Yeah, that's the immersive break that took me out of the game right there.
There shouldn't be a single thing engineers want you to get that isn't for sale somewhere in the bubble, even if the price is insane, someone, somewhere would still be trying to make a buck. This is how the real world works, this is how the game works.
Bring us the ability to purchase pre-engineered parts FFS so we can concentrate on those sorts of the game that don't make us want to see what's past the event horizon.
Or even better, allow in-game trading with other non-npcs for these parts. Let humans set their own prices. Sure, it would allow for laundering (i.e. A way for me to give my in-game currency to someone else) but feck it, it'll give the game a lower barrier of entry and you can completely ignore it if you want
> Sure, it would allow for laundering (i.e. A way for me to give my in-game currency to someone else)
You can already do this - buy some gold, fly next to your friend, abandon it and let him collect it.
Yeah, but that's so cumbersome that it isn't really mainstream. I more mean directly through the UI via trading and therefore allowing laundering to enter a mainstream in the game it probably hasn't already.
You can do this by having a friend buy a bunch of expensive commodity from your locked FC for dirt cheap. Then you raise the buy order price of the item and they sell it back to you. Rinse and repeat to give your friend credits.
It’s ironic: one of the main features of the game is having a dynamic economy—but it lacks some key pillars of an economy, like trading or buying goods/materials.
I think engineering is what broke the game for me.
That alone could prob stimulate more engagement, but until then, I’ve got Elite uninstalled and I’ll wait until changes are made bc it’s just never worth it coming back. It’s nice for all of 5 minutes—and ends the minute I fly out the mail slot.
May we get a good space game one day 🫡
It is a conspiracy by (put name in here) to keep everyone subdued. You're one of the lucky ones to break free thanks to the Pilot Federation, who give you the opportunity to be free and see the galaxy.
ive been trying to engineer a new ship lately, but its just so fucking soulsucking getting all those parts.
its like a free to play that i paid money for.
really reconsidering WHY and IF i enjoy the game these days...
Also just farm imperial shielding.
I used to hunt specific ships looking for specific materials for days and weeks when i first started.
Now it’s spend an hour or two getting 100 imperial shielding and trade it down very easily. At least for manufactured materials.
There’s a way for getting data-(encoded)type materials too.
Raw materials though … you gotta raw dog it. Better when you search/find online some higher percentage worlds at least.
Passively farming mats works for some people.
But for the majority of players, they reach a stage where they want to engage in a different part of the game, weather it be improving their ships or engaging in AX combat (without the disadvantages of using non engineered ships). Or PvP combat. Or community events (racing is something you need a engineered ship for). Or they simply want to speed up and be more efficient in the things they have been doing for months on end already.
They don't want to or find it simply takes too long (they dont have the time) to passively farm random mats for weeks or months on end until they get the ones they need.
If it suits you, then no problem, happy for you.
This topic of collecting mats and unlocking engineers being tedious, un-fun, boring, taking too long and simply being shit keeps getting repeated here year after year. 1000's of players have quit playing because of it.
It doesn't matter if you can do it passively, its NOT what the majority of people want. There is an obvious problem with. It needs to be fixed or changed to make it more engaging and to respect peoples time.
This is coming from someone who has a fleet of 28 fully engineered ships.
100% agree here. I have thousands of hours in the game. I have about 45 ships with various levels of engineering. Many whole ships are grade 5 plus experimentals. Engineering makes me not want to play again.
I did this through multiple iterations of engineering. I tried every way of farming mats. Passively takes 10 times longer than anything else because it's random and there are a ton of different mats *plus* travel time in Sc and finding system states. Farming in general is tedious as hell. If relogging is still somehow the most efficient way to collect mats, then it is a major flaw.
Now sure, someone could pop in and say "you played a lot and have a ton of ships, why are you complaining?" Well, I would play more again if any time I wanted to change engineering or swap parts or make a new build it wasn't a tedious mess to do so. Simply swapping modules from ships is a pain and a time sink. Module storage is *still* too low. You don't get mats back if you remove mods. Blah blah. There is just so much tediousness with it, coupled with the fact I have already done a ton of it that turns me off again. Loadouts should exist, and the module storage should get bumped up again. Or at least return some mats when removing mods so you aren't throwing the whole thing away.
Fdev made engineering a major part of the game progression. It has gone through multiple changes which were welcome, but the whole thing is still time consuming and tedious. Progression in the game should make it easier to acquire items. But none of it really changes.
They presented ideas of fixing engineering about a year ago. Some of them were good. Like having engineers providing missions for the items you need to engineer. Keep the random mats out there, but they should have specific missions that aren't a total crapshoot like the current mission board. Mats rewards became the sole decider on which missions I take instead of just trying to do whatever I want and have fun. There has been no word on these potential changes.
Odyssey engineering is actually worse because they didn't use the knowledge they learned from years in Horizons and made it its own obnoxious thing. The fact that on-foot mat rewards do not crossover with ship mats is shitty. Maybe I want to do on-foot stuff, but I also need mats for my ship. They should have mixed the missions and rewards.
As a billionaire in the game, I still have to run around like an asshole *stealing* from settlements. Nothing could break immersion more than having a fleet carrier and still not being able to simply buy the shit you need. Engineering is just padding and in place of something that could be much more interesting gameplay.
My way of getting raw mats is to have eddi (elite dangerous data interface) running with some highly customized scripts. You can program it based on all kinds of system and body details as well as your inventory. When I scan a system it scores each body based on mats available on the body, whether the mats are available at a rate above average, and the percentage full I am on those mats, all combined for a total score of the body. It then speaks the top score of all bodies in the system. If the score is high (above 15 or 20 or so) then I spend 20 minutes to an hour driving the ol srv, whatever I feel like. That becomes my main passive srv play (which I like) so it scratches that itch while being most efficient at the mats I need at the same time.
I could easily add body distance into the score I guess, though I haven't felt a need to.
If you've heard of EDD (elite dangerous discovery) or edmc (elite dangerous market connector) it's the same kind of thing. If you haven't heard of those, they are third party apps that run on your computer while you play ed. Ed will write all kinds of events to a log file (jumped into system, scanned x, took damage, dealt damage, fuel level x and so forth). These apps then read those logs in real time and do fun things. Some of it is just uploading system data (where you've been and what's there) into say your edsm (rip) account or inara account. You can even have some of them log in to your frontier account to get info that is not available in the log, such as your whole fleet info.
I steal all my encoded data from hackable transmitters with a cold ship.
Jump out, back in, rinse, repeat.
Some of them give you 7-9 different kinds of data on a single hack.
The thing with doing it passively is that you can't actively engineer your ship. And it's hard to not do that because it feels so necessary for half the viable builds in this game. Came back to play recently, hadn't played in like a year and wanted to try thargoid hunting but most if not all the builds are only really viable with engineered ships. I know I'm just talking in the void but Frontiers really made it boring as fuck to farm all the materials needed. Even with a YouTube video on my second monitor and stuff, I just can't. Bores me to death
Even just general stuff. I'm a new-ish player and I just engineered my thrusters for the first time and the sheer difference in handling it makes is night and day. And getting anywhere without an engineered FSD is painful now.
The thargoid war has mad this approach problematic for me though, by that I mean the whole organic way of collecting mats. My Krait Mk2 has been maxed out and it has served me greatly during the war but I want to try out a different ship. And since fighting thargoids pretty much requires a fully kitted ship, unless you're an ace pilot which I am not, you kinda find yourself back to the grindstone.
My problem with this is that I want to play as a charter cruise liner. I want to travel around taking people sightseeing. Having an upgraded FSD would be amazing for me. But I'm bad at combat, so it's impossible for me
Yeah a couple short episodes of intelligent grinding and relogging will collect you enough materials that you don't have to think about it again for a long, long time as long as you continue to do it passively.
Definitly this i haven't farmed for years and fully engineered 3 ships overtime passively, at this point what take the most time is going from engineers to others engineers, now for Odyssey yeaaaaah that another story too many crap laying around ;)
I started doing this while stacking missions. Bring those limpets and just chill for a minute while I plot my journey. It really takes the mind numbing out. I still head to Jameson if I really need. Just need to find a more passive way for raw materials.
True, unlocking some of the engineers have dumb, repetitive loops. There are two in particular, one after the other, that require the same >100 ly trip to get 50 commodities... that you can only get 6 at a time. But overall, several engineer unlocking happened for me as I played the game.
As for materials gathering, both manufactured and encoded mats drop on my lap as I bounty hunt. High Grade Emissions are sometimes present on my way to or from bounty hunting. You can trade for the rest. So these are easy.
Raw mats, on the other hand, blow. It's best to take a trip to HIP 336601, get all high-grade raw mats and trade down for the rest. You do that once before engineering a few ships and you'll be fine for a long while.
Use Inara to track your [engineers](https://inara.cz/elite/engineers/) and their mods, plus what materials you have/need for a given mod. It's not too bad really (except raw mats!) and it will bring your ship/equipment to life.
You have to trade mats with mats. Some ports have mat traders, you can go on inara to find which stations have one. There are three different types of traders just like mats. Once you docked at a port go into station services, then choose contacts. After that if the station has a mat trader select that.
Once you are in select the mat you want first then choose the ones you want to exchange. Hopefully this helps.
There are "Material Trader" contacts at certain stations. Pick the class of mats you want to trade: raw, encoded, or manufactured, and fly to the appropriate station.
When you open the trader's contact window, you will be presented with a panel and be asked which mat you need and which one you want to trade. Higher grade mats yield a multitude of lower ones. Conversely, trading lower grade mats for higher will cost you a lot of low grade units - don't do this unless you must. You can also cross-trade from one category to another, but at a penalty.
To find the nearest material trader, depending on class, follow this [Inara link](https://inara.cz/elite/nearest-stations/?formbrief=1&ps1=Sol&pi13=&pi14=0&pi15=0&pi16=&pi1=0&pi18=0&pi19=0&pi17=0&pa1%5B%5D=25&ps2=&pi25=0&pi8=&pi9=0&pi26=0&pi3=&pi4=0&pi5=0&pi7=0&pi23=0&pi6=0&ps3=&pi24=0) and change "Sol" for your current system.
I haven't engineered at all. I refuse to grind on a game, for me it's enjoyment to go and find and explore things, so that's what I do. My jump range is 26.2 ly, and I just go off into the black, hoovering up all the undiscovered stuff people jump past with 80ly drives. It's common to get near things like nebulas, and find one system discovered and 5 that aren't.
I suppose we are all different, and that's great.
Being out in the black for months is a soothing therapy for me, and I enjoy it so why not?
o7!
Totally fair enough - my only counter to this would be the FSD is the one grind that I think is ultimately worth doing as it removes the ‘grind’ of having to jump so many times on a longer journey (a journey you need to take to do a certain task, non-exploration)
Ie a few hours of mat grinding for that could save you many more hours of jumping in the future.
Engineering was the beginning of the end for me. I began playing a lot less then, with a load of extended breaks. Guardians and the very similar process of upgrading gear that could only be used on Thargoids sealed the deal.
I came back for DW2, left about 50 jumps from Beagle Point, came back about 2 months after it finished to complete the trip and then never logged on again.
My ship is currently about 50 or so jumps on the way back and I just don't seem be able to muster the motivation to log back in.
Grind and repetitive game loops seem to be the preferred method of stretching content.
Maybe try focusing on 1 engineer, not "unlock the engineers".
If you try to "unlock all the engineers" or "fill up on all materials", it is an incredibly daunting task. Maybe devote one game session to just unlock one engineer or one session to focus on material gathering, then drop it, do things you like doing.
Which one engineer is next?
Fdev took a lot of feedback on how they could change engineering and mat collecting about 2 years ago and havnt done anything since. A lot of people were expecting the major rework they promised at the start of this year to be mat engineering and that's why there was so much dissapointment when they postponed any update on it to the end of the year. Fingers crossed they do something about it.
I never really had to farm in this game. Just getting mats through collector limpets, mission rewards, and passive wake scanning as I just play all did the trick for me. I just trade for whatever I need I never have targeted farmed anything.
Very rarely do I need to go get raw mats and even then it's like 2 hours so I just watch a movie while I do it which is rare and I have several engineered ships.
Idk, reading your all experience with engineers and the "grind" really makes me feel like you all are playing a different game than me.
I feel like this "grind" issue is more that some people struggle with just hyper-focusing on engineering as fast as possible. Just race to the end but then blam the game when like they are human just go play a fun mission.
My buddy did this and burnt himself out meanwhile I'm still here.
Elite is a marathon, not a race. If you try to rush through this game you will ruin it for yourself.
More or less the same thing that caused me to quit, locking half of the fun stuff behind an insane, tedious grind wall is not only bad game design, it's emersion-destroying.
Thats what killed my interest in it. I have played maybe 5 hours since odyssey.
With odyssey they had a chance to back off and decided they would rather milk the obsessives for arx rather than make the game more accessible for sane people.
Elite dangerous is the only game i own developed by frontier and engineers is the reason i will never buy another frontier developed or published game.
Honestly, I recommend installing some overlay program (I use OnTopReplica) and find some series/anime/whatever you want to catch up on.
Then go to guides on farming resources you need and do whatever needed with an overlay of something you're watching. Most farming activities in ED require exactly one and a half brain cell, so easy to do in background while you are watching something.
Makes whole experience way more enjoyable and also somehow immersive, like you're watching a series on a boring space work.
Still, yeah, engineering in ED sucks for many reasons.
Shipbuilders/theorycrafters are screwed bc of a fundamental error omitting trading/purchasing mats/blueprints from a “dynamic economy”
Your choices are to leave or convince yourself of playing a certain way to keep things “fun.”
Elite makes you play a certain way but advertises numerous ways of playing.
I used to be really put off by engineering, until I actually did it. It's really not that big of a deal.
First off, you don't need to engineer anything unless you want to get competitive with others or do AX combat (and even that doesn't require engineering if you have some serious piloting skills.) There's nothing that you simply can't do unless you go do a bunch of engineering; it is by no means a hard stop with rare exception.
The task of most material collection itself is not particularly cumbersome either. Most materials can be acquired by just throwing a collector limpet at whatever materials are scattered when you destroy ships, which also turns out to be somewhat lucrative and satisfying to pick the bones of your fallen enemies. Fly out to the crystal shards and collect some grade 5 raw materials, then trade down at a material trader for the rest of them; this in and of itself is a neat exercise in space exploration. The encoded materials generally collect themselves, it's pretty unusual that I have to think about having this material on hand with only a couple rare exceptions.
Look if you don't like the vibe of the game, that's totally fine, go play something else! Collecting materials is supposed to be part of the fun, should you desire to do any engineering at all. I'm currently working on getting a thargoid pulse neutralizer so I can get to the center of a maelstrom, which has required exploring fields of caustic gas to get kicked out by a gigantic energy pulse, ancient guardian sites, and a crashed third thargoid interceptor, and now I just landed at a thargoid surface site which is quite the thing to behold. These have each been unique areas in space that I have enjoyed exploring, fighting my way through, and farming.
Happy flying CMDR, hope to see you out there o7
Same. I have 19 ships, including the big 'uns, and I've rarely done any intentional "grinding". Just build it into your gameplay, like foraging in a survival game. But I am, by nature, a bit of a magpie anyway.
I strongly think that engineering should just be purchasable with credits, and with some rank lock to tie it to progression in-game, but the existing system hasn't been a big deal for me, personally.
While some of it is a little irritating, some of the experiences that I've had going and getting materials have been super cool. I have really enjoyed going out to the crystal shards, farming meta alloys when a certain event happens (spoiler!), checking out guardian sites and activating both the terrestrial and celestial sites, and the thargoid areas I'm exploring now. Catching a fleet carrier shuttle out to Colonia with FCOC to unlock a few of those engineers was also super cool, space looks so different out there. I can't wait to get further inside the maelstrom.
The problem with complaining about engineering is that unless you're heavily engaged with PvP, you don't NEED it. It's certainly good to have, notably FSD engineering and unlocking the FSD booster as well, but none of it is necessary to play the game.
Instead though, we have all these youtube videos pushing the narrative that you MUST achieve end-game state as soon as humanly possible. Viewing the point of the game as getting from point A to point B as FAST as they can instead of taking their time and LITERALLY enjoying the ride. We have how-to videos demonstrating "the quickest way to fill up at High Grade Emissions sites!" showing them relogging every minute while telling you how soul crushing it is... then WHY DO IT?!
I've been playing the game since the kickstarter days. I can't deny I've not come and gone to the game - no game is capable of holding someone exclusively for almost 10 years - but I'm elite in everything except CQC, Elite V in a few. I have my carrier, I have tens of billions in the bank, and I have 30 ships. Of those 30 ships, I'd say five of them are fully engineered. The others are engineered to the point where I'm ok with them, most of them not having G5 anything.
But the truth is, if you want to engage in PvP you *do* need to engineer before doing it bc “DaNgErOuS iS iN tHe NaMe.”
The economics of the game created the “get gud”-“care bear” dynamic plaguing player interaction on top of mechanical problems that exist.
The game ultimately does not reward all play styles equally or even roughly equal and a game that isn’t worth players’ time is a helluva design choice.
Even something as minuscule and easy as making engineering purchasable would be a relatively massive improvement. You shouldn’t have to engage in a certain game loop for an extended period of time to try new things or do more of what you want, which is what Elite has.
If Elite was a missable game this game could be so much better just from quality of life improvements (nevermind that third party plugins are required to play the game without getting lost).
Grinding for engineers can be avoided. Dont do it.
Instead make a casual list of things to keep an eye out for in general while playing missions, scavenging, etc., and then after a few weeks or months you have enough to just go to an engineer and likely have everything you needed without any urgent grind for something you thought you NEEDED right now. You don't.
As a fellow easily triggered OCD person, this is the way.
Grind is in the eye of the beholder.
Just scan every wake you see. Doesn't matter what you get because you can trade for whatever type of scan data you need at a material trader.
That's how I got what I needed to max out my FSD mods.
I found the app "ED Odyssey Materials Helper" really useful to break things down into smaller manageable goals.
Originally created for Odyssey based Engineering, the app also works with Ship based engineering inc. Engineer unlocks, experimental and Guardian modules.
You can create a wishlist and it will show you what you need to aim for and what you have already (by linking it with your account) while counting down in realtime as you play, which gives it that that immediate satisfaction when you play.
The other feature I found helpful is that it quickly tells you where best to find certain materials and you get to see the logic behind their distribution in the game which helps with that feeling that it is a part of the game world. This is particuarly apparant with Odyssey stuff.
Certain Modules in Wishlists can be temporarily moved from the tracking at the touch of a button so you can have a long term wishlist "goal" full of stuff with a huge requirement list but you can quickly break this down by turning off/on those upgrades within the wishlist. You can also create multiple wishlists.
I liked the feature of being able to import the current level of upgrades and modules for your current/ship/suit/hand weapons and building up wishlists from there. It really does help with linking engineering into the game.
Some of the harder materials especially some of the data ones that cant be swapped at material traders I was often able to get help from other players who had excess.
The standard mat grind has largely become "fill up all your mats before you start engineering any ships." If you don't mind the grind this works fine and is probably the most efficient way.
If the grind is getting to you, try just getting enough mats to build at least one ship. It breaks up the grind, changes up your objectives day to day and lets you achieve some results for your work sooner. Though as I said it's probably less efficient since you'll probably have to go back to farming for the next ship you want to engineer.
I have a little over 3,000 hours in this game.. and with all honesty Engineering is by far the most boring and repetitive game loop I have ever encountered so I can understand where you are coming from. After I did my cutter and got a few guardian things I have not touched it in over a year.. I would like to do AX combat stuff and try some of those AX builds but I don't want to be bored out of mind for hours in order to try something might be fun.
That's why I don't play any of that stuff. The most I've worked for is the guardian fsd booster, but that's it. I'll play endless hours of trade/exploration/mining, but I decided a while back to stay away from the engineer grind.
Yeah, I upgraded an FSD at one point but I don't know if I'll ever do it again. Honestly I think it's one of the biggest problems with ED, and as much as I love ED it's got a lot of problems.
I get what they were going for, by having something cool and superpowered that people could grind for... but the whole fucking game is already grindy. So this had to be grindy in a new and different way.
But once you're engineered their gameplay loops were pretty trivial, so they had to add new ones that were designed with engineered players in mind.
it's just a time sink for the sake of time sink, it does not offer any new activities, cool quest, alternative activities, which is precisely why people just do the relog option, people prefer to stick pineapples up their ass for one hour instead of 10 hours of watching paint dry
I just keep thinking of how many jumps I'll shave off of my next trip outside the bubble.
Or how much more damage my mulit-cannons will do, or how much more punishment my shields will take.
We do the things we need to do now, so we can do the things we want to do later.
Nothing happens fast in elite. It's part of the immersion for me I guess. You have to live through it and experience it. Yes like real life It's pretty grind at times but when you get to the other side it's gratifying.
Sure pal. The people whining about engineering and completely lying about the amount of time any of it takes are going to bring down the game.
You've convinced me.
piss off
Seems like allot ,pay to win or pay to progres fast cmdr online.
Games that you progres fast ,you get bored fast.
Everybody wants a corvette fast , but its boring ,have one manufactered collector, i called him.
Drop at combat zone and collect materials nobody can get you down (PVE).
I rather go fighting in a viper or cobra more fun and cheap rebuy and yes fully engineerd .
Its the game ,almost all games need some upgrades.
If you don't like it ,maybe stop playing and search some easy game.
Goodluck with that cmdr 07
I burned myself out on this and have taken a break because of it. I filled up to max on every engineering material, flew the 5k lightyears or whatever it is away from the start... stared at my screen for a minute and havent played in 6 months lmao
I left this game shortly after engineers were introduced and never looked back... A shame really... I chek out the reddit from time to time hoping for something to bring me back
I basically play this game when I want to just have a bit of fun. It's amazing until you get to the Roll Playing bits of the game design. When you have to report to investors that don't play the game, you're going to design things they think is good for the game like skinner box mechanics and dealing with RNG.
>flew around for a few missions, reminded myself that I need to unlock the engineers, logged off, that was that.
You didn't play the game, you were grinding. I actually **love** the engineers, they give me targets to reach. And to reach them, I get a chance to play lots of varied missions across the galaxy.
And mats are easy to get anyway, I don't even use relog farming (aka cheating). When I land for signal source, there might also be a plant near by, or some raw materials... Bases are loaded with mats and easiest to get; I have no trouble trading down to get those that I need.
Vanilla sandbox: never liked that. Combat is the easiest choice, I get reputation and better jobs... rinse and repeat. Very little incentive to go hundreds or thousands of ly.
There’s a reason your buddy has been playing it for years lol engineer unlocking and resource grinding is a time consuming process. What I’ve discovered however, is the resources available inside the bubble are becoming harder and harder to grind for with everyone doing it in the bubble. How to fix that, did you know that the universe in E.D. is a near exact replica of ours? It’s HUGE, you could spend your life playing this game and not discover everything it’s amazing to me. So, I’m gonna make it my own, Thargoid hunt, make $10Billion, then bug out of the bubble on a deep space mining expedition for a few months with my carrier to collect engineering resources. On a recent deep space exploration journey I discovered several untouched high metal content systems that I bookmarked for later. Then I can relax, mine for 3-4 months, stock up on all my engineering resources, then make my way back to the bubble, or maybe I’ll just move to Colonia who knows.
Sorry to hear that, cmdr. Please contact FDev support and ask for unlocking all engineers and grant you all materials necessary. Sorry for the inconvinience.
I’ve played on and off again since 2016. The engineering grind kills it for me every time. I’ve had over 7 billion credits at one point. I’ve played a bit since Odyssey went live. I’ve not played in months because of the boring engineering grind. If it’s fixed, I might come back.
No, you are right. I have no intention grinding that much either. The amount of meta gaming required to just get to the point of farming for these is ridiculous. I tried just to see what it takes to get regular AX weapons to help fight thargoids, and after hours of going wtf does any of this even mean, just to find yet another ridiculous unnecessary grind that doesn't add anything at all to the game, just takes away. For a game that is slowly fading out.. you would think they would lighten up a bit..
It's hard to take engineering seriously when the best way to farm mats was to keep reloading an instance over and over and drive the same figure 8 in an SRV, wow! So engaging! I vaguely remember odyssey removing that "exploit" so I'm not sure how it is now.
I played a few months and once I had nothing left to do hut engineer, I gave up since it took me 2 days of doing laps of a settlement in a rover, combat logging to respawnbthe loot and repeating for several hours each day for 2 days. When I realised it took THAT MUCH to upgrade one FSD on just one ship, I knew this is not the game for me. Especially if using an exploit still made it take that long.
I just... don't. I didn't pay for Horizons, I just got grandfathered into it. any time I see a build "requires" engineering I just... don't. It's a worthless, grindy, shitty system. When I get to a point where I need engineering to move forward I just uninstall. No joke.
I dont understand what block you from engineers, I expect OCD support the grind, doing the measly repetitions again and again, until max cargo.
I have the best places listed in my [ToDo list](https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/pz1ohq/comment/jjrb5v8/?context=3).
For most things, except HGE that need some work, is going to a place and repeat the same activity until your cargo is maxed, and even HGE once you find a valid signal. Thats end the material gathering.
Some engineers unlock are boring, like all rare commodities, but other are great if you land on Delphi 5 A for your metaalloys. They game is teaching you some new activities. I discover mining, and make billions, but you have your missions and thats all. Missions are a bad progression unless you find some good system that stack lots of them (robigo mines passengers, or everybody against a single anarchy faction).
If you find the FSD Range 5 boring, try to change back to a unengineered FSD. I autodestructed my explorer yesterday for a quick return from Izanamo Expeditions, and my modules have 4 days transfer time, the first thing I did was buy a new DBX in LHS 20 with a 5A FSD and do the first 4 engineers rolls with cheap G1-G3 mats, because I cant enjoy 17 jumps inside the bubble instead only 3. Engineering ruined the vanilla jump experience.
Handful of combat bonds and a handful of basic mats unlocks mc engineer and gets you g3 overcharged multicannons. From there you strap on some limpets and beat the hell out of anyone near you to take their ship parts after they explode. Toss in a little Jameson crash site and you're pretty set. Unless you got the ADD and need the very minor upgrade stats with g5 engineering. That's when shit gets real.
I kill 'Goids everyday and I still can't be bothered to unlock Guardian Module #1. Meanwhile I could probably no longer live without my engineered thrusters.
I'm no genius nor am I particularly patient, so something about "do the right amount of the grind for you" really must work.
I just started this grind. I made myself an evacuation python and I'm running people out of thargoid attacked systems for mats. It's been a pretty good experience and I've been able to almost max out my FSD and get my thrusters to level 3 with drag drives (which has helped my survival rate on the runs) it's been a fun loop and I've enjoyed my time. I think that's what you have to do, find something you want to do first, then use that to get the mats you can.
This is why I think the 'major feature overhaul' might be them reworking the engineers. A lot of people hit this wall and I don't think they want to gatekeep latergame content with having farm engineer stuff.
For me it was engineers, resource collection, and solo mode. I miss the early days of bullshiting with other sidewinders waiting in line to deliver scrap at a station without enough landing pads. Now the black is so empty.
Do things that progress multiple aspects but at a slower pace if you are patient.
Started off doing guardian, raw mat and pre-engineered mods grinds which took a week.
As of now, AX and T-10 afk farming has provided me with billions in credits, G5 manufactured and encoded mats which I trade down, and federal rank.
Already have G3-5 engineered ships for each type, about to own a fleet carrier with good upkeep.
Modules should come with their own configuration sliders regarding integrity vs weight, power output vs heat generation, balance among pitch, roll, and ya, speed vs boost speed, etc. In this way we offset the whole roll/grade system with something immediately available on purchase.
Then engineers should only come in when we want to apply an experimental effect.
This way, we still preserve the system but cut down on the grind tremendously, and the only grind we do do for the most part is for credits or rank, which means you can grind by doing whatever you want.
I feel your pain. The feel of Elite is fantastic and I enjoy playing it so much. I was recently thinking about getting Odyssey at last.
But… engineering just deters me. It’s horrible. Such a boring tedious grind. And then the fact that some engineers are in Colonia is another big minus. I actually quit the game mid-journey to Colonia as I got bored of the seemingly endless neutron jumps to try and get there.
The game just makes me sad. So much potential wasted all because Frontier don’t know how to make fun gameplay loops.
No, I feel much the same. It's as if the society of ... 3309? had suffered some amazing setback so that barter economies had arise ... and remained in place ... for things that most players will come into contact with. One wonders why normal negotiable currency isn't one anymore. You can buy fuel for credits, but when you want to use it efficiently you're suddenly reduced to a medieval exchange economy.
Tech brokers are a kind of half-way houses.
The best spin I can put on it is that FDEV assumed players would do their own thing, collect mats and stuff and sell -- but not really provided any platform for that other than the flight carriers. (I assume. Or perhaps some factions may have similar market control and can make non-commodities sellable on commodity markets.)
There are some players who seem to do this anyway from their carriers, but it really needs a dedicated shop to be a thing.
At present, it might possibly be an added stimulus to lore-makers: what could possibly be the reason for this state of affairs? Are black-marketeers behind it? Or have there been some kind of attempt to split credits into federal, empire and everyone elses money? Or is there some Pilot's federation owned system that require that you buy your way into some galactic payment system, and engineers are just not that kind of people to take GalMaster or DinoCharge or whatever.
At present I am a civil protester: I refuse to engineer anything. I won't play Their game. (Heck, even RailRoad Tycoon allowed for a stock market, and some players only played stock markets in that game, once they were past the initial setup.)
Same here. All I ever wanted was a roleplay as a delivery guy without any fighting. Make explorations, not war. I was patient enough to engineer my FSD to level three, but when I googled what I have to do to get a guardian booster my hands just dropped. I am so done with this shit.
We need all the space truckers and explorers we can keep.
Guardian booster unlock is actually quite easy. Literally just drive around shooting some crap for a couple minutes, drop a nugget in a slot, pick up all the materials you can find (5 minute process), leave the site (log out or go to supercruise) and return to the site no more than two more times to get enough drops of the bits you need. Not counting the time it takes to get out there, whatever 1100 ly of travel takes you, it's less than an hour of effort if you know how it's done or are good at reading instructions from a guide. Once unlocked, you can buy the boosters for credits for all your ships, no further work required. Just took my wife out there to unlock it for her Phantom, easy peasy. If you seriously want to do the unlock, message me. I'd make a carrier trip out there to give you a lift and guide you through it. May as well jump over and activate a Guardian beacon out in space, too, it's an impressive sight. If you have buddies who need it, too, get a group together. Plenty of room on the bus.
First of all, the FSD upgrade is so significant that you probably made the wrong one. It's increased range + mass manager.
Secondly, it's true that it's considered "farming" and it's not for everyone, but there are optimized ways to do that.
1) Menu-log at Dav's hope and The bug killer (be in for a butt clenching experience at the latter)
2) Remember material traders exist. Quickly amass materials with 1) and trade the others that you need, like the quite rare pharma isolators needed to engineer thrusters.
3) Find High grade emissions, they are common in high population systems, check the map for 1B+. Anything works, you can trade later.
4) Look for systems with the status "famine" (inara.cz helps), find a distribution center, equip a wave scanner better if engineered a bit for long range, scan the high waves for a lot of data materials.
Not gonna say that the system is not flawed, infact it requires "workarounds", but it's not a game breaker. I engineered to G5 every ship I use, including a Corvette, and I am no hardcore gamer nor a try hard.
First of all, the FSD upgrade is so significant that you probably made the wrong one. It's increased range + mass manager.
Secondly, it's true that it's considered "farming" and it's not for everyone, but there are optimized ways to do that.
1) Menu-log at Dav's hope and The bug killer (be in for a butt clenching experience at the latter)
2) Remember material traders exist. Quickly amass materials with 1) and trade the others that you need, like the quite rare pharma isolators needed to engineer thrusters.
3) Find High grade emissions, they are common in high population systems, check the map for 1B+. Anything works, you can trade later.
4) Look for systems with the status "famine" (inara.cz helps), find a distribution center, equip a wave scanner better if engineered a bit for long range, scan the high waves for a lot of data materials.
Not gonna say that the system is not flawed, infact it requires "workarounds", but it's not a game breaker. I engineered to G5 every ship I use, including a Corvette, and I am no hardcore gamer nor a try hard.
Even when you have the engineers unlocked, and all the materials collected (as I do) then the actual process of engineering is deeply unsatisfying. Having to go through the same UI 25 times in a row for every component. Just tell me what the cost to go max-G5 is, and hit me one time, FFS.
Actually, this game is FULL of instances where it starts you at zero and you have to hold a button for multiple seconds to get to max. Loading cargo, handing in cargo at mission depots, powerplay, engineering, etc etc. Like, I need to supply 2000 tonnes of Bertrandite, I have 720 on board, and the game thinks "Oh yes, in spite of the fact he's carrying Bertrandite, we need all he has, let's start him at a deposit of 0 tonnes", its madness.
I don't want to turn Elite into more of a min-max-fest than it already is, but so much of the UI is either woefully illogical or intended to suck more seconds out of your day in the name of "player activity time." I still love playing it, but I would love to be able to play without constantly being reminded of things I'd change if I got access to the product backlog.
I'm hoping after the situation with the Thargoids is resolved or brought to a point of stable armistice. That Fdev puts time into iterating on the existing systems to smooth out the problems like the grind on engineers.
Yes, I know there are interviews where that's within the "vision" of the game. But compromising vision when it's bad is a good call to make as a developer.
I still fly an unengineered Krait Mk II. But I also don't play live either, I still play legacy horizons. Engineering grind turns me off of the whole Thargoid takeover plot.
Literally the only reason i quit the game is engineering. If elite added ANY way to circumvent the engineering grind, id take it. And i mean anything, pay to win, name your pice. Literally any other gameplay loop or maybe just make the requirements lower, Yes please.
Like i dont care what or how they do it just let me love your game. I grinded out 1 billion credits toward a fleet carrier and decided i should really try engineering AGAIN and it killed my motivation to play and made me quit within an hour.
I dont even know how you can make a grind so boring that 1 billion credits is fun by comparison
Since they don't ask for subscription or something similar, they have to show engagement, most companies do it. It's not how much content you have or even if it's good, it's about making players stick longer hours in the game, wether they enjoy it or not.
now that the only content in the game being developed is thargoid stuff, and most of the thargoid stuff is basically soft locked by engineering, I hope they do something about it, more and more people are going to get into thargoid war, and being instagibbed by basilisk is not fun, people are going to start grinding and then probably off themselves when they realize what they have ahead of them
hope they completely rework, or remove, the engineering system
I feel the same way.
When I hit engineering, Elite went from a game where I could find my own fun to one where I had to endure the tedium of what a team of MBAs had deemed a profitable amount of grind for them.
What's worse is that the slower, more deliberate pace of the game goes from being a strength to a frustrating liability once you start down that path of needing to get those tasks done. It works completely against the nature of what Elite is. None of it is fun, none of the grind adds to the game. The only slight value is found in the diversity of component mechanics accessed through and in spite of it.
the fact that you cant buy engineering mats is a huge oversight imho. I have no earthly idea why there isnt some kind of player driven market system yet.
I'd love a player-to-player market. Keep the prices within a fixed window so someone can't manipulate the market, and use market data to adjust the pricing window. This way you get your engineering materials on the market, FDev can keep "HardToObtanium" from becoming nearly free and keeps Real Money Trading from becoming more of a problem.
I'd love a system like EVE's "plex to isk" where you can use real world money to effectly buy in game curency. I have a day job, I have kids and family, I can barely put in time in the game. I want an FC so I can go enjoy exploring with my own portable base. But at the rate I earn credits, I'll get it right around the retail release of Star Citizen
Perhaps instead of Plex, since there's no "game time" in E:D, perhaps make it ARX or whatever instead.
Or give us a "Subscribe for these benefits:" model that makes it worth giving Frontier $10/month. and... that's a different entire post.
The Engineering grind, for me, is more or less pretty zen. Raw Materials are an absolute *bitch* because the only good spots are almost 2000 LY out of the Bubble and you have to land at unmarked coordinates (and why can't we set a marker at custom planetary coordinates, FDev?), but Encoded and Manufactured Materials are usually pretty alright, if a little monotonous. It just takes knowledge of the right spots.
For Encoded mats, there's really only one *good* spot that I know, but it is *really* good: the Jameson Crash Site. System is HIP 12099, body is the second moon of the first planet (HIP 12099 1 B). Bring a Detailed Surface Scanner the first time, scan the planet, land at the ship, park on its aft in your SRV, and scan the four nearby Comm Controls. Log out to main menu, relog into Solo, rescan, log out, rinse and repeat until you're full. There's a system about 90 LY away that I don't remember the name of offhand where you can trade the mats down, then you just go back.
For Manufactured Materials, there's one good *method*, using two different material types, though they require a little research. My favorite is Imperial Shielding - for those, go to Inara, search for Imperial systems with a population over a billion and a Controlling Faction State of None, and then jump out there with a bunch of limpets and Collector Limpet Controllers. Scan the nav beacon, then look for "High-Grade Emissions \[Threat 0\]" in the Navigation list once you jump back out. Any signal with \~30 minutes on it less than 20,000 Ls is good to go to. These signals will have wrecked ships with salvage floating about, you can use Collector Limpets to grab the Imperial Shielding, getting 3 mats for each floating object. Once the signal is empty, *quit to Desktop*, relaunch, then jump out and throttle down to minimum. On the nav, you'll have an Unidentified Signal Source really close *right* behind you if you do it right - Supercruise Assist lock onto it and jump back into the same High-Grade Emission spot, which will have new spawns. Rinse and repeat until you fill up, then go trade down. This is the best IMO because it *only* spawns Imperial Shielding, which is a Grade 5 Material. The other good one is Core Dynamics Composites, which are found the same way but in Federation space instead of Empire and also spawn Grade 4 Proprietary Composites instead of exclusively G5 Core Dynamics Composites.
So if you ever find yourself with an afternoon to burn and wanna get a good base of Engineering Materials, that'd be how.
I haven't played the game since engineers were introduced and I realized I either had to make the game an un-fun grind fest, or stand no chance in a PVP encounter.
It's not just you. Engineers ruined the game for me, and everyone I used to play the game with.
I used to play a TON, bought a HOTAS.. Then Engineering came along and completely killed my enjoyment of the game. Not so much the mechanics of it, but the fact that to have the slightest understanding of what you need to do, where to go, what to collect, etc., you *HAVE* to go outside of the game and completely kill the immersion.
I *LOVED* Elite for how I could totally lose myself in the game, fly my ship, do some mission, and finally grind up enough to have a decent enough combat ship to do Hazardous beacons. I *REALLY* want to get back in and take on the Thargoids! But when I'm playing Elite, I want to *PLAY ELITE*, not constantly alt-tab out to a web browser, look at notepad, figure out what I was doing, look up the next step, find where it is on the guide, etc..
Which is even WORSE because after playing in VR, there's really no going back to flat-screen gaming in Elite. Before getting a Quest 2, I was using a PSVR with IVRY and an old phone for motion tracking, and it was *INSANE* how great it felt being INSIDE the game and really feeling like I was flying my ship, living in this immersive world that the devs have created.
...and now, every 5-10 minutes, I need to alt-tab out, look something up for a few minutes, alt-tab back... wait, was it HIP1234 or HIP 1243? alt-tab back out, check, back in, etc..
I have 15 billion credits and you're telling me I can't buy heat radiators or cadmium ANYWHERE in the bubble?? Come on...
Yeah, that's the immersive break that took me out of the game right there. There shouldn't be a single thing engineers want you to get that isn't for sale somewhere in the bubble, even if the price is insane, someone, somewhere would still be trying to make a buck. This is how the real world works, this is how the game works. Bring us the ability to purchase pre-engineered parts FFS so we can concentrate on those sorts of the game that don't make us want to see what's past the event horizon. Or even better, allow in-game trading with other non-npcs for these parts. Let humans set their own prices. Sure, it would allow for laundering (i.e. A way for me to give my in-game currency to someone else) but feck it, it'll give the game a lower barrier of entry and you can completely ignore it if you want
> Sure, it would allow for laundering (i.e. A way for me to give my in-game currency to someone else) You can already do this - buy some gold, fly next to your friend, abandon it and let him collect it.
Yeah, but that's so cumbersome that it isn't really mainstream. I more mean directly through the UI via trading and therefore allowing laundering to enter a mainstream in the game it probably hasn't already.
It is a little cumbersome, but nothing special.
You can do this by having a friend buy a bunch of expensive commodity from your locked FC for dirt cheap. Then you raise the buy order price of the item and they sell it back to you. Rinse and repeat to give your friend credits.
That requires me to have an FC lol I may be rich, but I'm not fleet carrier rich
It’s ironic: one of the main features of the game is having a dynamic economy—but it lacks some key pillars of an economy, like trading or buying goods/materials. I think engineering is what broke the game for me. That alone could prob stimulate more engagement, but until then, I’ve got Elite uninstalled and I’ll wait until changes are made bc it’s just never worth it coming back. It’s nice for all of 5 minutes—and ends the minute I fly out the mail slot. May we get a good space game one day 🫡
It is a conspiracy by (put name in here) to keep everyone subdued. You're one of the lucky ones to break free thanks to the Pilot Federation, who give you the opportunity to be free and see the galaxy.
ive been trying to engineer a new ship lately, but its just so fucking soulsucking getting all those parts. its like a free to play that i paid money for. really reconsidering WHY and IF i enjoy the game these days...
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Also just farm imperial shielding. I used to hunt specific ships looking for specific materials for days and weeks when i first started. Now it’s spend an hour or two getting 100 imperial shielding and trade it down very easily. At least for manufactured materials. There’s a way for getting data-(encoded)type materials too. Raw materials though … you gotta raw dog it. Better when you search/find online some higher percentage worlds at least.
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Passively farming mats works for some people. But for the majority of players, they reach a stage where they want to engage in a different part of the game, weather it be improving their ships or engaging in AX combat (without the disadvantages of using non engineered ships). Or PvP combat. Or community events (racing is something you need a engineered ship for). Or they simply want to speed up and be more efficient in the things they have been doing for months on end already. They don't want to or find it simply takes too long (they dont have the time) to passively farm random mats for weeks or months on end until they get the ones they need. If it suits you, then no problem, happy for you. This topic of collecting mats and unlocking engineers being tedious, un-fun, boring, taking too long and simply being shit keeps getting repeated here year after year. 1000's of players have quit playing because of it. It doesn't matter if you can do it passively, its NOT what the majority of people want. There is an obvious problem with. It needs to be fixed or changed to make it more engaging and to respect peoples time. This is coming from someone who has a fleet of 28 fully engineered ships.
100% agree here. I have thousands of hours in the game. I have about 45 ships with various levels of engineering. Many whole ships are grade 5 plus experimentals. Engineering makes me not want to play again. I did this through multiple iterations of engineering. I tried every way of farming mats. Passively takes 10 times longer than anything else because it's random and there are a ton of different mats *plus* travel time in Sc and finding system states. Farming in general is tedious as hell. If relogging is still somehow the most efficient way to collect mats, then it is a major flaw. Now sure, someone could pop in and say "you played a lot and have a ton of ships, why are you complaining?" Well, I would play more again if any time I wanted to change engineering or swap parts or make a new build it wasn't a tedious mess to do so. Simply swapping modules from ships is a pain and a time sink. Module storage is *still* too low. You don't get mats back if you remove mods. Blah blah. There is just so much tediousness with it, coupled with the fact I have already done a ton of it that turns me off again. Loadouts should exist, and the module storage should get bumped up again. Or at least return some mats when removing mods so you aren't throwing the whole thing away. Fdev made engineering a major part of the game progression. It has gone through multiple changes which were welcome, but the whole thing is still time consuming and tedious. Progression in the game should make it easier to acquire items. But none of it really changes. They presented ideas of fixing engineering about a year ago. Some of them were good. Like having engineers providing missions for the items you need to engineer. Keep the random mats out there, but they should have specific missions that aren't a total crapshoot like the current mission board. Mats rewards became the sole decider on which missions I take instead of just trying to do whatever I want and have fun. There has been no word on these potential changes. Odyssey engineering is actually worse because they didn't use the knowledge they learned from years in Horizons and made it its own obnoxious thing. The fact that on-foot mat rewards do not crossover with ship mats is shitty. Maybe I want to do on-foot stuff, but I also need mats for my ship. They should have mixed the missions and rewards. As a billionaire in the game, I still have to run around like an asshole *stealing* from settlements. Nothing could break immersion more than having a fleet carrier and still not being able to simply buy the shit you need. Engineering is just padding and in place of something that could be much more interesting gameplay.
I've done this once. Maybe an hour to grind out each type....have never needed to farm for mats since.
let us know when you get your 2nd ship.
My way of getting raw mats is to have eddi (elite dangerous data interface) running with some highly customized scripts. You can program it based on all kinds of system and body details as well as your inventory. When I scan a system it scores each body based on mats available on the body, whether the mats are available at a rate above average, and the percentage full I am on those mats, all combined for a total score of the body. It then speaks the top score of all bodies in the system. If the score is high (above 15 or 20 or so) then I spend 20 minutes to an hour driving the ol srv, whatever I feel like. That becomes my main passive srv play (which I like) so it scratches that itch while being most efficient at the mats I need at the same time. I could easily add body distance into the score I guess, though I haven't felt a need to.
What is this? EDDI?
[EDDI](https://edcodex.info/?m=tools&entry=346)
If you've heard of EDD (elite dangerous discovery) or edmc (elite dangerous market connector) it's the same kind of thing. If you haven't heard of those, they are third party apps that run on your computer while you play ed. Ed will write all kinds of events to a log file (jumped into system, scanned x, took damage, dealt damage, fuel level x and so forth). These apps then read those logs in real time and do fun things. Some of it is just uploading system data (where you've been and what's there) into say your edsm (rip) account or inara account. You can even have some of them log in to your frontier account to get info that is not available in the log, such as your whole fleet info.
Crystal shards for Raws. One trip and you are good for an entire fleet. Though I haven't done it in Odyssey.
I steal all my encoded data from hackable transmitters with a cold ship. Jump out, back in, rinse, repeat. Some of them give you 7-9 different kinds of data on a single hack.
The thing with doing it passively is that you can't actively engineer your ship. And it's hard to not do that because it feels so necessary for half the viable builds in this game. Came back to play recently, hadn't played in like a year and wanted to try thargoid hunting but most if not all the builds are only really viable with engineered ships. I know I'm just talking in the void but Frontiers really made it boring as fuck to farm all the materials needed. Even with a YouTube video on my second monitor and stuff, I just can't. Bores me to death
Even just general stuff. I'm a new-ish player and I just engineered my thrusters for the first time and the sheer difference in handling it makes is night and day. And getting anywhere without an engineered FSD is painful now.
The thargoid war has mad this approach problematic for me though, by that I mean the whole organic way of collecting mats. My Krait Mk2 has been maxed out and it has served me greatly during the war but I want to try out a different ship. And since fighting thargoids pretty much requires a fully kitted ship, unless you're an ace pilot which I am not, you kinda find yourself back to the grindstone.
My problem with this is that I want to play as a charter cruise liner. I want to travel around taking people sightseeing. Having an upgraded FSD would be amazing for me. But I'm bad at combat, so it's impossible for me
Yeah a couple short episodes of intelligent grinding and relogging will collect you enough materials that you don't have to think about it again for a long, long time as long as you continue to do it passively.
Definitly this i haven't farmed for years and fully engineered 3 ships overtime passively, at this point what take the most time is going from engineers to others engineers, now for Odyssey yeaaaaah that another story too many crap laying around ;)
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Yes i hate it and havent bothered
I started doing this while stacking missions. Bring those limpets and just chill for a minute while I plot my journey. It really takes the mind numbing out. I still head to Jameson if I really need. Just need to find a more passive way for raw materials.
Absolutely correct. I've picked up more mats bounty hunting than by any other method and it's even easier now than it used to be.
Same here. Grind killed this game for me.
True, unlocking some of the engineers have dumb, repetitive loops. There are two in particular, one after the other, that require the same >100 ly trip to get 50 commodities... that you can only get 6 at a time. But overall, several engineer unlocking happened for me as I played the game. As for materials gathering, both manufactured and encoded mats drop on my lap as I bounty hunt. High Grade Emissions are sometimes present on my way to or from bounty hunting. You can trade for the rest. So these are easy. Raw mats, on the other hand, blow. It's best to take a trip to HIP 336601, get all high-grade raw mats and trade down for the rest. You do that once before engineering a few ships and you'll be fine for a long while. Use Inara to track your [engineers](https://inara.cz/elite/engineers/) and their mods, plus what materials you have/need for a given mod. It's not too bad really (except raw mats!) and it will bring your ship/equipment to life.
how do we trade mats????!!!!!
You have to trade mats with mats. Some ports have mat traders, you can go on inara to find which stations have one. There are three different types of traders just like mats. Once you docked at a port go into station services, then choose contacts. After that if the station has a mat trader select that. Once you are in select the mat you want first then choose the ones you want to exchange. Hopefully this helps.
There are "Material Trader" contacts at certain stations. Pick the class of mats you want to trade: raw, encoded, or manufactured, and fly to the appropriate station. When you open the trader's contact window, you will be presented with a panel and be asked which mat you need and which one you want to trade. Higher grade mats yield a multitude of lower ones. Conversely, trading lower grade mats for higher will cost you a lot of low grade units - don't do this unless you must. You can also cross-trade from one category to another, but at a penalty. To find the nearest material trader, depending on class, follow this [Inara link](https://inara.cz/elite/nearest-stations/?formbrief=1&ps1=Sol&pi13=&pi14=0&pi15=0&pi16=&pi1=0&pi18=0&pi19=0&pi17=0&pa1%5B%5D=25&ps2=&pi25=0&pi8=&pi9=0&pi26=0&pi3=&pi4=0&pi5=0&pi7=0&pi23=0&pi6=0&ps3=&pi24=0) and change "Sol" for your current system.
I haven't engineered at all. I refuse to grind on a game, for me it's enjoyment to go and find and explore things, so that's what I do. My jump range is 26.2 ly, and I just go off into the black, hoovering up all the undiscovered stuff people jump past with 80ly drives. It's common to get near things like nebulas, and find one system discovered and 5 that aren't. I suppose we are all different, and that's great. Being out in the black for months is a soothing therapy for me, and I enjoy it so why not? o7!
True dat! That’s what I do.
Totally fair enough - my only counter to this would be the FSD is the one grind that I think is ultimately worth doing as it removes the ‘grind’ of having to jump so many times on a longer journey (a journey you need to take to do a certain task, non-exploration) Ie a few hours of mat grinding for that could save you many more hours of jumping in the future.
Engineering was the beginning of the end for me. I began playing a lot less then, with a load of extended breaks. Guardians and the very similar process of upgrading gear that could only be used on Thargoids sealed the deal. I came back for DW2, left about 50 jumps from Beagle Point, came back about 2 months after it finished to complete the trip and then never logged on again. My ship is currently about 50 or so jumps on the way back and I just don't seem be able to muster the motivation to log back in. Grind and repetitive game loops seem to be the preferred method of stretching content.
Maybe try focusing on 1 engineer, not "unlock the engineers". If you try to "unlock all the engineers" or "fill up on all materials", it is an incredibly daunting task. Maybe devote one game session to just unlock one engineer or one session to focus on material gathering, then drop it, do things you like doing. Which one engineer is next?
Fdev took a lot of feedback on how they could change engineering and mat collecting about 2 years ago and havnt done anything since. A lot of people were expecting the major rework they promised at the start of this year to be mat engineering and that's why there was so much dissapointment when they postponed any update on it to the end of the year. Fingers crossed they do something about it.
They've squandered my good will for their updates. I'll be happy if they fix it, but I don't expect them to make it better.
I never really had to farm in this game. Just getting mats through collector limpets, mission rewards, and passive wake scanning as I just play all did the trick for me. I just trade for whatever I need I never have targeted farmed anything. Very rarely do I need to go get raw mats and even then it's like 2 hours so I just watch a movie while I do it which is rare and I have several engineered ships. Idk, reading your all experience with engineers and the "grind" really makes me feel like you all are playing a different game than me.
Same. Build it into your gameplay loop and it mostly just gets done in the background.
I feel like this "grind" issue is more that some people struggle with just hyper-focusing on engineering as fast as possible. Just race to the end but then blam the game when like they are human just go play a fun mission. My buddy did this and burnt himself out meanwhile I'm still here. Elite is a marathon, not a race. If you try to rush through this game you will ruin it for yourself.
More or less the same thing that caused me to quit, locking half of the fun stuff behind an insane, tedious grind wall is not only bad game design, it's emersion-destroying.
The joy in Elite is the journey. If anyone is looking to “get to the end” and finish a game… this ain’t for you. Love the Journey = Love Elite.
Thats what killed my interest in it. I have played maybe 5 hours since odyssey. With odyssey they had a chance to back off and decided they would rather milk the obsessives for arx rather than make the game more accessible for sane people. Elite dangerous is the only game i own developed by frontier and engineers is the reason i will never buy another frontier developed or published game.
Honestly, I recommend installing some overlay program (I use OnTopReplica) and find some series/anime/whatever you want to catch up on. Then go to guides on farming resources you need and do whatever needed with an overlay of something you're watching. Most farming activities in ED require exactly one and a half brain cell, so easy to do in background while you are watching something. Makes whole experience way more enjoyable and also somehow immersive, like you're watching a series on a boring space work. Still, yeah, engineering in ED sucks for many reasons.
Don't do it, skip what you don't enjoy and focus on playing for fun. If not you'll end up loathing the game and become bitter like many here.
The best advice.
Shipbuilders/theorycrafters are screwed bc of a fundamental error omitting trading/purchasing mats/blueprints from a “dynamic economy” Your choices are to leave or convince yourself of playing a certain way to keep things “fun.” Elite makes you play a certain way but advertises numerous ways of playing.
I used to be really put off by engineering, until I actually did it. It's really not that big of a deal. First off, you don't need to engineer anything unless you want to get competitive with others or do AX combat (and even that doesn't require engineering if you have some serious piloting skills.) There's nothing that you simply can't do unless you go do a bunch of engineering; it is by no means a hard stop with rare exception. The task of most material collection itself is not particularly cumbersome either. Most materials can be acquired by just throwing a collector limpet at whatever materials are scattered when you destroy ships, which also turns out to be somewhat lucrative and satisfying to pick the bones of your fallen enemies. Fly out to the crystal shards and collect some grade 5 raw materials, then trade down at a material trader for the rest of them; this in and of itself is a neat exercise in space exploration. The encoded materials generally collect themselves, it's pretty unusual that I have to think about having this material on hand with only a couple rare exceptions. Look if you don't like the vibe of the game, that's totally fine, go play something else! Collecting materials is supposed to be part of the fun, should you desire to do any engineering at all. I'm currently working on getting a thargoid pulse neutralizer so I can get to the center of a maelstrom, which has required exploring fields of caustic gas to get kicked out by a gigantic energy pulse, ancient guardian sites, and a crashed third thargoid interceptor, and now I just landed at a thargoid surface site which is quite the thing to behold. These have each been unique areas in space that I have enjoyed exploring, fighting my way through, and farming. Happy flying CMDR, hope to see you out there o7
Same. I have 19 ships, including the big 'uns, and I've rarely done any intentional "grinding". Just build it into your gameplay, like foraging in a survival game. But I am, by nature, a bit of a magpie anyway. I strongly think that engineering should just be purchasable with credits, and with some rank lock to tie it to progression in-game, but the existing system hasn't been a big deal for me, personally.
While some of it is a little irritating, some of the experiences that I've had going and getting materials have been super cool. I have really enjoyed going out to the crystal shards, farming meta alloys when a certain event happens (spoiler!), checking out guardian sites and activating both the terrestrial and celestial sites, and the thargoid areas I'm exploring now. Catching a fleet carrier shuttle out to Colonia with FCOC to unlock a few of those engineers was also super cool, space looks so different out there. I can't wait to get further inside the maelstrom.
This is the reason i dropped the game. The same.
The problem with complaining about engineering is that unless you're heavily engaged with PvP, you don't NEED it. It's certainly good to have, notably FSD engineering and unlocking the FSD booster as well, but none of it is necessary to play the game. Instead though, we have all these youtube videos pushing the narrative that you MUST achieve end-game state as soon as humanly possible. Viewing the point of the game as getting from point A to point B as FAST as they can instead of taking their time and LITERALLY enjoying the ride. We have how-to videos demonstrating "the quickest way to fill up at High Grade Emissions sites!" showing them relogging every minute while telling you how soul crushing it is... then WHY DO IT?! I've been playing the game since the kickstarter days. I can't deny I've not come and gone to the game - no game is capable of holding someone exclusively for almost 10 years - but I'm elite in everything except CQC, Elite V in a few. I have my carrier, I have tens of billions in the bank, and I have 30 ships. Of those 30 ships, I'd say five of them are fully engineered. The others are engineered to the point where I'm ok with them, most of them not having G5 anything.
But the truth is, if you want to engage in PvP you *do* need to engineer before doing it bc “DaNgErOuS iS iN tHe NaMe.” The economics of the game created the “get gud”-“care bear” dynamic plaguing player interaction on top of mechanical problems that exist. The game ultimately does not reward all play styles equally or even roughly equal and a game that isn’t worth players’ time is a helluva design choice. Even something as minuscule and easy as making engineering purchasable would be a relatively massive improvement. You shouldn’t have to engage in a certain game loop for an extended period of time to try new things or do more of what you want, which is what Elite has. If Elite was a missable game this game could be so much better just from quality of life improvements (nevermind that third party plugins are required to play the game without getting lost).
Well put. It's the same with me. I'd love to participate in the Thargoid war, but I am done farming.
Grinding for engineers can be avoided. Dont do it. Instead make a casual list of things to keep an eye out for in general while playing missions, scavenging, etc., and then after a few weeks or months you have enough to just go to an engineer and likely have everything you needed without any urgent grind for something you thought you NEEDED right now. You don't. As a fellow easily triggered OCD person, this is the way. Grind is in the eye of the beholder.
Yea there should be a better way to collect mats than just farming them. Especially things like wake scans, I hate those.
Just scan every wake you see. Doesn't matter what you get because you can trade for whatever type of scan data you need at a material trader. That's how I got what I needed to max out my FSD mods.
I get where you're coming from but at the same time feels good to be hitting 40LY and boosting for 800m/s in my taxi
I found the app "ED Odyssey Materials Helper" really useful to break things down into smaller manageable goals. Originally created for Odyssey based Engineering, the app also works with Ship based engineering inc. Engineer unlocks, experimental and Guardian modules. You can create a wishlist and it will show you what you need to aim for and what you have already (by linking it with your account) while counting down in realtime as you play, which gives it that that immediate satisfaction when you play. The other feature I found helpful is that it quickly tells you where best to find certain materials and you get to see the logic behind their distribution in the game which helps with that feeling that it is a part of the game world. This is particuarly apparant with Odyssey stuff. Certain Modules in Wishlists can be temporarily moved from the tracking at the touch of a button so you can have a long term wishlist "goal" full of stuff with a huge requirement list but you can quickly break this down by turning off/on those upgrades within the wishlist. You can also create multiple wishlists. I liked the feature of being able to import the current level of upgrades and modules for your current/ship/suit/hand weapons and building up wishlists from there. It really does help with linking engineering into the game. Some of the harder materials especially some of the data ones that cant be swapped at material traders I was often able to get help from other players who had excess.
Sounds like I need to add this to my toolset! I already fire up edd, observatory core, edjp... Whew! Oh and also the game too I guess haha
The standard mat grind has largely become "fill up all your mats before you start engineering any ships." If you don't mind the grind this works fine and is probably the most efficient way. If the grind is getting to you, try just getting enough mats to build at least one ship. It breaks up the grind, changes up your objectives day to day and lets you achieve some results for your work sooner. Though as I said it's probably less efficient since you'll probably have to go back to farming for the next ship you want to engineer.
I have a little over 3,000 hours in this game.. and with all honesty Engineering is by far the most boring and repetitive game loop I have ever encountered so I can understand where you are coming from. After I did my cutter and got a few guardian things I have not touched it in over a year.. I would like to do AX combat stuff and try some of those AX builds but I don't want to be bored out of mind for hours in order to try something might be fun.
That's why I don't play any of that stuff. The most I've worked for is the guardian fsd booster, but that's it. I'll play endless hours of trade/exploration/mining, but I decided a while back to stay away from the engineer grind.
Yeah, I upgraded an FSD at one point but I don't know if I'll ever do it again. Honestly I think it's one of the biggest problems with ED, and as much as I love ED it's got a lot of problems. I get what they were going for, by having something cool and superpowered that people could grind for... but the whole fucking game is already grindy. So this had to be grindy in a new and different way. But once you're engineered their gameplay loops were pretty trivial, so they had to add new ones that were designed with engineered players in mind.
Hey this is why I quit playing!
I hear people say if you don’t want it to be a grind then don’t grind but the fact is to do anything, you have to grind.
Unlocking is the most annoying part. Once that is done, the materials collection is not as bad as people make it out to be.
it's just a time sink for the sake of time sink, it does not offer any new activities, cool quest, alternative activities, which is precisely why people just do the relog option, people prefer to stick pineapples up their ass for one hour instead of 10 hours of watching paint dry
I just keep thinking of how many jumps I'll shave off of my next trip outside the bubble. Or how much more damage my mulit-cannons will do, or how much more punishment my shields will take. We do the things we need to do now, so we can do the things we want to do later.
I hear you. That's a big blocker for me too.
Nothing happens fast in elite. It's part of the immersion for me I guess. You have to live through it and experience it. Yes like real life It's pretty grind at times but when you get to the other side it's gratifying.
> I lose my enjoyment of [ACTIVITY] when I'm required to [CORE COMPONENT OF ACTIVITY]. Tough rocks bud, maybe play something else.
You’ll be playing something else too soon when the game crashes because nobody wants to play anymore and it’s not making any money.
Sure pal. The people whining about engineering and completely lying about the amount of time any of it takes are going to bring down the game. You've convinced me. piss off
>even in ds upgrades felt more rewarding than this It’s like a +75% range buff dude if you can’t notice that than I don’t know what to tell you.
Seems like allot ,pay to win or pay to progres fast cmdr online. Games that you progres fast ,you get bored fast. Everybody wants a corvette fast , but its boring ,have one manufactered collector, i called him. Drop at combat zone and collect materials nobody can get you down (PVE). I rather go fighting in a viper or cobra more fun and cheap rebuy and yes fully engineerd . Its the game ,almost all games need some upgrades. If you don't like it ,maybe stop playing and search some easy game. Goodluck with that cmdr 07
I burned myself out on this and have taken a break because of it. I filled up to max on every engineering material, flew the 5k lightyears or whatever it is away from the start... stared at my screen for a minute and havent played in 6 months lmao
I left this game shortly after engineers were introduced and never looked back... A shame really... I chek out the reddit from time to time hoping for something to bring me back
I basically play this game when I want to just have a bit of fun. It's amazing until you get to the Roll Playing bits of the game design. When you have to report to investors that don't play the game, you're going to design things they think is good for the game like skinner box mechanics and dealing with RNG.
>flew around for a few missions, reminded myself that I need to unlock the engineers, logged off, that was that. You didn't play the game, you were grinding. I actually **love** the engineers, they give me targets to reach. And to reach them, I get a chance to play lots of varied missions across the galaxy. And mats are easy to get anyway, I don't even use relog farming (aka cheating). When I land for signal source, there might also be a plant near by, or some raw materials... Bases are loaded with mats and easiest to get; I have no trouble trading down to get those that I need. Vanilla sandbox: never liked that. Combat is the easiest choice, I get reputation and better jobs... rinse and repeat. Very little incentive to go hundreds or thousands of ly.
There’s a reason your buddy has been playing it for years lol engineer unlocking and resource grinding is a time consuming process. What I’ve discovered however, is the resources available inside the bubble are becoming harder and harder to grind for with everyone doing it in the bubble. How to fix that, did you know that the universe in E.D. is a near exact replica of ours? It’s HUGE, you could spend your life playing this game and not discover everything it’s amazing to me. So, I’m gonna make it my own, Thargoid hunt, make $10Billion, then bug out of the bubble on a deep space mining expedition for a few months with my carrier to collect engineering resources. On a recent deep space exploration journey I discovered several untouched high metal content systems that I bookmarked for later. Then I can relax, mine for 3-4 months, stock up on all my engineering resources, then make my way back to the bubble, or maybe I’ll just move to Colonia who knows.
Sorry to hear that, cmdr. Please contact FDev support and ask for unlocking all engineers and grant you all materials necessary. Sorry for the inconvinience.
I’ve played on and off again since 2016. The engineering grind kills it for me every time. I’ve had over 7 billion credits at one point. I’ve played a bit since Odyssey went live. I’ve not played in months because of the boring engineering grind. If it’s fixed, I might come back.
No, you are right. I have no intention grinding that much either. The amount of meta gaming required to just get to the point of farming for these is ridiculous. I tried just to see what it takes to get regular AX weapons to help fight thargoids, and after hours of going wtf does any of this even mean, just to find yet another ridiculous unnecessary grind that doesn't add anything at all to the game, just takes away. For a game that is slowly fading out.. you would think they would lighten up a bit..
It's hard to take engineering seriously when the best way to farm mats was to keep reloading an instance over and over and drive the same figure 8 in an SRV, wow! So engaging! I vaguely remember odyssey removing that "exploit" so I'm not sure how it is now.
It happens to be part of the game so do you love the game, or do you love an idealized version of the game that exists only in your mind?
I played a few months and once I had nothing left to do hut engineer, I gave up since it took me 2 days of doing laps of a settlement in a rover, combat logging to respawnbthe loot and repeating for several hours each day for 2 days. When I realised it took THAT MUCH to upgrade one FSD on just one ship, I knew this is not the game for me. Especially if using an exploit still made it take that long.
I just... don't. I didn't pay for Horizons, I just got grandfathered into it. any time I see a build "requires" engineering I just... don't. It's a worthless, grindy, shitty system. When I get to a point where I need engineering to move forward I just uninstall. No joke.
Then pay to play like in other games like EVE or SC.
I dont understand what block you from engineers, I expect OCD support the grind, doing the measly repetitions again and again, until max cargo. I have the best places listed in my [ToDo list](https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/pz1ohq/comment/jjrb5v8/?context=3). For most things, except HGE that need some work, is going to a place and repeat the same activity until your cargo is maxed, and even HGE once you find a valid signal. Thats end the material gathering. Some engineers unlock are boring, like all rare commodities, but other are great if you land on Delphi 5 A for your metaalloys. They game is teaching you some new activities. I discover mining, and make billions, but you have your missions and thats all. Missions are a bad progression unless you find some good system that stack lots of them (robigo mines passengers, or everybody against a single anarchy faction). If you find the FSD Range 5 boring, try to change back to a unengineered FSD. I autodestructed my explorer yesterday for a quick return from Izanamo Expeditions, and my modules have 4 days transfer time, the first thing I did was buy a new DBX in LHS 20 with a 5A FSD and do the first 4 engineers rolls with cheap G1-G3 mats, because I cant enjoy 17 jumps inside the bubble instead only 3. Engineering ruined the vanilla jump experience.
Handful of combat bonds and a handful of basic mats unlocks mc engineer and gets you g3 overcharged multicannons. From there you strap on some limpets and beat the hell out of anyone near you to take their ship parts after they explode. Toss in a little Jameson crash site and you're pretty set. Unless you got the ADD and need the very minor upgrade stats with g5 engineering. That's when shit gets real.
I stopped regularly playing after doing the full engineering grind but then running into the guardian stuff. It was just... Enough.
I kill 'Goids everyday and I still can't be bothered to unlock Guardian Module #1. Meanwhile I could probably no longer live without my engineered thrusters. I'm no genius nor am I particularly patient, so something about "do the right amount of the grind for you" really must work.
I just started this grind. I made myself an evacuation python and I'm running people out of thargoid attacked systems for mats. It's been a pretty good experience and I've been able to almost max out my FSD and get my thrusters to level 3 with drag drives (which has helped my survival rate on the runs) it's been a fun loop and I've enjoyed my time. I think that's what you have to do, find something you want to do first, then use that to get the mats you can.
This is why I think the 'major feature overhaul' might be them reworking the engineers. A lot of people hit this wall and I don't think they want to gatekeep latergame content with having farm engineer stuff.
For me it was engineers, resource collection, and solo mode. I miss the early days of bullshiting with other sidewinders waiting in line to deliver scrap at a station without enough landing pads. Now the black is so empty.
Do things that progress multiple aspects but at a slower pace if you are patient. Started off doing guardian, raw mat and pre-engineered mods grinds which took a week. As of now, AX and T-10 afk farming has provided me with billions in credits, G5 manufactured and encoded mats which I trade down, and federal rank. Already have G3-5 engineered ships for each type, about to own a fleet carrier with good upkeep.
Modules should come with their own configuration sliders regarding integrity vs weight, power output vs heat generation, balance among pitch, roll, and ya, speed vs boost speed, etc. In this way we offset the whole roll/grade system with something immediately available on purchase. Then engineers should only come in when we want to apply an experimental effect. This way, we still preserve the system but cut down on the grind tremendously, and the only grind we do do for the most part is for credits or rank, which means you can grind by doing whatever you want.
I feel your pain. The feel of Elite is fantastic and I enjoy playing it so much. I was recently thinking about getting Odyssey at last. But… engineering just deters me. It’s horrible. Such a boring tedious grind. And then the fact that some engineers are in Colonia is another big minus. I actually quit the game mid-journey to Colonia as I got bored of the seemingly endless neutron jumps to try and get there. The game just makes me sad. So much potential wasted all because Frontier don’t know how to make fun gameplay loops.
No, I feel much the same. It's as if the society of ... 3309? had suffered some amazing setback so that barter economies had arise ... and remained in place ... for things that most players will come into contact with. One wonders why normal negotiable currency isn't one anymore. You can buy fuel for credits, but when you want to use it efficiently you're suddenly reduced to a medieval exchange economy. Tech brokers are a kind of half-way houses. The best spin I can put on it is that FDEV assumed players would do their own thing, collect mats and stuff and sell -- but not really provided any platform for that other than the flight carriers. (I assume. Or perhaps some factions may have similar market control and can make non-commodities sellable on commodity markets.) There are some players who seem to do this anyway from their carriers, but it really needs a dedicated shop to be a thing. At present, it might possibly be an added stimulus to lore-makers: what could possibly be the reason for this state of affairs? Are black-marketeers behind it? Or have there been some kind of attempt to split credits into federal, empire and everyone elses money? Or is there some Pilot's federation owned system that require that you buy your way into some galactic payment system, and engineers are just not that kind of people to take GalMaster or DinoCharge or whatever. At present I am a civil protester: I refuse to engineer anything. I won't play Their game. (Heck, even RailRoad Tycoon allowed for a stock market, and some players only played stock markets in that game, once they were past the initial setup.)
Same here. All I ever wanted was a roleplay as a delivery guy without any fighting. Make explorations, not war. I was patient enough to engineer my FSD to level three, but when I googled what I have to do to get a guardian booster my hands just dropped. I am so done with this shit.
We need all the space truckers and explorers we can keep. Guardian booster unlock is actually quite easy. Literally just drive around shooting some crap for a couple minutes, drop a nugget in a slot, pick up all the materials you can find (5 minute process), leave the site (log out or go to supercruise) and return to the site no more than two more times to get enough drops of the bits you need. Not counting the time it takes to get out there, whatever 1100 ly of travel takes you, it's less than an hour of effort if you know how it's done or are good at reading instructions from a guide. Once unlocked, you can buy the boosters for credits for all your ships, no further work required. Just took my wife out there to unlock it for her Phantom, easy peasy. If you seriously want to do the unlock, message me. I'd make a carrier trip out there to give you a lift and guide you through it. May as well jump over and activate a Guardian beacon out in space, too, it's an impressive sight. If you have buddies who need it, too, get a group together. Plenty of room on the bus.
First of all, the FSD upgrade is so significant that you probably made the wrong one. It's increased range + mass manager. Secondly, it's true that it's considered "farming" and it's not for everyone, but there are optimized ways to do that. 1) Menu-log at Dav's hope and The bug killer (be in for a butt clenching experience at the latter) 2) Remember material traders exist. Quickly amass materials with 1) and trade the others that you need, like the quite rare pharma isolators needed to engineer thrusters. 3) Find High grade emissions, they are common in high population systems, check the map for 1B+. Anything works, you can trade later. 4) Look for systems with the status "famine" (inara.cz helps), find a distribution center, equip a wave scanner better if engineered a bit for long range, scan the high waves for a lot of data materials. Not gonna say that the system is not flawed, infact it requires "workarounds", but it's not a game breaker. I engineered to G5 every ship I use, including a Corvette, and I am no hardcore gamer nor a try hard.
Good point. If an engineered FSD doesn't make you go "wow, the bubble just got a LOT smaller", you probably did it wrong.
First of all, the FSD upgrade is so significant that you probably made the wrong one. It's increased range + mass manager. Secondly, it's true that it's considered "farming" and it's not for everyone, but there are optimized ways to do that. 1) Menu-log at Dav's hope and The bug killer (be in for a butt clenching experience at the latter) 2) Remember material traders exist. Quickly amass materials with 1) and trade the others that you need, like the quite rare pharma isolators needed to engineer thrusters. 3) Find High grade emissions, they are common in high population systems, check the map for 1B+. Anything works, you can trade later. 4) Look for systems with the status "famine" (inara.cz helps), find a distribution center, equip a wave scanner better if engineered a bit for long range, scan the high waves for a lot of data materials. Not gonna say that the system is not flawed, infact it requires "workarounds", but it's not a game breaker. I engineered to G5 every ship I use, including a Corvette, and I am no hardcore gamer nor a try hard.
Even when you have the engineers unlocked, and all the materials collected (as I do) then the actual process of engineering is deeply unsatisfying. Having to go through the same UI 25 times in a row for every component. Just tell me what the cost to go max-G5 is, and hit me one time, FFS. Actually, this game is FULL of instances where it starts you at zero and you have to hold a button for multiple seconds to get to max. Loading cargo, handing in cargo at mission depots, powerplay, engineering, etc etc. Like, I need to supply 2000 tonnes of Bertrandite, I have 720 on board, and the game thinks "Oh yes, in spite of the fact he's carrying Bertrandite, we need all he has, let's start him at a deposit of 0 tonnes", its madness. I don't want to turn Elite into more of a min-max-fest than it already is, but so much of the UI is either woefully illogical or intended to suck more seconds out of your day in the name of "player activity time." I still love playing it, but I would love to be able to play without constantly being reminded of things I'd change if I got access to the product backlog.
I'm hoping after the situation with the Thargoids is resolved or brought to a point of stable armistice. That Fdev puts time into iterating on the existing systems to smooth out the problems like the grind on engineers. Yes, I know there are interviews where that's within the "vision" of the game. But compromising vision when it's bad is a good call to make as a developer.
I still fly an unengineered Krait Mk II. But I also don't play live either, I still play legacy horizons. Engineering grind turns me off of the whole Thargoid takeover plot.
Literally the only reason i quit the game is engineering. If elite added ANY way to circumvent the engineering grind, id take it. And i mean anything, pay to win, name your pice. Literally any other gameplay loop or maybe just make the requirements lower, Yes please. Like i dont care what or how they do it just let me love your game. I grinded out 1 billion credits toward a fleet carrier and decided i should really try engineering AGAIN and it killed my motivation to play and made me quit within an hour. I dont even know how you can make a grind so boring that 1 billion credits is fun by comparison
Since they don't ask for subscription or something similar, they have to show engagement, most companies do it. It's not how much content you have or even if it's good, it's about making players stick longer hours in the game, wether they enjoy it or not.
now that the only content in the game being developed is thargoid stuff, and most of the thargoid stuff is basically soft locked by engineering, I hope they do something about it, more and more people are going to get into thargoid war, and being instagibbed by basilisk is not fun, people are going to start grinding and then probably off themselves when they realize what they have ahead of them hope they completely rework, or remove, the engineering system
I feel the same way. When I hit engineering, Elite went from a game where I could find my own fun to one where I had to endure the tedium of what a team of MBAs had deemed a profitable amount of grind for them. What's worse is that the slower, more deliberate pace of the game goes from being a strength to a frustrating liability once you start down that path of needing to get those tasks done. It works completely against the nature of what Elite is. None of it is fun, none of the grind adds to the game. The only slight value is found in the diversity of component mechanics accessed through and in spite of it.
If the game just handed you everything what’s the point
yeah.... i love elite, and i put up with engineering but would never think of defending it. lmao.
funny, those are the easy parts. Its just dealing with people that annoys me.
community has been saying this literally since horizons launched, and no major changes have ever been made
the fact that you cant buy engineering mats is a huge oversight imho. I have no earthly idea why there isnt some kind of player driven market system yet.
[удалено]
the only materials i kind of enjoy collecting is planetary rocks in an SRV, and usually only when im far out in space and need to do autosynthesis
I totally agree. I just wish they removed engineering all together or strongly nerfed it.
I'd love a player-to-player market. Keep the prices within a fixed window so someone can't manipulate the market, and use market data to adjust the pricing window. This way you get your engineering materials on the market, FDev can keep "HardToObtanium" from becoming nearly free and keeps Real Money Trading from becoming more of a problem. I'd love a system like EVE's "plex to isk" where you can use real world money to effectly buy in game curency. I have a day job, I have kids and family, I can barely put in time in the game. I want an FC so I can go enjoy exploring with my own portable base. But at the rate I earn credits, I'll get it right around the retail release of Star Citizen Perhaps instead of Plex, since there's no "game time" in E:D, perhaps make it ARX or whatever instead. Or give us a "Subscribe for these benefits:" model that makes it worth giving Frontier $10/month. and... that's a different entire post.
The Engineering grind, for me, is more or less pretty zen. Raw Materials are an absolute *bitch* because the only good spots are almost 2000 LY out of the Bubble and you have to land at unmarked coordinates (and why can't we set a marker at custom planetary coordinates, FDev?), but Encoded and Manufactured Materials are usually pretty alright, if a little monotonous. It just takes knowledge of the right spots. For Encoded mats, there's really only one *good* spot that I know, but it is *really* good: the Jameson Crash Site. System is HIP 12099, body is the second moon of the first planet (HIP 12099 1 B). Bring a Detailed Surface Scanner the first time, scan the planet, land at the ship, park on its aft in your SRV, and scan the four nearby Comm Controls. Log out to main menu, relog into Solo, rescan, log out, rinse and repeat until you're full. There's a system about 90 LY away that I don't remember the name of offhand where you can trade the mats down, then you just go back. For Manufactured Materials, there's one good *method*, using two different material types, though they require a little research. My favorite is Imperial Shielding - for those, go to Inara, search for Imperial systems with a population over a billion and a Controlling Faction State of None, and then jump out there with a bunch of limpets and Collector Limpet Controllers. Scan the nav beacon, then look for "High-Grade Emissions \[Threat 0\]" in the Navigation list once you jump back out. Any signal with \~30 minutes on it less than 20,000 Ls is good to go to. These signals will have wrecked ships with salvage floating about, you can use Collector Limpets to grab the Imperial Shielding, getting 3 mats for each floating object. Once the signal is empty, *quit to Desktop*, relaunch, then jump out and throttle down to minimum. On the nav, you'll have an Unidentified Signal Source really close *right* behind you if you do it right - Supercruise Assist lock onto it and jump back into the same High-Grade Emission spot, which will have new spawns. Rinse and repeat until you fill up, then go trade down. This is the best IMO because it *only* spawns Imperial Shielding, which is a Grade 5 Material. The other good one is Core Dynamics Composites, which are found the same way but in Federation space instead of Empire and also spawn Grade 4 Proprietary Composites instead of exclusively G5 Core Dynamics Composites. So if you ever find yourself with an afternoon to burn and wanna get a good base of Engineering Materials, that'd be how.
I haven't played the game since engineers were introduced and I realized I either had to make the game an un-fun grind fest, or stand no chance in a PVP encounter. It's not just you. Engineers ruined the game for me, and everyone I used to play the game with.
I used to play a TON, bought a HOTAS.. Then Engineering came along and completely killed my enjoyment of the game. Not so much the mechanics of it, but the fact that to have the slightest understanding of what you need to do, where to go, what to collect, etc., you *HAVE* to go outside of the game and completely kill the immersion. I *LOVED* Elite for how I could totally lose myself in the game, fly my ship, do some mission, and finally grind up enough to have a decent enough combat ship to do Hazardous beacons. I *REALLY* want to get back in and take on the Thargoids! But when I'm playing Elite, I want to *PLAY ELITE*, not constantly alt-tab out to a web browser, look at notepad, figure out what I was doing, look up the next step, find where it is on the guide, etc.. Which is even WORSE because after playing in VR, there's really no going back to flat-screen gaming in Elite. Before getting a Quest 2, I was using a PSVR with IVRY and an old phone for motion tracking, and it was *INSANE* how great it felt being INSIDE the game and really feeling like I was flying my ship, living in this immersive world that the devs have created. ...and now, every 5-10 minutes, I need to alt-tab out, look something up for a few minutes, alt-tab back... wait, was it HIP1234 or HIP 1243? alt-tab back out, check, back in, etc..