Something I'd like to say to those complaining about the new engineer system.

[4gui4]

Question: why do I have to start from level 1 again?

Even though 5 level unlocked, I have because I've had before, now I have to start from 1 as all pple that never knock at the engineers door before.

 

[Chris Simon]

Question: why do I have to start from level 1 again?

Even though 5 level unlocked, I have because I've had before, now I have to start from 1 as all pple that never knock at the engineers door before.

I would refer to this wonderful analogy:

On the note of mechanics, my brother (who's a mechanic) offered this insight (which I had to have him write down, I'm no good with cars myself. x.x):

You get a brand-new older car you want to make faster. So start with basics...first headers and dual exhaust (G1). Then (on older cars) remove the belt-driven fan and replace it with an electric one (G2). Then polish the insides of the intake manifold for smoother airflow (G3)...each step adds more power, at cost of fuel efficiency and some extra wear, of course.

Then you get a different car. You want it to be fast too. Which means...doing the same steps on THIS engine, because what you did on the old first has no bearing.

Each grade on a module is a step in the process of adding all the modifications, one at a time, and each roll within the grade a "tuning" stage to maximize the performance of that particular modification or add-on.

Works the same way with lightweight modifications. First you remove unnecessary bits. Then replace a heavy piece with a lightweight replacement. Then replace a heavy steel frame-bit with an aluminum one (G3)...and so on and so forth.

 

[MrFailfactory]

I'll be honest, I am having a bit of trouble reconciling "casual Engineering" with wanting G5 upgrades.

I mean, those max G4's are quite nice indeed nowadays, and there really isn't much grind in achieving them, even starting from scratch.

If previous 3-rolled G5's were good enough, how then are current max G4's not good enough? In a lot of cases, these might be fairly substantial upgrades from what you had before, so why the need for anything G5?

Frontier has set the bar in a good place, I think - getting a max G4 ship doesn't take a lot of time or effort, and makes for a very solid PvE ship. If, however, you want to go for max G5, that is where the grind begins, but now the end result is known, and guaranteed.

Make your choice, per ship, and per module. Deeper player choice, is something else that has been added with this new system that is very frequently overlooked.

Riôt

 

[Spacecat]

If they would have just adjusted the secondaries and reduced the RNG outcome ranges, the old system would be fine. The game's a full time material hunting/trading sim now. But it is what it is.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

If they would have just adjusted the secondaries and reduced the RNG outcome ranges, the old system would be fine. The game's a full time material hunting/trading sim now. But it is what it is.

Is it? Because I've been doing lots of things besides gathering materials, yet still getting my Cobra set for combat against aliens.

 

[Stealthie]

Yeah...How unfortunate that everyone is back to having basically the same engineered ships and once again a level playing field.

Guess the winning ship will once again come down to piloting skills and combat tactics vs who spent 2 weeks rolling for the best upgrades possible.

Oh the shame of it all! What a complete a total disaster for the game!

You can pick out the lackluster players by how loud they are yelling and screaming about this change. The louder and more negative the posts, the more mediocre the flying and combat skills are of the player posting those comments.

You realise that (as well as sounding a little petty and spiteful) makes no sense, right?

If people have used the old system to create insanely over-powered ships and modules, they've already got those things.
If anybody's going to be moaning about the new system, I would have thought it'd be the people who find that they flat out will NEVER have any way to compete with people who have mod's created using the old system.

For example, I spent a lot of effort modding a Viper, iEagle and iCourier for speed.
Having played around with the new system, I have discovered that I've got two sets of EPTs which are better than anything the new system can generate.
It is slightly disappointing to find that any yahoo can spend an hour and create a ship that's as good as one of my fast ships but I guess I'll just have to accept that it wasn't actually that special.
The real issue is that nobody is EVER (using the current system) going to be able to create a Viper or an iCourier as fast as mine.

Course, I was just building "toys" that aren't really going to have an impact on anything anybody else does.

Somebody who's got a flying death-machine which was god-rolled under the old system will be laughing their butt off at protestations about "leveling the playing field".

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

...

For example, I spent a lot of effort modding a Viper, iEagle and iCourier for speed.
Having played around with the new system, I have discovered that I've got two sets of EPTs which are better than anything the new system can generate.
...

Seriously?

What are the specs on those?

 

[Stealthie]

Seriously?

What are the specs on those?

Can't tell you exactly, cos I'm nowhere near where they're parked-up.

As usual, it's to do with secondaries though.
They have high minimum-mass stat's, IIRC.
Under the new system, once you max-out EPTs you can build a fast ship but once you start adding weight to it, the speed falls away.
Using mine, I can build a fully mission-capable iCourier, for example, which is armed, has shields, an SRV bay and still does 850m/sec.

 

[Spacecat]

Is it? Because I've been doing lots of things besides gathering materials, yet still getting my Cobra set for combat against aliens.

All I can say is that I just finished engineering a Chieftain, and it took 3X as long as it would have taken with the old system. I've learned to live with the new system, but that doesn't mean I won't complain about it.

 

[Hellakitty]

Just let me buy the maxed out G5's with credits then I can actually get on with playing the game.

 

[Stealthie]

All I can say is that I just finished engineering a Chieftain, and it took 3X as long as it would have taken with the old system. I've learned to live with the new system, but that doesn't mean I won't complain about it.

Well, that's the thing innit?

It's not the end of the world, or anything, but there's just the constant nag to collect mat's for all the upgrades you might want to do in the future.

If you're actually hunting for mat's, that's fine. You do what you gotta do.
It's all the rest of the time, when you're doing stuff that didn't previously involve collecting mat's, where you're constantly thinking about hoovering up mat's for future use.
Tends to make things like RES-hunting and pirate battles a bit less exciting.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

Well, that's the thing innit?

It's not the end of the world, or anything, but there's just the constant nag to collect mat's for all the upgrades you might want to do in the future.

If you're actually hunting for mat's, that's fine. You do what you gotta do.
It's all the rest of the time, when you're doing stuff that didn't previously involve collecting mat's, where you're constantly thinking about hoovering up mat's for future use.
Tends to make things like RES-hunting and pirate battles a bit less exciting.

Oddly, I find the loot collection makes things more interesting.

 

[Chris Simon]

Oddly, I find the loot collection makes things more interesting.

Especially now that we actually have somewhere to put them.

But I can see how someone who doesn't like to collect materials would find engineering uncomfortable. But the truth is, mats are everywhere, now.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Can't tell you exactly, cos I'm nowhere near where they're parked-up.

As usual, it's to do with secondaries though.
They have high minimum-mass stat's, IIRC.
Under the new system, once you max-out EPTs you can build a fast ship but once you start adding weight to it, the speed falls away.
Using mine, I can build a fully mission-capable iCourier, for example, which is armed, has shields, an SRV bay and still does 850m/sec.

Did you use compare with drive distributors instead of drag drives?
That would be an edge case for one set, much less two.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/405552-Drag-Drives-vs-Drive-Distributors-for-speed


https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ve-nailed-Dirty-Drives!?p=6363345#post6363345

 

[Hellakitty]

Especially now that we actually have somewhere to put them.

But I can see how someone who doesn't like to collect materials would find engineering uncomfortable. But the truth is, mats are everywhere, now.

This is the future we face. If nothing else, just make the rarer stuff a little bit less rare, and give better prices at the mat trader so at worst-case scenario a bout of the 'I really cba going finding those HGE's tonight' is occasionally viable.

 

[Longdall]

I've seen this comment quite a lot.

"I prefer the old system because I was happy to settle for a mid-range roll. New system means I have to grind."

Right, I'm going to be blunt.

This quote is silly. It makes no sense. None at all.

In the old system, yes, it's true. You could technically get a god roll on the first attempt. Great, cool. But you know what else could happen in the old system? You could get a bottom 1% roll every time. RNG meant that was possible. Indeed, I do have one friend who made several hundred G5 rolls. They all sucked. He got no gain whatsoever.

Here's the thing about the new system. Here's why it is better, even for those happy with "mid-range" rolls.

Yes, the minimum number of rolls needed to progress has increased. I'm not denying this, as it is irrefutable fact. However! The maximum amount of rolls to achieve the absolute best result has, on average, decreased by a literally immeasurable margin. What used to take on average a few hundred rolls... Now takes at most twenty. And that's on really bad RNG progression. So far, my G5 mods have taken between 8-12.

Can someone please explain to me, how on earth 20 rolls of guaranteed progression is worse than several hundred rolls that are each worse than the last? It absolutely boggles the mind.

It's not about god rolls at all... it's about taking "best of three" (because that's how you get materials).

This is what best of three looks like (in this case with a twenty sided die):

Mean: 15.4875
Mode: 20
Median: 16

(roll, count, percentage, cumulative, reverse, bar)

  1     1  0.013   0.013  99.987
  2     7  0.087   0.100  99.900
  3    19  0.237   0.338  99.662
  4    37  0.463   0.800  99.200  #
  5    61  0.762   1.562  98.438  ##
  6    91  1.137   2.700  97.300  ###
  7   127  1.587   4.287  95.713  ####
  8   169  2.112   6.400  93.600  #####
  9   217  2.712   9.113  90.888  #######
 10   271  3.388  12.500  87.500  #########
 11   331  4.138  16.637  83.362  ###########
 12   397  4.963  21.600  78.400  #############
 13   469  5.862  27.462  72.537  ################
 14   547  6.838  34.300  65.700  ###################
 15   631  7.888  42.188  57.812  ######################
 16   721  9.012  51.200  48.800  #########################
 17   817 10.213  61.413  38.587  ############################
 18   919 11.488  72.900  27.100  ################################
 19  1027 12.838  85.737  14.262  ####################################
 20  1141 14.262 100.000   0.000  ########################################

As you can see, the highest value is the mode... the most common result. In engineering terms, that means that the most common result of three engineering rolls is going to put you into the top 5% (about 1/7th of the time), ignoring additional god roll effects (because when you're doing this you wouldn't be caring about them). It's less common to not get at least average (10, 50%)... that only happens 1/8. Half the time, you're doing 16 (80%) or better. Even if you do get minimal rolls three times in a row (really, really rare)... you're still better off than three rolls in the new system (you get a higher grade and need less types of materials)... providing you've fully unlocked the engineer in both (yes, this can cost materials in the old system, but that cost is amortized over every use of the engineer in the old system and becomes very small... it doesn't in the new). Three bottom 5% rolls on a grade 5 still gets you a real boost... if that's all I had to engineer an FSD drive, I would still be happy with the result when I compared it to what I had initially, even if I was disappointed I didn't get more.

In the new system, it takes you many rolls (and the materials) to get to grade 5. Then the grade 5 rolls aren't best of... they're cumulative. Three will probably put you somewhere around the middle... not as good as just best of three in the old system.

This isn't to say that the new system is bad. But the one unarguable thing about it is that it requires more grind for the same result for those cases where you'd be happen with best of three in the old, and a lot less if you want god roll level equipment. These are different play styles.

 

[Kaocraft]

I've seen this comment quite a lot.

"I prefer the old system because I was happy to settle for a mid-range roll. New system means I have to grind."

Right, I'm going to be blunt.

This quote is silly. It makes no sense. None at all.

In the old system, yes, it's true. You could technically get a god roll on the first attempt. Great, cool. But you know what else could happen in the old system? You could get a bottom 1% roll every time. RNG meant that was possible. Indeed, I do have one friend who made several hundred G5 rolls. They all sucked. He got no gain whatsoever.

Here's the thing about the new system. Here's why it is better, even for those happy with "mid-range" rolls.

Yes, the minimum number of rolls needed to progress has increased. I'm not denying this, as it is irrefutable fact. However! The maximum amount of rolls to achieve the absolute best result has, on average, decreased by a literally immeasurable margin. What used to take on average a few hundred rolls... Now takes at most twenty. And that's on really bad RNG progression. So far, my G5 mods have taken between 8-12.

Can someone please explain to me, how on earth 20 rolls of guaranteed progression is worse than several hundred rolls that are each worse than the last? It absolutely boggles the mind.

So yes. I'm sorry folks. You're never going to get to experience that god roll on attempt #1. You will have to do some work. But overall, the "grind" has been reduced massively.

Here's the thing. Nobody is really happy with "mid-range". We all want "the best" at heart. We all want that extra 2m/s, that extra 0.13ly. And now, getting those stats is a very reasonable, and realistic goal for even the most casual players.

Nobody has lost anything with the new system. Nobody. But instead, everyone has gained. Massively. The problem is, some people seem to not be able to accept this.

One final point. "I want mid-range only."

I think Frontier wants you all to get top results now. Winter is coming. I think you'll need the engineering soon. I think PvE is going to get very interesting, thanks to Thargoids.

After ranking up engineers, I used to be able to do ONE roll for ANY "good enough" G5 roll on any module with any mod. The worst possible G5 roll in the old system was still always better than stock, and always better than the best possible roll of a G1 module in the new system. If I bought a brand new ship and put brand new modules into it I could G5 all of those modules right away and I'd only need the mats for ONE roll per module.

If you don't care about being "maxxed out" (which I generally don't), then the old system was better because it was more economical and flexible. The new system puts upper-level performance within reach of everyone, at the cost of making mid-range performace much much much MUCH more expensive in terms of time and resources.

You argument mostly amounts to an assertion that people are lying when they say they want mid-range. They're not lying.

 

[jasonbarron]

I haven't really noticed grades 1-3 requiring much in the way of time or resources. The only time you need to put any work in, maybe, is when you get to g4.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

After ranking up engineers, I used to be able to do ONE roll for ANY "good enough" G5 roll on any module with any mod. The worst possible G5 roll in the old system was still always better than stock, and always better than the best possible roll of a G1 module in the new system. If I bought a brand new ship and put brand new modules into it I could G5 all of those modules right away and I'd only need the mats for ONE roll per module.

If you don't care about being "maxxed out" (which I generally don't), then the old system was better because it was more economical and flexible. The new system puts upper-level performance within reach of everyone, at the cost of making mid-range performace much much much MUCH more expensive in terms of time and resources.

You argument mostly amounts to an assertion that people are lying when they say they want mid-range. They're not lying.

But it also makes top-level mods much cheaper. Which renders mid-range a bit pointless, really.

I haven't really noticed grades 1-3 requiring much in the way of time or resources. The only time you need to put any work in, maybe, is when you get to g4.

G1-3 is cheap. Like, really cheap.

 

[GG7]

All I can say is that I just finished engineering a Chieftain, and it took 3X as long as it would have taken with the old system. I've learned to live with the new system, but that doesn't mean I won't complain about it.

You're doing it wrong.

I had the exact opposite experience. But then again, I took the time to fill out my mat and data inventories before I even considered engineering anything. All that took was a generous supply of G5 mats and Data, converted down to fill out all the various grades to a 30 unit minimum per mat and data.

When you have all the stuff, (Not counting travel times between engineer bases) it takes less than 30 minutes to G5 upgrade a Chieftain from scratch. I have done it twice now. Once in the Beta and once in the release version.

There is really no comparison in terms of completion times between 2.4 and 3.0/02. The new system is exponentially quicker IF you have all the mats and data.