Making creds nowadays is so easy. Peeps hate engineers because they actually have to play the game.
No pay to win. To bad. So sad.
No pay to win. To bad. So sad.
Trying to upgrade thrusters. Argh, this is why I hate engineers
- Thread starter BlackSpaceCowboy
- Start date
Tip for ranking up engineers quickly:
- Get lots of G1 and G2 mats and fly to the relevant engineer.
- Pick the effect you want and get it to grade 2.
- Pick another effect (it doesn't matter which) and do the same. Yes, this will delete the first one, but don't worry about it.
- Rinse/repeat until you get to level 5.
It's just the opposite. I don't like engineers because it becomes a barrier between me and the game.
I enjoy combat related activities. I like bounty hunting and combat zones. I sometimes also enjoy mining with the new mechanic.
I don't enjoy having to spending time not playing the game while researching a convoluted upgrade mechanic.
I don't enjoy having to stop my game, go to some external website because the game doesn't tell you what you need to know.
I don't enjoy driving around a planet shooting rocks for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
I don't enjoy scanning wakes over and over again.
I don't enjoy the scavenger hunt for materials.
For me, it breaks my immersion because in any real world you wouldn't "unlock" engineers. You wouldn't need to "unlock" various upgrades. You wouldn't go mining your own arsenic or chromium.
I just want to be a starfighter and play the game the way I want. Isn't that the motto?
Anyway, I managed to have fun today doing some bounty hunting with my slightly improved thrusters and shields. I'm also playing around with using FA off more often and I just love how it feels like "The Expanse" when the engines are quiet and I'm drifting through space.
So you can jump from Grade 2 to Grade 5?
So, if I don't have the mats for G3 and G4 but I have a lot of G2, I can just spam G2 then get to G5 and pin blueprint?
You could, but rep gain diminishes at higher ranks from g2 engineering. You'd probably be better off checking out encoded signal sources for g3/g4 materials and trade surplus for parts you don't find.
I unlocked them all in normal game play. They all clearly state their requirements and introduce you to one another, even marking their locations on the galaxy map. I don't see that any research or external web sites are needed.
I think it helps to realise that G5 upgrades are the rewards for large amounts of game play. Lower grades shouldn't be overlooked. The engineers are clearly designed with this in mind: G3 is usually available from more than one of them. Note that an engineer offering G3 also offers the experimental effects to go with it, and these are often the best part of the upgrade.
I do understand your complaints - I made them too.
The problem is, that the engineering process has become very convoluted and complicated, because it was from the beginning quite complicated. I did not experience this, I am new to the game, but one can read about it. And then it was changed, and partially nerfed and changed again. The result we see today. It is supposedly better that before, but quite complicated. I personally think, that the Engineers are not a very good idea. An experienced player said, that he would like better, if the CMDR himself has to learn and collect materials to do the upgrades himself, would not have changed the need to collect and research, but would maybe more motivating..
But I think the system will not be changed, it is here to stay, with small updates maybe. The problem is, that many gamers today think that they must have everything immediately, and the engineering process is here to slow this down a bit. So we have documents and posts like 'Engineering done in 3 days', then shortcuts are nerfed, and so on. Its a pity, but this is how things are. And you, if you want to do combat, feel forced to engineer.
And now you are in the worst situation: You want a certain upgrade and are waiting for it, and are forced to do specific things to get it. And this way it is a grind.
Commmenting on the SRV 'shooting rocks' part: I was lucky and did enjoy driving around in the SRV, since it is still quite new for me. And lately I explored a system inside the bubble, unpopulated, and quite nice. There I landed on a moon, without special features. And after driving for a few minutes I saw interesting wave forms on the scanner. While driving towards it I found several mineral locations and did even receive a G4 material (Polonium), and lots of other mats. Then I found a place, with a crashed ship, an occupied escape pod and several cargo containers! All this was guarded by 3 skimmers, easy to shoot down. I did this 3 times in the same system on two different moons and every time found a place like this. Once I met another (NPC) ship, who told me 'that he had traveled a long way for the things in my cargo hold'. Since I just was lifting off the moon he could no get into position and I jumped out, had another pirate after me in the next system, which I shot down.
So - just 'shooting at rocks' turned into a nice adventure. Why? Because I was not in a hurry, I did not look specifically for something, I just played the game. And FD did a lot to make this enjoyable. But if you feel 'forced' to a certain upgrade just now, because you think you 'need' it, it will bring you into 'grindy' situations.
Yes, it is a bit silly to do wake scans over and over, I also complained about this. Why? As an explorer type I wanted the FSD upgrade - and felt forced to do this. Now, that I have it I am doing things more as an adenvture. Yes I have 3 engineers unlocked, several more introduced and I will unlock more. But I have time, and this is the thing...
It is not different to other grades and reputation gains. After unlocking an engineer you start with reputation 0, neutral, or how you want to call it. That means grade 1 access. Every time you do an upgrade your reputation grows. And if you sell certain things (specified at INARA) to the engineers base, your reputation grows too, and this brings you to grade 2 access, and so on. You can alternate between upgrading and selling, you can prepare (like I did) and have things to sell before you visit the engineer the first time. You also should plan what you could upgrade, and how. And yes, like another poster here said, you can do 'senseless' upgrades, remove them and start over, since every engineering step counts. But this will cost you materials, so I prefer the 'sell things method'. Just keep in mind that 'pinning' an upgrade (one per engineer is possible) has several problems (pinned upgrade become unpinned) and if you use the method, you will not gain reputation with the engineer! So better to visit her/him and do it there until you have grade 5 access.
I hope, that you get over the annoyance about the grind, and receive your wanted upgrades.
I'm sorry OP, but it is in fact that bad. I maintain that the engineers have been one of the biggest trainwrecks of game design that I've ever seen.
If he hadn't avoided it and instead took care of this earlier, the exact same grind would still exist... just earlier.
Just another thought. For those sick of looking for Pharma Isolators. I'm currently running a stock of about 24 from pirate lord assassination missions. They don't pop up every time, but I've yet to find a more reliable way of getting these without selling my soul and kidneys to the material trader.
That is some mind-boggling mental acrobatics right there.
Pirate lords and +++++ delivery* missions. They drop pharma isolators, military grade alloys and proto-radiolics with nice regularity. Lots of proto-lights too. It's worth hanging about for the pirates rather than running fast to the station.
* I found I had written "devilry missions" at first. I don't know what those are, but they sound like they would be fun.
Grind is just gameplay you don't want to do. Time-shifting it to when you want to do it therefore stops it being grind. I've unlocked all the bubble engineers and I absolutely refuse to grind in any game I play; games being a leisure activity and all that.
Don't expect to get an engineer up to G5 without actually doing G3 and G4. The amount of rep you get from G1 and G2 upgrades once you have the engineer up to G3 is really, really, really small. I mean, incredibly small. You're better off compiling a list of what materials you will need to do a single upgrade all the way up to at least G4, planning to need the following number of rolls for each grade:
G1: 2 to 3
G2: ~4
G3: 5 to 6
G4: 5 to 6
Gather the materials you will need before visiting the engineer and then just get them to G5 reputation by just crafting that module.
People here are giving the impression that gathering materials is some incredibly painfully long process, but it's not as bad as all that if you leverage available tools (i.e. Inara's crafting list and materials needed list, etc). I did it this way, as a very new player, and it only took me a few days of play to gather all the materials I would need for every engineer that is not out at Colonia. I'm STILL unlocking those engineers a week later...gathering the materials was incredibly fast by comparison.
Some general tips that helped me with the material gathering:
- Leverage Dav's Hope for manufactured materials
- Leverage the Jameson Crash site and/or Bugkiller for Encoded materials
- Use a site like EDDB to do targeted planetary landing/gathering for the Raw materials you need. Go after planets that have decent % of the material in question AND volcanic activity, then gather only at the Geological signal locations. Density of materials is much higher that way.
- Specifically target gathering the G4 Raws in the 'rows' that you need materials from rather than worrying about gathering all of the G1-3 of them, then just trade at material traders for any of those G1's to G3's that you did not just get while working on the G4's.
Gathering the G5 materials you will need is a little more time consuming. But you don't need much in the way of G5 materials for G1-4 engineering, so you won't need much to get the engineers ranked up. My approach was to focus on upgrades to G4 to get engineers unlocked and get their rep up. Then circle back and get the actual G5 upgrades done as I finished gathering the materials required for that. The first step of that was very fast for material gathering, like I said, just a few days. That second step has been going on for about 1 1/2 weeks, and is not quite done yet....but I am doing it for 9 ships at the same time, so I don't think that is an unreasonable amount of time.
Sorry for so many words!
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It's FOMO* that causes commanders to chase their tails to reach the top of Level 5 immediately.
The Level 5 will still be there later and, if you follow Jaggid's advice, you will enjoy a more pleasant game.
*Fear Of Missing Out
The Level 5 will still be there later and, if you follow Jaggid's advice, you will enjoy a more pleasant game.
*Fear Of Missing Out
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before the redid engineering to where it is now, you could spam g1 or g2 or whatever, change effect, do it more, whatever..
the value of next grade was 3 time what previous grade was.....so g2=3*g1, g3=3*g2(or 3*(3*g1)..etc, doable but uses a lot of g1 and/or g2 materials . no biggie, lots of folks did it.
Its a bit different now and good luck doing g1, g2 over and over..just as easy to get all the right mats.
the worst thing from the start of it was the actual commodities we had to collect, we don't have to do that anymore unless you want guardian or human tech unlocked at a tech broker.
In normal gameplay a great deal of whats needed will accumulate and eventually having all the mats makes it easy to decide to go do what other lame task they want to work for you.
All that aside, some of the fun of collecting is NOT for everyone, some do not want to kill, some can't kill, sooo there are people that can't get certain engineering done at all.
Remember the broken Sirius Permit?
That was a blast, I had the permit from before(many of us did), then they broke it so we had to wait months for them to fix it...one of the recent updates actually removed several of my permits again...sure hope I don't need them..
Then of course as some of us know, alllll the things we need USED to be as mission rewards too, that helped, till an update broke it, then they fixed, then they broke it...over and over. Seems to me like people actually gave up complaining.
Kinda like massacre missions, broke it, fixed it, broke it, stayed broke for over a year, they think they fixed it....phhh, most of us that used to do the massacre missions just gave up and moved on to other things.
Another fine example...we no longer have any starving factions/systems anywhere....soooo another avenue of scans and materials gone.....
for some things there are several ways to get mats, for some....barely 1
One of the reasons I have over 200 ships is actually because I enjoy making different builds and I don't like constantly swapping modules...it might be different if we could label them, like we can now name ships....even that took forever.
anyway, that's a lot of stuff to engineer...half of the 200+ships are actually holding engineered modules and many are named according to whats in them.
Point is it takes a lot of effort even now to engineer....I needed more biotech conductors for whatever is next as I depleted them a week ago, easiest was to do a lot of assassinate missions for them, trading for them just means you then have to replace what you traded which is bad as its a g5, so its a 2:1 trade...nice
the value of next grade was 3 time what previous grade was.....so g2=3*g1, g3=3*g2(or 3*(3*g1)..etc, doable but uses a lot of g1 and/or g2 materials . no biggie, lots of folks did it.
Its a bit different now and good luck doing g1, g2 over and over..just as easy to get all the right mats.
the worst thing from the start of it was the actual commodities we had to collect, we don't have to do that anymore unless you want guardian or human tech unlocked at a tech broker.
In normal gameplay a great deal of whats needed will accumulate and eventually having all the mats makes it easy to decide to go do what other lame task they want to work for you.
All that aside, some of the fun of collecting is NOT for everyone, some do not want to kill, some can't kill, sooo there are people that can't get certain engineering done at all.
Remember the broken Sirius Permit?
That was a blast, I had the permit from before(many of us did), then they broke it so we had to wait months for them to fix it...one of the recent updates actually removed several of my permits again...sure hope I don't need them..
Then of course as some of us know, alllll the things we need USED to be as mission rewards too, that helped, till an update broke it, then they fixed, then they broke it...over and over. Seems to me like people actually gave up complaining.
Kinda like massacre missions, broke it, fixed it, broke it, stayed broke for over a year, they think they fixed it....phhh, most of us that used to do the massacre missions just gave up and moved on to other things.
Another fine example...we no longer have any starving factions/systems anywhere....soooo another avenue of scans and materials gone.....
for some things there are several ways to get mats, for some....barely 1
One of the reasons I have over 200 ships is actually because I enjoy making different builds and I don't like constantly swapping modules...it might be different if we could label them, like we can now name ships....even that took forever.
anyway, that's a lot of stuff to engineer...half of the 200+ships are actually holding engineered modules and many are named according to whats in them.
Point is it takes a lot of effort even now to engineer....I needed more biotech conductors for whatever is next as I depleted them a week ago, easiest was to do a lot of assassinate missions for them, trading for them just means you then have to replace what you traded which is bad as its a g5, so its a 2:1 trade...nice
Good shout. The delivery missions are probably a better for this as you get 3/4 pirates and they are guaranteed come to you (edit-assuming you get the incoming enemy alert) as opposed to pirate lords who just probably will. Chances are there will be some biotech conductors as a reward option as well.
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Lightspeed and I agree on something!
/thread
The Replicated Man
T
I feel your pain op. I personally have done the engineer grind 3 times and am working on a fourth.
Some call me mad. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I just enjoy punishing myself lol
Some call me mad. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I just enjoy punishing myself lol
I wish that were true, but I have yet to see biotech conductors drop from anything other than a very long time ago. afaik only from missions and traders
I don't kill for a living anymore so I'd rather not waste so much effort..passenger missions and several others give them too, but for me its faster and easier to just take 20-30 assassinate missions, be done with it.. I take a massacre mission too, then they mostly just come to me..it would just be nicer if I could find them like any of the others..PI's, manipulators..etc. I can usually fill up on those and much more in like an hour...much faster
I don't kill for a living anymore so I'd rather not waste so much effort..passenger missions and several others give them too, but for me its faster and easier to just take 20-30 assassinate missions, be done with it.. I take a massacre mission too, then they mostly just come to me..it would just be nicer if I could find them like any of the others..PI's, manipulators..etc. I can usually fill up on those and much more in like an hour...much faster