When we start in the galaxy of ED, we have money grind. We work our way along the ships that can be gained without reputation walls and choose what we like to fly. We do the same to buy better modules for the ships we’ve chosen and ply our chosen trades. The steady structured ways to do this are pretty clear; we kill, mission, trade, explore, mine, steal or any mix of these activities we prefer. Aside from the past issues with 100+ mill per hour bugs/exploits this works pretty well.
Then we come to engineer materials. Suddenly the steady structured progression goes away and we are left with the horror of the random number generator. Many sites list the conditions by which the BGS affects loot drops, that isn’t the problem. The problem comes with pure luck defining whether it takes 5 mins to gain the materials you need to progress or a week, a month, potentially never. Likewise gaining materials from missions – we have no way to control what we get offered. It might be a full list of low rank missions that will never reward us with g4 or 5 materials. It might be that they loot gen dice gets stuck on one reward item. It might be that the reward we desire comes from a playstyle we dislike. So again we roll the dice and relog to see if the next list is any good and we’re back where we started wasting the scant few hours most adults can give to gaming in a week filled with work, families, friends and chores.
But we have the material traders now right? That fixes this [expletives deleted] nightmare waste of our precious free time doesn’t it? Well no not really. Turjan Starstone and The Yamiks made good videos on the subject (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tATD4Ayd-MM, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iDAdSy6xgY) tl;dr it takes around 1200 grade 1 mats to trade up to a grade 5.
The problem then still remains. So what for a solution? Well how about instead of a fixed material type reward per mission, the ability to choose depending on the system economy type? Or even half the reward in a different material type. This would go a long way to providing that ‘slow steady structured path’ that has been quoted for progression with engineers.
An example of the current system : I want 12 grade 5 materials to get that l5 engineering bonus. (12 is taken from average number of rolls taken in beta and live for 3.0.x to max a l5 upgrade.) Then I need to get very lucky 4 times when scanning a combat vessel for Abnormal Compact Emission Data. I get a drop from scanning ships of any type roughly every 10-12 ships I scan, and that drop can be one of 10 items. All drops being equal I could expect to gain my 12 after 40-80 combat ships scanned. But all drops aren’t equal and I need the rarest 0.5-3% drop rate item, not only that but I need it on the correct type for data not shield emission. This puts my chances so low that after 7 hours real time scanning in combat zones I have yet to loot a single one let alone 12.
Then we come to engineer materials. Suddenly the steady structured progression goes away and we are left with the horror of the random number generator. Many sites list the conditions by which the BGS affects loot drops, that isn’t the problem. The problem comes with pure luck defining whether it takes 5 mins to gain the materials you need to progress or a week, a month, potentially never. Likewise gaining materials from missions – we have no way to control what we get offered. It might be a full list of low rank missions that will never reward us with g4 or 5 materials. It might be that they loot gen dice gets stuck on one reward item. It might be that the reward we desire comes from a playstyle we dislike. So again we roll the dice and relog to see if the next list is any good and we’re back where we started wasting the scant few hours most adults can give to gaming in a week filled with work, families, friends and chores.
But we have the material traders now right? That fixes this [expletives deleted] nightmare waste of our precious free time doesn’t it? Well no not really. Turjan Starstone and The Yamiks made good videos on the subject (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tATD4Ayd-MM, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iDAdSy6xgY) tl;dr it takes around 1200 grade 1 mats to trade up to a grade 5.
The problem then still remains. So what for a solution? Well how about instead of a fixed material type reward per mission, the ability to choose depending on the system economy type? Or even half the reward in a different material type. This would go a long way to providing that ‘slow steady structured path’ that has been quoted for progression with engineers.
An example of the current system : I want 12 grade 5 materials to get that l5 engineering bonus. (12 is taken from average number of rolls taken in beta and live for 3.0.x to max a l5 upgrade.) Then I need to get very lucky 4 times when scanning a combat vessel for Abnormal Compact Emission Data. I get a drop from scanning ships of any type roughly every 10-12 ships I scan, and that drop can be one of 10 items. All drops being equal I could expect to gain my 12 after 40-80 combat ships scanned. But all drops aren’t equal and I need the rarest 0.5-3% drop rate item, not only that but I need it on the correct type for data not shield emission. This puts my chances so low that after 7 hours real time scanning in combat zones I have yet to loot a single one let alone 12.
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