Not doing it all in one go is my point.
I bimbled and pootled my way to most of the unlocks over about two years. Haven't done any in colonia and still have a couple left to do in the bubble IIRC. No grind no salt just fun. No need for any full bins either thanks to the traders.
And that's the big, fat issue IMO.
There's this false-narrative out there that players
"... can't play the game until I get an A-Rate, G5-everything Anaconda, and my mat bins must be full all the time."
It's the biggest pile of biowaste out there. A vanilla vulture can get you through a high-intensity CZ. A T6 can get you through any (non-wing[1]) cargo hauling mission you want, and literally any ship can do:
- Courier missions
- Surface Scan missions
- Salvage missions
- Mining
- Exploration
- Guardian Ruins
- Source missions
- God... might as well list virtually everything here except some wing missions
Hell, with enough skill people are taking out
Thargoid Medusas in an Eagle[2]. Of course that's a pretty extreme example but nonetheless... there's a lot you can do with basic ships and basic fits.
Of course, if someone wants to beeline for an anaconda and ignore everything in between, that's fine, but it's the equivalent of playing, say, Fortnite, and ignoring every weapon in the game until you find a specific, gold-tier weapon, and complaining that "It's such a grind to find weapons!". You set that task, not the game, and there's plenty you can be doing in between, and if you ignore it, fair, your choice, but not the game's fault when it feels like a massive grindfest. I've even inadvertently done this myself; a game has felt like there's a massive bridge between two stages of progression and felt like "such a grind", but it's because I've missed or accidentally ignored an intermediate progression step.
As is the case in the OP, where they want a PvE[3] FDL and have set themselves an enormous shopping list before commencing that activity. A vanilla FDL is
perfectly servicable for all manner of PvE, and there's no reason the mat collection "grind" can't come secondary to getting in that ship and having fun with the activity you
want to do.
[1] Not quite true, you
can do a wing mission with a T6... but like many things, I could also beat my head against a wall for a while and have more fun than hauling 10,000t of water. Thing is, even an A-Rate G5 Conda/vette/cutter won't fix that.
[2] not entirely a good example either, since the pilot is
very skilled, and has unlocked guardian weapons and probably done engineering to the eagle, but nonetheless.
[3] I've had counter-arguments that the mat grind is essential for PvP. I don't disagree with the idea in concept, but generally something doesn't sit right with me about it. But in this case, it's for PvE.