Artisan Archive

In my opinon having artisans with a dot or two in Engineering fix vehicles rather then these mysterious Garage gnomes that only come out when your not looking, would be good for the game.

With Artisans fixing them, money paid for vehicle repair remains in the Economy. The Magic Gnomes on the other hand run off to the Mystical Dimension from which they came.

If an Artisan tries to overcharge you on a vehicle repair, you can simply finda different Artisan who would do the job for less. On the other hand, the Magic Gnomes seem to be members of a workers Union, you can't barter with them, and they all overcharge you.

If an Artisan does the job, he gets Xp, which will eventually allow him to build bigger and better things to add into the game. Magic Gnomes may also earn Xp for doing the job, but all it does is let them screw you out of your money in Bigger and Better ways.

If you don't like the service you get from an Artisan, or he tries to run away with your money, you can always chase him down and shoot him. Or you can tell your friends not to deal with him. If the Magic Gnomes rip you off, you really have no recourse. The little buggers are way to fast for you to catch, and in the blink of an eye, they are off to their mystical homeland having robbed you of your hard earned cash, before you even know what hit you.

You can always talk to an Artisan while he fixes your vehicle. On the other hand, Magic Gnomes, being part of a union, have formed a clique and only talk to each other.

If the repair cost some resources rather then money, the Artisans would have to charge at least a little bit of money, and you would actually see Artisans who make their money as Auto mechanics, which in my opinion would be rather nifty.

When a Master Artisan builds a vehicle he has to put X amount of resources into Various parts to build the vehicle. Generally these Parts don't mean anything, they are the text description of where your resources are going. What I would like to see is this; as the vehicle takes damage those parts could get damaged and an Artisan would have to replace them. The Artisans would have to build specific replacement parts, rather then simply putting money into the car and having it magically repaired. Actually I'd be happy with anyone being able to actually do the repair work, if they had to buy the parts to put into them from an Artisan. The way I'd see it working is like this: Vehicles have 5 parts, as the vehicle gets damaged, the parts break down in order. At X Vehicledamage part 1 is destroyed, once the vehicle has taken Y damage, part 2 is also destoroyed and so on. The Vehicle continues to function until it's last hitpoint (just like now) is gone. To fix your Vehicle you simply purchase whichever parts arebroken, head over to a garage, and pop them in. You'd probably have to start in order of the part to become damaged last to first, but you wouldn't have to replace all the parts. The new parts would restore the Vehicles HP an appropriate amount for each part. This would lead to the rise of,,, Part stores. Artisans could make money simply by selling Vehicle parts, just as many Medics make money now by selling Stimpacks. The first parts to get damaged (1 - 2) would cost less resources to build, hence they would be cheaper, and the last parts (4 -5) would cost a lot more, hence they would be more expensive. If the later parts also took a bit more skill to build you'd have the added interest of "I'm going to have to send back my supplier in Bestine to get this part"