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

[Disemboweled Ego]

Using the silly argument that compiling steam reviews gives data to what changes would improve player counts (which is REALLY silly)... how would the lost player count be measured from implementing these changes? Where is your data for both gains and losses for a given change?

You have to argue based on imperfect data sometimes and this is inherently one of those cases. You kinda have to guess at what the inputs are and what the results of any changes will be.

Saying "I read some steam reviews and a lot of them said engineering sucked" can be a valid argument - it's not data, but I'd believe it as an argument without scraping every elite steam review and doing sentiment analysis to win and argument online with infallible data.

I guess I'm assuming the weaker form of the argument since I'm also assuming they're arguing in good faith.

What is it that you're trying to say? That we can't ever possibly know what the Elite community thinks about a feature? Even if we did we couldn't make changes based on that because we couldn't know why they thought that way and what effect the changes would have on the opinion? Yet data is needed to argue for any changes?

Believing it's futile to discuss anything because of nihilism or whatever is ok but the most compelling reason for it is that it's unlikely FDev is capable of implementing meaningful sweeping changes at this point rather than "Well, you can't possibly know what people actually think from thousands of posts on the subject".

 

[Greasetrap42]

You have to argue based on imperfect data sometimes and this is inherently one of those cases. You kinda have to guess at what the inputs are and what the results of any changes will be.

No you don't. You have choices in life. You can chose to post your own thoughts based on what you believe the merits are. There is no need to second-guess and make up quasi stats and speak on behalf of others.

The belief that someone is inherently qualified to speak on the behalf of others (especially large populations) without actual data or stats... they just "know" is ... well... you might want to google this. Further discussion not appropriate here.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

I'll admit taking my own advice for suit engineering. The only suit I wanted for the gameplay I'm interested in was the Artemis. Looking at engineering options, I couldn't see any that I really needed for exobiology and a pre-engineered G3 suit was available. Therefore I'm yet to purposefully collect any suit engineering materials or visit any suit engineers. I don't feel that my gameplay has been restricted at all.

All of my Cmdrs have a G3 Artemis with enhanced batteries and reduced tool consumption to increase the base capabilities of the suit.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

No you don't. You have choices in life. You can chose to post your own thoughts based on what you believe the merits are. There is no need to second-guess and make up quasi stats and speak on behalf of others.

Yeah but if you do that people will say it's only your opinion and make up some data about how everyone else believes the exact opposite of what you're saying.

The belief that someone is inherently qualified to speak on the behalf of others (especially large populations) without actual data or stats... they just "know" is ... well... you might want to google this. Further discussion not appropriate here.

Yeah but if you do go and gather the data people will argue that data on other people's opinions is inherently messy social sciences crap and there's a silent majority that believes the exact opposite of what you're saying.

Arguing about arguing on the meta level is a strange game, the only winning move is to not play.

Anyway on a more serious note there needs to be room to reasonably discuss issues in ways where opinions of affected groups are taken into account and not just individual opinions because of the asymmetry in how many people express opinions vs how many receive them in mass communication and much of this has been problematic since the first forms of mass media and we're still figuring stuff out.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Second and final reminder to participants: please discuss the topic. Other participants are not the topic. Failure to comply will result in advisories, reply bans, warnings and / or thread closure.

 

[Jack Winter]

Ok.... If you say so....

My own suggestion has always been to make engineering purchased with credits - not that gathering materials is onerous to me, but there are some here who cannot tolerate playing the game in any way other than their own way, which is fine, if frustrating, I'm sure.

IMO, that'd be a bit rubbish..

 

[aRJay]

Sounds not bad, but I'm doing it a little different way.
If I have some assasinations/massacres/SaR missions, generally anything what "require" scanning nav beacon to system, where after scan I see some HGE, I'm just going here before jumping to missions. Of course, way slower than relog farm, or even than hunting signals, but I can do when I'm doing other stuff.

If I could be bothered with missions I would do the same.

This is why making limpets faster would only be the first part of untangling the mess of material gathering.

Having players ignore 99% of the loot that drops while complaining about the grind is insane.

But very human.

Ignoring the loot here is absolutely the right thing to do and I went on a whole long rant about why earlier in the thread.

Obviously posts in this thread are evidence that not everyone ignores all the loot and not everyone thinks the grind is too much, but I think it sums up how extreme the situation is overall nicely.

Most of it isn't conceptually hard:

• Loot should be convenient to pick up except in rare cases
  This is where making limpets faster comes in and you could design scenarios around not being able to use limpets, like forcing players to pick up stuff manually in HGEs

Loot should be as easy or difficult to collect as the in game situation allows not set by some rigid external rule.

• Loot from defeating equal power level opponents should be at least somewhat worthwhile to pick up.
  This is where elite really messes it up - most enemies are trash tier with a decent engineered ship and the hardest enemies in CZs and pirate activity detected signal sources are dropping the same crap everything else with ship type being the main thing that matters.

Of course loot should be tied to the ship, if you loot a Cessna you don’t expect to find the same stuff as you would in an Airbus A380 no matter who was flying them.

• Some free loot should be available to prevent players from getting stuck in their progression, but not in infinite amounts (HGE's, Jamesons) so it becomes the main method of gathering devaluing everything else in comparision.

Available where, is this trying to force us to do missions?

• There is no sane solution to having hundreds of different material types
  It's just impossible to balance and has to be streamlined somehow.
  The easiest way is to improve material trader rates and further improve them if trading in the same category and add an prompt to auto-trade any of the materials needed for a recepie at the engineer bases with a slight (10-25%) convenience fee compared to the now vastly nerfed regular material traders (could also just be a flat credits transaction).
  Traditional RPGs have loot tables for bosses so if you need an item for a certain build you can figure out what boss to farm, Elite has a version of that with loot varying by ship type but it doesn't work because of so many things (Too many mats, Too many worthless G1 mats dropping, Too much randomness in ship spawns, Many rare drops needed to complete all G5 rolls for a single item, Too big recepie/loot tables to memorize, Too confusing overall).

I don’t think the trading values are too far off myself. The trading facility at the engineers would become too convenient unless you are going to retain the one trader to a location system we have now.
I am sure traditional RPGs have what you say they have but as Elite is non of those things I am not sure I want it to start copying them.

• Interesting engineering progression is just impossible via certain playstyles and that's bad if the game wants to pretend to be a sandbox where you can pick your career, but that's actually hard to fix since it requires new mechanics and content.

I doubt impossible is right, difficult and much slower than you want it to be almost certainly.

 

[Rat Catcher]

IMO, that'd be a bit rubbish..

I didn't suggest it was a good idea - but do consider it being the only way that folk who complain about the engineering 'grind' will have 1 less thing to complain about...

 

[Jack Winter]

And let's be serious - after fully engineering 70+ ships and like 12-15 suits and 30+ weapons, I can tell you that Ship engineering is waaaaay less time consuming than EDO engineering, and if we remove relogging and carrier trading out of the equation, the differences are even bigger to even almost impossible* to unlock certain engineers


*(SDP anyone? i got like 4-5 per account in the legit way - aka missions or normal looting rest came from relogging or trading - and i did that for 3 accounts already)

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.

Or I've just gotten so used to grinding that I don't really notice anymore..

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Of course loot should be tied to the ship, if you loot a Cessna you don’t expect to find the same stuff as you would in an Airbus A380 no matter who was flying them.

The issue isn't that it's ship based, the issue is that a heavily engineered Elite python in a pirate activity beacon that's maybe even tougher than a CZ ship will drop the same loot as a mostly harmless one and even if it dropped better loot it wouldn't be worth gathering mats from difficult fights like that without some other changes.

Available where, is this trying to force us to do missions?

This is about the infinitely farmable HGE's - they/the free mats should be a rare one-time thing like pre-engineered odyssey weapons, a bonus not something to rely as your main source of materials income and other stuff should be balanced so that getting the mats to properly engineer stuff doesn't take much longer than it takes with HGE farming now but it could take more skill.

I am sure traditional RPGs have what you say they have but as Elite is non of those things I am not sure I want it to start copying them.

Elite copying them is the mistake here. I'm not sure if it's intentional copying/adapting those systems to Elite or convergent ideas resulting in similar solutions. The way Elite does it is similar to the RPG example I gave, but misses important nuances and falls flat to the point I think it's not fixable by making it more like those other systems.

I doubt impossible is right, difficult and much slower than you want it to be almost certainly.

You're not going to get your ship engineering done by deep space exploring unless you count visiting signal sources in populated systems the bubble exploring. I consider the HGEs free handouts like I said earlier. There are long range tourist missions that can reward materials but that's not exactly viable because you're at the mercy of additional layer(s) of RNG there. Similar with mining, trade and AX (except there the high mat rewards for the 3 types could sustain using material traders).

It's not entirely bad that the game forces you into different playstyles (mainly combat which is the best part anyway) but the end result isn't just dipping into the other playstyles to grab a few things you missed out on. The majority of all material gathering ends up being from the 2-3 things you can actually do to get any type of (manufactured) materials or G5 materials in large enough quantities to trade. This means going out of your way to do engineering and even the slow passive material gathering can't help you.

The end result is you spend almost 100% of the time you spend engineering doing things specifically to progress in engineering, the passive stuff doesn't get you 75% or even 50% of the way there, even if you do combat as your main activity (except in outlier cases where you play the game for years to get that far).

This could be fine if the gameplay for gathering materials didn't suck, but it does suck, hard. That is an issue.

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)

It's better if what you need to finish a recepie is a potential mission reward, but you're still at the mercy of the RNG to get a viable mission with the right material reward to spawn. If you need anything in large quantities (Manufacturing Instructions) you're in for some grind.

If you want 10 of something to finish a recepie you're probably going to spend 3-5h looking for and doing missions only to get those materials on the average and you might be forced into longer play sessions than you'd like because of the short mission expiry timers. It'll be hit or miss if you find quick assassination missions or missions where you have to wait 3min or whatever for a power regulator to pop out after flying 100kLs to a secondary star.

Unlike the space ship stuff the odyssey gameplay doesn't have staying power for 1000s of hours, but the amount of material you need to fully engineer several sets of gear (all 3 types of suit) expects you to play it past the point where it's fun. This is a case where it's not worth bothering and I regret doing as much odyssey engineering as I did trying out all the weapons and trying to find builds for interesting gameplay.

 

[Brrokk]

The issue isn't that it's ship based, the issue is that a heavily engineered Elite python in a pirate activity beacon that's maybe even tougher than a CZ ship will drop the same loot as a mostly harmless one and even if it dropped better loot it wouldn't be worth gathering mats from difficult fights like that without some other changes.


This is about the infinitely farmable HGE's - they/the free mats should be a rare one-time thing like pre-engineered odyssey weapons, a bonus not something to rely as your main source of materials income and other stuff should be balanced so that getting the mats to properly engineer stuff doesn't take much longer than it takes with HGE farming now but it could take more skill.


Elite copying them is the mistake here. I'm not sure if it's intentional copying/adapting those systems to Elite or convergent ideas resulting in similar solutions. The way Elite does it is similar to the RPG example I gave, but misses important nuances and falls flat to the point I think it's not fixable by making it more like those other systems.


You're not going to get your ship engineering done by deep space exploring unless you count visiting signal sources in populated systems the bubble exploring. I consider the HGEs free handouts like I said earlier. There are long range tourist missions that can reward materials but that's not exactly viable because you're at the mercy of additional layer(s) of RNG there. Similar with mining, trade and AX (except there the high mat rewards for the 3 types could sustain using material traders).

It's not entirely bad that the game forces you into different playstyles (mainly combat which is the best part anyway) but the end result isn't just dipping into the other playstyles to grab a few things you missed out on. The majority of all material gathering ends up being from the 2-3 things you can actually do to get any type of (manufactured) materials or G5 materials in large enough quantities to trade. This means going out of your way to do engineering and even the slow passive material gathering can't help you.

The end result is you spend almost 100% of the time you spend engineering doing things specifically to progress in engineering, the passive stuff doesn't get you 75% or even 50% of the way there, even if you do combat as your main activity (except in outlier cases where you play the game for years to get that far).

This could be fine if the gameplay for gathering materials didn't suck, but it does suck, hard. That is an issue.


It's better if what you need to finish a recepie is a potential mission reward, but you're still at the mercy of the RNG to get a viable mission with the right material reward to spawn. If you need anything in large quantities (Manufacturing Instructions) you're in for some grind.

If you want 10 of something to finish a recepie you're probably going to spend 3-5h looking for and doing missions only to get those materials on the average and you might be forced into longer play sessions than you'd like because of the short mission expiry timers. It'll be hit or miss if you find quick assassination missions or missions where you have to wait 3min or whatever for a power regulator to pop out after flying 100kLs to a secondary star.

Unlike the space ship stuff the odyssey gameplay doesn't have staying power for 1000s of hours, but the amount of material you need to fully engineer several sets of gear (all 3 types of suit) expects you to play it past the point where it's fun. This is a case where it's not worth bothering and I regret doing as much odyssey engineering as I did trying out all the weapons and trying to find builds for interesting gameplay.

I'm genuinely puzzled by all this. I don't spend the major part of my play time looking for engineering materials. I don't do things specifically to progress in engineering. I just collect stuff whenever it turns up, and it does turn up in heaps. Every time I buy a new ship I plan it in EDSY first and engineer to G5 with special effects wherever I want. Yet my material bins are always almost full.

It's almost as if we're not even playing the same game; I just don't recognise your description as applying to the one I'm playing.

As for HGEs, it's a long time since I've thought it worthwhile to visit one, but if relogging is involved I regard that as an exploit. I base this opinion on the fact that FD tried to stop it from working in a patch (but apparently failed).

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The irony of it is that designing around delaying progression or having infinite diminishing progression is kind of a failed paradigm - games that significant amounts of people play for hundreds or even thousands of hours don't get played for that long because the grind demands it and people get suckered in*, but because their actual core mechanics are rock solid and fun (example - roguelikes). This applies to Elite too.

The other problem with Elite Dangerous in this respect is that (unlike its predecessors) it actively encourages playing to short-term goals in which efficiency is crucial (and efficiency relative to other players is the balancing point)

You can experience most of the game content - even if you're not doing it "optimally" - in some lightly-engineered cheap ships and a couple of slightly upgraded pieces of personal equipment you bought in the store. It might even be more fun than walking over the Haz RES in a Cutter with invincible shields.

If you're doing the Thargoid War, or Powerplay, or the Political BGS, with the aim of actually making a measurable difference to the simulation state ... then you're potentially up against other players who have been playing for years and have fully-upgraded ships customised to the jobs. (Or, since the Thargoid War is fully co-op, you're up against a set of difficulty levels balanced around the large organised groups with lots of those ships)

That's exactly the sort of thing where being able to get a high-end ship or two relatively quickly becomes important - and certainly no slower than your actual flight skills are improving.

In the purely single-player context, not having the best ship isn't a big deal: you can get one that's more than powerful enough relatively quickly. In multiplayer, it's definitely important for new players to be able to get ships reasonably competitive with established players relatively quickly (even if they never see any of those other players). Another case where the Frontier of 2013 didn't realise that "multiplayer Elite" wasn't just "singleplayer Elite with more players", and the Frontier of 2023 can't easily change that.

I find a digital espionage mission to download a SDP every 3-4 hours that I play.

And sure, SDPs are particularly excessive, but ~40 hours - more if you're a beginner and can't guarantee completing an arbitrary mission destination with your G2 Maverick - just to get a referral to a mid-rank on-foot engineer who doesn't even have any unique blueprints themselves, as a step on the way to getting access to Uma Laszlo's unique mod ... is definitely an indication of the amount of play-time it's balanced around.

Yet my material bins are always almost full.

Sure, so are mine. Once you have a bunch of engineered ships - so that you're only putting together a new one occasionally - the gradual accumulation rate is fine.

 

[metatheurgist]

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.

Or I've just gotten so used to grinding that I don't really notice anymore..

It's not just you. Personally I find foot engineering much more engaging than ship engineering. And you only really need to do 3 suits (and there is no point in upgrading an Artemis tbh). It's not like each ship requiring upgrading. Not everyone is a nutter like me with 10 odd g5 suits.

As for HGEs, it's a long time since I've thought it worthwhile to visit one, but if relogging is involved I regard that as an exploit. I base this opinion on the fact that FD tried to stop it from working in a patch (but apparently failed).

It worked. They made it so you had to log to desktop instead of menu. It's just a limitation of the way the game works, they could record the fact that you've already done a particular signal source in an instance on your commander, but that's a lot more work than just flagging it on the active client. If people are prepared to log to desktop to get a thing, maybe they deserve it?

 

[Jack Winter]

It's better if what you need to finish a recepie is a potential mission reward, but you're still at the mercy of the RNG to get a viable mission with the right material reward to spawn. If you need anything in large quantities (Manufacturing Instructions) you're in for some grind.

If you want 10 of something to finish a recepie you're probably going to spend 3-5h looking for and doing missions only to get those materials on the average and you might be forced into longer play sessions than you'd like because of the short mission expiry timers. It'll be hit or miss if you find quick assassination missions or missions where you have to wait 3min or whatever for a power regulator to pop out after flying 100kLs to a secondary star.

Unlike the space ship stuff the odyssey gameplay doesn't have staying power for 1000s of hours, but the amount of material you need to fully engineer several sets of gear (all 3 types of suit) expects you to play it past the point where it's fun. This is a case where it's not worth bothering and I regret doing as much odyssey engineering as I did trying out all the weapons and trying to find builds for interesting gameplay.

If I'm offered 5 MIs for a quick assassination mission I'm likely to take it.. Take an APEX, do something else for a while, like go to the loo, get a beer or snack, interact with my wife, etc. Once there, locate the target, decide on a course of action, most likely immediately order an exfiltration APEX, go shoot the target in the face with a silenced weapon (without disabling alarms), get out, take another short break.

Yes I've adopted my game play to how the game works, and I really don't resent the brief pauses. They also allows me to get out of the chair and refocus my eyes for a moment, or god forbid do some forum PvP.

I agree that it's close to impossible to chase the mats that you might need for a specific mod, so I've adopted a policy of collecting mats preemptively. Like that I have the mats when I need them for something specific. To be honest I'm also not really doing it to collect mats, I'm doing it just because I enjoy going somewhere in a space ship, landing on a new planet or moon, see new sights as sometimes it's really beautiful, and I enjoy making a battle plan, execute it, and then reap the reward I was after.

Could it be designed better, most certainly but on the other hand I really don't mind it at all. I'm not a minmaxer seeking instant gratification..

I haven't counted the hours doing on foot mission, but i'm surely into the thousands there too. And funny enough I still enjoy it. Even if I don't need any more credits, I also enjoy putting on foot mats up for sale and see other commanders pay me a billion over a week for the fruits of my labour!

 

[Jack Winter]

And sure, SDPs are particularly excessive, but ~40 hours - more if you're a beginner and can't guarantee completing an arbitrary mission destination with your G2 Maverick - just to get a referral to a mid-rank on-foot engineer who doesn't even have any unique blueprints themselves, as a step on the way to getting access to Uma Laszlo's unique mod ... is definitely an indication of the amount of play-time it's balanced around.

I'd completely agree that the SDPs are really too hard to get, and I don't think it's a very good design when people find that the best way to get them is to find the right mission and then relog...

 

[Jack Winter]

It's not just you. Personally I find foot engineering much more engaging than ship engineering. And you only really need to do 3 suits (and there is no point in upgrading an Artemis tbh). It's not like each ship requiring upgrading. Not everyone is a nutter like me with 10 odd g5 suits.

I'm in that club... I guess it would be nice if we could at least destroy a mod and redo a suit, but I suspect that they didn't want us to run out of reasons to collect on foot mats. Suit engineering is very different to ship engineering in that we have only 3 base suits, not some 40 odd ships. We'd quickly settle on our favourite suits and that would be an end to on foot engineering for any particular player.

I think a case might be made for a combat Artemis dedicated to hunting Banshees..?

It worked. They made it so you had to log to desktop instead of menu. It's just a limitation of the way the game works, they could record the fact that you've already done a particular signal source in an instance on your commander, but that's a lot more work than just flagging it on the active client. If people are prepared to log to desktop to get a thing, maybe they deserve it?

I kind if agree, the people that relog probably don't deserve missing out on all the fun gameplay, but it's their own fault for doing it. On the other hand I really don't agree with all the minmaxers advocating it and making tutorials on how to do it. IMO a perfect way to destroy the fun of the game.

Possibly the solution would be as easy as removing all POIs withing 10 ls when a player logs in. They did do something similar for Odyssey where all mats (except for the quest item) are removed if you relog at a settlement. Though I have no doubt that some would then complain that they have to leave the HGE and fly 10ls to relog to desktop..

 

[Hellrider]

SDP are indeed, very difficult to get, but when I checked upgrades offered by SDP engineer I was like
"srsly? do it for so poo poo upgrades? I dont need that, that and that, oh, this is nice, but I can do it with other engineer".

 

[Jack Winter]

Let me get this straight, is the main argument really about time? That the game doesn't provide instant gratification like an arcade game does?

When I was new to the game I played a couple of years without nearly any engineering.. Yes I did stay away from some missions and I didn't do space combat zones as they were too hard for my skill level and the unengineered ships I flew. It's more satisfying to win than to lose your ship...

I can't say that I found the game impossible to play nor did I come to the same conclusion that the OP seems to have arrived at. I was just blown away with the game and having tons of fun flying around blowing up space ships..

One of my personal biggest criticisms would be that the game doesn't really help you understand what you need to do in order to get going with engineering. I remember going to engineers and finding that I was missing mats so that I could only do very limited rolls and I ended up going away nearly empty handed and concluding that I'd get back to engineering later. I didn't realize that I ought to pack collector limpets, nor that I ought to fit a wake scanner, and I also didn't do all kinds of different missions, so didn't scan data ports on the surface or visit mega ships.

Then when Covid arrived I got serious about engineering and decided to unlock all the engineers and fill up my mat bins. In retrospect a big mistake as I started googling and watching youtube which led me to relog at HGEs, relog at Jameson's etc... What an absolutely horrible and inane way to play the game! No wonder people call it grindy if they think that's the way to do it..

For my alt I've been wiser and haven't relogged except for when the game is broken and forces me to relog to get an invite, to reset a bugged instance, etc. I fitted a k-warrant scanner to my sidewinder as soon as I could. Went to a high res and scanned and tagged what the system security was shooting at.

Didn't take long to be in a T-6 and just a few days to be in a T-9 with a billion in the account. Nice now I can buy any ship I want and A rate what I need. I scanned all ships I came across, and scanned a wake or two leaving the stations. I equipped a combat ship with collector limpets and hovered up manufactured mats.

Then I unlocked Martuk and Farseer for some basic engineering, went out to the guardian site to pick up a FSD booster, to the crystal sites to fill up on G4 raws. Participated in a gold rush and got myself a fleet carrier.

Then I actually put it aside for a long time, when I came back I started unlocking the on foot engineers, once more or less done I came back to the ship engineers. Funnily enough they more or less unlocked themselves.. By now have all but 2 unlocked in the bubble. I'll do the 5000ly ones when I come back from Colonia and unlocking the engineers out there.

I was going to write a longer wall of text, but somehow I managed to post due to the touchpad on this laptop so I'll continue in another post...

 

[Jack Winter]

SDP are indeed, very difficult to get, but when I checked upgrades offered by SDP engineer I was like
"srsly? do it for so poo poo upgrades? I dont need that, that and that, oh, this is nice, but I can do it with other engineer".

Well they're also needed to progress to more engineers, and it's nice to have more choice to cut down on the travel distances..

 

[Rat Catcher]

Well they're also needed to progress to more engineers, and it's nice to have more choice to cut down on the travel distances..

I found it quicker, and easier, just to unlock the Colonia on-foot engineers...
Even if one isn't a resident, the trip from the bubble is only a few hours using the Neutron Highway...