General Overhauling Engineering: A Family's Request for a Streamlined Upgrade System
- Thread starter Daniel Dusk
- Start date
That is one form of waiting I'm talking about, yes. Limpets are fine while mining, because you need to both mine and collect simultaneously, and that's gameplay. Surprisingly good gameplay, even, given the control you have over how your chunks of asteroid go flying. You can even send out prospectors at the end while you wait. But collecting wreckage is different; you just sit there and wait. That's bad.
Collectors were just never designed with engineering materials in mind. They were added because mining was tedious in the extreme at first, and it's very clear mining is what they were designed for. They added mats much later, and the two do not synergize well at all.
But it's never too late to fix that.
But it isn’t logging off or even AFK. It’s just a brief break while shields recharge repairs or synthesis can happen and your SLF softens up the next target for you assuming that more targets have arrived yet.
Perhaps things are different if missions are involved I wouldn’t really know.
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Am I the only person that manually collects mats? 
Some strange weirdo that enjoys flying my ship? That's boring you say? Well, so is driving circles but some seem to find that entertaining and they're not even in a spaceship.
Some strange weirdo that enjoys flying my ship? That's boring you say? Well, so is driving circles but some seem to find that entertaining and they're not even in a spaceship.If people want to take a break, that's one thing, but compelling a break is something different entirely. If materials could be collected instantly, you could still take a break; if you play well enough to not NEED a break, but you still want to collect materials, you must take that break, even though you shouldn't have to.
That's especially relevant for missions, yes, and also Conflict Zones, where taking time to collect mats can mean losing the fight, especially if other players are involved.
The cargo scoop? Well there's at least two of us. CBR III is a dream for this.Am I the only person that manually collects mats?
Yes, I do this too, but in whatever ship I'm in.
In some ships, I don't get to collect all of the mats before they expire, though using FA off helps quite a bit with turning around to line up for the next one.
Hmmm... In context to my comment: If Frontier were going to change engineering (specifically) - demands for such being raised since before I was a member here - they might have implemented them already, if this was their intention.
Content that appears developed for EDO (spires in particular) had likely been delayed by around a year, just because EDO had a very poor launch (and is still scorned by too many players, IMO)
Simply put, I don't consider I know everything about the game - although I know enough to be able to answer most questions asked in the squadron about the game - and there is the minor point that I walk th epath of lawlessness in preference, so my experiences are not ones that appeal to the majority.
I use collectors in CZs, but prefer to use the cargo hatch otherwise - In a CZ the brief respite while 5 limpets are doing their thing permits my shields to recover, if needed, and me to rest, briefly, before jumping back into the mayhem.
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I wonder what the actual timings are:
What's the best case scenario of picking up something with a limpet if you position your ship just right?
What's the average case - facing the material at 300m?
What's the worst case 1500m while standing still.
Is there a rebuttal to my statement that picking up G1 mats is like picking up every 1 gold junk item in a bethseda RPG (or something like Divinity Original Sin that has a lot of junk for immersion). It's actually worse in Elite since you basically have to do the equivalent of a lengthy lockpick minigame to be able pick up anythign at all.
If you try to do that your limpets are liable to expire from getting out of range - I often find myself in situations where there's multiple (thargoid) wrecks in close proximity and trying to move between would cause limpets to split between multiple different wrecks which means I'd have to wait at near-max range for the limpets to return at their slow-speed which is just worse.
You don't need to invent new data materials for that - data about the exact location of material in space could be as good as the material itself if you transmit the coordinates for someone to pick up later using cheap long range limpets with ion engines or just efficient orbital trajectories. Picking up a material could just mean tagging it for someone else to pick up later offscreen.
When i do HGE's and there's more than 3 materials I usually try to pick up 1-2 manually before my limpets can grab the rest and whenever I kill mission stalkers I pick up some mats to 100% fill up bins I can't via mat traders due to fractions while waiting for the 2min cooldown for the next one from the same mission give faction to be able to to spawn in supercruise.Am I the only person that manually collects mats?
Well...
1. You actually need some G1s to get through the early engineering tiers.
2. They are so common that your storage of them will soon be full and limpets will then ignore them.
3. They might not be valuable but collecting one can never actually be a disadvantage so they're nothing to worry about.
But anyway I agree there are far too many varieties of materials. The fact that I enjoy a game activity doesn't mean I think it's perfect.
A great observation - although enjoying playing this game, despite it not being perfect, often appears to be frowned upon by some of this game's wonderful 'community'.
Perhaps I am the one wrong here, but if any game doesn't entertain me, I won't waste my time playing it and being discontented doing so.
No rebuttal - you are expressing an opinion, which, as it is your own, is 100% yours....
I guess it all boils down to one's opinion of how the game should play?
I pick up everything, if storage is full it gets traded up for materials that are in shorter supply. I suppose I am fortunate in playing games for enjoyment, rather than efficiently, so can spend as much, or as little, time as I wish doing any activity.
Side note: Yes, I pick up everything in a Bethesda RPG too
I think many Commanders enjoy the game and are either more or less forgiving of it's foibles? But that doesn't mean they dislike the game ?
I believe I did say earlier about time and game situation allowing. While there are enemies near enough to be bothering you is not such a situation when the CZ has been won or even nearly so is such a situation, remember I am on the take your time side of things there is no need to collect every mat at once.
If materials could be collected instantly it would be another step to the dark side of being an arcade game.
Occasionally if the target was tempting enough, the Alliance Chieftain is one of the best for it, the Saud Krugers are the worst.
Am I the only person that manually collects mats?
Nope.
I dont carry collectors unless i'm mining or i do rescue/liberate hostages missions - in the later case i use a-rated hatch breakers and b-rated collectors in targeted mode.
But for HGE or random material collection? Manual collection is as fast if not faster
Complaining about collectors collection speed? That's rich.
Have you run out of thigs that annoy you and want them changed?
Edit: i mean, seriously - that's a really a freaking non-issue for engineering.
Just collect materials in a small and agile ship and dont use collectors if you feel they're slowing you down.
It's a death by a thousand cuts situation here and the fixes have to start somewhere instead of neglecting everything (due to a lack of resources).
There's a thousand other small issues of a similar significance that should be fixed, just because it doesn't bother most people to the point of complaining or because they're sick of complaining without being listened to doesn't mean that subtle fixes like that wouldn't make the game more fun for everyone.
Sometimes games feel just right and it's hard to articulate why and it's often because they lack stuff that gets in the way and breaks the flow like the limpet stuff that's conceptually cool but needs tweaks to really work.
The slow collector speed is maybe also a necessary component in explaining why material collecting in it's current state feels so bad and just ignoring issues is detrimental to the discussion if the systems are so intertwined.
Nah, collectors are not an issue for engineering.
And IMO, ship engineering has little to no issues except maybe the rarity and randomness of certain resources corroborated with lack of information and/or people refusing to use the said info that's made available to them
I personally have absolutely NO issues to top up all my material Bins.
But i do know how to use Inara to spot the Systems that have factions in the right BGS states (and NO Other States) to get the materials i need.
I'm also not making the mistake to take ED as a game that can be played for less than 500-1000 hours and in sessions less than 60 minutes (I usually dont even start the game if i dont have 2h at my disposal, unless there is something very specific that i want to do and i know i can do it in 30 minute or 1h)
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Which, if I may add to this, is not really an early game concern, is it?
Yeah it goes deeper than engineering, stuff like piracy and mining are affected by it and it's not just collector limpets, but prospectors and others too that get delayed due to having to wait for some cargo scoop stuff.
It's not that changing limpets will fix any of those things by itself, but neither will any other fixes that don't involve a complete overhaul (which isn't advisable in many cases).
I actually wrote my own tool for that ages ago that not only searched for the right state but filtered out binary systems where potential HGEs could spawn at the secondary star instead.
The issue here isn't that it's ultimately hard to get materials, it's that the efficient method is boring and frowned upon by many in the community for being both boring and feeling like an exploit (if you do it via reloggng). The game knowledge (from out of game sources) put to the test here doesn't involve real decision making or thought when there's a right/wrong answer to where to go for the HGE you need and the rest is luck. The efficient methods are also so much better than the rest that it puts them below consideration even if they're more fun which smells like bad game design.