Your least enjoyable Elite activity?

[Riverside]

Sunk cost fallacy maybe. Not about money, but time. And the prospect of just getting to the same point. Which may or may not happen.

I know what you mean I told myself I'd reset after I got to triple Elite, over 4 years & another 7,000+ hours later I still haven't reset

But I play in Open (in the suburbs, not the high pop hotspots) and regularly meet relatively new players. They usually have around 2bCr, either a cutter or corvette, and are mostly harmless or maybe expert combat rank. They are just starting to get into engineering & are looking for a reason to keep playing after a hundred hours or so of play. I help those that are willing, to find a reason to continue to play, usually a cause to work towards. That then gives them reasons to buy & use different ships, for gathering exploration data, for hauling, for killing NPCs, and making their ships better at doing those tasks by engineering them for a better jump range or bigger shields becomes a natural part of achieving the goal rather than just upgrading for the sake of it. Most of my ships are cobbled together from spare parts, then tweaked to improve their capability as I use & assess them. It's not a big part of how I play.

 

[Stigbob]

I sometimes feel like lazy mining. Pack my mining lasers, roam around and let the limpets collect. While listening to an audiobook. It's a bit of gaming zen and I do enjoy that.

As a side effect, this activity tops up some G1 and G2 raw materials in limited time. And the material trader then converts that to whatever I need. Sure, the trade rates are terrible, but you usually don't need excessive amounts of them. Similar for data things: sure I could try to grind for firmware or something like that. But data comes in automatically when hunting enemies in a RES. When storage of some data runs full, I exchange it again for the more valuable stuff.

So no, neither of those things brings in materials fast. It's a small but constant stream of materials instead. It just pools up in the run of time and was enough to get my last two ships engineered when I decided to get them.

Anything you have full bins of is for chucking at the traders no matter the rate.

 

[House0fDerp]

I sometimes feel like lazy mining. Pack my mining lasers, roam around and let the limpets collect. While listening to an audiobook. It's a bit of gaming zen and I do enjoy that.

As a side effect, this activity tops up some G1 and G2 raw materials in limited time. And the material trader then converts that to whatever I need. Sure, the trade rates are terrible, but you usually don't need excessive amounts of them. Similar for data things: sure I could try to grind for firmware or something like that. But data comes in automatically when hunting enemies in a RES. When storage of some data runs full, I exchange it again for the more valuable stuff.

So no, neither of those things brings in materials fast. It's a small but constant stream of materials instead. It just pools up in the run of time and was enough to get my last two ships engineered when I decided to get them.

On ones that need rarity 4 mats it's 216:1 conversions so you you can't store more than one worth of the rarity 1 mats to convert. That's if in the same line; if not, you can't possibly convert it even from a full load of a rarity 1, you'd have to updrade the full load to an intermediary mat then do a few more full loads of the same to convert to 1 rarity 4. And given that I typically do 4-6 G5 runs per mod trying to get to >75% quality... Add that to a series of mods across a series of ships...

How long do you have to mine for 4,320 rarity 1 elements? I don't know. I've never laser mined that much.

Edit: How much have you engineered? Just curious because I can't help but wonder if the divide is how much you engage with the system.

 

[Sylow]

How long do you have to mine for 4,320 rarity 1 elements? I don't know. I've never laser mined that much.

Honestly: I don't know. I don't take the time on my mining tours. If anything, I could try to re-calculate it based on audiobooks and TV series I watched at the same time, but the result would be highly inaccurate.

What I do know is that I have engineered two ships since the engineering rework. So no, if I wanted to build up a set of ships quickly, my method absolutely would not work. But I refuse to sprint. I also don't see it as a marathon. It's rather along the line of taking a walk and picking up the gifts on the way.

My method is not fast in any way. But it's probably the most relaxed way of engineering ships. And in the run of the years, I still get to my goal, without being stressed or building up anger. I can get that elsewhere, I don't need a computer game for that.

Edit: answering this question:

Edit: How much have you engineered? Just curious because I can't help but wonder if the divide is how much you engage with the system.

The newly engineered ships generally have all modules and all weapons G5 engineered and with special effects. What I do not do is pushing the G5 upgrades to the upper limit. I mean, when I see that my HRP is at +14.8% on all resists after two or three rolls, then I just don't see a reason to invest any more. It doesn't matter that the progress ring mockingly displays that it would only be 60% filled. I understand that the +0.2% resist would eat up more material on one module than it would take me to get the next module also to +14.8%. So I rather stop there and move on.

If you have "all need to be maxed" OCD, then my method will be unacceptable. But if you realize that the insignificantly small difference almost certainly will never make and difference in actual gameplay, you can just shrug it off and save materials there.

 

[House0fDerp]

Honestly: I don't know. I don't take the time on my mining tours. If anything, I could try to re-calculate it based on audiobooks and TV series I watched at the same time, but the result would be highly inaccurate.

What I do know is that I have engineered two ships since the engineering rework. So no, if I wanted to build up a set of ships quickly, my method absolutely would not work. But I refuse to sprint. I also don't see it as a marathon. It's rather along the line of taking a walk and picking up the gifts on the way.

My method is not fast in any way. But it's probably the most relaxed way of engineering ships. And in the run of the years, I still get to my goal, without being stressed or building up anger. I can get that elsewhere, I don't need a computer game for that.

Personally, hours upon hours of mining would probably have me more annoyed than surface prospecting as both are pretty sedentary compared to my preferred activity of combat. If it's not going to be great either way you might as well rip that bandaid off rather than slowly creep through it IMO.

But the point still stands, whichever act I choose it stands in the way of my preferred gameplay of trying out new builds in PvE combat. Hence why prospecting qualifies as my least favorite activity rather than one I just wholly ignore.

 

[Stigbob]

Personally, hours upon hours of mining would probably have me more annoyed than surface prospecting as both are pretty sedate compared to my preferred activity of combat. If it's not going to be great either way you might as well rip that bandaid off rather than slowly creep through it IMO.

But the point still stands, whichever act I choose it stands in the way of my preferred gameplay of trying out new builds in PvE combat. Hence why prospecting qualifies as my least favorite activity rather than one I just wholly ignore.

What do you need large quantities of anything for ?.

 

[Sylow]

Personally, hours upon hours of mining would probably have me more annoyed than surface prospecting as both are pretty sedate compared to my preferred activity of combat. If it's not going to be great either way you might as well rip that bandaid off rather than slowly creep through it IMO.

I don't mind the mining, I find it relaxing. But of course it's a matter of taste and I can understand people who don't like to do it. That's why I try to always point out that it's my style of playing, where engineering works so well. I also like combat.

I switch activities all the time, depending on my mood. I am online late at night, exhausted from work, mentally in a vegetable state but not yet ready to go to bed? I do some mining and watch a movie, listen to an audiobook or something like that. (Dammit. They just e-mailed me my Covid-adjusted work plan for the next weeks. I definitely see some mining tours coming up... )

It's Saturday evening, my wife kept me busy with shopping, but I still am not utterly broken? I might just run some missions to clear up my mind.

It's Sunday afternoon and for reasons unknown I actually have a few hours for myself? HAZRes or Wing Assassination missions it is!

Either is fine and enjoyable for me, depending in which shape I am.

But the point still stands, whichever act I choose it stands in the way of my preferred gameplay of trying out new builds in PvE combat. Hence why prospecting qualifies as my least favorite activity rather than one I just wholly ignore.

Understandably. If you constantly buy and change ships then my method would never satisfy your needs. We just play differently.

 

[House0fDerp]

What do you need large quantities of anything for ?.

Engineering.

 

[Sylow]

Engineering.

Hehehehe... great answer! Got me laughing.

But I somehow got the feeling that he expected a bit more detailed reply.

 

[House0fDerp]

Hehehehe... great answer! Got me laughing.

But I somehow got the feeling that he expected a bit more detailed reply.

But to be fair, most of that stuff only has one use and it's pretty clear that engineering is a system that will consume as much as you can be bothered to throw at it. And as I said trying stuff out is a big part of my fun so I'm going to be throwing a lot at it.

For instance, that 4,320 number was the number of grade 1 mats needed to trade for the Antimony necessary for 5 grade 5 runs for 4 HD Shield boosters. That's just a fraction of my Vette's engineered modules. My Vette is just one of several engineered ships and it's on its 3rd loadout iteration.

 

[Sylow]

But to be fair, most of that stuff only has one use and it's pretty clear that engineering is a system that will consume as much as you can be bothered to throw at it. And as I said trying stuff out is a big part of my fun so I'm going to be throwing a lot at it.

Hmm, yea. I rather plan my ships on Coriolis first. Only when something really interesting comes up, I start building it in game.

Also, quite often what I like to try can also be tested merely by tooling around with some weapons. So yes, I also by now have a collection of weapons with different engineering done to them. They migrate from one ship to the other, according to where they are just needed. (I don't see a point in fully engineering all weapons again for each ship, if I already have a well engineered weapon around. It's not like I can fly more than one ship at the same time, anyway. )

Edit:
And yes, I absolutely would enjoy a loadout saving system like in STO. I select the saved loadout for a ship, it activates it and takes all the modules from wherever on my account they are, no matter if in storage or on another ship. But it's unlikely that we get that, especially as I am quite certain that people would start launching and dying when their ships miss important components, as it was stored on another station and still is in transit.

 

[Fenwe]

Exploring. I just finished my Elite Explorer. I headed out to the deep dark. I was at 10% Pioneer. I got first discovered/first mapped, which I absolutely never thought I would do.

But darned if I didn't dislike most everything about it. I had tried the Road to Riches:Exploration when I first started the game. Didn't like it. I figured since I was so close it wouldn't be so bad...

 

[House0fDerp]

Hmm, yea. I rather plan my ships on Coriolis first. Only when something really interesting comes up, I start building it in game.

Also, quite often what I like to try can also be tested merely by tooling around with some weapons. So yes, I also by now have a collection of weapons with different engineering done to them. They migrate from one ship to the other, according to where they are just needed. (I don't see a point in fully engineering all weapons again for each ship, if I already have a well engineered weapon around. It's not like I can fly more than one ship at the same time, anyway. )

Edit:
And yes, I absolutely would enjoy a loadout saving system like in STO. I select the saved loadout for a ship, it activates it and takes all the modules from wherever on my account they are, no matter if in storage or on another ship. But it's unlikely that we get that, especially as I am quite certain that people would start launching and dying when their ships miss important components, as it was stored on another station and still is in transit.

I use Coriolis a lot for planning. Sometimes I find something out later that there was another option.

Also I don't know about you but when I hit 15 armed ships and several others using lower module sizes for various reasons things became harder to keep track of and more annoying to ship when they thing I wanted wasn't on the hulls in the station. Hence why everything gets all the things they need.

 

[Sylow]

[...] but when I hit 15 armed ships [...]

That's very much the crucial difference. I don't have that many fully engineered ships. I just don't have a need for them. My ships can do all the roles I need them for. Sometimes I switch around a few weapons and modules, but that's it.

Sometimes I ponder if this or that ship wouldn't also be nice to have. Then I think for a moment longer and wonder if I would actually keep using it, but rather fly it once or twice, then store it away. I find that I would probably fly around from engineer to engineer for longer than I'd actually use the ship.

Then I just buy the ship, put already available equipment in there and fly it. Or sometimes just fly it without any engineered equipment. It very much serves the purpose, while cutting down the engineering effort.

 

[House0fDerp]

Like I said, building out and trying ships is my thing, and combat is my core focus. None of them really do anything wholly unique and could probably be considered somewhat redundant but all do the job differently enough to be worth keeping for me.

 

[Stigbob]

Hehehehe... great answer! Got me laughing.

But I somehow got the feeling that he expected a bit more detailed reply.

He probably quit a few years back, the forum undead don't do detail.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

You'd reset and void all the progress just to do it all over again?

I'm actually thinking of doing just that if the next expansion is what the leak says it is.

I have no issues unlocking and getting engineering mats. Most of the activities are pretty good fun.

 

[Sylow]

He probably quit a few years back, the forum undead don't do detail.

Eh, check again. He answered in more detail later.

And the detail he gives tells me that it's not an undead, but actually playing. He might be a bit of a manic ship collector, but that's a different story. As long as it's fun, it's a good choice.

 

[House0fDerp]

Eh, check again. He answered in more detail later.

And the detail he gives tells me that it's not an undead, but actually playing. He might be a bit of a manic ship collector, but that's a different story. As long as it's fun, it's a good choice.

I have a feeling Stigbob is fine with the quick quip and didn't really have much intent to deeply engage otherwise he'd have kept up enough with the thread to see the detailed replies.

I could be wrong, but I'll wait to see if he actually bothers before changing my mind.

Edit: He is right that I'm not currently playing though, but that has more to do with my rig dying than anything else. Circumstances being what they are are making replacement shopping less than convenient.

 

[Lngjohnsilver1]

@OP - least enjoyable? Definitely the materials grind for engineers...ho boy wot a time killer of brain numbing proportions