4Game

So, I recently started a new Elite Dangerous account, playing on the same PC & game installation as my old one. So I've previously unlocked all the engineers, done all their work, etc.

However, on the new account — just started last week — I'm finding a bunch of engineers just… don't need unlocked?

I went out to Ngurii, bought three Soontill Relics, brought them to Elvira Martuuk, and she… didn't want them? She just engineered my stuff. So I sold them to the commodities broker.

I did some missions to gather Modular Terminals, went over to Marco Qwent and he… didn't ask for them. He just engineered my power plant. I sold them to the commodities broker.

So I went out to HIP 17403, gathered up 25 Sensor Fragments, and took them to Professor Palin. He wanted them! I gave him the sensor fragments, unlocked him, and engineered my thrusters.

Next was The Dweller. I traded at 5 Black Markets, flew over to Black Hide and… he fixed up my power distributors. No donation necessary!

I skipped Lei Cheung, because with this being a new account, I haven't traded at 50 ports — only about 15 so far. Instead, I shot down 15 ships and went over to Tod "The Blaster" McQuinn, to turn in bounty vouchers.

You see where this is going — he didn't care about my bounty vouchers, he just offered me multicannon upgrades. Then I got an invitation to meet Lei Cheung! Checking my Codex, my market network is only 16, nowhere near 50.

To forestall an obvious question: I am not cheating. I'm not running any external software besides EDMC (nor have I ever at any point in the past on any account.) I am most definitely playing on my new account, the commander name & appearance is different and I don't have any of my ships. The majority of engineers just don't seem to have unlock requirements, or if they do, they're much lower than before. Did they change something in Engineering with Update 11? The Wiki & patch notes don't indicate any differences, but I'm getting invites in my inbox, flying out there for the first time (getting discoveries in my log, etc. for my first visit to a system), and finding I don't need to do any of the unlock stuff that I've done every time I've played the game before, and I can't figure out why.