Even with access to the so called "crack train" cracked industrial firmware needs a MASSIVE increase in its droprate and the material/data storage needs to be at least doubled.



As someone who has done extensive engineering / grinding / ship building and with a lot of experience in the engineers mechanics I can definitely say that cracked industrial firmware is possibly the worst implemented material in the entire game at the moment. The drop rate of crack has been proven both subjectively and objectively to be extremely low regardless of its status as a tier 3 rarity. Using traditional methods of data acquisition (bases as they are non-POI and as such their existence is non-rng) its rarity is anywhere between five to ten times higher than that of tier 5 data like modified embedded firmware.



Even though it is possible to get the occasional streaks of high crack amounts using bases every once in a while in the long run it always comes down to crack being the one and only hindrance to high tier modifications of drives and power distributors and long range weapons. Now this bit is me making assumptions but based off of everything that I have seen the percentage chance of getting crack from satellites and other datapoints such as bases and POI datapoints seems to be more or less the same and using the "crack train" method of grinding we have mostly confirmed that the chance of actually getting crack is soul crushingly low compared to other necessary materials for high level engineering.



As completely anecdotal evidence the last time I went base raiding specifically for crack I got 3 drops of it in 24 bases and in the long run that type of occurrence rate is quite consistent. I have done way more bases than I would like to guess and these types of numbers are also consistent with every possible piece of feedback that I have gotten from anyone else. Actually the only reason the "crack train" even works is because you can spam the data scan infinite times and even using it you can go tens of scans without getting a single one and that's nothing too out of the ordinary.



We already know that the "crack train" does not work in 2.3 so once the patch hits the main client it's back to massive time investment for crack unless if you get very lucky and more often than not it's so rare that effort just simply doesn't correlate with results at all. The reason why this specific material requires such a lengthy post is simply because tier 5 dirty drives and tier 5 charge enhanced power distributors are objectively the modifications (far better than any other drive or PD mods) for any combat ship and absolutely 100% necessary for any minmaxed PvP ship and just as useful for PvE.



And yes for anyone who does a lot of engineering the caps for mats and data are incredibly low considering the amount of different types of mats that exist within the game and even a more casual engineer-ee can fill up his or her storage in a very short period of time. The module storage bit is also way too low but that's another thread for another time.