This is a mechanic that is done on-foot but strictly for your space ship. This can only be done in places where you can exit your space ship and be on foot and be within a few meters of your ship.
Necessary prereqs:
acquiring certain materials from wrecks and stolen from base...these materials you'd select to load into your new hand-tool (multi-tool)...the amount and combination would factor into the engineered effect (the recipes - you'd have to acquire in order to implement any engineered effect and these you would get as rewards upon completing missions for a given engineer). Bonus effects would exist but they'd be unique to self-engineering. Bonus effects are triggered by tweaking an extra chip on the board before the timer runs out and creating a certain waveform overlap to the recipe one. The shape dictates the bonus effect if any - and quality of that shape matching the ideal dictates the magnitude of the bonus effect.
the mechanic would work by equipping the multi-tool, this would highlight areas of your ship that can be engineered by the tool. You'd load in what the recipe called for, then, within a certain distance and direct line-of-sight of the area (you may have to jump on your ship to reach items on top), you trigger the tool to initiate the engineering sequence.
engineering sequence:
This the ship exposes an access port via the tool use and a card becomes visible on your helmet hud as the tool's nano wires go into the module port to access it. This configuration card view must be reconfigured while under a timer, using your multi-tool to tweak the circuit pattern so the tool's harmonic visualizer shows green for success. The circuit pattern tweaking involves using your mouse to select the various reconfigurable chips on the card and alter circuits layout around it by pressing and releasing the mouse button when the harmonic pattern looks correct on the tool (side of hud).. However looking correct must consider the cumulative changes you've made as all of the chips signals interfere with eachother. Successful engineering is achieved when the end pattern is within tolerance of the recipe and there is still time left on the timer ...how close to exactly matching dictates the level of the engineering effect.
Materials are all consumed by the multi-tool and can't be retrieved once the process begins. self-engineered items can't be built upon by other engineers. self-engineered items have the potential to be better than anything offered by real engineers or offer modifications they dont offer at all. Different recipes must be completed in different amounts of time and different module classes and ranks also factor in to how difficult the process to engineer them is. Expensive high end modules are harder (allow less time to complete and more chips to reconfigure) than cheap low end ones.
Initiating an engineering sequence and failing will result in a negative engineering effect that can't be removed without the self-engineering tool completing a successful engineering sequence. This negative engineering effect will reduce performance or ability to below stock (but will not do something that would reduce to below stock FSD jump range - so you can't end up stranded by failing). re-engineering an existing engineered module will remove any previous engineering.
There is more than one way to succeed sometimes. Some recipes will offer very similar engineering effects but be wildly different in difficulty of pattern. The "mini-game" is part puzzle (you have to figure out how to build the final signal from varying quantities of partial signals) as well as reaction time (activating a reconfigurable chip starts it thru it's permutations of signal output that you have to stop on when desired )... Only by mastering these skills can you acquire the best results engineering your own modules. But these results can exceed or be entirely unique in comparison to regular engineering.
You can be interrupted by npcs or other humans while this process is going on...killed or otherwise. Abandoning the process can be done at any time and will result in failure. How much failure (negative engineering effect) that causes depends on how altered the signal is from stock and if you haven't gotten the signal in acceptable range for the recipe.
You can not engineer damaged modules.
Removing a negative mod without re-attempting the engineering can be done by going to a normal engineer and overwriting the engineering effect or selling the module and buying new. Other self-engineered mods can be removed like normal engineering mods can if desired.
Necessary prereqs:
acquiring certain materials from wrecks and stolen from base...these materials you'd select to load into your new hand-tool (multi-tool)...the amount and combination would factor into the engineered effect (the recipes - you'd have to acquire in order to implement any engineered effect and these you would get as rewards upon completing missions for a given engineer). Bonus effects would exist but they'd be unique to self-engineering. Bonus effects are triggered by tweaking an extra chip on the board before the timer runs out and creating a certain waveform overlap to the recipe one. The shape dictates the bonus effect if any - and quality of that shape matching the ideal dictates the magnitude of the bonus effect.
the mechanic would work by equipping the multi-tool, this would highlight areas of your ship that can be engineered by the tool. You'd load in what the recipe called for, then, within a certain distance and direct line-of-sight of the area (you may have to jump on your ship to reach items on top), you trigger the tool to initiate the engineering sequence.
engineering sequence:
This the ship exposes an access port via the tool use and a card becomes visible on your helmet hud as the tool's nano wires go into the module port to access it. This configuration card view must be reconfigured while under a timer, using your multi-tool to tweak the circuit pattern so the tool's harmonic visualizer shows green for success. The circuit pattern tweaking involves using your mouse to select the various reconfigurable chips on the card and alter circuits layout around it by pressing and releasing the mouse button when the harmonic pattern looks correct on the tool (side of hud).. However looking correct must consider the cumulative changes you've made as all of the chips signals interfere with eachother. Successful engineering is achieved when the end pattern is within tolerance of the recipe and there is still time left on the timer ...how close to exactly matching dictates the level of the engineering effect.
Materials are all consumed by the multi-tool and can't be retrieved once the process begins. self-engineered items can't be built upon by other engineers. self-engineered items have the potential to be better than anything offered by real engineers or offer modifications they dont offer at all. Different recipes must be completed in different amounts of time and different module classes and ranks also factor in to how difficult the process to engineer them is. Expensive high end modules are harder (allow less time to complete and more chips to reconfigure) than cheap low end ones.
Initiating an engineering sequence and failing will result in a negative engineering effect that can't be removed without the self-engineering tool completing a successful engineering sequence. This negative engineering effect will reduce performance or ability to below stock (but will not do something that would reduce to below stock FSD jump range - so you can't end up stranded by failing). re-engineering an existing engineered module will remove any previous engineering.
There is more than one way to succeed sometimes. Some recipes will offer very similar engineering effects but be wildly different in difficulty of pattern. The "mini-game" is part puzzle (you have to figure out how to build the final signal from varying quantities of partial signals) as well as reaction time (activating a reconfigurable chip starts it thru it's permutations of signal output that you have to stop on when desired )... Only by mastering these skills can you acquire the best results engineering your own modules. But these results can exceed or be entirely unique in comparison to regular engineering.
You can be interrupted by npcs or other humans while this process is going on...killed or otherwise. Abandoning the process can be done at any time and will result in failure. How much failure (negative engineering effect) that causes depends on how altered the signal is from stock and if you haven't gotten the signal in acceptable range for the recipe.
You can not engineer damaged modules.
Removing a negative mod without re-attempting the engineering can be done by going to a normal engineer and overwriting the engineering effect or selling the module and buying new. Other self-engineered mods can be removed like normal engineering mods can if desired.
