General Overhauling Engineering: A Family's Request for a Streamlined Upgrade System

[Brrokk]

This

I have more than 8500h spread over 3 accounts. I fly FA ON most of the time.
I really rarely fly FA OFF, usually if/when i do old school 1-on-1 with thargoid interceptors or when leaving the station i find that my hyperjump destination is behind the station i just left - in which case as i exit the mailslot i FA OFF, boost straight, wait till i clear the station mass lock, then engage hyperdrive, turn 180, turn FA ON and boost - then the timer is up and i get into hyperspace... Much faster than flying around the station to clear its Mass lock


I do remember when i started on XB - the first session was a real mess with me trying to figure out how to leave the station in the starting Sidewinder.
However, i dont think i would have ever got into it if it was FA OFF from the get go.



I take this as something for the OCD completionists - which i am when i have materials, and i usually always have materials.
And i like it's there as an option.

I suspect that FD didn't expect the way we use engineering. I think their intention was that G2 or G3 results would usually be enough for us and G5 would usually be an aspiration. They didn't want the end point to be the usual application. This of course utterly failed to take into account human nature!

Design-wise there are two ways to provide diminishing returns from multiple rolls. Either a convergent series which tends to a known limit, or a divergent one which has no limit.

Examples:
1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... = 1
1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 ... = infinity

The second way could be interesting. Enough engineering could take you to Beagle in one jump, but FD could arrange that it needed more than a lifetime of material collection to achieve.

I think the divergent way would be interesting as it would do away with known cookie-cutter builds; there would be no final step available. I don't think it would end complaints about grind though!

Basically, we'd all be happier using engineering the way it was intended, recognizing the diminishing returns and not obsessing over the last circle. I don't see that happening either though. I don't even do it myself; materials stack up so quickly that I always complete G5 just so I don't feel I'm wasting limpets in future.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Mine is better
View attachment 379727

True but I haven't done anything for the faction previously and so I'm neutral. If I don't find a mission offering 5 of a useful mat here I can hop to another random port to try my luck. I certainly doesn't take 3 or 4 hours to pick up 10 Manufactured Instructions.

 

[Northpin]

I suspect that FD didn't expect the way we use engineering. I think their intention was that G2 or G3 results would usually be enough for us and G5 would usually be an aspiration. They didn't want the end point to be the usual application. This of course utterly failed to take into account human nature!

I suspect they didnt expected us to engineer 30+ ships either.

Or, i do remember about someone complaining about engineering being TOO Grindy here on the forums and it turned out they set out to engineer 5 ships at the same time.
I mean... really? 5?

 

[zimms]

Quick TLDR of the previous 20 pages.

Players with 10+k hours of play time tend to agree Engineering is just fine.
New(er) players tend to get frustrated by the amount of time/work it takes.

 

[Northpin]

Mine is better
View attachment 379727

It's nice when you get some of those, but they're usually way to few to make a difference.

I mean.... on my XB account migrated to PC - the lates account i did (heavily) EDO engineering, i ended up with 5 suits and 13 weapons - all G5 and full modded, most of them form G3 upwards, but IIRC a couple i got from G2 upwards.
That makes for about 400 MI and i really dont dare to count the rest of materials

Not sure I agree with this, yes unlocking the on foot engineers does take some time, but once you know what to do it's really not all that hard. Steal most assets & goods when no one is watching (or loot when you are wiping out an entire settlement), assassination missions will often have the target in a command building, turn off the alarms, kill everyone and pick up some schematics, shut down the power and loot more schematics and power regulators. Most (if not all data) is available in 5 packs as mission rewards. I find a digital espionage mission to download a SDP every 3-4 hours that I play.

All in all, to get all the unlocks and all those upgrades on my migrated account, took me like 3 months of heavy playing, as a vet that really knows what he's doing, transferring about a fifth to a quarter of materials from my other 2 accounts (including 11 SDP) and running about 700 missions out of which 500 were restores.

Compare those 3 months, with 2.5 months that took me - as a completely fresh and pure Newb when i started on XB - to get to unlock almost all bubble engineers (I think Lori and maybe Palin were still unlocked at the time), get a Cutter, get Elite in Trading and Exploration, decently engineer that Cutter (along wiht the rest of my ships - Python, Krait Mk2, AspX, Cobra Mk3)

The fact alone that i can hunt only for G5 materials then down-trade for what i need, makes Ship engineering so much easier (for me at least)
While global caps for EDO engineering is really in my way too...

 

[Northpin]

Players with 10+k hours of play time tend to agree Engineering is just fine.
New(er) players tend to get frustrated by the amount of time/work it takes.

That's quite correctly - because most of the new players treat ED like a shooter or like a mild RPG which you can finish in like 50-100 hours
When they find out they're expected to play many hundreds of hours - in the thousands actually, like a real career game that it is - they flop.

My own case - i avoided ED as much as i could since i knew it was going to be a time sink, but when i eventually succumbed to it, i dived in full throtle
Took me like 400 hours to unlock almost all bubble engineers, get a cutter, etc (as a freshman) - no complains, i knew exactly what i was getting into and i enjoyed every bit of it (almost every bit of it, damn you Lei Cheung)

So, yea ED is a niche game, and is definitely not a game for the ones with short attention span and/or without the required time to sink in ED

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I suspect that FD didn't expect the way we use engineering. I think their intention was that G2 or G3 results would usually be enough for us and G5 would usually be an aspiration. They didn't want the end point to be the usual application. This of course utterly failed to take into account human nature!

But not just human nature - there's also a lot of multiplayer content where you need a ship that's competitive with the ones flown by other players to participate effectively in that content.

They have the "fly around, enjoy the journey" angle from the content carried over from the previous games - add some engineering to your ship as you go along, build things up gradually.
They also have the explicitly or implicitly competitive elements where, sure, having a fancy ship and not knowing how to fly it won't help much, but having a stock ship won't help even if you do know how to fly it either, and the whole gameplay is built around completing weekly (or daily) tasks with maximum efficiency.

It's not a surprise that the most vocal ragequits after the original Engineering release were from the ship-to-ship PvPers - but it of course also affects a lot of the other content too even if you never interact with another player directly.

When they find out they're expected to play many hundreds of hours - in the thousands actually, like a real career game that it is - they flop.

Which isn't good for the game as a whole, because you then end up with a big divide between the existing thousands-hour veterans (who have maximised ships and find everything too easy and call for greater challenges) and anyone who started playing in, say, the last 2-3 years who can't catch up to that even if they play an hour a day.

Things like Powerplay (well, a better-designed Powerplay) or the Thargoid War could provide thousands of hours of content without needing to first play 1000 hours to get to the stage where you can start participating competitively.

 

[Northpin]

Which isn't good for the game as a whole, because you then end up with a big divide between the existing thousands-hour veterans (who have maximised ships and find everything too easy and call for greater challenges) and anyone who started playing in, say, the last 2-3 years who can't catch up to that even if they play an hour a day.

Yes, but just remember how Elite started.
DBOBE wanted a game that players can play for weeks, months, etc.
Publishers wanted a game with 3 lives that can be played in 10 minutes.
Eventually they found a crazed publisher that was so impressed with his and Ian's work that they went forward.

The same thing happened with ED too - but they weren't that lucky this time in finding a crazed publisher, so they had to kickstart it, move the company to PLC, get some public investments and publish the game themselves.

ED is definitely not a short-term game - and that seem to be very much intended.

 

[metatheurgist]

I suspect they didnt expected us to engineer 30+ ships either.

Or, i do remember about someone complaining about engineering being TOO Grindy here on the forums and it turned out they set out to engineer 5 ships at the same time.
I mean... really? 5?

Funny thing is I find for foot it's easier to engineer many things simultaneously, because pursuing one single mat at a time is tiresome.

 

[Northpin]

Funny thing is I find for foot it's easier to engineer many things simultaneously, because pursuing one single mat at a time is tiresome.

Nah, global caps and lack of materials tiers and fully developed trading makes it a real pain for me to go out and upgrade and engineer 2 suits and 4 weapons at the same time
I could really live without any tiers, but they should at least increase the global caps to at least 5000 per global cap.

 

[metatheurgist]

Nah, global caps and lack of materials tiers and fully developed trading makes it a real pain for me to go out and upgrade and engineer 2 suits and 4 weapons at the same time
I could really live without any tiers, but they should at least increase the global caps to at least 5000 per global cap.

For me it was easy. Every time I got close to the mat cap I'd check and sure enough some mod/upgrade could be done somewhere. I did have to cycle different settlement types to avoid bottlenecks. So probably in unusual fashion all my suits/weapons crept forward at different paces. But then I do have a weird brain.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Complaining about boring robigo runs instead of HGE relogging.

I wouldn't know about that - I've never done either!

As I said - it doesn't matter, whatever is suggested there will be a counter against such... where credits are so easy to accrue (just nip out and scan some vegetatrion for 100's of millions in an hour) arguing that players would have to 'grind' for them is somewhat strange, IMO.

So either make it free from the monent one logs in for the very first time - or remove engineering entirely - easy peasy...

 

[Northpin]

For me it was easy. Every time I got close to the mat cap I'd check and sure enough some mod/upgrade could be done somewhere. I did have to cycle different settlement types to avoid bottlenecks. So probably in unusual fashion all my suits/weapons crept forward at different paces. But then I do have a weird brain.

Yes, but you have to do one mod/upgrade at a time unload materials and make space for the next mod.
Which means that instead of playing "normally" (whatever that may mean) and stashing materials and then bulk engineering something - like fully modding and engineering a weapon or a suit in one session - if you feel like needing something or experimenting with something - then nope, with the current system you could maybe do one weapon, but not a full set unless you plan it in advance - which is not me, i usually engineer stuff on impulse.

 

[Rat Catcher]

anyone who started playing in, say, the last 2-3 years who can't catch up to that even if they play an hour a day.

But wouldn't this be the same in any other MMO? Progression from underdog to dominator over some considerable amount of time? (I remember WoW - I played that a lot for a year when it came out - I was still way behind many others)

The only way to 'level the playing field' is to have no benefit to amount of time played - make everything in the game free the moment one starts to play - so that the only thing that seperates new from old players is the skills they have learned along the way...

It would make the game incredible boring, IMO, if this was the way - but that may be because I have played many RPG / ARPG games over the decades and don't expect to be playing in God Mode from the very start.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Basically, we'd all be happier using engineering the way it was intended, recognizing the diminishing returns and not obsessing over the last circle. I don't see that happening either though. I don't even do it myself; materials stack up so quickly that I always complete G5 just so I don't feel I'm wasting limpets in future.

Are there any actual dev comments to give more clarity what the deeper intent behind those things is? Even a design with a solid intent behind it can turn out bad though.

I think the divergent way would be interesting as it would do away with known cookie-cutter builds; there would be no final step available. I don't think it would end complaints about grind though!

I don't see how infinite progression would impact cookie cutter builds and why that would be a better way of handling it than fixing the balance of the actual recepies.

Players with 10+k hours of play time tend to agree Engineering is just fine.

Only 3k more hours until I come around to thinking it's good then.

I think it's mostly the beginners who suffer and mostly the veterans who complain really.

As I said - it doesn't matter, whatever is suggested there will be a counter against such... where credits are so easy to accrue (just nip out and scan some vegetatrion for 100's of millions in an hour) arguing that players would have to 'grind' for them is somewhat strange, IMO.

Any system you attach progression to becomes a load bearing core pillar of the game and nothing in elite can currently really take take weight imo so work has to go into balancing those things in addition to whatever other changes happen to engineering. Even if it's trivial incremental changes to balance money making or material gathering. Balancing credit stuff would probably be easier on the dev time unless things are hardcoded and would upset the player base more (which is fine).

I think having credits based engineering would be too simple, but it's a better problem to have than having an overly complicated unapproachable system.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I think having credits based engineering would be too simple,

Just make everything in the game free from first login instead?

People will complain about anything and everything, after all...

Of course, then it will be "too easy" and people will complain about that...

Circular arguments are wonderful, aren't they?

ETA: If the only barrier to players is their own ability to learn flying and strategy skills, they would only be limited by their own abilities, surely? (and no doubt would complain that others are 'better' than they are at XXX!)

 

[varonica]

Just make everything in the game free from first login instead?

People will complain about anything and everything, after all...

Of course, then it will be "too easy" and people will complain about that...

Circular arguments are wonderful, aren't they?

ETA: If the only barrier to players is their own ability to learn flying and strategy skills, they would only be limited by their own abilities, surely? (and no doubt would complain that others are 'better' than they are at XXX!)

They won't be around long enough to complain. They will get the biggest ship they can find, put the biggest guns they can get on it, fly out of the mailslot and immediately get blown up by a ganker flying a Vulture, log off and never return. It's only people who play the game for more than 5 minutes who eventually spend time to complain.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

But wouldn't this be the same in any other MMO? Progression from underdog to dominator over some considerable amount of time? (I remember WoW - I played that a lot for a year when it came out - I was still way behind many others)

I think a lot of successful (but not the best designed) MMO's funnel their players towards the current expansion content which is also the highest level/most gear gated content. To do that new players get some kind of "starter pack" that lets them basically skip the early game by making it trivially easy ruining the original design since they end up one-shotting enemies in all the early game encounters.

MMO's that try harder will have more money sinks to prevent the accumulation of excess capital and can focus on sidegrades or adding new progression systems with every expansion so new players can just choose to invest in the latest-greatest one, maybe skipping multiple layers of systems before that.

Just adding a new progression systems like that isn't a good idea and it makes those games messy and not very cohesive when you have multiple obseolete systems of progression left over and everyone knows that they'll need to grind again to have the best gear when the next update comes out. It also requires a constant flow of new content which also seems to be a slight problem for Elite.

The kinds of systems you end up with in MMOs with multiple expansions worth of differently designed progression systems would actually be similar to what Elite managed to design without going through the intermediate steps - you end up with inventories full of hundreds of different types of crafting materials most of which are utterly worthless and not worth the time it takes to click the loot all button.

Elite doesn't really have meaningful money sinks, but tech broker/guardian/pre-engineered/powerplay modules are a form of alternate progression where new players could skip ahead (but not really since engineering still makes up the majority of any ships combat power). Odyssey engineering being its own thing is essentially that too.

The new module unlocks (and port scenarios in invasions) probably opened up AX combat for a lot of people by letting them skip some of the progression.

Just make everything in the game free from first login instead?

How does that follow from what I said?

But that said, how would making the first few grades of engineering completely free affect the perception of engineering in general

People will complain about anything and everything, after all...

Of course, then it will be "too easy" and people will complain about that...

That doesn't make the complaints invalid, especially if they're if they're well reasoned.

 

[metatheurgist]

Yes, but you have to do one mod/upgrade at a time unload materials and make space for the next mod.
Which means that instead of playing "normally" (whatever that may mean) and stashing materials and then bulk engineering something - like fully modding and engineering a weapon or a suit in one session - if you feel like needing something or experimenting with something - then nope, with the current system you could maybe do one weapon, but not a full set unless you plan it in advance - which is not me, i usually engineer stuff on impulse.

That's not "normal" for me. And much like ship upgrades I already figured out what was good and bad (for me) and had all 10 suits and 15 weapons planned out in advance. Like I said, weird brain.

 

[Rat Catcher]

But that said, how would making the first few grades of engineering completely free affect the perception of engineering in general

I didn't suggest only the first few grades - all engineering, as it is, allegedly, time wasting and frustrating (for some) over the whole system.

That doesn't make the complaints invalid, especially if they're if they're well reasoned.

Of course it doesn't... Is well-reasoned a cast in stone principal, or just an opinion? (Only as the interpretation of such, especially in RL, can vary wildly, depending which side of the fence one may be sitting on - I'm sure that some of the current events in the world came about from a 'well reasoned' approach from one of the sides...)

Afterthought: I joined in with "Operation Montgomery-Scott" in Colonia - so my approach to engineering is apparently the opposite to your own.