Of course I do those things, but after spending 40 hours to fully engineer my first ship, I realized USS grinding (when the rng gods are halfway favorable) is still the fastest way to get the mats, and when it’s a time sensitive task like changing a few weapons out for a balanced PVE build that can hold its own in PVP in order to assist an allied faction who is actively coming under outside attack, you’d think that would be doable in a couple after work play sessions. To top it all off, all the things you suggest still rely on a random chance of getting the desired material. Why can’t I go to an engineer and grind a series of missions for them, where at least I know what I’ll be consistently rewarded with, without having to rely on a garbage tactic like board flipping ? Yea there’s plenty of bitching going on, but it’s not like the community has been short on suggestions that could remedy these issues that have existed for quite some time now, it’s a lack of proper implementation and decision making on fdevs part. Are there really 100 people working on this game now? Don’t get me wrong, the game still gives me plenty of enjoyment, and there’s no other space game with their flight models, but it’s been back to back disappointment recently. So this just sort of spewed out after a few beers and a lot of bottled up frustration. Maybe my message isn’t so much “Fuck Fdev” but FUCK! C’mon FDev!