Raw materials prospecting is terrible gameplay and makes no sense in terms of technology lore
- Thread starter ste234
- Start date
Hard disagree with the OP sentiments. Could it be better? Sure. Should there be player-driven markets for materials, e.g. via carriers, also sure. But remember there ARE also material traders in game.
e.g. I'd like to see hand mining, deployable mining rigs (like the small rigs POI already in game), more surface geology science with Arc cutter and Artemis bio tool definitely. But to suggest that elite is only a space flying game is not what it's all about, and never has been (other than the very early kickstarter launch stage). It's about all the things. And long may that continue.
e.g. I'd like to see hand mining, deployable mining rigs (like the small rigs POI already in game), more surface geology science with Arc cutter and Artemis bio tool definitely. But to suggest that elite is only a space flying game is not what it's all about, and never has been (other than the very early kickstarter launch stage). It's about all the things. And long may that continue.
Last edited:
I've maxed out all the ship engineering materials, a good supply of the suit/weapons materials and most of the Guardian and Thargoid materials except of course the latest Thargoid War Titan items. With the Glaives taking me out I may never bother. It was fun checking a planet for a high percentage of say Antimony or Tellurium then driving around an hour or more collecting more than I needed. Even faster on a mostly flat smooth planet surface and a nice relaxing break from whatever I was doing before.
Odyssey comes along and now that same hour or more may not find anything while trying to travel across some pretty rough planet surfaces. So it is off to farming sites 1000LY out of the bubble using Lat/Lon coordinates to find them as they do not show up in the Navigation page even after scanning the planet. Farm grade 4 materials then back to the bubble and trade for iron etc.
As I see it Odyssey and new components locked out in Live 4.0 added a lot of stuff to the planets with settlements and for additional missions. Material sites that were once on the Navigation page have now been spread out across the planet requiring a player to search for them at 100m above the surface. New additions to exobiology requres that so shooting rocks on a planet was lost somehow. Meanwhile the rocks we used to find are very low in quantity and quality.
Was this on purpose or just the complexity of the programming who knows. Whenever something is added to Elite Dangerous it always affects other game play and usually in a negative way. E.G. changes in Scarab control, hard to find rocks, rough terrain, blow up a rock, four materials come out but then are not displayed on the scanner to target them for scooping. The result is that I don't drive around shooting rocks much anymore and that is a loss for me.
Oh...we could actually mine planets in Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters by purching a MB4 Mining Machine and even raiding mining sites. I guess the Devs at Frontier could consider that.
Regarda
Odyssey comes along and now that same hour or more may not find anything while trying to travel across some pretty rough planet surfaces. So it is off to farming sites 1000LY out of the bubble using Lat/Lon coordinates to find them as they do not show up in the Navigation page even after scanning the planet. Farm grade 4 materials then back to the bubble and trade for iron etc.
As I see it Odyssey and new components locked out in Live 4.0 added a lot of stuff to the planets with settlements and for additional missions. Material sites that were once on the Navigation page have now been spread out across the planet requiring a player to search for them at 100m above the surface. New additions to exobiology requres that so shooting rocks on a planet was lost somehow. Meanwhile the rocks we used to find are very low in quantity and quality.
Was this on purpose or just the complexity of the programming who knows. Whenever something is added to Elite Dangerous it always affects other game play and usually in a negative way. E.G. changes in Scarab control, hard to find rocks, rough terrain, blow up a rock, four materials come out but then are not displayed on the scanner to target them for scooping. The result is that I don't drive around shooting rocks much anymore and that is a loss for me.
Oh...we could actually mine planets in Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters by purching a MB4 Mining Machine and even raiding mining sites. I guess the Devs at Frontier could consider that.
Regarda
Last edited:
Ah ok, the 1 bio signal confused me, since you are on Horizons live obviously you will be prospecting on airless bodies only so probably only get the old bio which often appears as a single bio signal because there's not as much variety on airless bodies.
It's not that it's rubbish in my mind, as more undercooked. Sci-fi hasn't precluded machines that manufacture all kinds of things from raw materials, that's how all the crew on board the Enterprise got their food etc.. so having a synthesis module in a ship set so far in the future where we can manipulate time and space with Alcubierre drives isn't so farfetched as is more the limitations of how it is implemented in Elite.
Like it or loathe it though, crafting in all manner of games is pretty much here to stay - look at Tears of the Kingdom to see it, in fact it wouldn't surprise me one bit to see it making an appearance in Metroid Prime 4. I think crafting is a great so I would actually love to see Elite embrace crafting to the fullest to the point of actually being able to manufacture outfitting and/or ships out in the black using Fleet Carriers with the correct materials. It's one of the things I really enjoyed about Empyrion. I believe that crafting is the key to bringing all of the gameplay loops together in Elite, giving meaning and purpose to mining, prospecting, trading, piracy, salvaging etc.. and the multiplayer/bgs aspect.
It's not the mechanic that's rubbish, I have no issues with people producing stuff from raw mats, that's called manufacturing and people have been doing that for a while. The problem is the failure to understand a system that works for a magic setting should not be poorly translated to a scifi setting without any forethought.
The "magic" crafting works for a fantasy setting because "magic" is a discrete effect that can only be produced by following a ritual. This is supported by the ingredients being arcane stuff like unicorn farts and fairy tears.
If you just lazily copy if over to a scifi setting, without regard for the setting and its rules, it's just poor verisimilitude. Lazily swapping the names in the process for carbon, iron, manufactured goods and data is going to lead to people asking sane questions like - Why can't I copy the data? It's just data! Carbon is so common I can make some whenever I sneeze! Why am I scraping around planets for it? Why can't I go to Pioneers Supplies and buy a Conductor again?
It just doesn't work for the setting as a straight copy; it's unimaginative, disappointing, and frankly lazy. It's not like they couldn't have made it work in this context, they just needed to try harder. Frankly we deserved better.
It's a bit like Mary Poppins though - you can make the job a game. You find the fun, and SNAP the job's a game! I love it when the raw materials go flying up in low gravity and trying to drive the rover under them to catch. Weeee
After the Thargoid War, so many commanders have gotten so tremendously wealthy (I talked to a guy who earned 200 Billion so far. That sounds like the GDP of a large space station (or some planets)) from the combat bonds that the galactic economy should go into a deep recession. That would force the authorities to make mats for sale, just to claw back some of the money they've been giving us.
On the other hand, the prospecting should remain because it's the only way to get G5 mats like Polonium for FSD level 3 boosting when you're outside the bubble. Sure, it's not as needed when traveling the neutron superhighway but in the deep black, you're gonna want a way to fill your G5 bins. I suppose you could go on the FC Owner's Club and ask a member to swing a bajillion light years to pick you up and sell you mats, but don't expect it to be cheap.
On the other hand, the prospecting should remain because it's the only way to get G5 mats like Polonium for FSD level 3 boosting when you're outside the bubble. Sure, it's not as needed when traveling the neutron superhighway but in the deep black, you're gonna want a way to fill your G5 bins. I suppose you could go on the FC Owner's Club and ask a member to swing a bajillion light years to pick you up and sell you mats, but don't expect it to be cheap.
The problem for me is I can't find any organics. It seems that Fdev chucked out the geo sites around and in the bubble, and planted organics somewhere, maybe out in the black.
If you are playing Odyssey im happy to give you locations to find sites if you tell us what your looking for.
O7
Thanks. I am in Odyssey open. Appreciate the offer. Giving me info is probably best here because I can't seem to get Inara or other things to work.
I think the problem is I don't understand technology much. (Problem? Call my son)
The other thing is when I need to pew pew I like to reload the guns on the fly. Need to keep up a different list of mats. High quality is best then I can trade down as necessary. And it is raw materials I need.
Regards from me.
You need to use lat long coordinates to find the right locations now:
Odyssey / Horizons 4.0 live crystal shard and Braintree Locations:
HIP36601 C 1 a Polonium: -57.4599, 126.9543
HIP36601 C 1 d Ruthenium: -51.2639, 14.7291
HIP36601 C 3 b Telluruim: -17.6769, -55.1800
HIP36601 C 5 a Technetium: 3.5500, 111.5415
Outotz LS-K d8-3, B 5 a Yttrium: -1.9216, -145.7013
Outotz LS-K d8-3, B 5 c Antimony: -62.4905, 80.2426
HR 3230 (bubble), 3 a a Selenium: Position: 52.6000, -165.8786
(Trade Selenium for your first units of Telerium needed to get your first class 5 pre-engineered V1 FSD from human tech brokers and add mass manager effect to it.)
Filling up the other G4's at crystal shard sites is so fast, I just use a material trader to fill up my selenium to full before going on the trip to visit the crystal shard planets. It seems wasteful but if you gotta get some technetium or tellurium anyway... might as well.
I don't know if the SRV mechanics are better or what... but compared to when I posted on this thread earlier zipping around the crystal shard sites in the SRV seems really easy now. Whether you gotta get 50 or 150 it doesn't make a huge difference in time. Maybe an extra 15-20 min? I didn't time myself. The planets I go to have sufficient grouping of shards as long as you go to the blue zones of the DSS "heatmap" and fly around a bit you find them no problem. When finding the crystal shards skip the sparse ones-and-twos... keep looking until you find the big groupings.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Here is my crystal shard tour route. If you have a fleet carrier the first four locations are all within single jump distance.
-> Obviously just go to the destinations that are needed.
-> All of these locations are far from the primary star. Make sure to plot Fleet Carrier rout directly to the planet.
There are probably better tour routes. Using a fleet carrier I never needed to improve on this.
Travel to Outotz HD-J d9-3
B 8 d - Antimony
Travel to Outotz KY-I d9-6
B 6 b - Telurium
Travel to Outotz CI-R c18-0
B 6 b - Ruthenium
Travel to HIP 36601
C 1 a - Polonium
C 1 d - Ruthenium
C 3 b - Tellurium
C 5 a - Technetium
Travel to Outotz PI-K d8-0 (close, but 600 Ly away from the other locations)
BC 2 a - Yttrium
Last edited:
I've been to HR 3230, 3 a a Selenium: Position: 52.6000, -165.8786 a couple of times in recent months. I will check the galaxy map later.
You must have gone to the wrong planet. Here is HR 3230 3 A A with five fleet carriers orbiting it. The primary planet 3 is black because the system view isn't rendering properly for me today. Don't know why.
