Finding Settlement Defence Plans is one of the biggest bottlenecks in the process of unlocking Odyssey engineers; maybe those still stuck on this step will find the following helpful. This revolves around finding a fitting Irregular Marker POI, and resetting it over and over again.
Why do I want this?
To unlock a chain of Odyssey engineers in the bubble, you need to collect 15 settlement defence plans and deliver them to engineer B2 Hero Ferrari, who will tell you about Wellington Beck as a reward. This in turn also allows you to unlock engineer Uma Laszlo down the line. Both of these have really good modifications available, but except for Uma Laszlo's headshot damage mods they're all available from other bubble engineers as well – so if it's worth the hassle to unlock these two is debatable. But what would we come to if we start reflecting on debatable grinds in Elite?
What do I need to do this?
- a ship with sensors, a DSS and some shields (small ships are good, but not required, I used an ICourier)
- engineer Hero Ferrari unlocked (win 10 low threat ground combat zones to do that)
- ideally access to a decent weapon and suit to take a few shots and take out small groups of scavengers (I used a G5 Manticore Intimidator / G5 Maverick, but use whatever you feel most comfortable in)
- not strictly necessary, but I recommend using the brilliant to keep on top of the grind and not go insane
What do I do to farm this?
1. go to Omani 3 C and find a 'Irregular Marker' POI
- use your full spectrum system scanner to discover all planets, then use your detailed surface scanner (and fly close enough) to discover the random POI spawns
- you're looking for a Irregular Marker spawn that fulfills two conditions: (1) it shows up with a [Threat 1] – [Threat 3] threat level – without threat level it's no good; (2) it is the layout with (screenshot shamelessly taken from because I didn't take a screenshot like a dumbass).
- Note that this POI is not a guaranteed spawn, e.g. the layout with three containers and a crashed SRV is far more common. POI generation is random (?), they will despawn/expire after a while – if you don't see the required irregular marker check out the rest of the planets in the system, or simply log out and come back and hour or two later. That being said, 4 out of 5 times I checked Omani 3 C this week it generated the required POI for me – but ofc, anecdote is the opposite of data so YMMV.
- For me a third of the time spend on this grind was finding the POI.
2. land your ship close to the crashed skimmer and download data
- for me this POI is bugged and the skimmer doesn't show any visible data ports, but you can access the port and download data as usual
- I parked the back of my Courier right against the skimmer so I could download data while standing in the blue "board ship" post and regenerate suit battery/replenish ammo – this is where a small ship can be useful
- your ship's shields will also offer some protection, as with every respawn 3-4 scavengers (on a threat 1 site) will spawn with you that you can dispose of quickly
- in maybe 50% of cases an NPC ship will drop in and deliver another 2-4 scavengers, but if you're quick you can usually ignore these – I killed these for the variety and the hefty 750c bounties to collect!
- there is nothing else worthwhile at these sites; grab your data and relog!
3. exit to desktop and relog
- this generates a new skimmer with new data to download (but also new scavengers, see above)
- not every instance will generate Settlement Defence Plans; I collected my 10 missing plans from 40 instances (but again, YMMV)
- other useful data drops are Manufacturing Instructions, Operational Manuals and a bunch of other data items that you will already have plenty of
- exit to desktop is important, don't try to relog from the main menu
Alternatives?
Settlement Defence Plans are meant to drop from CMD and IND ports, the higher the settlement security the higher the drop chance in theory. I've done a good bit of farming to upgrade multiple suits and almost all weapons to G5, including the ever popular Arai's Mine. That got me an impressive total of 2 SDPs. Most stations also generate missions that require you to download an SDP somewhere – you can do that and simply abandon the mission to keep the SDP. These missions can generate fairly reliably, but I've never been able to stack more than 1, and the time to head out, fly to the target settlement, maybe deactivate alarms, download the SDP, and fly back to wait for new missions was a lot longer for me than to relog the same POI. But, ofc you do you, the sanest alternative is probably to ignore this part of the Odyssey grind.
Do let me know if I missed anything, let me know if you did anything different or simply tell me how much you hate the Odyssey mats grind below =)
