These are all controllable by finding (or making) a system with the right combination (e.g. one faction in X only and the rest in None) so that all the HGEs are bound to the correct faction and state. And if you do that more than once, you don't need to wait around for the reappearance, you can cycle the systems instead.
Certainly it will appear random if you just show up to a system and hope it's right, of course.
Maybe. I've found more Proto Heat Radiators in the last two days than I did in the entire game since 2.1, so I'm not convinced people are going to be running out of materials that quickly.
And the NPC Anacondas seem to have had their drop rate increased too - I got one with 3 separate G5 materials yesterday, which I'd never seen before 3.3.
You'd have to be engineering a lot of ships to be running out of materials *faster* than in 3.2, I think.
Ian, I'm going to come across arrogant here, but I'll put my gathering methods and knowledge up against those of anybody. I don't know everything about this game, I'm not even that good at combat, but I gather like a pro. I know EXACTLY what to expect under any combination of circumstances, I was extremely capable under the previous model and already feel I have a very good understanding of the new model, while obviously my experiments continue. The only reason I didn't write a 10,000 word guide to gathering earlier is because I knew it was going to change soon.
Please take me at face value, test the following sentences yourself, and tell me honestly what you think...
1) The findability of HGEs in general is reduced compared to the old model. Now 'most' systems do not generate a single HGE and ones that would have been prime farming targets (8 HGEs over the space of an hour, such as TZ Arietis, for example) generate 1 or maybe 2.
2) We're 9 days in now and a large number of states have not been created and are unlikely to be created soon,
in systems that would be likely to spawn HGEs as per (1) above..
3) The fact that they are now in jurisdictions and do not necessarily belong to the faction owning the system, and even if they do, not necessarily representing the state considered the 'primary' state for the faction/system, adds a
significant dice roll to the procedure, while I concede also provides the opportunity for occasional nice (but also unwanted) surprises in your HGE results for a given system, which are already poor.
4) The additional 2 states per OTHER faction adds yet more dice rolling
Don't forget we're talking about what is currently observed to be best case scenario, which is about 5 in system to begin with, PLUS having enough time on them to get round them all. Truth is you can't get round more than 6 in time anyway, I reckon, so you're then at the mercy of the respawn mechanism for a little more RNG.
I'll give you one big caveat, that MIGHT save it from being a problem, but not from being still very, very messy, and that caveat is; we don't currently see a representative number of spawns of HGEs in general due to the apocalypse that's happening with the BGS right now. Either spawn rates could rise on their own, or a bug which is keeping them low will be resolved, or a dev will bump the spawn rate in general. The first makes me wrong in a way, or at least showing impatience, though we are 9 days in now, fair enough. But the other two require some noise to be made. So...Bang my drum I shall.
