Engineers Unlocking Tier 5. Again and again and again.....

[Cmdr Zach]

I've been away from elite for over 8 months, but last time I played, I had unlocked all the engineers to Grade 5 and had engineered many, many modules across my extensive fleet.

Now I've returned since the big update, and I went to fix the FSD to grade 5 on a few haulers.

However, grade 4 and 5 were locked. Lucking I had plenty of materials on me, so I ground through 4 and unlocked 5, and did a couple of rolls on the FSD (Without adding an experimental effect).

I then wen't and got my next hauler - to find grade 5 was locked again. And for the next.

In case this was caused by legacy engineered items already existing on the ships, on the 4th hauler I pre-removed all existing engineered parts and went to see Felicity stock. FSD was locked right down to grade 1!!!

Am I doing something wrong, or is the game doing something wrong, or is this working as intended - every individual ship needs to grind up to grade 5 with each engineer, not the player?!?

 

[Faded Glory]

Am I doing something wrong, or is the game doing something wrong, or is this working as intended - every individual ship needs to grind up to grade 5 with each engineer, not the player?!?

Every single module needs to be upgraded through all the grades, unless you convert it from a legacy mod, in which case it drops down from (for example) grade 5 legacy mod to grade 4 maxed out in the new system. Then you go ahead and upgrade through grade 5 to complete, if you wish, with experimental effect.

This is how the new system works. It was controversial, but to be honest, it's very few rolls in the lower grades to progress to the next (and you don't need to max out each grade, you can move onto the next as soon as it's unlocked), so you'll be rolling grade 3 after three rolls and grade 5 after 6 or 7. Grade 5 takes anything from 7 to in my experience 11 (but I've read of 17!) to complete, so essentially, so long as you have the materials rolling a module from scratch isn't that tortuous.

Also worth noting that if you have a blueprint pinned from an engineer, you can roll the mods at any station, and will only need to visit the actual engineer to get the blueprint or a special effect.

 

[Jastebro]

There are two components, engineer reputation and component mod grade.

With a new component, you never go straight to G5, it has to be gradually tinkered with and improved gradually in order to unlock the next level.
Engineer rep determines how many rolls on this tinkering process is required.
If you have max rep, it should take some 9 to 12 rolls on a G5 module to max it to 100%

 

[Blackcompany]

Its intentionaly designed to waste your time. Its a desperate attempt to mask the games lack of content.

 

[Kubicide]

OP this is a new change with 3.0. Nope, you are not doing something wrong. Yes, you now need to unlock G5 to upgrade every existing module. Fun huh? The worse part is that you will start at G1 for engineering all new modules - no more starting at G3 or G5 after earning your way up. That's been taken away. Also note a number of good secondary's are no longer available so you may want to keep old RNGineered modules and compare against what is possible with the new change.

FDev giveth max rolls to everyone, but they forgot to taketh away the grind... the truly bad part of RNGineers...

 

[Cmdr Zach]

Thanks for the replies gents.

Quite shocked at how massive this change is. Have to re-think engineering my whole fleet, I think. Those materiel brokers will help, but the new grind is daunting, in light of the one I'd already don't to unlock them all.

 

[Martind Forlon]

Thanks for the replies gents.

Quite shocked at how massive this change is. Have to re-think engineering my whole fleet, I think. Those materiel brokers will help, but the new grind is daunting, in light of the one I'd already don't to unlock them all.

Dunno if you know, but now you also can pin blueprint (whole range 1-5!) and proceed with engineering on any startport with outfitting. Ideally if you have not enough mats is do for example lvl2 upgrade, chose special ability (only can be added by engineer), pin blueprint and finish upgrading later out of engineer base.

 

[Dr Zarkov]

Every single module needs to be upgraded through all the grades, unless you convert it from a legacy mod, in which case it drops down from (for example) grade 5 legacy mod to grade 4 maxed out in the new system.

And only if the previous upgrade was the same. For example, if Multis were grade 5 overcharged, they drop to tier 4. But if you come with grade 5 rapid fire, you'll have to start overcharged from scratch.

 

[Cmdr Zach]

Couple more questions while I'm here:

Do experimental mods still reduce your standing with the engineer? Because if so, I shouldn't utilise the 'remote engineer' people above have told me about.

Generally, is it better to leave my G5 grandfathered modules alone, or is it best to convert then re-upgrade them?

 

[Faded Glory]

Couple more questions while I'm here:

Do experimental mods still reduce your standing with the engineer? Because if so, I shouldn't utilise the 'remote engineer' people above have told me about.

Generally, is it better to leave my G5 grandfathered modules alone, or is it best to convert then re-upgrade them?

No, experimental effects just cost materials and don't affect your reputation.

It depends. Although most mods in the new system will be better than ones you had in the old, it is possible that the effect when on your ship will not necessarily be as good if you had very good secondary effects previously. This is most likely to happen with drive mods, shield mods, and perhaps FSD mods. To put it in perspective, I've had this happen once, with a DD5 mod on an Imperial Eagle where none of the new mods improved its boost of 851 m/s, but then on my iCourier, I got nearly 80 m/s increase in boost to 881 m/s. I still haven't been able to work out what secondary on the iEagle has given me such a good boost.

If you have the mats for the lower grade rolls (and it's really not many to get up to grade 5), then it's probably a no-brainer to simply engineer a new one from scratch, then you can see when you swap it whether it's better or not. Because I have a bunch of ships that can all use the same size modules I have been able to use the trickle down effect and once the ship I'm trying to mod comes out better, I then swap whatever the existing module was and put it in another ship and most times that has given me a small bump on that ship.

 

[Talamat]

Dunno if you know, but now you also can pin blueprint (whole range 1-5!) and proceed with engineering on any startport with outfitting. Ideally if you have not enough mats is do for example lvl2 upgrade, chose special ability (only can be added by engineer), pin blueprint and finish upgrading later out of engineer base.

Alas if your module has legacy upgrades on it, you'll have to visit the engineer to get it converted before you can use pinned blueprints.

 

[Martind Forlon]

Alas if your module has legacy upgrades on it, you'll have to visit the engineer to get it converted before you can use pinned blueprints.

yes, this is true. On other side you still can just remove modules from your ships and send them to engineer on 1st visit, on 2nd visit you can upgrade them all. It is not elegant solution, but with some planning you can adjust your ships quite fast. My personal experience is, that except few weapons (focused APA with heat reduction and packhounds also with heat reduction) I got better stats just by conversion itself.

 

[CItizenFive]

Progression from Grade 4 to Grade 5 is maddening. If your reputation is maxed out with an engineer, you can get 75-85% towards max with four or five rolls. But that last little bit might take another ten rolls. You spend the materials and either gain .01% or nothing at all.

Combined with the fact that I already spent hours in the grinder to get the modules to Grade 5 to begin with, it's as if Fdev is punishing us for engineering before 3.0. I also have extensive G5 engineering across numerous ships, and I don't think I'm going to convert most of them.

I seriously don't understand it. Sandro said that he and the team really want to encourage conversion, but then they punish us with a loss in grade if we convert. I'd really like to meet that guy and ask him what alternate dimension he is from, because he certainly isn't in touch with this reality.

The current engineering is a terrible smack in the sack to anyone who did a lot of engineering prior to 3.0. They need to either play fair and let us convert a legacy G5 to a 3.0 G5, or tweak the RNG so that it doesn't take 7 - 12 rolls to regain G5 after conversion AND spend more materials to get the specialized effect again.

OK, rage ranting to the side, is there a forum thread or other method for me to contact the devs and throw my opinion in the overflowing bucket of complaints?