In previous posts I’ve pointed out the limitations of the Engineering element of the game and how particularly the mission reward commodities cause major road-blocks.
I have been chipping away at these obstacles and with the help of members of the community providing both cargo and practical advice, I have some solutions.
Commodity storage
This isn’t going be an option for most players, but it is an option all the same. One CMDR told me his son is a lapsed player, so he has been using his son’s Type 6 as commodity storage. How does that work? The player logs in on two PC’s using two different Elite accounts and goes to the same location and game mode, then drops the mission reward commodity on one screen, the (on the laptop in this case) the CMDR scooped up the canister in his son’s Type 6, then logged out.
He now has storage for up to 100T of cargo.
Obviously not everyone has access to a second account, but maybe you have a friend who can hold on to your cargo for a while?
Upgrading ships that don’t have cargo racks
My Federal Corvette is built for combat and doesn’t have any cargo racks. What’s more once my Python has picked up a mission reward, I have to sell those commodities before I can switch to my combat ship. A major pain if I need the said commodity to upgrade my Corvette’s FSD to a level 3. So what’s the solution? Well, I have an Anaconda, which does have cargo racks and has identical internals to the Corvette, so I can fly the Anaconda out to Farseer Inc and get the Class 6A FSD on that ship upgraded by the Engineer. I then fly back to where my Corvette is stored. Here comes the “tricky” part.
- I have to sell the modified FSD and buy a lesser model.
- This puts the modified FSD in the outfitting “cache”.
- I can then swap ships to my Corvette, in outfitting, using the “buy back” grab the modified FSD.
- I then swap back to my Anaconda and rebuy the vanilla 6A FSD.
My Corvette now has the better FSD and my Anaconda is none the worse for wear – neither is my bank account!
Why is that “tricky”? Because the server controls the outfitting cache and it resets every five (or maybe ten) minutes. This means if you start doing this at 14:39 (server time) and take longer than a minute when the clock strikes 14:40, the “cache” may reset and bye! bye! goes your modified FSD. So don’t start until 14:41 and get done before 14:44 to be safe! Avoid minutes divisible by 5.
This option is permitted by Frontier, but not officially supported, so while it works now, it may not always work.
Finding tricky mission reward commodities
I have slaved, explored, worked and jumped game modes. But I could not for the love of anything get a mission with Modular Terminals as a reward. I went to stations where people had seen them (or even were at that moment) but zip! The mission board is random and my dice were cursed.
So how to get that one final ingredient to the FSD Jump range spell?
Trading with other players.
CMDR TheArmysRedNeck mentioned to me that he had some Modular Terminals, but needed some Osmium and Praseodymium but didn’t have a mining ship to get them.
I did have a mining ship and knew the exact pristine ring system where these items were plentiful.
I gave him my location, went mining in the ring and by the time Red arrived, I had half what he needed already.
We then made a simple exchange and were both on our way with what we needed for our respective blueprints.
So my advice is, if you have an excess of Praseodmium or you have a bunch of mission reward commodities you don’t want, advertise the fact! Go to FaceBook groups, the Frontier forums – wherever and let others know you want to trade.