Why can't we see all blueprints when we have the engineers unlocked?

amadeus1171

amadeus1171
It is silly that we either have to travel to the engineer, or lookup blueprints offline, to see what materials we need, or still need to get. If we unlock the engineer, visit the engineer, and see the blueprints, then those blueprints should be permanently stored in our ship's computers, and we should have access to see blueprints whenever we want.

Why are things so silly in the future?

SDK rant.

If FD would actually implement a proper SDK 3'rd party deveolopers could take care of it. All that would be needed are blank panels where 3'r party apps could render into the game, and take input from the game back to the 3'rd party apps.

I made a suggestion before about implementing a lua interface for Elite: Dangerous, but it never gained any traction.

Plugin's/addons could run directly in the ED runtime, or a 3'rd party app could communicate to ED using IPC/RPC calls.

The SDK doesn't have to expose much. At a minimum, instead of writing to a file, the SDK can provide, at request, the same information via IPC/RPC, or through callback methods in a lua plugin. This information is already being provided, so why not just provide it to a lua plugin?
 

amadeus1171

amadeus1171
Reasons is not a good answer. We should see all the blueprints we have unlocked so we can plan properly without having to rely on out of game resources.
 

Deleted member 115407

D
Once you unlock them, you should have remote access to the blueprint information. I agree.

It's silly the way it is now, as if someone couldn't just jot down the information on a piece of paper. Which they can do, which defeats the whole purpose of trying to obfuscate the info.

Poorly designed for the player, IMO, and a waste of the player's time.
 

Dbrn47

Dbrn47
amadeus1171 said:
Reasons is not a good answer. We should see all the blueprints we have unlocked so we can plan properly without having to rely on out of game resources.
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Well, it'd require a good amount of resources to get it to the level of those out of game resources. Inara is pretty darn good right now. Perhaps, they don't feel it's worth it for the moment. I'm not one of them, but some people like things being obscured and taking extra time to get things done. Not the first time something like this has been asked and I'm sure it'll be asked again and again, with the answer still being reasons.
 

Spacecat

Spacecat
They need to consolidate the recipes so every level doesn't require totally different mats. This is still, and has always been, silly.
 

amadeus1171

amadeus1171
Dbrn47 said:
Well, it'd require a good amount of resources to get it to the level of those out of game resources. Inara is pretty darn good right now. Perhaps, they don't feel it's worth it for the moment. I'm not one of them, but some people like things being obscured and taking extra time to get things done. Not the first time something like this has been asked and I'm sure it'll be asked again and again, with the answer still being reasons.
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I call . The information is already there. Just render it on a screen in the ship.

Edit: Wait, you can't say ?! What if I meant to say Bachelor of Science? I can't say I have a degree in computer science?! That's !
 

kofeyh

kofeyh
I used notepad.exe yesterday. It became intolerable to track all of the tat the engineers needed; and because there's no way to pin specials, and no way to view this outside of the engineer. We also still cannot know what the specials are, we have to experience them for ourselves (we have to unlock grade one for every blueprint to know what the specials materials are).

So I manually wrote everything down because it's 2018 and apparently tracking any of this at all within game, is just too darn hard. There's hiding things, and then there's hiding things. Imagine if all of this, all of it, was in the same system Galnet uses. All the blueprints. All the specials. All the engineers. All the new unlock-able modules. All of it.
 
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Dbrn47

Dbrn47
amadeus1171 said:
I call . The information is already there. Just render it on a screen in the ship.

Edit: Wait, you can't say ?! What if I meant to say Bachelor of Science? I can't say I have a degree in computer science?! That's !
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I'm with you. Frontier isn't, pretty clearly.
 

kofeyh

kofeyh
picommander said:
Currently I'm re-learning the importance of restrictions to gameplay. It's part of the game - of any game. You are constantly playing towards lifting those restrictions. Ones they are all lifted the game is pretty much dead for you. Maybe you don't see it now. But almost every player is sooner or later caught in a burnout loop were nothing but boredom awaits you. That's the moment were you hopefully mark my words. I've just recently wiped a 4 years old commander with over 1 Billion credits + a full fitted Corvette. I'm playing the game from scratch now and receive all the sweet restrictions and enjoy every new update for my ship. I have such a blast again! This sort of joy is all gone once you have so much credits that you can afford what you want whenever you want. :)
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This has, virtually nothing to do with the game adequately providing information about it's own mechanics. There's no way to 'lift those restrictions' because it doesn't matter if you have 5 thousand credits, or 5 billion, the experience is identical; you cannot see specials for any module, unless you've engineered the module at least once, and you cannot track multiple blueprints from one engineer.

This isn't a credit concern. It's a simple lack of visibility.
 

Valorin

Valorin
I wondered myself yesterday when looking through the Engineer table ingame why we can't see all blueprints they do, but only two of their specialties. It also doesn't even tell me that the information provided is incomplete.
If I wouldn't know about Inara, I probably would try to unlock another Engineer who can craft the blueprint I want, because it's in his list in the game, but not on the list of another one whom I know can craft it, but the game doesn't tell me.

We know where Engineer locations are via Galaxy Map already, so I'd presume that the Engineer screen would give me more information, and it does. I like that they have a bio and thus more personality and all, and the screen also shows me the criteria to unlock an Engineer, and then it shows me what they can do but does not tell me that this is just two of their specialties. And at that point I'm a bit meh, because why provide an information if it's not complete?
 

rhiz

rhiz
Yes, I agree entirely – this has been a long standing frustration for me. When collecting materials we’re often trying achieve multiple things at once, so in the absence of a photographic memory the single pinned blueprint for each engineer strikes me as a completely arbitrary restriction. Perhaps less of an issue now that we have more mat storage, but still. I’m always leaving the game to refer to INARA. I play in VR, so it's especially disruptive.
 

-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
Yep. I agree 100%. I don't understand why we can't see the blueprints that we have unlocked.

Hey Ho. Looks like I will be using an out of game app for that still. It's the only one I have ever used and looks like I will still need it.
 

kofeyh

kofeyh
picommander said:
Of cause not, but that wasn't my point. I only mentioned my resent wipe so you can see I know what I'm talking about. Take it as a general statement about accessibility, which improves over the time as you play the game. But you are right, this special case doesn't improve by any means and looks indeed like a very artificial and needless restriction. I stand corrected.
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I've reset a couple accounts (I have 3 PC, one Console; don't judge me!). And I have one account that's hard-mode (ship dies? so does the save). So I can relate. Ahh, that new car smell.

My point, is that the game persists in endlessly hiding information that has no intrinsic value being hidden. The data is there. A UI that brings all that disparate data, together, would be a godsend. Materials, modules, blueprints, ship stats, specials, full engineer breakdowns (all they do, and to what level) you name it. There is a wealth of data and the game already has a way to present it.

This isn't a new request, it's been asked for, I think, even before I started playing; and I have the best part of 2k hours invested this thing. So, I am back to notepad and sites like inara and eddb because the developer just doesn't have enough hours in the day to fight fires and add content, let alone describe any of it.
 
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rain_walker

rain_walker
I agree with Op. I think any information we can get from outsources like Inara or Eddb should be in the game. No point hiding these things when most of the player check them outside anyway. Another Example, material traders and technology brokers, already on Inara. Why not put them on the map already?

FD loves to go the hard way on every feature then roll it back on later updates. This is one of the few times that i wished Elite Dangerous had Evocati testers, ppl who play the game regularly will have a whole different view toward the game and how the features should be implemented.
 

amadeus1171

amadeus1171
picommander said:
Maybe the reason for this restriction is much easier than we think. We shouldn't forget 'remote Engineering' which needs this restriction, otherwise there would be no point in visiting the Engineers at all. So it's possibly just to keep the code simple: If all blueprints would be visible, the code would need to distinguish between active (remotely usable) and passive (just visible) blueprints. I don't know, too tired to think anymore now...
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I'm sorry coding is hard.

Just as we have the option to view our engineers, there should be a sub option to show the recipes each engineer offers.
 
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