Rinse & Repeat =?

Deleted member 182079

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What do you want for them? How about 200 tons of painite. LOL
Well, got some Pharma Isolators and Improvised Components perhaps? ;)

I wish I could share them with other players, have all Guardian gear unlocked and they're just sitting there in storage unused now.
 
I stopped bothering. I never did the reloggings. Well, I did but it was so boring I quickly abstained from it. Try checking these spots where you can harvest them. I hear that come with the loggings but at least you get some stuff in bulk? I dunno. It's maybe just not designed for us.
 

Deleted member 182079

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The vast majority of PVE combat doesn't require any amount of engineering.
It's true, although once you reach Deadly/Elite in combat rank, the NPCs become such bullet sponges that engineered weapons are highly recommended for avoiding falling asleep at the helm.

Also OP, best place to hunt manufactured mats are CNB's, much better than RES's and less frantic than CZs. No relogs required either as the ship supply is unlimited and spawns mostly high ranked ships.
 
This thread is right up my alley.
Most of the time I'm "out there". So no chance of gathering manufactured or data materials and practically no chance of getting raw materials. Also no need for the former two in the black, but that is a different issue.

So when I'm back in the bubble it used to came down to Dav's hope and one of the crashed anacondas and hours upon hours of relogging.
That had also to do with lack of (ingame) information or presentation of the same.

So far the "introduction". Now my story.

While I've been in Colonia a while ago I set my goal to get allied with all the factions there (haven't acheved that, yet). I shipped my T9 over to do mining/trading missions.
There I've realized what was already mentioned before: when allied, factions give a decent amount of missions with G4/G5 mats. Probably not at a single station, but I had several stations I flew to anyway.
Being a trader for a week or two is actually something I like every now and then. So I played the game. Imagined being a space trucker AND could stock up on materials.
However, I still wanted to do it somewhat effectively, thus I wrote a tool that helps optimizing trade missions and avoids unnecessary flying around.

One drawback is, that just a few types of G4/G5 mats are mission rewards.
The solution for raw materials was Crystalline Shard harvesting. CMDR Exigeous has a very good (as usual) video on this. Yes, I had to fly a bit to get there, but it's just ca. 3 kly round trip … that is not that much.
It is still a grind, but far less than the crashed Anacondas. It also is far more efficient, because several materials can be picked up from planets in the general vicinity of each other. Your hold can be filled to the brim with Yttrium in ca. half an hour with this method and it doesn't require relogging.
I did that when I was actually playing a different game (Origin: Divinity Sin 2). Driving around in the SRV for half an hour a day and shooting the crystals. Didn't feel like much of a grind but very much like actually playing :).

I than looked into manufactured materials. These are dropped by ships upon destruction (I think) or can be found in High Grade Emissions. Well, I don't really play ED for the combat; so the latter it was.
Down to Earth Astronomy has a very good video about that and provides a table what conditions a system needs to be in to drop certain kinds of materials.
That works very well. Especially if one finds a "cluster" of systems with the necessary conditions.
I usually ignored this stuff before, but it's actually kind of fun. And besides getting the mats, is it also giving me an opportunity to fly around in my Sidewinder (I like that ship so much and it's not even engineered yet).
The problem with that approach is finding clusters of large population systems with the necessary conditions. It's not a problem at all to find single systems with the necessary conditions. EDDB is doing an excellent job. But the process can be speed up significantly if several high population systems with the necessary conditions are within jumprange -- the aforementioned cluster. And that is hard to figure out with the list EDDB returns.

So, right now I'm working on a tool to find me such clusters. And when that is finished I can harvest a HGE in a high population boom system and do one jump to a high population Outbreak system to harvest the HGE there and so on.
Or what I'll actually do: running missions in these systems for materials and harvesting the HGE's while playing the game :)

Regarding data … well, I haven't found a way to get G4/G5 data-mats in the same way as the other materials, yet. I do scan everything in sight when entering / leaving stations. But for the G4/G5 I fear it will be Jamesons crashside.

So that was my take on the whole issue. With that approach (and the tool(s)) I could greatly reduce the grinding and get back to playing.
 
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Here's a list of ideas I compiled from previous threads:-

I advise starting to collect materials and data right at the start of your Elite career and waste as few opportunities as possible. The following are ways you can build up your stocks.
  • Always carry collector limpets and collect everything left after combat, or be prepared to scoop materials manually. Check the "Contacts" tab to see if any useful materials are nearby.
  • Scan ships whenever entering and leaving a station, and in supercruise when possible. (It used to be the case that Datamined Wake Exceptions could only be got from wake scanning; now you can get them occasionally from ship scans or trade for them instead).
  • Drop in on biological or geological surface sites and collect phloem or crystal clusters, which always yield the planet's grade 5 materials.
  • Get allied and choose missions which give grade 5 materials. Some missions give 5 materials or data, usually Biotech Conductors, Exquisite Focus Crystals or Modified Embedded Firmware.
  • Submit to interdictions and fight pirates rather than running. Delivery missions of precious cargoes from extraction systems can attract pirates which drop grade 5 materials when destroyed.
  • Use traders to even out your stocks, but only to prevent filling up or to get materials you need, not for complete levelling. They don't give good exchange rates.
  • Try out Dav's Hope, crashed Anacondas and Jameson's crashed Cobra; these are special sites which have materials or data available to be collected. Relogging restocks them.
  • Drop in on signal sources when they're nearby, especially high-grade ones.
 

Deleted member 182079

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What's that????
Compromised Nav Beacons. Comparable to HazRES's but they spawn much better NPCs which yield better mats. One I usually go to (as it's close to ShinDez) is in ER 8. Looks nice too as it's at a Neutron Star. Bring a decent combat ship though and avoid engaging wings unless you know what you're doing, and have sufficient ship reserves (hull, shield).

Another good spot (but darn difficult!) are Pirate Attack USS's - they come in levels 6 and 7 iirc, and are tough as nails (going in there with cargo is pretty much suicidal).
 
This thread is right up my alley.
...

Regarding data … well, I haven't found a way to get G4/G5 data-mats in the same way as the other materials, yet. I do scan everything in sight when entering / leaving stations. But for the G4/G5 I fear it will be Jamesons crashside.
I don't remember the original post here, but there was a list of surface bases published that involved scanning 4 or 5 (Been a while) data points and being rewarded on the final scan with varied data scans, the 'circuit' is set out in a way that joining at any point and 'following' the list is minimal jumps. As usual, RNG on data received, but mat trader is your friend (even if it is a rip-off). List follows:

System - Body - Name
Delta Pavonis - Gold - Ejeta Relay
Yu Tiku - A 4 a - Kawanishi Enterprise -
Tetoneane - 4 G - Grant Relay
Col 285 Sector VF-E C12-11 - AB 1 A - May Camp +
HIP 94926 - 3 c - Roddenberry Camp
Jarnuekenk - B 5 G - Newcomen Relay
NLTT 34960 - 2 E - Bombelli Lab
LTT 4487 - 5 d - King Camp
Raksaka - 3 F - Garan Horizons
Asegezites - 5 d - Treshchov Survey
CPD-51 3323 - 1 d - McDivitt Vision
B2 Carinae - A 4 D - Ricci Vision
Salikians - 5 A - Resnick Base
Deorini - 1 C - Pond Survey
Sha Wa - 10 F - Jakes Vision
LTT 1935 - F 1 - Lavrador Base
Aholhyniai - B 2 - Cannon Vision
s Eridani - C 3 - Langsdorff Relay
La Thixo - 1 A - Watts Camp
Antiang - B 1 A - Mil Lab
Kou Hua - 1 B - Arzachel Survey
HIP 114236 - 2 C - Orbik Lab
LHS 4031 - 3 - Laird Survey
Hollos - A 5 E - Crossfield Horizons
CD-54 9671 - 5 F - Caillie Terminal
HIP 116460 - B 6 - Nagata Landing
HIP 3142 - 1 A - Laumer Lab
HIP 3142 - 1 A - Emshwiller Lab
Kokowar - 5 A - Clebsch Camp
9 Ceti - A 2 A - Kanai Terminal
Hedetet - 11 E - Cartan Survey
31 Arietis - B 3 A - Ellern Beacon
HIP 20440 - 5 A - Abasheli Observatory
Ross 584 - 1 B - Binder Beacon
G 173-53 - 2 - Thurston Terminal
V640 Cassiopeia - A 6 A - Fibonacci Survey
Wyrd - Lister - Gulyaev Vision
LFT 992 - B 5 A - Scithers Beacon
Acan - A 6 A - Saavedra Survey
Komotae - 6 A - Vittori Base
Gendalla - A 5 A - Caselberg Relay
Delta Pavonis - Gold - Ejeta Relay


Thanks to the original poster, even though I forget who it was :)
 

Deleted member 182079

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Compromised Nav Beacons, but they're wrong. :p Just go to any of the new installations and wait for the pirate raid.
I think CNBs are preferred because you can pace yourself i.e. engage an NPC one at a time - if you're in a CZ or installation often other ships' point defences will take out your limpets which is quite annoying and slows you down (apart from shooting at you while you're trying to gather mats).
 

Deleted member 38366

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My last Engineering run is a little over 1 month in the past - but moving through random inhabited Systems in the Bubble remains a very reliable source of HGEs to me.

With several G4 Mats topped off, the Mat Traders do the rest and I've made it a habit to completely top off [fill up by trading] all G1-G3 Mats.
No shortage of anything really.

Elements for me came from Deep Space Exploration (Crystalline Shard Biologicals) or the oddball Geo Site and usually everything is topped off there as well.

With above done, Engineering even a completely new Ship or Sip build is a non-issue to me.
 
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One of my philosophies is whenever I start to reach full storage of two or three low grade materials, I drop by the material traders and trade up to clear some store space for the things you see all the time. I try to keep it that I have roughly 100 each, of all materials or data in grades 1-4, whatever they are, grade 5 are rarer obviously but even those creep up over time. It seems a waste though, when you do stop to pick up materials, if materials are sitting there but you can't pick half of them up because no storage.
 
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