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Engineering

Tanner edited this page Jul 9, 2026 · 1 revision

Engineering

Elite Trader tracks your engineering materials and plans blueprint upgrades — both on the LOCAL tab.

New to engineering? The 60-second version

Engineers are characters who upgrade your ship's modules far beyond anything you can buy — for example, making your jump drive reach ~50% farther. Upgrades don't cost credits: they cost materials you collect while playing (scan data, ship salvage, planet minerals). Each blueprint climbs grades 1→5, applied several times ("rolls") per grade. Material traders — a service at some stations — swap materials within a family: 6 lower-grade make 1 higher-grade, 1 higher-grade makes 3 lower.

The best first upgrade for almost any ship is FSD Increased Range (applied by Felicity Farseer in Deciat, an easy early unlock).

Engineering materials card

Your live raw / manufactured / encoded inventory, straight from the journal.

Engineering planner card

  1. Pick a blueprint and target grade, press PIN.
  2. You get a checklist of every material the full grade-1→target climb needs, checked against your inventory in real time:
    • ● green = covered, ○ red = short, with exact "need N more" counts
    • hover a material to see where it comes from (wake scanning, settlement data points, ship salvage, SRV prospecting…)
    • shortfalls show material-trader suggestions from your surplus — "swap 2× Pharmaceutical Isolators at a material trader to cover the rest"
  3. TRADERS NEAR ME lists the nearest raw / manufactured / encoded material traders, one tap from plotting.
  4. When a pickup completes a pinned list, a voice callout tells you: "Materials complete for FSD Increased Range, grade 5" — your signal to stop farming and fly to the engineer.

Roll counts are community averages — treat totals as a close estimate, not an exact bill. The recipe set is curated and grows each release.

Not covered (yet)

Engineer unlocks (each engineer has an invite requirement) — see Inara's engineer list for those.

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