Engineers 2.1 Beta - findings so far

[Phillipus]

If I'm going to be pestered by opposing PP agents in RES and CNB then it'll be a pain. I'll probably quit my ALD allegiance from PP. I only signed up to get the bonus on bounties. I'll make up the money lost by running missions.

[Cmdr Kharma]

Well so far....

Battled for about 2 hours to get the beta to actually show in the launcher.....

Started at the arse end of nowhere in my Python.....Immediately A rated the crap outta it....As you do....

New outfitting screens are OK.....Speed stats of ship seem wrong though....

Flying back to Brestla interdicted by a wing of 3...Courier, Sidey, Cobra.....

Interesting stuff they leave behind when they die, which I could not pick up as my materials were maxed out with planetary stuff.....

Invites for Engineers received......

No audio for fuel scooping.....

landed at Brestla and swapped to Keelback.....Nice greeting radio comms on approaching I sola.....I quite like these at the moment...But I can see them getting on some peoples nerves.......

Planet texture seems to have changed as does buggy handling.....Buggy seems to take more damage....

You now get a Low Gravity warning (Spoken) when deploying SRV....

SRV's now leave tracks.....This is handy when ship is far away from POI......Get back in ship and follow tracks to pick up rest of stuff....

You now get an audible beep....Dingy thing when aligned for boarding.....

You cannot seem to target Skimmers/Defence turrets from the ship anymore.....

Shot a skimmer and it left a new material behind....Galvanising Alloy or sthg....

SRV weapon and scanner bindings reversed.....Even though set right in new options layout....

Double jettison bug fixed.......

Security service ships now patrol planet.....Got fined 3 grand and took a rep hit (Allied -> Friendly) because of illicit cargo....Bastards....

POI's were mainly canisters...6 in all the ones I found with a mixture from Gold to tea in each....

POI's seem fewer.......

CTD'd whilst attacking mining facility......

New mission board a bit crap.......Takes longer to navigate and No rescue pod missions the times I looked....Not sure if this has been nerfed as it was a good money and rep earner.....Will try again later tonight....

Bought a FAS and A rated it......Picked up some fish as it was one of the Engineers first thing they want as an introduction sorta thing....

Engineers bases were LY's away......Made 22 jumps to first one and game went into loop coming out of orbital cruise into glide.....Ship remained 112 Km from station and not responding....Could not escape out......Had to task manger close ED.....

Lucky enough bought me back in at same spot...I would have been really pissed if it was the last station as I had not docked in the 22 jumps...

Engineers screens seem OK....But only later grade 4 and 5 upgrades seem worthwhile....Looks like you will have to do a lot of hunting for the stuff they need for the upgrades.....There are loads of upgrades...At least at the ones I visited....

Flew to 2nd Engineer that needed some bounty as an intro....Managed to upgrade/downgrade a multi-cannon as I already had the material for a Grade 1....Special thingy on this is it recognizes friendly ships and shots do no harm......

And that's about that for the couple of hours I had last night......Will do some more tonight.....

Orft to a BBQ now.......

Toodily pip......

[JohnLuke]

Personally, I like the new mission board. It gives you a lot of information without scrolling.

In this screenshot (click for full size) the minor factions are listed on the left along with my current standings with each faction (represented by the bar) and how many missions I quality for regarding each specific faction. For instance, I am allied with the Order of Gende and there is one mission available. I am friendly with People's Gende Labor and there are 5 missions that I could run. This will be very handy for doing OoM missions and not having to weed through the clutter of the other minor faction's missions.

The right pane shows each mission and how much impact there will be to Reputation and Influence when completed. More plus signs means more impact.

The top right corner shows some details about that minor factions current state and your reputation with them. You can see that I am "unfriendly" with the Mob. That's because they have the tastiest ships in the Haz-RES. In E-D 2.0, I would VERY rarely see BB missions for the mob, so it's been extremely difficult to work on repairing my relationship with them. In the beta, I've been offered quite a few missions from the Mob and am well on my way to a 'cordial' relationship with them. I don't know if the mission board will stay this way after beta, but I sure hope so.

When you complete a mission, a bar graph is shown with a highlighted section showing how much Rep increase you gained from running that specific mission.

I had a simple fetch mission today that got quite interesting. I needed to get 8 Tantalum for the Mob at Gende. No biggie, they were available in a system close by. The mission said that 'others will be interested in your delivery' in the details, but we've all heard that before, right? I got my shipment (flying my A rated Python for BB missions, by the way) and headed back to Gende. After getting in the system, I received a mission update on my comms panel. The message was that two specific commanders were interested in my cargo and I would receive additional credits if I destroy them. Humm... OK.... if I run across them and they aren't flying conda's.... why not.

I get interdicted by a Novice DBS, and he's one of the interested parties looking for my cargo! Easy kill, right? I submit to the interdiction, and start working him with my 2 large beams. He's fast as shit, and runs away a few times (I absolutely HATE that the NPC's do that in beta), so I'm chasing as best I could and waiting for him to reengage, when a deadly Clipper dropped into my instance. Humm... what's this? He's the other ship that was listed on my mission update. Since the DBS commander was updating his final will and testament while my 3 multi-cannons worked his hull, I thought I'd finish him off and jump out, leaving the Clipper for another day.

But,much to my surprise, the DBS and Clipper (not winged) worked me over... big time, and broke open my cargo hatch! I lost 4 of my 8 Tantalum, and still hadn't killed either ship!

Screw it... I jumped back into SC, ran back to buy more Tantalum and completed the mission. I learned not to engage any targets while running a mission, no matter how easy them may seem to be.

It sure as hell made for the most exciting 'fetch' mission that I have **EVER** done in E-D!

[Cmdr Kharma]

Ahh see that's the difference.....In the new one there is a lot of information....

I normally just scroll down the list looking at the icon for what the mission is and the price.....

I don't normally give a monkeys about the faction.....

So it's taking me longer as I now read all the crap.......

Good for info and stats though......Guess I'll get used to it.....

[Phillipus]

Anyone tested cannons? I like to have a good mix of huge, medium and large cannons on my larger ships and these have, up unti now, proved to be very effective when targetting power plants on larger ships in RES. With 2.1 beta, cannons seem to be like pea shooters. hardly any damage is done compared with 2.0.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

I'm not too thrilled with the engineers so far. I can't make head or tails out of their performance screens, but it appears that most of the upgrades are actually net downgrades. And to get too the possibly good upgrades, you need to grind through lousy upgrades. It would be nice if they gave us more material storage so we wouldn't need to space half our stock. They are also buggy, which isn't helping.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

Anyone tested cannons? I like to have a good mix of huge, medium and large cannons on my larger ships and these have, up unti now, proved to be very effective when targetting power plants on larger ships in RES. With 2.1 beta, cannons seem to be like pea shooters. hardly any damage is done compared with 2.0.

I haven't tested them, but does it have anything to do with the angle of attack? Multicannons don't seem to do much unless you are nearly perpendicular to the target. I'm fairly new to kinetic weapons, at least for sub-targets, so maybe it's always been this way?

[Nethaufer]

FDL practically catches fire while fuel scooping now, which coupled with its modest jump range makes travelling even more tedious. Firing a class 4 SCB appears to cause more module damage than before. 4x medium pulses & 1x huge multi does not have heat issues though.

FDL with 4x pulses and 1x huge MC seems about the only viable ship in this beta. At least in RES.

I have no problem with my FAS with two large beams and two medium multis. I tried doing two large multis and two medium beams, but I couldn't for the life of me handle those SCB spamming 'condas. Two large beams seems to be enough to fight through the recharge though.

[Cmdr Kharma]

I'm not too thrilled with the engineers so far. I can't make head or tails out of their performance screens, but it appears that most of the upgrades are actually net downgrades. And to get too the possibly good upgrades, you need to grind through lousy upgrades. It would be nice if they gave us more material storage so we wouldn't need to space half our stock. They are also buggy, which isn't helping.

I'll second that on my brief visits......

I'm not a spreadsheet person...If you catch my drift.....And all the stats and figures just really mean jack shit to me.....

Spose it might help by playing sober........

Fuck that......

[Phillipus]

Second thoughts about the NPC chaff spam. They might be playing by the rules if they fire 11 chaffs max. Next time I'll count 'em...