bulkheads, drives, powerplant, fsd, distributer, life support, sensors, shields

Gives a material cost of for a base ship of 268.8 mats

(Each weapon would be 33.6+ ~10 mats for a special effect)

The first ship core modules will be faster to engineer to grade 5. Per module it's 36 (old) vs 33.6 mats (new).


For the core internals and shields it will be
Old system = 72 mats
New system = 268.8 mats

For the first module with a special effect at an engineer (eg weapons)
Old system = 54 mats (36 mats for module, +18 for special effect)
New system = ~43.6 (depends on special effect)

For subsequent upgrades with special effects available at the same engineer
Old system = 21 mats.
New system = ~43.6 (new, depends on special effect)

Without special effects modules take:
Old system = 36 mats then 9 for every subsequent module at the same engineer
New system = 33.6 for every module

My opinion
Pros: I like the more predictive system a LOT. I like the 'buying' of special effects rather than rep. I think everything else in this update from all 3 streams looks great and I'm looking forward to trying it out.
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Repped for supporting a post with numbers.
 

Shotgun2097

S
brilliantly put

Epicthetrumble said:
I'll just repost my post on the matter from the recap thread. Just to clarify, I am fairly casual about upgrades, I don't care about min-maxing, I just roll once or twice until I've got a decent roll.

---

I am a touch miffed about the decision to stick with the through-tier upgrading process. It reeks of artificially lengthening a process that is already fairly lengthy and not even all that rewarding (since power creep has made engineered modules the new baseline), and goes out of its way to screw people who operate multiple ships, or trade in ships frequently, like me. I have a mostly upgraded Anaconda, Python, Fer-de-Lance, DBX, Imperial Courier, Imperial Eagle and Sidewinder, plus am planning to acquire a Chieftain and Krait once they become available. My current crop have upgraded critical systems for my play style (drives, FSD, reactor, shield gen, boosters, plus between two and eight weapons, more if I am experimenting with builds). I am nowhere near being an extreme example, I have merely played casually since the Standard Beta and haven't even interacted with the engineers until after 2.2.03. I have around six hundred million in total assets to my name, mostly in ships, acquired by just messing around and doing whatever I felt like. Point is, I'm not by any means a hardcore player.


Upgrading that under the old system took me less than two hundred rolls in total (since I already have most of the engineers unlocked and levelling up with them can be done in a dozen or so rolls anyway. Under the new system, assuming the current statistical distribution of upgrades holds (average of four to six rolls per level, judging by the video) it would take me, assuming a perfect streak of god rolls, about a thousand upgrades, and more likely upwards of six thousand to achieve the same level of enhancement plus or minus a few hundred, and that's for partial system upgrades, not all-module upgrades, and not counting hull tank upgrades needed for fighting Thargoids or soloing wing mission NPCs. That means I'd be looking at an investment of between fifteen and thirty thousand units of materials, depending on an upgrade's exact requirements and the luck of the draw, not counting extra materials needed for trading, CGs, or the new tech broker, who draws from the same pool. And yes, I know my current modules will be transferred to the new system unchanged, but that's not the point, the point is comparing a bad system to an even worse one.


So tell me, how exactly is this fair to players who choose to, as the ever-so-obnoxious marketing materials put it, play their own way and blaze their own trail? There is only one group of players who benefit from this, the sort of people who, immediately upon starting a new Jameson simply grind passenger missions for twenty hours straight, park their rears in an Anaconda and never fly anything else, and then quit and complain about how there's no content. The kind of player most of us can't stand, in other words. The rest of us are having at the very least five times, and under real-world conditions closer to twenty-five times the amount of grind the engineers have up until now required forced upon us for no sane reason. The condescending response given by Mr Sammarco was the worst part. "People are afraid of change." Utter tosh, we're not afraid of the new system, we're disappointed by how infuriatingly stupid the new upgrading process is, smack in the middle of what is an otherwise flawless update.


I see two solutions to the issue:


Solution 1: ditch the through-tier upgrades, let us start at the highest unlocked tier, jack up resource prices to compensate. The highest unlocked tier is the only one anyone cares about anyway, and doubling prices would make acquiring upgrade materials more deliberate without forcing players to resort to material grinding to the exclusion of all other activities.


Solution 2: ditch the rolls. They are pointless in the new system anyway. Everyone knows what they're going to get, the only uncertainty is how long it's going to take to get there, making it indistinguishable from commuting through London at rush hour. Without the upgrade percentage uncertainty of the old system, the upgrade roll is reduced to nothing more than a randomly-allocated resource cost for a fixed-percentage upgrade. So get rid of it. Give each upgrade a fixed resource cost, plus our pick of additional effects for a further cost. If you want to keep controlled, minor uncertainty, well, we already have that in every other step of the engineering process - finding materials, unlocking engineers, doing missions for both, et cetera. Half of the upgrade's attributes are locked anyway (the negative stats), would it really hurt the game that much to lock in the other half as well? I really, really don't think it would.


There is no challenge to getting engineer upgrades, no test of skill, no obstacle to overcome by mastering the game's systems, they're hard to get because they're so obnoxiously obtuse and more padded than a Tolstoy novel in an insane asylum, and that's just terrible game design. You don't even need to be a designer to know that, you just need to play the game for longer than an hour at a time once a week while doing more than just bouncing off of station walls and crashing into landing pads. Rolling dice is at least compelling when the outcome is unknown, but when it is known, it's just an unnecessary time sink. So please, please change it, or at the very least reign in the number of rolls it takes to go up a grade. Three should be the maximum, not a rare-to-the-point-of-being-unheard-of minimum.
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answers all points i was lookin for regarding new engineeering. i play the same way. agree with every part of this ( i stumbled here after new engie queries)
 

Bob Lighthouse

Banned
Bob Lighthouse
Steed said:
Whilst it will probably give a more reliable outcome...
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No, it will definitely give a more reliable outcome.


...it will be far more time consuming for a player's fleet, however you go about getting the materials (mat broker etc)...
Click to expand...


Not true/non sequitur.

Getting mats is much quicker now due to the mat trader.
You don't need to search for each individual mat any longer.

I only look for G4-5 stuff now.
 

Boff'in

Boff'in
Confirmed, the new system costs more materials.
Round of applause.

can we now drop this.

But it's more mats, it's more grind, it's really inconvenient to make use go through 1-5 EVERY TIME

Really?

Is it SERIOUSLY more inconvenient?

I was grinding those g1-g4 materials in the older system ALL the same, and we all had to ignore those mats because we sat there frustrated that it wasn't a g5.
We grinded and ignored ridiculous amounts of materials g1-g5 materials that I could have been using for "something"
oh and wait that something could have been a series of negative rolls.

The new system is simpler, easier, more intuitive and more effective use of people hard work and all those mats Im just collecting for fun, are just transiently used in g5 or to level up super quickly into g5.

Have you seriously measured your inconvenience factor of a nights playing sessions?
(but it's more materials....you cry, you got your stats and excel charts).


I managed to sort out dirty drives for the majority of my fleet in the space of a weekend.
And not just drives, but shields, armour, sensors, power-distributers
And that included grandfathering and/or starting from scratch.

in comparison.

I spend the last 2 years (on and off) trying to get a decent dirty drive roll for just one ship (my adder).

please convince me that the new system is more of an inconvenience and waste of my time with this inescapable meaningless grind wall?
 
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