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.
So just do the fight for the fight and pick up any mats afterward that you have less than a full bin of, after all in a fight like that if you are going to win you are either beyond the newbie stage or such a good pilot that it isn’t an issue.
Also it isn’t the Python that is Elite it is the one in the cockpit flying it, the Python is merely heavily engineered, but yes it would be nice if a rarer mat or two would drop from engineered ships.
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.
One time per player, one time per HGE instancing, one time per location in the game? None of that sounds good, and how do you sell that to the new starter when there are players with bins full of that mat or storage full of the modules that mat created.
Replacing farming with a range of more skilful activities could be good as long as they aren’t like that horrible reflex based version of bio sampling that was trotted out originally.
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.
Good I don’t want Elite to copy other games I prefer it to be itself.
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).
Yes but it is a bit of a catch 22 example as while exploring in the black doesn’t help engineering much, you can’t easily explore much in the black without some engineering.
No matter where the XP goes I don’t consider tourist missions exploration. But driving around in an SRV works in my mind so that gets an explorer access to a whole range of raw mats.
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.
Sticking with your dedicated explorer example how much engineering do you actually need to do.
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).
I applaud that statement, so little if it is incorrect but the whole thing is so misleading.
I spend almost 100% of the time I am doing an activity in the game doing things that progress that activity the issue if there is one is how big a percentage of your total time in the game the activity consumes. Oh! and if you personally enjoy it. After all some people enjoy missions.
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.
You should have just, as I did, spend time visiting new stations in the bubble buying G3 kit and then trying out the activities. I soon found that apart from exobiology there was little that interested me so while I have access, picked up in casual play, to a great many Odyssey engineers I have done no engineering with any of them.