Where to find electrochemical arrays and other materials?

[DjVortex]

I'm at Colonia and I'm trying to upgrade some guns, and I need electrochemical arrays, conductive ceramics and conductive polymers. But where to get them?

The ED wiki says that these can be found from signals in anarchy systems. I have gone to about 20 or 30 such signals. No dice. Nothing. Tons of common materials, but nothing of those.

I usually don't really mind grinding, but I must admit it becomes a bit frustrating when such materials seem to be ultra-rare (apparently less than 5%, probably a lot less, of all anarchy system signals), especially since it tends to take a long time to scan the system and then reach those signals.

Same wiki says that those mats are sometimes also rewards for data delivery mission rewards. Try to make a guess how many such missions I have seen that reward any of those materials.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Electrochemical Arrays: pain in the neck, reasonably common as combat zone debris from the larger ships but you'll have to make an effort to pick it up afterwards [1], occasionally show up as a mission reward which might be easier.

Conductive Ceramics / Polymers: Biotech Conductors are available as a very common mission reward for mid-range and higher missions, get those and trade down and you'll have huge amounts very quickly. The relevant Material Trader is at Foster Terminal in Coeus.

[1] Easiest is probably if someone else does the shooting, and you stay neutral and do the collecting.

EDIT: as regards mission rewards, the only thing which determines how much materials you can get from a mission reward is how much cash it gives - there's no difference between data delivery, assassinations, salvage, trade, etc. missions in that respect ... except that the payouts on data delivery are much lower, so those probably won't have what you want. Getting allied with a faction will significantly improve mission pay and therefore material rewards.

 

[DjVortex]

Nice views at Foster Terminal...

 

[DjVortex]

The material trader was the solution to the problem.

I wonder why the wiki doesn't mention this as a possibility.

 

[Jack Winter]

Add it..

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The wiki is extremely variable in quality.

For NPC plot characters, someone spent a very long time going through and entering comprehensive articles for just about everyone appearing between 2014 and 2021 (though seems to have stopped more recently) so those are really good references and cross-references, with detailed sourcing to the original Galnet articles and tourist beacon texts for verification.

For the political BGS, no-one has made a serious attempt to manage and maintain that page, so it's incredibly outdated (describing the pre-3.3 system) and wasn't completely correct even then.

 

[metatheurgist]

The mats give a pretty good idea of where they're found in game. A couple are patently wrong though.