Python MK II Modules Known Issue

[Cmdr. Numa]

I'm not exactly sure why engineering needs to be made easier. If it's made purely easier, without any balancing drawbacks, then it would be, once again, just pure power creep.

Well, I suppose a ton of people complain about the engineering for some reason. I never quite understood the reasoning, as it just sounds like "I need to grind the game in order to get the highest-grade endgame stuff". Something that's quite common in MMOs. What exactly are they expecting? Getting all the highest-grade stuff from the get-go without any kind of effort? Make ED into CS:GO? Just make it an outright arena shooter in space?

News flash: Some of us don't mind the need for grinding. It gives that sense of getting a reward for your effort. You aren't given everything for free, but you have to actually earn it by doing some work. It doesn't feel even close as rewarding if you don't need to put any effort into it. Some of us don't play this game as just a glorified version of ED:Arena.

I don't mind the grind at all. What grinds my gears though is the RNG.

I'm currently engineering SCO drives for my whole fleet.

Raw materials: Fine, there's places you can grind them at industrial productivity level. There's still some RNG, but the sheer volume you can rake in makes up for that. It took me day to fill all G4 materials to at least the desired levels to be able to trade down and didn't even have to for most lesser materials, since they were pulled in in volume as a byproduct as well.

Data materials: Mixed bag. For low volume engineering you can grind Jameson's Cobra and trade down/across. For a large volume project like mine currently that isn't an option. I need so many Datamined Wake Exceptions, that the crosstrade ratio of 6:1 is way too punishing. And the RNG in wake scanning is considerable. It works, eventually, but it takes a lot of time.

Manufactured Materials: Living Hell. I need absurd amounts of Chemical Manipulators, so I need to farm Pharmaceutical Isolators to trade down. Enter the insane RNG of High Grade Emissions farming. Not only is the presence of faction states neccessary for a certain material to spawn widely different (Outbreaks for Pharma Isos are rare, Imperial systems for Imperial shielding are as many as sand on a beach for example), but also the HGE mechanic itself is absolutely punishing. The spawn rate is way too low, it runs on a timer and is often far far away, which only recently got a little less relevant thanks to the brand new SCO drives. On top of that HGE despawn after you collect from them once, if you play as intended. And then you can wait endlessly for the next. The only thing making HGE farming borderline tolerable is relog-spamming. If/when you eventually get a rare HGE type that's on a 30+ minute timer still, you are set and can fill that material up to max in one go. Going through that ordeal still feels terrible.

 

[DjVortex]

Data materials: Mixed bag. For low volume engineering you can grind Jameson's Cobra and trade down/across. For a large volume project like mine currently that isn't an option. I need so many Datamined Wake Exceptions, that the crosstrade ratio of 6:1 is way too punishing. And the RNG in wake scanning is considerable. It works, eventually, but it takes a lot of time.

While the 6-to-1 trade ratio is a bit punishing, I don't think it's that bad. Getting your inventory full of that one grade-5 encoded material (I don't remember which) at Jameson's crash site is relatively quick. After that it's just flying to the nearest encoded material trader, trading all of those for the Datamined Wake Exceptions, and flying back to the crash site. Rinse and repeat a few times. It is much faster than scanning wakes, even with all that traveling back and forth.

(I suppose an absolute role-playing purist would be bothered by the fact that logging out to the main menu and then back respawns those encoded materials to be scanned, but hey, I'm willing to make that little sacrifice of immersion in this particular situation... )

Manufactured Materials: Living Hell. I need absurd amounts of Chemical Manipulators, so I need to farm Pharmaceutical Isolators to trade down. Enter the insane RNG of High Grade Emissions farming. Not only is the presence of faction states neccessary for a certain material to spawn widely different (Outbreaks for Pharma Isos are rare, Imperial systems for Imperial shielding are as many as sand on a beach for example), but also the HGE mechanic itself is absolutely punishing. The spawn rate is way too low, it runs on a timer and is often far far away, which only recently got a little less relevant thanks to the brand new SCO drives.

It's definitely slower than the above, but I don't think it's that bad either. Because of material traders you don't necessarily need to harvest for a particular material (although that's most optimal, of course, if you happen to encounter those materials.)

I assume you know the most efficient way to harvest HGEs? (And I'm not here referring to the ugly trick of quitting and restarting the game in order to respawn the current HGE signal, but just pure "genuine" "honest" way to farm them.)

In other words: Jump to a system, select the nav beacon from the left navigation panel, drop on it, scan the beacon (by targeting it), see if there are any HGEs in the navigation panel (filtering to show signals only makes this easier), and if there are, target it and fly there (SCO helps here immensely). Do this with all the HGEs in the system. After that, just jump to another system and repeat the process.

Sure, it takes a bit more time, but it's not that bad, IMO.

(If there would be one improvement that Fdev could make, it would be to create missions that provide the precise materials you are looking for as rewards for certain, rather than it being completely randomized. Might well be that doing the missions isn't any faster than the above, but at least it would be a nice change of pace; something different to do for a change.)

 

[vanFace]

Data materials: Mixed bag. For low volume engineering you can grind Jameson's Cobra and trade down/across. For a large volume project like mine currently that isn't an option. I need so many Datamined Wake Exceptions, that the crosstrade ratio of 6:1 is way too punishing. And the RNG in wake scanning is considerable. It works, eventually, but it takes a lot of time.

It is a pretty chilly activity to sit in the distribution center of a famine system and long-range scan the like 4-6 adder high-wakes popping up every 5 minutes or so. It usually takes like 2 rounds of them for me to pick up 6 DWEs, which is enough for one G5 engineering. On the plus side you'll also get many of the lower tier mats as well.

 

[wrmiller]

Be very careful what you wish for.

Having survived the engineering debacle of late '16, early '17, I concur.

 

[Moirai]

B Carinae generally has a decent number of HGE's with Core Dynamics Composites and Proprietary Composites. Handy for top-ups...

 

[STRONTIUM DOG]

moist cake is essential for immersion don't ever commit the sin of letting it or your mats dry out and lead to somewhat flaky gameplay imo

 

[Mohrgan]

You/We will be able to recover all the lost 0 credit modules simply by selling your Pre-Made P2, the Stellar, and then re-authorizing it again. It's just like fixing your router, turn it off, and then back on again. Once done, you will have a pristine Stellar MkII in your fleet. I bought a new P2 hull, and fit that one up for use, and I stored the stock Stellar under a tarp in my old barn. It'll be there for my grandchildren to find, and maybe sell to Jay Leno...

 

[Quillmonkey]

Engineering is a good gameplay concept. Grind is not. However, most ship mats are so easily gathered during other gameplay loops that you only really ever need to top up the G5s.
Still, a reworking of engineering should include:

• Removal of RNG
• Removal of drop scarcity
• Lower sized modules require less mats
• Pre-engineered modules available as reward for specialised missions only available from engineers
• Mission rewards offer choice of mat
• Thargoid/Guardian mat traders
• Remove pointless foot data mats
• Offer mats for more gameplay loops eg FSS new systems, foot CZ reward

None of these seems hard to implement.

 

[Mohrgan]

Simply allowing us to trade mats across types would be tremendous. I could trade some of those Mfg items for some Raw mats, and rule the universe, or galaxy depending how old you are. Or just remove the Raw mats all together. I never have enough Raw mats, banish them!

 

[DjVortex]

Or just remove the Raw mats all together. I never have enough Raw mats, banish them!

Funny thing is that raw materials are actually (at least in some sense) the easiest to get, if you know how.

There's this one famous system that has four planets/moons with brain trees in them, which allow collecting 4 different types of grade-4 materials (I think they were technetium, ruthenium, tellurium and polonium, if I remember correctly). You can relatively easily get an inventoryful of all four of them, and then go trade for what you need.

 

[Mohrgan]

Funny thing is that raw materials are actually (at least in some sense) the easiest to get, if you know how.

There's this one famous system that has four planets/moons with brain trees in them, which allow collecting 4 different types of grade-4 materials (I think they were technetium, ruthenium, tellurium and polonium, if I remember correctly). You can relatively easily get an inventoryful of all four of them, and then go trade for what you need.

I got ya. I just don't end up collecting stuff. I drive around basically trying to destroy the buggy instead. And, I have to force myself to keep a bay in my ship. I am an irresponsible Engineerist.

I just have to buckle down and get collecting. Well, not until I see what happens with any changes to Engineering that may be coming. Imagine that, I buckle down and get to work, and they end up granting my wish.... How stupid would I look then?

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

I got ya. I just don't end up collecting stuff. I drive around basically trying to destroy the buggy instead. And, I have to force myself to keep a bay in my ship. I am an irresponsible Engineerist.

Don't use the buggy. Take (or build) your best mining ship. Mine is a T10 with 3 medium mining lasers and 260 cargo. Next replace those mining lasers with remote flak launchers and fill up on limpets. Having a carrier for limpet restocks with you helps. Then head out to those braintrees, position yourself above, just within rendering range. Have your limpets out and blast the trees with the flak. Move just out of render distance so the limpets don't crash on the trees, but not too far so that limpets don't exceed max range. Then watch the materials rolling in. Rinse and repeat. Oh, and only ever use one flak at a time. Multiple just serve to counter their low ammo count, so you can cycle through them one after the other.

 

[DjVortex]

I just have to buckle down and get collecting. Well, not until I see what happens with any changes to Engineering that may be coming. Imagine that, I buckle down and get to work, and they end up granting my wish.... How stupid would I look then?

You can never have too many materials. It's never a waste of time to collect them.

 

[vanFace]

Don't use the buggy. Take (or build) your best mining ship. Mine is a T10 with 3 medium mining lasers and 260 cargo. Next replace those mining lasers with remote flak launchers and fill up on limpets. Having a carrier for limpet restocks with you helps. Then head out to those braintrees, position yourself above, just within rendering range. Have your limpets out and blast the trees with the flak. Move just out of render distance so the limpets don't crash on the trees, but not too far so that limpets don't exceed max range. Then watch the materials rolling in. Rinse and repeat. Oh, and only ever use one flak at a time. Multiple just serve to counter their low ammo count, so you can cycle through them one after the other.

That sounds like a hilarious exploit: moving out of render distance so the objects are no obstacles anymore. Didn't know that, thanks for the hint!

 

[K Olley]

Simply allowing us to trade mats across types would be tremendous. I could trade some of those Mfg items for some Raw mats, and rule the universe, or galaxy depending how old you are. Or just remove the Raw mats all together. I never have enough Raw mats, banish them!

Now if I could store and trade all of the Raw mats that I leave floating in the rings for lack of space I would quite happily trade for some of the mats that are unobtainable out in the black

 

[Shurimal]

Manufactured Materials: Living Hell. I need absurd amounts of Chemical Manipulators, so I need to farm Pharmaceutical Isolators to trade down.

Chemical manipulators drop frequently from pirate Anacondas. Pirate Anacondas are plenty common cruising in systems with anarchy faction or in haz RES-s. Anacondas are really easy to kill in agile ships like Chief with 3 small, 1 medium beam lasers (or cytos) and 2 large fixed SRB cannons—strip the shield, and if you're lucky a single cannon salvo to the power plant will blow it up. Get an interdictor, stack a few massacres and go have fun! SCO makes interdicting much more fun, too! I maxed the chemical manipulators out in a few days of bounty hunting

often far far away, which only recently got a little less relevant thanks to the brand new SCO drives.

Only the first trip from nav beacon to the first HGE is of any appreciable length. Once you're away from the main star travel to the next HGE takes only a minute or two without SCO. SCO makes it all near instant—there's absolutely no reason to complain about supercruise travel anymore.

The only thing making HGE farming borderline tolerable is relog-spamming

No. That relogski makes it horrible complete vomit-inducing grind. Been there, done that. Simply flying from HGE to HGE is much less mind-numbing. Especially chill after a long day at work when my brain is too exhausted to do abything more intensive (like CZ-s or AX).

That being said, drop rates for G5 materials should be increased and all of them should be mission rewards. Crosstrade ratios should also be more sane: 2:3 or 1:2 instead of current 1:6.

 

[GroG79]

Chemical manipulators drop frequently from pirate Anacondas. Pirate Anacondas are plenty common cruising in systems with anarchy faction or in haz RES-s. Anacondas are really easy to kill in agile ships like Chief with 3 small, 1 medium beam lasers (or cytos) and 2 large fixed SRB cannons—strip the shield, and if you're lucky a single cannon salvo to the power plant will blow it up. Get an interdictor, stack a few massacres and go have fun! SCO makes interdicting much more fun, too! I maxed the chemical manipulators out in a few days of bounty hunting

Only the first trip from nav beacon to the first HGE is of any appreciable length. Once you're away from the main star travel to the next HGE takes only a minute or two without SCO. SCO makes it all near instant—there's absolutely no reason to complain about supercruise travel anymore.

No. That relogski makes it horrible complete vomit-inducing grind. Been there, done that. Simply flying from HGE to HGE is much less mind-numbing. Especially chill after a long day at work when my brain is too exhausted to do abything more intensive (like CZ-s or AX).

That being said, drop rates for G5 materials should be increased and all of them should be mission rewards. Crosstrade ratios should also be more sane: 2:3 or 1:2 instead of current 1:6.

You looked over the main error this CMDR is making

I'm currently engineering SCO drives for my whole fleet.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

I eventually got lucky with an outbreak system and am now set with the Chemical Manipulators. Now I'm just wake scanning and doing 2-5 FSD per day, depending on how much time and RNG luck I have. 19 done, 20 to go.

 

[GroG79]

I have over 50.. I should really quit buying new ones

 

[Rat Catcher]

I'm just putting FSO FSDs in the 4 ships I fly most, then engineering up 2 others for spares in case I decide to use a less common ship so I can swap them over for the duration.

But then, I'm odd and only think of convenience, engineering 44 SCO drives, for ships that are still a bit wacky in handling with them, is not convenient. (not even needed!)