Story progress and RNG

[68plex]

Unless I'm mistaken, artifacts II & IV seem to rely solely on RNG. Please correct me if I am mistaken.

Artifact II: I got a legendary very early game (to my amazement) but that's the last I've seen of them after hours and hours of play and hundreds of ships killed and looted so far. It'll be easy enough to get an extra artifact, but I think you still need 2 plain legendary for research, right? I think they nerfed the drops - which I don't mind at all for normal game play (I use the turret factories, and get plenty of exceptional + a few good exotic upgrades) - but for story progress, I'm beginning to wonder just how many more hours I'm gonna have to spend blasting enemies before I get one more legendary? As powerful as my ship is in the Xanion belt, that's getting pretty old and unchallenging now. I really need to start mixing it up with the big boys near the core lol!

Artifact IV: The RNG for finding the Mobile Equipment Dealer seems kinda brutal. What is it I read... like 20% chance he'll pop in every 8 hours, then 2% chance that he sells it? Brutal, I say! Again, how many more hours can I stand waiting for RNG to go my way before I lose patience? Do you guys see the MED often? Maybe I'm just not paying enough attention to that small font bottom left??? I've seen him only twice - once early game when I didn't even know the significance of him, and once lately, but with no artifact.

RNG is not a good mechanic to have to rely on for story progression, imho. Please tell me if I'm missing something. Or any hints or tips for progressing would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[68plex]

Hey, I was just wondering: Does anybody know if spending time salvaging at a scrapyard is good for getting legendarys?

[Rickson]

I didn't mind the research one too much. It mostly involved dumping a bunch of junk systems into a research station for a while. It's a bit annoying but at least you can just keep chipping away at it.

IV is just completely lazy and bad game design. RNG on top of RNG is always garbage. I learned something else killing time waiting for it too; if you're in a hostile controlled sector when the equipment merchant triggers he spawns in hostile so you can't even trade with him to find out if he has it. After a couple hours of waiting for this guy to show up I just cheated one in, and I don't feel guilty about it at all.

[68plex]

Yeah, I don't blame you. I may end up doing the same thing. Appreciate the tip on research. I forgot I had that option... crap shoot though it may be. I'll try that. Tried the scrapyard last night, but it seems the drops are nerfed there too. Didn't get barely anything but scrap after half hour. Oh well, probably have to look up the console commands.

[Kanaro Min]

Originally posted by 68plex:

Yeah, I don't blame you. I may end up doing the same thing. Appreciate the tip on research. I forgot I had that option... crap shoot though it may be. I'll try that. Tried the scrapyard last night, but it seems the drops are nerfed there too. Didn't get barely anything but scrap after half hour. Oh well, probably have to look up the console commands.

Scrapyards seems to be good for raw materials only, not so good for drops. I always get the best drops off ships I destroy in the field, and only send my salvager to a scrapyard when I am not out "hunting".

Research is a bit weird - I tried a bunch with turrets the other night and it appears as though it's currently broken. 5 double turrets turned out into a single (barrel) turret with 1/2 the DPS, which is totally unacceptable. It's really only useful for turning ship upgrades into higher tier upgrades - turrets don't currently benefit at all from what I can see. Just sell turrets, and research ship slot equipment.

[68plex]

Originally posted by Kanaro Min:

Originally posted by 68plex:

Yeah, I don't blame you. I may end up doing the same thing. Appreciate the tip on research. I forgot I had that option... crap shoot though it may be. I'll try that. Tried the scrapyard last night, but it seems the drops are nerfed there too. Didn't get barely anything but scrap after half hour. Oh well, probably have to look up the console commands.

Scrapyards seems to be good for raw materials only, not so good for drops. I always get the best drops off ships I destroy in the field, and only send my salvager to a scrapyard when I am not out "hunting".

Research is a bit weird - I tried a bunch with turrets the other night and it appears as though it's currently broken. 5 double turrets turned out into a single (barrel) turret with 1/2 the DPS, which is totally unacceptable. It's really only useful for turning ship upgrades into higher tier upgrades - turrets don't currently benefit at all from what I can see. Just sell turrets, and research ship slot equipment.

Appreciate the tip. Come to think of it, I had a similar experience researching turrets early game. It was a completely underwhelming result, and I remember being pissed that I lost better turrets. I'll stick with the upgrades.

[Chaoslink]

Yeah, the equipment salesman one is kinda dumb. Needs to be altered into a new objective of some form. The research one is alright I guess, though a bit of a grind. Still, that one you know you can do.

[Kanaro Min]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Yeah, the equipment salesman one is kinda dumb. Needs to be altered into a new objective of some form. The research one is alright I guess, though a bit of a grind. Still, that one you know you can do.

The research artifact grind is enormous, and IMO far too long to reach. I have 100M, a ship worth another 100M (sporting 120 custom railgun fighters), tens of millions of resources, purple/gold ship systems, a fully piloted and heavy salvager following me around, and two dedicated miners with 1/2 pilot staff constantly grinding away. I absolutely melt anything outside the barrier short of the MAD boss, and am frankly just spending 100% of my time trying to find more ship systems to research up. I don't think I've done even one purple yet. :(

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Kanaro Min:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Yeah, the equipment salesman one is kinda dumb. Needs to be altered into a new objective of some form. The research one is alright I guess, though a bit of a grind. Still, that one you know you can do.

The research artifact grind is enormous, and IMO far too long to reach. I have 100M, a ship worth another 100M (sporting 120 custom railgun fighters), tens of millions of resources, purple/gold ship systems, a fully piloted and heavy salvager following me around, and two dedicated miners with 1/2 pilot staff constantly grinding away. I absolutely melt anything outside the barrier short of the MAD boss, and am frankly just spending 100% of my time trying to find more ship systems to research up. I don't think I've done even one purple yet. :(

You buy out the equipment docks? I usually do every time I see them. You can also mix random systems together just to get the three purples.

[Kanaro Min]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

You buy out the equipment docks? I usually do every time I see them. You can also mix random systems together just to get the three purples.

I have started to in the last few days, yes. But they often only sell 1-2 whites that would be good for researching (and actually useful later on instead of just a money sink).

A purple needs 5 reds. 5 reds need 25 golds. 25 golds need 125 blues. 125 blues need 625 whites. Not even going to do the math on the greys.

The grind is pretty ridiculous. I understand trying to protect the core and unique content/material, along with extending gameplay. But this feels overly artificial. Requiring us to research 5-10 reds would have been more than enough.

[Chaoslink]

See, when you say "good for researching" it sounds like you exclude some. Don't. You can research any 5 whites and get a random green based on the whites combined. There are probably some upgrade types you don't care about much, at least beyond a certain level. Just mix them all together into a mash and don't worry about what types go in, just get the tier up until you can merge them. I literally buy every upgrade available from every dock I can just to increase my pool. The only exception are the multi million credit upgrades. That's a bit much for one trash upgrade.

[Kanaro Min]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

See, when you say "good for researching" it sounds like you exclude some. Don't. You can research any 5 whites and get a random green based on the whites combined. There are probably some upgrade types you don't care about much, at least beyond a certain level. Just mix them all together into a mash and don't worry about what types go in, just get the tier up until you can merge them. I literally buy every upgrade available from every dock I can just to increase my pool. The only exception are the multi million credit upgrades. That's a bit much for one trash upgrade.

That can't possibly be the design direction they had in mind for this artifact, can it? Force the player to become an item hoarder, to the point of buying anything anywhere and jumbling it all together even if it isn't considered useful?

There are only a few system upgrades that I don't consider useful, that I regularly skip buying. And I never buy turrets - researching them is a lost cause. I'll just keep going as I have been and hope that the feedback reaches the developer's ears: way too big a time sink, and waaaaaaay too boring.

[Kanaro Min]

Based on my game time so far (Xanion pre-barrier) for this save of about 80 hours, and the money I've put into buying equipment only used for researching (along with the value of what I've found in the field)... I'm going to guesstimate the overall value of this "Research Legendary" at around 150-200 million credits. Compared to the cost of the one you can buy.. it's ridiculous. :)

[68plex]

Yikes... and I only have 6 mill left after utilizing the local turret factories for maximum gain.

Really, a simple tweak to the loot table codes could resolve this RNG roadblock being experienced by players trying to progress the story; this off-puttingly high level of grinding currently necessary. Indeed, "necessary" may not even be the proper term to use here, considering we're talking about RNG, which, in theory, could well equate to an eternity of grinding with nary a beneficial result for the un-lucky.

Surely, it shouldn't be easy to acquire purples. It should take a lot of pirate and Xsotan butt-kicking. But a player playing the game well and hard, experiencing the game through long hours of game play, and learning and utilizing the game mechanics to the point where gaining a vast superiority over adversaries in the Xanion region is achieved, should "somehow" (read code-wise) equate to a marginal influx of purple drops. If not so much for the purpose of increasing the power of player ships, than for simply opening an avenue - outside of RNG - for progression with the story.

I like this game, and I like these devs. It's my opinion that they'll hear the feedback and fix things sooner or later.

[Kanaro Min]

So.... I researched my third Legendary equipment upgrade today, after dropping ~30 million buying up lesser upgrades and researching to the purple level. I got absolutely nothing for it.

The artifact you're supposed to receive after researching three Legendary upgrades yourself was never awarded to me. Is this quest broken, or tempermental? I'm -done- spending money/effort on it - it was an unnecessary time sink to begin with. How can I use the console to give myself the artifact and open up the portal to the center area now?

[Chaoslink]

I assume that none of the purple upgrades were also artifacts? That doesn’t work.

As for console, not sure what the code was but I remember finding a sort of debug menu unlocked that adds a button to the top right with the tools for doing stuff like that. You’d have to google search it. I don’t remember it off the top of my head.