Crafting System Feedback

General Feedback
#1

The foundation is solid. The numbers, starting out, need a little tweaking as progression appears to be tied to maintaining a current level of equipment.

This is where the basic tuning seems far out of place for, in particular, heavier items.

The min / max items utilized allows for a fair amount of customization for item rank and bonuses within any given tier it seems, so I believe it best to establish a baseline, and I will use the basic items as an example.

In this example, I will make the following assumption: All basic Completed Weapons have a base level of 1, while all basic completed Components have a base level of 0. The basic +1 Weapon tier has a base level of 5.

This means a weapon can be no lower than 1 or 5, but with components, can be anywhere from 1/5 to 10-20, potentially higher if even higher quality materials are used.

At weaponsmith 3, when the next tier of blueprints comes out, this pattern can follow, with the base tier 2 weapon being base level 10, and the base tier 2 +1 being base level 15. In this way we can ensure that weapons are not only readily craftable by progressing smiths to progressing fighters, but still allow the great amount of lateral tinkering that can make a crafting system so engaging.

#2

Some of the basic gears current minimum crafting level

Armour (all basic with no +level modifiers) (brackets are earliest skill rank you need to craft)
Heavy Breastplate - Level 10 (rank 6)
Heavy Shield - level 11 (rank 7)
Tower Shield - Level 19!!! (Rank 15)
Heavy Belt 1 - Level 15 (rank 11)
Basic Heavy Boots - Level 11 (rank 7)
Heavy Crest 1 - level 12 (Rank 8)

This is because of how the basic crafting works, as just adding basic materials to the minimum requirement for these, ups the required crafting level majorly. This can best be seen with tower shield basic

which requires 2 Heavy Armor Cores (Level 4 x2 = level 8) And 2 Heavy armor segments (Level 3 x2 = level 6+ for a total of + 14 to a base craft rank of 5 for that sum level of 19 and a required skill of 15 to even make a basic tower shield.

#3

I would probably also combine the level 25 perks Weapon/Armoursmith Efficiency and Optimization into one perk. As they do the same thing except in opposite directions

Efficiency :
Reduces the minimum number of components required to make an Armorsmith item. At least one component is required for each Category of Main, Secondary, and Tertiary (if the blueprint requires it).
By 1/2 (level 25W/Asmith and 50 for 2nd tier)

Optimization: Increases the maximum number of components able to be added for Armorsmith items. by 1/2 for level 25/50

These also cost 15 Perk Points to buy each for T1 and 2, so thats 60 points if you want both.

#4

Warning, long :slight_smile:

Firstly, I really like this system, and think it has bags of potential. It’s very close to excellent right now, and with a few tweaks I think it can get there.

I’ve levelled Fabrication and Engineering, and there’s a very big difference between them in ease and speed of levelling, and in terms of economic impact.

Firstly, some terminology. “Minimal DC” is the term I will use for the lowest possible level of a recipe - assuming the recipe, and all its sub-recipes, are made of materials that have +0 levels. “Level 1 DC” is the term I will use for the same recipe made with entirely level 1 materials. At crafting level X a character can craft recipes with DC X+4.

Engineering has blasters, which require only metal, and have two components - a barrel and a core. A rifle takes 3 metal for each. So for a total of 6 metal and 3 crafting steps, you can make a blaster rifle that sells for 97g. The core is level 3 and the barrel is level 2, and the rifle has 3 base levels (so the minimal DC for a rifle is 8, and the level 1 DC is 14. Between making the components and making rifles, therefore, you can push the envelope of your crafting for the first 10 Engineering levels… and then can start making Blaster Rifle 1s that have +5 DC, meaning with an adjustment in material you can keep grinding out max level recipes.

Level 1 metal is also the most available component. There are lots of veldite deposits, and each mined ore yields 6 ingots when a level ~10 engineer is refining it. So an engineer, building rifles out of veldite, can get masses of resources for minimal gathering time, and bulk produce rifles that sell for a reasonable sum. The combination of (a) only using one resource type, (b) it being the most plentiful resource type, and © needing only a few resources per recipe makes engineering very strong.

Contrast with fabrication. The fabrication build tree is fairly complex, but most recipes use a combination of the following.

  • Construction Parts - these have a minimum DC of 2 and require 4 metal.
  • Computing Modules - these have a minimum DC of 3 and require 3 electronics
  • Small Structure - these have a minimum DC of 3 and require 3 metal, 1 fiberplast and 1 organic.
  • Medium Structure - these have a minimum DC of 8 and require a small structure, 3 metal and 1 organic.

The best recipe for grinding, therefore, is medium structures - closely corresponding to blaster rifles. Both require 6 metal, but the structure also needs 2 organic and 1 fiberplast. That’s 50% additional components, bringing the level 1 DC up to 17, and up to 3 different types - much much harder to gather. In addition, mynock meat is fairly scarce, so a fabricator has to use a lot of wood as the organic material, which means heavier dependency on scrap metal (comparatively scarce compared to refined velite) to keep the DC down until you reach Fabricator 13+, further slowing production.

Medium structures also don’t sell for anything. The next easiest thing to do with them is to make silos. Silos have a minimum DC of 12, and require a medium structure and 2x construction parts. This means they have a total of 17 ingredients - 14 metal, 2 organic and 1 fiberplast. The level 1 DC is therefore 29. Grinding them, therefore, requires a very large amount of scrap metal.

Silos still don’t sell for anything, so while the engineer is getting rich off his grinding, the fabricator isn’t making any money at all.

IMO I think both engineering is too easy and fabricating is too hard. I’d like to see rifles (and pistols) require a stock, say, made from organic material, to at least add some resource diversity to the engineering grind.

Fabricating is a bit tougher, since it’s very reasonable that big structures require more ingredients! But the scaling effect, as shown by the difference in level 1 DCs between a blaster rifle and a basic silo, is brutal on crafting. My recommendation is to back the level of construction components to 0 and make them require 2 metal not 4. That would (e.g.) change the minimum DC of a silo to 8, and the level 1 DC to 21 - a much more reasonable range, though still not easy.

The other effect of this would be on base building. Right now you need the following structures in a base.

  • Small control tower. Min DC 30, requires 19 metal, 9 electronics, 3 power cores (bought not crafted), 1 fiberplast and 1 organic.
  • Small building. Min DC 25, requires 27 metal, 3 power cores (bought not crafted), 1 fiberplast and 1 organic.
  • Basic resource drill. Min DC 28, requires 33 metal, 3 organic, 1 fiberplast.

The proposed change above would make all of these achievable and open up base building to more reasonable fabrication scores. With construction parts at 0 base level and 2 metal:

  • Small control tower. Min DC 14, requires 11 metal, 9 electronics, 3 power cores (bought not crafted), 1 fiberplast and 1 organic.
  • Small building. Min DC 8, requires 15 metal, 3 power cores (bought not crafted), 1 fiberplast and 1 organic.
  • Basic resource drill. Min DC 16, requires 21 metal, 3 organic, 1 fiberplast.

That seems much more reasonable, and means that at level 10 Fabricator you can start building a base and actually being useful. Right now I’m level 17 fabricator and still 9 levels away from being able to make a control tower!

#5

I would say either the Components should lose minimum level, or the finished items should lose mimimum level.
One glaring issue with the crafting system thus far, is the minimum levels imo, since they effectively stack with each other.

#6

I want to suggest moving Components for every single crafting skills to be the first option when accessing the workbench.

It’ll be a QoL improvement, since most of the crafts require components to be crafted first, anyways.

#7

It would be very useful for leveling up a crafting skill if there was an option (first option?) to craft the last thing you crafted again - saves having to go through all the menus over and over again if you’re crafting the same thing 60 times.

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