Update below!
How many of you don't get a long time to play each day/week...?
I'm one of those people who get maybe 5-10 hours a week, if I dedicate all my free time entirely to ED.
So, when it comes to hunting down materials, it can take up huge amounts of my free time to gather very little, or sometimes nothing at all (like yesterday, 1 hour, no arsenic).
The sense of progression towards my goal was basically zero. I spent a full hour driving around on a barren rock, only to find nothing I needed. It's very very demoralising.
This has always been my main issue with the material gathering . (Do not read as "Engineers", they're fine, but materials are used for synthesis too).
There's far too much of "nothing" or waiting in between finding what you need.
So, I offer a sort of solution...!
It's going to sound like a step backwards, but hear me out.
Increase All Recipe Requirements By 10x
"That's " I hear you say. And quite right. That by itself is just .
Let me explain further, by increasing a recipe so instead of 5 of something, you need 50, you now need to gather 10x as much.
Which means, the spawn rate can be increased even further,10x, 20x or even 30x. On the surface, this would mean rocks spawning all over the place. Spoilt for choice!
Same with USSs, make them more common (maybe not 20x +.. lol) and contain more materials.
Anyhoo, with a much higher spawn rate, you're more likely to collect at least some of what you need per session.
Even if you only get 10 of 30 of whatever, it's better than 0 of 3.
And even if you don't, you'll be no longer be wandering around waiting for a rock or USS to show up, before getting back to playing, you'll always be busy.
Of course, material storage would also need to accommodate this increase. No idea if that's possible.
And I haven't taken in to account material brokers at all.
So for casual players like myself, I can put in an hour's time, and still leave having likely worked towards my goal, rather than the current system, where I can spend an hour achieving nothing.
Does that make sense?
Update
So moving on, the other problem is actually the new material brokers. I don't like them, and I've yet to even visit one. Lol
They basically want me to gather random junk, them fly to then, wherever they may be, and exchange it for what I was looking for in the first place.
When it would be so much nicer to just find what you was looking for in the first place.
So, idea part 2
Remove the material brokers!
But keep the data ones, because I can't think of a better way to sort the data out. Lol
Instead transform the synthesis doodah on our ships in to a fully functional crafting system, and allow us to synthesise the manufactured materials, from elements (and maybe data?).
The rarer the manufactured material, the more elements you need. More or less the same as a broker, but onboard, and makes sense. Lol
That idea there is the basis for a fully fledged crafting system.
(You'd still also be able to find manufactured materials, this is just another avenue to acquiring them)
You can even gate it slightly behind needing a acquire a schematic to synthesise something. And schematics can be found, earned, and even the best can be behind permit locked area, another gate, and more gameplay.
Rather than a hotch botch of random elements, have a system like that, working together, and intertwined.
Thoughts?
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Yeah it is very frustrating to clear 3 hours for yaself to play a game, and not get any closer to ya goal in that.. this is most noticeable when it comes to HGE farming. It's just not a game that respects its players time.
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