Remove the Engineers

[Kira Goto]

I think a distinction should be made between “possible for good enough player” and “impossible for average (and casual) player” when it comes to determining the (im)possibility of a thing without engineering. Thargoid combat especially - want to see you beat a Hydra(or two) without any engineering on your ship, by yourself. That probably requires enough skill that most players won’t ever do it.

As far as I’m concerned, Thargoids from Basilisk and upward are balanced with engineering (and Guardian weapons) in mind.

 

[Hellrider]

not everything has to be doable at noob/nonengineered level

I completely agree, and be honest- crushing majority of content is possible without engineers.
I'm not sure tho about wing assasinations, never tried that in full wing of nonengi ships.

 

[Hellrider]

Thargoid combat especially - want to see you beat a Hydra(or two) without any engineering on your ship, by yourself. That probably requires enough skill that most players won’t ever do it.

well, 2 things
1) I said "AX", not "soloing hydras", actually I was more like scout/clop hunter with a ocassionally sending limpets.
2) sure, skill is factor, but honestly after this all posts "engineering mandatory in any CZ, or even in any combat" I'm not sure how low is bar of "average player". But yes, imo it works as intendend, players which are good enough can substitute a lof of their "mandatory" engineering with pure skill.
Honestly- I dont feel, that I'm good player. I just pay attention on things which happens around me during combat, and know limits of my ships, so I wouldn't try tanking 10 enemies in vulture.

 

[Darrack]

I think what we are all trying to get at is that 'Most' of the core base game can be done without engineering, slap a fuel scoop on a stock ship (like we all did) and you can explore.
ALL games have progression otherwise there is no challenge, just like we had to get 'flagged' and grind gear to raid POP/SSRA/Time in Everquest if you want to do the tougher content, engineering is your gear upgrade.
Anyone who thinks Starfield will be their saviour from grind better look at ESO, cant remember how many hours i put in to get Emperor (without the faction cheat), Grand Overlord, complete all of Cadwells quests, skyshards, you really think the space equivalent will be any different?

O7

 

[RolloTreadway]

I don't know about combat and Thargoids and stuff, because that's really not my cup of tea, but the idea that you can't explore without engineers is baffling. What was it we were all doing in the pre-engineering days? Exploring requires nothing more than pointing the ship in a direction away from populated space and pressing go.

 

[EdzUp]

Before engineers were introduced we had a process called running away.

Before engineering there was the 'everyone's ship was the same' dogfighting until some bright spark discovered SCB stacking and that caused a major imbalance to dogfighting combat. Engineering whilst a HUGE grind is fdev's answer to that which over the years has created several 'issue' builds where the engineering created something that was way to powerful to exist in the game and fdev's answer to that is to lock that off but still allow original players to use it which was a bad idea.

What was proposed many years ago (by me actually) was you ask the engineer to upgrade x item, they give you the possibilities with the items you have or send you to get x items so it can be done. They dont RNG it they tell you exactly how it would be improved and what you would get out of it, the upshot of this would be the removal of grind where we are scanning and jumping everything to get mats that we may possibly require or not and its that which was the issue. We need engineers that tell is what we are gonna get and we can proceed to upgrade if we want not a RNG guesstimate of their capabilities.

Another thing we dont need is to do the engineers 'shopping' before they will even talk to us.

 

[Krieger]

In the hype for Starfield I decided to download Elite Dangerous again, and a few minutes later I realized why I had uninstalled it before: it was extremely boring and tedious having to make engineers.

I wanted to be able to play exploring, or fighting ships and Thargoid, but without engineers it's impossible to have a good experience.
Collecting materials is okay, but there are so very many engineers and modules and each one does one thing and very far away from each other, engineering a ship for combat for example is extremely demotivating, your jump is tiny, until you go all the way between one engineer and another you've already abused the game.

If I ever see any news that engineers have been removed, I'll install and play this beautiful game again, but until then I see no reason to play it.

I get your point OP. However, you won't get much support on this forum. The people still playing Elite after 8 years are people who actually like grind. To them the grind is the gameplay. You probably expected that after grinding out enough stuff the game opens up and the "real" gameplay begins. But no... it's just the start of the next grind. I know. I've been playing Elite all those years...

The (engineering) grind is not going away I'm afraid, because designing grindy tinker box games is what Frontier does. Grind is their favourite game mechanic and they have gathered a loyal player base that likes it that way.

So you can't avoid the grind in Elite but you can deal with the grind:

1. Play the activities YOU like and simply ignore the stuff you don't like.
2. Elite is NOT a competition. That other players can jump further, fly faster, etc, is nice for them but doesn't really affect you (unless you are a very competitive person who wants to beat everyone at everything.)
3. Accept the game for what it is. Don't worry about what the game could have been if only the designers put in less grind. They didn't. They can't.

 

[Hellrider]

The people still playing Elite after 8 years are people who actually like grind

Nah.
I simply know MUCH MORE grindy games, so for me elite even isn't true grind

Have you some special ships or modules in elite, which require let's say 6/8h daily for few weeks, day after day?
Or maybe do you need grind money for few weeks just to buy new stock vessel, only to fly only this vessel just to make it slighty better, with starting tier as "flying garbage bag"?

In elite I can outfit any ship for money earned in let's say 2/10 hours. Even the most expensive. Ranks are doable in 1 day if you want to grind, or maybe few weeks is you play in certain space. Unlocks can be a little more difficult since they require toucing nearly any gameloop, but this 4/6 basic engineers are doable in single days, not weeks or months.
Materials? Again, I could grind it in 1 evening, but I prefer taking them as byproduct of gameplay, so I'm at point (because I had this mind since first days), where I cannot grab more encoded data from scanned ships because I'm full of them, 90% of missions offer me materials which I cant pick, and I could make any ship from my imaginations in 1 moment.

And I never had feeling that I have to farm something for long weeks or even months. But maybe fact that I started in pre-carrier era was helpfull so I hadn't any pressure on farm billions credits because...what I could to do with them. Buy cutter #5?

 

[Danieros]

OP, very few games let you be done with the grind like Elite, especially live-servicey games. Once you've engineered your ship, you're pretty free to do the activities you said you'd want to do.

As someone who's played for years I don't think even 1% of my play time has been spent with said "engineering grind".

 

[Miscellaneous]

I wanted to be able to play exploring, or fighting ships and Thargoid, but without engineers it's impossible to have a good experience.

Hey I didn't engineer or even understand what they were for, for quite a long time. Then I come to rather enjoy it; but, never feel blocked by it. Your hyperbole sets a false stage CMDR Mateus Faria.

Even when I went out to see the Angry Thargaloids last year, initially I took the ship unengineered to see how things was, and introduced some engineering slowly as I worked on the method.

Perhaps, perhaps it's more satisfying to use that way to taste, rather than to aspire to fully engineer some ship to the gills to your or anyone else's preference just to use it

If I ever see any news that engineers have been removed, I'll install and play this beautiful game again, but until then I see no reason to play it.

vive les ingénieurs!

 

[Northpin]

OP, very few games let you be done with the grind like Elite, especially live-servicey games. Once you've engineered your ship, you're pretty free to do the activities you said you'd want to do.

As someone who's played for years I don't think even 1% of my play time has been spent with said "engineering grind".

Hear, hear!

 

[Darth Ender]

since everything in the game doesn't matter and is optional, engineer grinding is never a problem until it's between you and a goal you have.

unlike some games, elite only has grind loops outside of some combat scenarios unless the rng gods are shining on you and you happen to find a mission giving you the materials you need (but even those are just the grind loops with additional npc opponents potentially thrown at you). what engineers (and the game all over) needs is a tier of activities that isn't dictated by rng that you can choose to do instead of the grind loops that are much harder, but much more rewarding and don't take long if you are successful.

then players won't find themselves stuck behind grind walls for their goals unless they want to take the easy safe options to get there.

or maybe the game could add some content and purpose around activities so upgrading your ship isn't the only thing you have to do once you have purchased what you can purchase and have grown tired of caring about power play or the bgs or thargoids because none of that stuff leads to any permanent changes. like maybe add a reason to give players to explore. a reason to mine or trade the crap that fills up the commodity board that isn't the top 3 most profitable items. some npc memory of player actions so combat activity matters beyond a simple relationship number to a faction nobody cares about.

fdev didn't want to do any of that so they did the easiest thing and played on players desire to acquire things for the best gear, etc to drive up engagement well beyond the time it takes to acquire all the ships. and it works.

 

[Chaparral]

Why not? Not like its impossible lol.

Walk the walk post a vid. Unengineered cobra - go.

 

[Chaparral]

Actually yes

O7

Walk the walk. Unengineered cobra. Post the vid go.

 

[alexzk]

I just watch new Elite yourtuber, he came from SC to try Elite. He posts 15-20 mins vids each the day last 1 month.
He just bought the carrier, have like 10+ ships - and nothing was engineered yet. All his money he made from combats stacking like 20 missions at once.
So not sure what you dislike here, don't do engies and play the game as is.

 

[Schmack]

I just watch new Elite yourtuber, he came from SC to try Elite. He posts 15-20 mins vids each the day last 1 month.
He just bought the carrier, have like 10+ ships - and nothing was engineered yet. All his money he made from combats stacking like 20 missions at once.
So not sure what you dislike here, don't do engies and play the game as is.

This. Many backers and others who have been in this game since it came out did everything sans engineering because it didn't exist. It's not that the NPCs are "harder" per se after engineering was introduced, it's that they are more time consuming. I wouldn't equate the two. It was harder to manage power priorities back then than it is to pew pew a few more times for a PvE kill today, if you had zero engineering.

Stacking 20 missions at once for massacres, in some systems, means super cruise for 150K Ls to and from each instance. If you can cherry pick which systems you farm, a CNB or a narrative based POI like a capital ship or dispensary that gets attacked, you can make relatively short work of these things. However, if you follow the game map you will be chasing target signal sources for hours to complete 20 stacked missions solo in a random system. It's still lucrative given the KWS and the buffed payouts for many of the wanted NPCs stacked with the mission payouts. So I can see how it's doable following a specific template.

Hey I didn't engineer or even understand what they were for, for quite a long time. Then I come to rather enjoy it; but, never feel blocked by it. Your hyperbole sets a false stage CMDR Mateus Faria.

Even when I went out to see the Angry Thargaloids last year, initially I took the ship unengineered to see how things was, and introduced some engineering slowly as I worked on the method.

Perhaps, perhaps it's more satisfying to use that way to taste, rather than to aspire to fully engineer some ship to the gills to your or anyone else's preference just to use it



vive les ingénieurs!

Same here. Engineering is just a different level of the game you might get to once you've done all the early stuff like figuring out your ship, your system and galaxy map, the faction dynamics, combat rules, Crime and Punishment, narrative, etc. That can take a while if you don't play all day every day. You can spend countless sessions in wings just killing stuff in RES sites or Conflict Zones. If you're scraping along and making Credits in the process, a lot of your game reward comes from the cooperative element of the wing sessions. I started engineering once my friends stopped playing the game and I was in solo. Then I still wanted to do the same activities only I wasn't as effective as I was in a wing where I could get a couple cheap shots in and score credits still. Before wings you couldn't even do that, you'd have to kill steal . Good times.

 

[Nephthys Vasudan]

I just watch new Elite yourtuber, he came from SC to try Elite. He posts 15-20 mins vids each the day last 1 month.
He just bought the carrier, have like 10+ ships - and nothing was engineered yet. All his money he made from combats stacking like 20 missions at once.
So not sure what you dislike here, don't do engies and play the game as is.

You presume he knows how to google and has critical thinking skills.
Some people just can't figure that out.
While others just roll their sleeves up and dive into it - only to find out - like me - its not that hard and not really that much of a grind.

 

[EdzUp]

The game was much more tactical before engineering and for me more like Elite, after engineering it's more gamey and more RNG which to be honest lost the Elite feeling at that moment.

 

[Hellrider]

Walk the walk post a vid. Unengineered cobra - go.

I could, but I see no point in "proving" anything to randoms from internet.
Also- why cobra? I said "unengi", not "unengi small". I participated in AX CG without any engineering, survivid, and smh was in top 25%. So for me it means that without engineering I can do AX. Do AX. Not "tank whole CZ alone since first kill to hydras appearing".

 

[Factabulous]

Lol - I can't do AX in an Engineered Cobra

*And I tried - as I have a Cobra-only CMDR

Engineering for AX is a bit of a wild goose - none of the good weapons can even be engineered - and now we have caustic sinks there's less need for hull depth. Main thing stopping me in AX is skill - not engineering