Architect Archive
Thread: Is the epidemic of critical failures due to a coding bug in crafting stations?
Daynn wrote:
Something else.
Okay, take a breath, now.
I get far better results at my droid station than I do at my maxed furniture crating station. In fact, using a REALLY good station seem to be exactly inverse of what you would expect. I failed so much at my GOOD crafting station, I gave it up entirely. It has been deleted.
Someone in this or the WS forum did a test using very good and very bad stations and found that the Bad station was much better. I have found the same.
So, I suggest you try doing your combines at a very bad station and see if that works better. My guess is that there is a (-) in an equasion somewhere where there should be a (+).
Out of all the speculation I have heard, this one seems to ring true.
The usual advice given by veteran MAs like Daynn is that critical failures are caused by using low-quality components. I've been skeptical because it doesn't match my experience. For example, the time I was critical-failing on making bricks with steel and ore having a Toughness of 850. A master architect, top-quality tools and stations (12 and 39) and 850-grade materials, should not be seeing failures making a brick.
It seems to me that we all noticed an epidemic of critical failures that started a few weeks ago. There was a good long while when, basically, crit-fails were very rare for me. Then, a few weeks ago something changed: Quality of crafting stations became visible.
Now that I think about it... I looked at the quality of the station I had built for myself. It was a 6. Ugh! I pulled some 950-conductivity copper out of storage, experimented, and got a 12 - not very good, but I didn't use the optional components, so its not surprising.
I started getting critical failures. So I looked around, and contacted Mox (on Gorath). He built me a 39-quality crafting station. It was after that that critical failures stated to get really devastating, and no matter what I did, I was failing about 10% of the time.
So here's what I think happened: For a long time, we were mostly using stations with an effectiveness near 0 or even slightly negative. The bug inferred by Daynn was lurking, but there were very few high-quality stations out there. Then, they made effectiveness visible. People started getting uber stations. All of a sudden - the reversal of the + and - manifested, and the epidemic of criticals started.
Does this ring true for other crafters?
I still think that the current system of critical failures is a bad idea, but if fixing this bug brought it down from 10% to 1% it would cease to be of practical concern.
I had a friend that's a master Architect tell me basically the same thing. When he was using his 8.6 crafting station he got a lot less crits then when he used his 36.8 station. Looks like I'll be saving my good crafting station materials for when this is confirmed/fixed. No use in making really nice stations if they don't help.
On another note. I'm a master droid engineer and for some reason even with 940+ conduct materials can't seem to get my droid crafting stations abovea 2.
They are bugged, but it isn't 100%. At times I can do no wrong with my best stations, at other times I can do no right. There must be an internal checker that when it works, does great, but often fails and your tool quality gets set to the lowest it can be. Droids and stations without the input hopper may work differently.
I do know I got more fails with the same tools and station post patch, so it is a higher crit fail rate all the way around.
my droid was always better...
even before the station update i would get more failures if i was crafting near a staion as opposed to not being at one....so i dont think it is really that new...just maybe compounded by the new code
to beat the failures...once a tool has failed put it aside and use another one....use the the tool that had the last fail on the final combine...
or build a new tool....i have rarely if ever had a tool fail on its first use
but i am cynical and mistrusting....i dont think the fails are not a bug...i think that they are working as intended