New way to find engineering materials

Duel Forever

D
At the moment, certain missions will pay out engineering materials which is great. The trouble is, it's a dice roll whether you'll find a mission that pays out the material you need in a useful quantity.

A much easier way to have people earn mats without just directly buying them would be the ability to ask an NPC (or pay them an amount relative to the rarity and quantity of what you're looking for) if they know where to find [x] material. At which point the NPC will reply with "I've heard this place has them but they might not give them up easily" or something. It sends you to a settlement, hideout, abandoned settlement, trade route, crash site, etc. where you can steal or otherwise earn what your looking for.

This adds an additional and more direct way to find what you need without allowing you to outright buy the mats. Also makes on foot stuff more useful. These missions could be super tough too, adding a bit of danger rather than elite.

OR a way to just ask a mission provider to pay a certain material. Instead of asking for more of something you don't need, you can ask directly for something you need.
 
Last edited:

Jmanis

Jmanis
Duel Forever said:
At the moment, certain missions will pay out engineering materials which is great. The trouble is, it's a dice roll whether you'll find a mission that pays out the material you need in a useful quantity.

A much easier way to have people earn mats without just directly buying them would be the ability to ask an NPC (or pay them an amount relative to the rarity and quantity of what you're looking for) if they know where to find [x] material. At which point the NPC will reply with "I've heard this place has them but they might not give them up easily" or something. It sends you to a settlement, hideout, abandoned settlement, trade route, crash site, etc. where you can steal or otherwise earn what your looking for.

This adds an additional and more direct way to find what you need without allowing you to outright buy the mats. Also makes on foot stuff more useful. These missions could be super tough too, adding a bit of danger rather than elite.

OR a way to just ask a mission provider to pay a certain material. Instead of asking for more of something you don't need, you can ask directly for something you need.
Click to expand...
There's an untapped opportunity for developing NPCs into Tier 2/3 flavours with this sort of thing, and expanding into a "Reputation Store" for rumors and such, or identifying other contacts in a small radius of neighbouring systems who could tell you where a particular thing could be found, spawning a relevant mission USS with something to do there.

Functionally, it's just missions, in practice it's 'asking for tip-offs/rumours' at the cost of rep, for a good reward. Definitely a reasonable interaction with such NPCs.
 

Duel Forever

D
Jmanis said:
There's an untapped opportunity for developing NPCs into Tier 2/3 flavours with this sort of thing, and expanding into a "Reputation Store" for rumors and such, or identifying other contacts in a small radius of neighbouring systems who could tell you where a particular thing could be found, spawning a relevant mission USS with something to do there.

Functionally, it's just missions, in practice it's 'asking for tip-offs/rumours' at the cost of rep, for a good reward. Definitely a reasonable interaction with such NPCs.
Click to expand...
Indeed. Also, this fixes the problem where you spend more time finding out where to find what you need than actually finding/earning what you need. Perfect for people who love the game and want to bring other players in but also have lives.
 

Duel Forever

D
DjVortex said:
Well, if you only need a particular material, you can get it from a material trader. Which kind of would make this kind of mission a bit moot (unless you just want to do it for the experience).
Click to expand...
Yeah absolutely. The thing I don't love about the trader is that it's super annoying to keep track of what you do and don't need so you run the risk of trading something that you'll need later. And the traders don't even carry all of the materials that I know of.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
DjVortex said:
Well, if you only need a particular material, you can get it from a material trader. Which kind of would make this kind of mission a bit moot (unless you just want to do it for the experience).
Click to expand...
I think they'd still have relevance. What I think the OP is talking about is a non-repeatable mission to get a small handful of materials of a specific type. Presumably, you'd only get one of these at a time... as such it would still be much slower than, say, simple incidental collection of material rewards from missions, or <your favourite crystal shard site>. And end of the day, people are still going to get full bins that they want to cross/down-trade to make room for future rewards.

So, material traders would still have relevance in that instance.

Edit: by non-repeatable, i mean no logoffski tricks to regenerate the uss a-la HGSS
 
Last edited:

Jack Winter

Jack Winter
Personally I think letting the player haggle for the mission reward would be a good move. Like that the players that are in a hurry and/or looking for some special material might find it more easily.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
SteveWW57 said:
But some offer PRs anyway. Just gotta find the right contact.

Steve
Click to expand...
smoller taxidermy fox.jpg
 

HRDiagram

HRDiagram
Factabulous said:
They got so close with the foot NPCs.

Would you be interested in 10 Evacuation Plans to do this mission?
No - but if you could have offered me Power Regulators ...
Click to expand...
What we got instead are priceless conversations like:

NPC: Pssst! Can I interest you with some dodgy business?
CMDR: Sure, what's the reward
NPC: 2 Whatevers
CMDR: You can do better, I need 5
[Dice roll]
NPC: No, that's too much, 2 or nothing.
CMDR: Then I'm not interested
NPC: You don't know what you're missing!
🤦🏻‍♂️
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
Factabulous said:
They got so close with the foot NPCs.

Would you be interested in 10 Evacuation Plans to do this mission?
No - but if you could have offered me Power Regulators ...
Click to expand...
My favorite part of the negotiation process is when I see they offer me a few of something I want, so I roll the dice and succeed, but the option goes away entirely. I imagine they're playing hardball when that happens. 😄
 

Cmdr Alphonso Dementia

Cmdr Alphonso Dementia
Duel Forever said:
The thing I don't love about the trader is that it's super annoying to keep track of what you do and don't need so you run the risk of trading something that you'll need later.
Click to expand...
Take a look at Elite Dangerous Material Helper. It keeps track of that for you! A bit of a learning curve, but well worth the time...

github.com

Releases · jixxed/ed-odyssey-materials-helper

Elite Dangerous Odyssey Materials Helper. Contribute to jixxed/ed-odyssey-materials-helper development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
 

Sandman73

Sandman73
Jmanis said:
I think they'd still have relevance. What I think the OP is talking about is a non-repeatable mission to get a small handful of materials of a specific type. Presumably, you'd only get one of these at a time... as such it would still be much slower than, say, simple incidental collection of material rewards from missions, or <your favourite crystal shard site>. And end of the day, people are still going to get full bins that they want to cross/down-trade to make room for future rewards.

So, material traders would still have relevance in that instance.

Edit: by non-repeatable, i mean no logoffski tricks to regenerate the uss a-la HGSS
Click to expand...
I actually would do the logoffsky trick because the reward of 2 to 5 mats per mission is ridiculously arduous. More reward for doing a logoff= more mats time investment. Win! Faster progress to upgrade and get back to ACTUALY playing the game. Wonderful!
Grinding doing arduous task to get minimal rewards NOT FUN!
 

Ned Flandalorian

N
metatheurgist said:
My favorite part of the negotiation process is when I see they offer me a few of something I want, so I roll the dice and succeed, but the option goes away entirely. I imagine they're playing hardball when that happens. 😄
Click to expand...
Yes, despite this being "fixed" in the update notes it's still a shell game - NPC increases their offer to 5 manufacturing instructions, so you do the mission and come back to find they're now offering two identical credit rewards instead...
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Sandman73 said:
I actually would do the logoffsky trick because the reward of 2 to 5 mats per mission is ridiculously arduous. More reward for doing a logoff= more mats time investment. Win! Faster progress to upgrade and get back to ACTUALY playing the game. Wonderful!
Grinding doing arduous task to get minimal rewards NOT FUN!
Click to expand...
Ah yes, the old "I don't want to play the game's activities because they're not fun, so instead I'm going to grind the materials for engineering so I can do the exact same activities?"

Though I'd also note this post... yes, FD are starting to put in anti-relog mechanisms. If you log in at an Odyssey base, there will be no lootable items, until you re-instance with the area.

... and this one... 27 hours of crunch grind? Yeah, those "content creators" sure put out some dumb ways to play the game. Better to just get on and do what you want to do.

Sounds like this just isn't your game.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom