Reduce the number of engineering material types

[Ian Doncaster]

And each of those requires different combination of materials, from different lines of materials and making up for more or less believable blueprints
for example: efficient beams requires materials from Manufactured (Heat), Encoded (Emission) and a Raw material. Kinda makes sense, isn't it?

Reducing the number of materials would make the whole process quite cartoonish instead of being rather close to a space sim with unique crafting recipes

That's certainly true and I agree that's a good thing.

On the other hand, even with that thematic nature, Thermic and Heat are pretty interchangeable, Alloys and Composites (and Thermic in a different way) are all pretty interchangeable, Firmware and Encryption and Archives are all similar, etc. The Chemical branch is used for very few things and none of them particularly thematically - why do Pharma Isolators make your ship really fast? - etc.

There's definitely room for a bit of trimming without losing any immersion.

 

[Rietz]

indeed, i do think touching the raws might have some undesirable effects



Yea, but we have 60-70 distinct blueprints spread over 5 categories comprising a lot of equipment types
Plus a ton of experimental effects and quite a number or resynth types.

And each of those requires different combination of materials, from different lines of materials and making up for more or less believable blueprints
for example: efficient beams requires materials from Manufactured (Heat), Encoded (Emission) and a Raw material. Kinda makes sense, isn't it?

Reducing the number of materials would make the whole process quite cartoonish instead of being rather close to a space sim with unique crafting recipes
Sure, they could probably revamp the hole system, remove pointless blueprints and their unique materials. I mean who is ever going to use Reinforced Drives or Blast Resistant Hulls

But OP is not asking for that.
He just want to open less browser pages when he wants to engineer a ship (Inara can help here by keeping track of your materials, your wanted blueprints and materials needed)

Alternatives could be to either get materials while playing and mildly (that is G3, maaaybe a G4) engineer ships when he has materials or organize material hunt expeditions and make sure he has all materials, all the time, in sufficient numbers.
My approach is to go for the latter. My G5 stashes never drop below 25-30 materials and I usually keep them in the high 75%+ and i get lower grades from trading down G4/G5
That is simply because when i want to engineer a ship - i just want to do it and have everything at hand

Just for clarification, you seem to think that having to open 3-4 browser tabs when playing a game is a good thing? Huh... Well, I don't share your view on that

That said, I already engineered all the ships that I need with extra mats to spare. What I want is to have a system that doesn't make people rather quit than learning how to do it.
Is having an overly complicated number of materials for "immersion" really worth it considering god knows how many people quit the game because they hit the wall when it comes to engineering? Sometimes, it's better to compromise and settle for the middleground instead of going to the extreme regardless the cost.

 

[GroG79]

Maybe you should not show off all your fully engineered ships to your squad mates and make them jealous.
Or tell them to get a bigger ship when they just filled up a t6.

 

[CMDR Cknarf]

I'd lay some back in my day on you, but I'm all for streamlining the engineering process even further.

 

[Rietz]

Maybe you should not show off all your fully engineered ships to your squad mates and make them jealous.
Or tell them to get a bigger ship when they just filled up a t6.

Agree, we should also ask youtubers and streamers to stop using fully engineered ship to avoid making people jealous. /s

 

[Northpin]

Just for clarification, you seem to think that having to open 3-4 browser tabs when playing a game is a good thing? Huh... Well, I don't share your view on that

Certainly not.
But i've come to terms with having to use inara, eddb and edsm while playing ED (and the forums ofc with occasional trips to reddit)

 

[Tikanderoga]

^^ This ^^ We have the locations to fill our boots with top grade raws this is still a significant investment in time but its all possible without relogging and is engaging gameplay. I'd really like something similar for manufactured and data. Perhaps for data and mats you could farm data points/black boxes/materials in the wreckage field of a combat aftermath, not the 1-5 mats we find in HGEs at the moment but zones where 10-20 ships were destroyed and each has materials to gather from

So instead of a re-logfest of 30 relogs we'd only have to do it 3 or 4 times?

But seriously: I'm fine with the amount of mats we got.
The shards are a great way to fill our bins for raw mats.
For the data and manufactured, it could do with improvement.

 

[Gauntlet]

So instead of a re-logfest of 30 relogs we'd only have to do it 3 or 4 times?

But seriously: I'm fine with the amount of mats we got.
The shards are a great way to fill our bins for raw mats.
For the data and manufactured, it could do with improvement.

Well 3-4 logs would be less tedious then 30 right

I think if mats were much more plentiful in a given location then there would be less incentive to relog anyway and mat gathering would be more organically driven. Players would be more inclined to visit mat locations in normal play.

The trouble is Mats are scarce because they are the real currency in ED, credits are meaningless, so the only game loop driver is the need to farm mats for engineering and that's likely to get worse with odyssey. There's a balance to be struck between working towards a goal or reducing the activity to a protracted relog grind fest, for raws I think its the former, for data and manufactured its more the latter.

Things that would help
Reduce mat costs for blueprints
Reduce cross trading exchange rate
Increase mat drops

 

[Douglas Reynholm]

I'd like to see an in-game button [ FILL BINS ], which would for 10.000 ARX fill all mat bins to the lid.
FDev could make millions billions, but unfortunately they never listen.

Pay to win ... that would go down a treat ...

 

[Douglas Reynholm]

Then there's the randomness of the efficiency of engineering meaning the cost in materials will vary from person to person depending on the luck of the RNG. That's not how engineering works in the real world.

I'd disagree with that. Irl a project leader won't order just enough materials to construct a house, they will probably order a surplus to account for the randomness of accidental damage through construction/transport/etc.

Additionally how does it make sense that you would need a 160 ton computer for sensors for a big ship when a 1,3 ton computer can do the same job for a small ship? And why do we need two computers for handling SC assist and automated docking when these calculations can be done with even the lousiest smart phone today? It's supposed to be 1300 years into the future. No, there's only one reason for engineering being as complex as it is, adding grind so we'll have to spend more time getting to the fun part. (Combat with well engineered ships and weapons).

160 ton (Class 8) sensors has a larger emission range, compared to the 1.3 ton (Class 1), so not the same.

I agree SC and Automated docking could be merged, however as these modules make ship flying much easier, they must come at a heavy tax of using up 2 internal slots, so decent game design imo.

While engineering can be used from early game, it's main intentions are for endgame users. This is what makes this game as replay-able as it is, as it takes time to do the things you want to do. Yeah that may be annoying when you are staring up the mountain of engineering feeling like you cba to collect all those materials, and believe me i've been there, but it makes completing that ship so much more rewarding than if it was just as easy as what you are suggesting.

 

[Fullo111]

^^ This ^^ We have the locations to fill our boots with top grade raws this is still a significant investment in time but its all possible without relogging and is engaging gameplay. I'd really like something similar for manufactured and data. Perhaps for data and mats you could farm data points/black boxes/materials in the wreckage field of a combat aftermath, not the 1-5 mats we find in HGEs at the moment but zones where 10-20 ships were destroyed and each has materials to gather from

And putting a timer on a signal source before it disappears is strange.
I admit I have relogged many times to gather the materials I need.
I pretty much ignore encoded and degraded emission sources now as they provide very little in quantities for the time and effort sacrificed to get to them.
I simply trade down after visiting HGEs, Jameson Crash Site and crystal shard planets and I'm done. It takes many hours to gather it all but it's boring and it feels unrealistic.
I'd much rather drop out on a combat aftermath signal source and find dozens of various grades of manufactured materials and some encoded.

 

[Misty_Dark]

so what would the gameplay be?

one of the thing is that the collecting and doing the upgrades is content and gameplay. you only express this to be a thing to get over as fast as possible to do other things... just like how people are pushing hard to get into the "end game" content of this game, and then realise that they just skipped the game just to do the EXACT same stuff that they skipped. and since they skipped the content by taking the fastest and often the worst way to past that content in, so now they are stuck with content that they now have negative feelings for, since they choose the grindy way to get past it.


So why not try to think differently?
I mean, why not think about how can I gather material while playing the game? By this I mean, your main activity is for the most part, not about collecting material, but todo other things, and still gather stuff.
Why not check out the mission board, and see if there are any mission that have material/data reward that are easy todo, or might even fit in with what you are about todo. Do some wake scanning when you are leaving a station, etc...
Then use Material, traders to trade away stuff you have lots of. so you can keep collecting this stuff.



Then the premise for this is also misleading, as you do not need 108 different things to upgrade a ship, as you will not do every kind of upgrade. so if you never need Imperial Shielding for your upgrades, then this is irrelevant for you. and since we have dedicated storage per material and data, you are not risking anything by picking up stuff you do not need.Before when we had shared storage, then this was problem, i remember I dumped ALOT of Guardian data, due to I had to make room for other things, data I later needed to unlock Guardian stuff.


So lets how much diufferent stuff you need to G5 engineer a ship to G5, so for this I will do something like this:
Overcharged Powerplant
Charge enhanced Power distributor
Dirty Drive Thrusters
Heavy Duty Hull
Light weight Life Support
Long Range Sensors
Increased Range Frame shift drive
Reinforced Shields
Overcharged Multi Cannons
Long Range Pulse Lasers

So this got me a summary of:
30 Manufactured
16 Raw
11 Data

From the 108 different things we are now down to 57, so we are now more looking at a reduction from 57 to 36, as the reduction of material would mean that the remaining stuff would be used on alot more blueprints. so I would not expect there to be to much reduction on what you actually would need if we needed fever different resources in total.
And the base complaint are still there, as you would still have to check what you need todo the desired upgrades? And once you know what different things you need, you would still need to check if you have it or have enough of it. and if you need to collect it, you have to find out where to collect what you need. So what would the benefit be here really?

 

[Rietz]

so what would the gameplay be?

one of the thing is that the collecting and doing the upgrades is content and gameplay. you only express this to be a thing to get over as fast as possible to do other things... just like how people are pushing hard to get into the "end game" content of this game, and then realise that they just skipped the game just to do the EXACT same stuff that they skipped. and since they skipped the content by taking the fastest and often the worst way to past that content in, so now they are stuck with content that they now have negative feelings for, since they choose the grindy way to get past it.


So why not try to think differently?
I mean, why not think about how can I gather material while playing the game? By this I mean, your main activity is for the most part, not about collecting material, but todo other things, and still gather stuff.
Why not check out the mission board, and see if there are any mission that have material/data reward that are easy todo, or might even fit in with what you are about todo. Do some wake scanning when you are leaving a station, etc...
Then use Material, traders to trade away stuff you have lots of. so you can keep collecting this stuff.



Then the premise for this is also misleading, as you do not need 108 different things to upgrade a ship, as you will not do every kind of upgrade. so if you never need Imperial Shielding for your upgrades, then this is irrelevant for you. and since we have dedicated storage per material and data, you are not risking anything by picking up stuff you do not need.Before when we had shared storage, then this was problem, i remember I dumped ALOT of Guardian data, due to I had to make room for other things, data I later needed to unlock Guardian stuff.


So lets how much diufferent stuff you need to G5 engineer a ship to G5, so for this I will do something like this:
Overcharged Powerplant
Charge enhanced Power distributor
Dirty Drive Thrusters
Heavy Duty Hull
Light weight Life Support
Long Range Sensors
Increased Range Frame shift drive
Reinforced Shields
Overcharged Multi Cannons
Long Range Pulse Lasers

So this got me a summary of:
30 Manufactured
16 Raw
11 Data

From the 108 different things we are now down to 57, so we are now more looking at a reduction from 57 to 36, as the reduction of material would mean that the remaining stuff would be used on alot more blueprints. so I would not expect there to be to much reduction on what you actually would need if we needed fever different resources in total.
And the base complaint are still there, as you would still have to check what you need todo the desired upgrades? And once you know what different things you need, you would still need to check if you have it or have enough of it. and if you need to collect it, you have to find out where to collect what you need. So what would the benefit be here really?

The gameplay would be combat, exploration, trading, BGS, etc. I wouldn't call engineering the real gameplay of ED. Do people get on ED just to engineer ship after ship after ship without doing anything else?

Regardless, the suggestion isn't to make it less grindy or to skip the grind. The suggestion is to make the grinding less tedious on the eye. We do not need 108, then why do we need to look through the list of 108 every single time we want to engineer? The point isn't to make the game easier to play. The point is to make the game easier to look at.

And the benefit? That would be to have a system that plays almost the same way as the current system, BUT less intimidating for new players and less of a cluster f*ck when you look at the list of materials. Imagine getting a couple hundreds of different material types after another 2-3 expansions lmao.

 

[Tikanderoga]

Well 3-4 logs would be less tedious then 30 right

The trouble is Mats are scarce because they are the real currency in ED, credits are meaningless, so the only game loop driver is the need to farm mats for engineering and that's likely to get worse with odyssey. There's a balance to be struck between working towards a goal or reducing the activity to a protracted relog grind fest, for raws I think its the former, for data and manufactured its more the latter.

Fair point.

They aren't exactly a currency. A currency is something you can exchange/trade for something else. In this case they are really just an ingredient.

One thing I always wondered: Data mats. What happend to good old copy/paste? Put on a 10tb hard drive, copy it, and you got plenty more. Same with blueprints from the guardian sites. If we can store data, why can't we just copy it? It's not like data is a finite resource.
I have 1, I copy it 100 times, now I have 100. Magic!

 

[Oytis57]

If they just rework (for good!) the terrible exchange rate at Mat Traders,I'm fine with all the different Mat types.Also a better spread out of manufactured stuff in HGEs,not just the same 4 or 5,same for Data,Raw are just fine with Crystal Shard Forests,just add a bit more of them.

 

[Fullo111]

My question to OP:
What 3 fully engineered ships do you have after a month of playing the game?

 

[Rietz]

My question to OP:
What 3 fully engineered ships do you have after a month of playing the game?

I was using Krait Mk2, but wanted to try combat so I engineered both the Chieftain and the FDL to try them out.

 

[Fullo111]

Reducing the amount of materials required to fully engineer all modules would mean you still end up needing more materials.

For example:
A shield generator probably uses different materials than the thrusters.
By reducing the amount we need to collect would mean we use more of the same materials to engineer the 2 modules, meaning we run out sooner and therefore need to go back out.

I have recently just bought a Federal Corvette and A rated everything possible. I spent 2 weeks based on a couple of hours per evening playing searching for HGEs in various state systems, then headed out 1700ly to gather G5 raw, then to Jameson Crash Site to gather encoded as well as scan wakes at distribution centres.
Most of it I had anyway from just playing the game and collecting anything from destroyed ships and scanning passing ships.

The materials vary so much that after engineering all I can, I still have enough materials to probably engineer the same modules again.

I do that run probably every 4 months if there's a ship I want to engineer.

 

[aRJay]

I'd like to see an in-game button [ FILL BINS ], which would for 10.000 ARX fill all mat bins to the lid.
FDev could make millions billions, but unfortunately they never listen.

They do but they listen to the people saying don’t introduce any form of pay to win.

 

[Rietz]

Reducing the amount of materials required to fully engineer all modules would mean you still end up needing more materials.

For example:
A shield generator probably uses different materials than the thrusters.
By reducing the amount we need to collect would mean we use more of the same materials to engineer the 2 modules, meaning we run out sooner and therefore need to go back out.

I have recently just bought a Federal Corvette and A rated everything possible. I spent 2 weeks based on a couple of hours per evening playing searching for HGEs in various state systems, then headed out 1700ly to gather G5 raw, then to Jameson Crash Site to gather encoded as well as scan wakes at distribution centres.
Most of it I had anyway from just playing the game and collecting anything from destroyed ships and scanning passing ships.

The materials vary so much that after engineering all I can, I still have enough materials to probably engineer the same modules again.

I do that run probably every 4 months if there's a ship I want to engineer.

Again, the point of the suggestion isn't to reduce the amount of material needed to engineer something. It's already easy at the current rate. You can easily engineer a ship per day if you want to at the moment.

The whole point of the suggestion is to streamline it so new players don't look at the material list with 108 items with random names and be like " that, I'm not gonna waste my time going through all this crap". I want a system that a new player can look at it and be like "It's not that much, I can do it".
Why? Because I want my friends who aren't fluent in English to be able to play the game without feeling like they're back in highschool doing homework.