Whats the best way to get engineering materials?

CoyoteXStarrk

CoyoteXStarrk
This may be a bit of a noob question, but I am finally at a point in the game where I have a fairly decent amount of money and have A-rated my Conda. But I have yet to engineer anything outside of my FSD and its only a G4. And I have seen several videos on engineering and the materials you need, but they are fairly vague on the best ways to get the materials that you need.



My problem is that I am missing alot of materials needed for even basic engineering. And I noticed that I got most of my materials up to this point via missions or just scooping up materials from destroyed ships at unidentified signal sources or mining sites. Is that the best way to do it? Because I have been tempted for a couple of days now to take my Courier out and just search for signals and patrol mining sites. Just scoop up and scan anything and everything I find.


I mean it sounds like a fun way to get the materials, but is it the most efficient?
 

Good Death

Good Death
CoyoteXStarrk said:
This may be a bit of a noob question, but I am finally at a point in the game where I have a fairly decent amount of money and have A-rated my Conda. But I have yet to engineer anything outside of my FSD and its only a G4. And I have seen several videos on engineering and the materials you need, but they are fairly vague on the best ways to get the materials that you need.



My problem is that I am missing alot of materials needed for even basic engineering. And I noticed that I got most of my materials up to this point via missions or just scooping up materials from destroyed ships at unidentified signal sources or mining sites. Is that the best way to do it? Because I have been tempted for a couple of days now to take my Courier out and just search for signals and patrol mining sites. Just scoop up and scan anything and everything I find.


I mean it sounds like a fun way to get the materials, but is it the most efficient?
Click to expand...

Grind the rest of your face off.
 

Quantis Trap

Quantis Trap
Focus on getting the highest grade materials. While getting those high grade materials you'll also get a lot of lower grade materials kind of by accident. Once you have a few of the higher grade materials you can go to material traders to trade down and fill the hole of materials you don't have.
 

Faybs

Faybs
Pick up everything you see, and use https://inara.cz/galaxy-nearest/25/367/ to find a material trader near you. Don't grind unless you've got almost everything you need for an upgrade, and then limit it to a couple of hours (unless you enjoy driving your SRV, I find it fun and so I have more raw mats than I know what to do with). Also don't feel the need to take everything to grade 5 on the first trip to the engineer. Get the first couple of upgrades, add any special effects you want and then pin the engineering blueprint. Then just go about your merry way and when you've got enough mats for an upgrade, go to the remote engineering menu on your ship and upgrade from the pinned blueprint. Special effects remain when you do an upgrade and you're guaranteed that your module's stats will never go down from a reroll.
 
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m0rl0ck

M
Well if you are anything like me, or some of the other posters i have seen on the board, you are about to find out what the game is really all about.
Funs over, time to grind.
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
If you do a little bit of everything and collect everything you find you will easily get enough G3 mats. You will get enough G4 mats to do some stuff every once in a while doing the same. G5 mats you will have to hunt for if you want to do more than an upgrade every quarter.

G3 upgrades are more than adequate for most things in the game. Most people will want to max out FSD upgrades though. If you want to PvP, get grinding.
 

Teh Smoo

T
CoyoteXStarrk said:
This may be a bit of a noob question, but I am finally at a point in the game where I have a fairly decent amount of money and have A-rated my Conda. But I have yet to engineer anything outside of my FSD and its only a G4. And I have seen several videos on engineering and the materials you need, but they are fairly vague on the best ways to get the materials that you need.



My problem is that I am missing alot of materials needed for even basic engineering. And I noticed that I got most of my materials up to this point via missions or just scooping up materials from destroyed ships at unidentified signal sources or mining sites. Is that the best way to do it? Because I have been tempted for a couple of days now to take my Courier out and just search for signals and patrol mining sites. Just scoop up and scan anything and everything I find.


I mean it sounds like a fun way to get the materials, but is it the most efficient?
Click to expand...

  • Farm high grade mats and trade down. A chunk of USS hunting in deep space in systems with certain effects active. Very effective, not very stimulating.
  • Drive SRV a lot? There's crashed ships as well, that give certain things. Again- fill up and trade down.
  • Knock over the static installations as well (in solo!). It's boring, but it works.
  • There is no good way to farm wake scans. Scan wakes. Distribution centers can be nice.
  • Data is also annoying to farm, installations give some, other stuff is harder to get.
  • Pick up EVERYTHING. Imagine how much more annoying this way when the hard cap for ALL material+elements was 1000.
 

gooddoc

gooddoc
I got my materials from USS threat level 0's.

I just noted down 1 or 2 mods at a time, I was after, what was needed to get to G5 with each. By hovvering the pointer over each item on the engineering module page it brought up a brief description of the type of system these where found in - or go to the Inara site.

I then filtered these system types to show on the Galmap, jumped to them & roamed around in SC waiting for USS's to appear. I only chose threat level 0's 'cos I hate pewpew. As others stated, by going for the higher level materials, the lower levels were also obtained.
I just rinsed & repeated until I had enough for the rolls to get to G5 + special effect.

This became easier when the material traders were introduced as exchanging abundant materials for needed one's reduced the time taken to get what you wanted but were difficult to find.

Bear in mind though, I have only engineered important modules on my ships & not EVERY possible module or weapon - as some players do. So to me it wasn't the grind that others report!
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
Best way to get mats is to play around BEFORE you're allowed to perceive you need them.

It only screws up if you're flying around not even paying attention to the fact you're there, stuck in your mind thinking about the materials you need and the enginnering you do with them. And it really screws up.

If you just play around not having an immediate need for them (sure if you need something you can do research and put yourself playing around the right things that drop materials) everything is sweet. Daydreaming about engineering your ship is not playing.. and you've been fooled by any game that has strung you along by the promise of something bigger as the only reason to do what you're doing now.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Missed one thing. The basic low grade engineering materials are not manufactured but raw. Those you can only get planetsides. Get into your SRV and start prospecting. If you need specific high grade raw stuff, check eddb or inara for suitable bodies.
Some other mats are actually data you get from scanning other ships or, in the case of G5 long range FSD mods, high wake signatures. The basic ship scans you get for free from your regular scanner just target other ships. For the wake scans, though, you'll need to lug around a wake scanner.
Finally, you can get most (all?) materials as alternative mission rewards. Finding them can be even more tedious than finding the elusive High Grade Emissions USS.
 

Faybs

Faybs
Ashnak said:
Finally, you can get most (all?) materials as alternative mission rewards. Finding them can be even more tedious than finding the elusive High Grade Emissions USS.
Click to expand...

A good source for those is whatever the latest mission money farm is. Most missions let you choose between money, rep or mats. During the latest Robigo craze I made almost no money, but maxed out on the top tier mats they were giving out as mission rewards.
 

Rulki

R
I would do the collection grind only once or twice to know how it works ;)

But for my 25+ ships i just fly to Jameson's cobra to collect data. For materials i visit crashed Anacondas, Dav's Hope or do missions. For most raw materials i still go planet side. But you can find some high grade raw materials at the crashed Anacondas as well

When i got enough i visit the material trader to get the materials i need. Its faster than combat or HGE most times.
 

Hairy Polo

Hairy Polo
CoyoteXStarrk said:
This may be a bit of a noob question, but I am finally at a point in the game where I have a fairly decent amount of money and have A-rated my Conda. But I have yet to engineer anything outside of my FSD and its only a G4. And I have seen several videos on engineering and the materials you need, but they are fairly vague on the best ways to get the materials that you need.



My problem is that I am missing alot of materials needed for even basic engineering. And I noticed that I got most of my materials up to this point via missions or just scooping up materials from destroyed ships at unidentified signal sources or mining sites. Is that the best way to do it? Because I have been tempted for a couple of days now to take my Courier out and just search for signals and patrol mining sites. Just scoop up and scan anything and everything I find.


I mean it sounds like a fun way to get the materials, but is it the most efficient?
Click to expand...

OP, three places I use to grab mat and high grade mats: 1) Davs Hope. 2) Crashed Anaconda. 3) Robigo passenger missions to Sirius Atmospherics. Once you fill up on what is available using these locations, everything else can be traded at a material trader.

These locations can all be found by a Google search. Its still a grind, but much less than doing it on a wing and a prayer. o7
 

zebcarter

zebcarter
For data, the easiest way is to do the Federation and / or Empire rank grind doing Planetary Scan missions. You will earn a lot of money, rank up quickly and on each scan get a lot of data. Actually, I needed to visit a Material Trader several times to empty my overflowing data storage 😎
 

Phil JMac

P
If you try to unlock everyone all at once this may well get frustrating but I have never found anything to do with the Engineers that much of a chore


- Play you normal game to a certain extent - Missions give G4-G5 mats when your allied so trade and source and return can be lucrative. trade with a number of stations and do a little smuggling with black markets (you'll find out why if you don't already)
- Scan missions - take a few and you'll get data rewards from the mission itself, after running away from the outpost spend a little time shooting rocks
- Stick a wake scanner on your most used ship and scan one high wake every-time you leave a station
- Stick a collect limpet on a combat ship and collect while blowing stuff up in res sites and combat zones
- Scan every ship you see, at least every ship you can be bothered with
- Drop in to signal sources you see while you trade - to start with everything is useful
- you can go to the "special sites" - crashed anacondas, Jamersons site - personally i don't like going somewhere and relogging as I find that dull

You'll soon find you have lots of stuff you need for certain unlocks and blueprints (don't forget to pin blueprints you want) - You will need at some point to find something that you have not enough of but mats traders are there. Its easy finding G1, G2 and G3 mats so burn through them, you'll find more...


hope this helps
 

Achilles7

Banned
Achilles7
Firstly, book yourself in for a lobotomy...

I appreciate that many of the hardcore, no-life, game-apologists known as 'The Stepford Cmdrs' (you know who you are...we all do, we all do!) are way ahead of me on this course of action!

NB: After the procedure there is an additional benefit; you're also now fully qualified to join SDC. A camp voice aids any application too,
à la Sundae & Harry P. Hence, I would strongly advise attempting an impression of Louis CK's "gy" voice during the Discord interview.
​

Cmdr Achilles7 is an equal opportunities insulter.
 
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