Artisan Archive
Thread: Has reverse engineering come up in any discussions?
I was thinking this would be a good idea to keep the uber loot from mobs from being completely devastating to crafters. It could beincorporated into Architect in the Construction treeor possibly come up with a new Elite class of Engineer to make items and experiment on them??????
There would no no reverse engineering of player made equipment.You already have anything they have and would keep players from the Uber stuff a crafter worked so hard to create and model.
You can add checks into the process for fully finding out what was used. Start removing the the items that were identified from the list of ingredients the further from the successfull check you get. It would basically break down the item into its base components and any item youcould not identify would be labled as unidentified Ore, or component, or crystal, or whatever. Any sub-components would then be capable of going through the same process also. From that point you would be able to craft the item with the exact components and try to make the same product (this is where the skill and level and everything comes into play). However, a schematic is not made unless all items are identified.
Uber loot items willbe tough and the checks can be made to reflect the rareity that the Devs wish to keep the item. Itwould make it hard todo but, not impossible. In this case if you are at a Reverse-Engineer station (or all reverse engineering requires a station) and you successfully identified all pieces of the item down to its sub components and theiringredients, you should get a schematic that allows you to experiment on to createmore of the item.
WHOA!!! Now I am sure the DEVS are not going to want 100k Knight Sister Lightning-Force-blow-your-but-out-of-the-water-Uber-Swords running around do they? I did not think so. Make this item only craftable by hand, no factory runs, have the schematic limited by not only the rare items needed to craft it, but also limited in the number of items that can be created.
In essence, what you get are Uber loot items that drop rarely, can be rarely reverse-engineered completly enough to create a schematic, are dependent upon rare ingredients (that an industrious crafter would write down and possibly start hoarding), and if all of that chance falls into place it can only be created say 100 or less items before it disappears.
This desrotys the item completely once it is reverse engineered so, it keeps people from wanting to give up the items to be reverse engineered. It also makes it so that even if everything does fall into place, the item is so intricate, you have to experiment on it each tiem and it rarely comes out the same way twice.
Of course this is just my opinion and we all know what that is good for!!