Artisan Archive

while i'm a scout/pistol-user/artisan, i consider myself a craftsman above anything else. i'm a relatively casual player and so i dont concern myself much with getting the most xp at all times for all things. however, there is a lot of discussion about factories going on right now and i cant say that i completely understand what the issue really is... see i just barely got my first wind harvester up and running so i have no idea how factories and such really work.

so my questions are thus...

1) how do factories really work? as i understand it you feed it a schematic and the necessary resources and it produces the item in question for you. can you queu up multiple different items? I've heard that item quality as produced from factories doesnt work right... is this true?

2) how does factory xp work? as i understand it you are supposed to earn experience for items crafted through a factory just at a lower rate? do i have to be near the factory? do i have to be logged on? how much xp do i really earn using a factory?

3) in your opinion jasarina... is a factory a viable option for a simple artisan like me? i'm not out to craft the biggest baddest stuff right now. in fact i just want to setup a kind of general store/house where low level folks can get decent equipment without having to pay billions of credits that they don't have. ((yknow... experimented cdef's, food, travel packs, powerups, useful items but inexpensive things)). later in life i might want to do some advanced things though... would i even NEED a factory?

Opps, let me answer the other questions, too.

How does a factory work?

FIrst, a factory requires power and maintenance, about the same as a medium harvester. You can only make things from schematics, so you have to create or buy an appropriate schematic. You do this at a crafting station. That is what the option for manufacturing blueprint is for. Once you have a schematic, you put it in the schematic slot and then put the required materials in the input hopper. These must be EXACTLY the same as were used to make the schematic. If the item requires sub-parts, these must be manufactured first using a factory and the main schematic has to be assembled using parts from those crates. You cannot hand make the parts that go into a schematic. Everything has to come from a factory.

To recap making a grenade, for instance. You make a factory run of 55 of each part. You then make a schematic for the final grenade using parts from those crates. You then put this new schematic in the slot, put the items from the crates in the input hopper and put the remaining resources in there also. Currently, you cannot reliably just put the crates in the hopper. You have to manually take each one out and place it in the hopper.

Second question was how does factory xp work. Here is how it was supposed to work. It was supposed to give you 10% of the xp you would have gotten if you made it by hand. It was supposed to give you xp even if you were offline or away from the factory.

How it was working. You got 100% of the xp, but nothing when it was used. You had to be online and near your factory.

How it works now. You get 10%, no uxp and you have to be online and near your factory.

The exploit was having 8-10 factories running simultaeously, 24 hours a day while you sat nearby AFK. This would net 250,000 to 300,000 xp per day in your chosen field.

so let me get this straight?

* some items require sub-parts which HAVE to come from the factory in order to work properly

* you HAVE to use the EXACT same resources in the factory as you used to make your schematic/prototype

* you dont get any usage experiencefor items made in the factory like you would normally if they were made by hand

* you have to be online and near your factory to get just 10% of the normal crafting experience that you would get for making the same item by hand

* but they're forcing you to use a factory to make certain things...

so with the exception of items that REQUIRE you to make them in a factory... i'm actually better off in terms of experience points gained from craffting and usage if i actually just sit and make them myself? doesnt that kinda defeat the purpose of a factory though? increased efficiency and all that?

i'm sorry folks but that just doesnt work for me. i know it's a young game and all... but that needs to be changed to something a bit more reasonable. dont get me wrong i'm not one of those guys who will rant and rave ((i saw the 500 or so posts on the main related thread)) but that kinda cripples those of us who are just getting started. doesnt hurt those who are already reached their goals, like master level or whatever... since they just produce things to sell and the xp doesnt matter so much at that point, but it matters to me. i am a casual player admittedly but i DO want to feel like i'm getting somewhere... ya know?

how about this?

a) if people with multiple factories were a problem, why not restrict players to one factory per person. characters in groups could still mass produce items by focusing on different components and still be very efficient, kinda like real life... comapny a makes component1 which is combined with component 2 from company b by company c to make product 3... or somethign like that

b) i don't mind so much not getting full exp for not making it by hand and letting a machine do it... that makes sense since i'm not doing all the work. but why force me to stand nearby? let the factory give the reduced xp whether online or nearby or not.

c) usage xp is tricky. i thought it was one of the primary ways we could gain xp... by making good items and having people use them. i think we should still get usage xp for items made through factories. it's not like i didnt have to acquire the resources, factory, schematic and stuff in the first place. being a crafter is WORK. maybe reduce usage xp in a similar fashion? down to 10% if factory made?

i hope this gets to the developers ((hello correspondant lady!)). i think those are reasonable solutions.

Kinda:

1. Yes.

2. Yes.

3. Its a bug.

4. Its a bug, identified.

5. Yes.

Yes, for skill up you are better off hand crafting. Factories are good for components though, like Bone Armor segments, Fiberplast Panels etc. - because you can get 50 in a crate, which only takes up 5 pack slots.

Usage XP for skilling up is (and always has been)pointless, but it's a nice bonus and slight motivator to get Artisans to deal with customers.

Bushwa

I'll agree with that. User xp is completely useless... I haven't gained even 1/2 a first level skill in armorsmithing and I've only made sellable items and all of them have sold. it's nice to get a little boost, but still it's nothing to rely on for sure!

I like the Idea of 1 factory per person... but if they did that I would like it if you could que schematics... I plan on making some really outstanding armor peices and then mass producing them. (well after I reach Maser so that XP doesn't really mater any more)

-Finibhire
Expert Armorsmith

when i first started i made food and gave it away in the cantina. it was kewl i actually watched my little yellow exp bars climb up a notch once or twice. i dont expect to rely on it... but it IS an incentive... one of the few other than credits that we have

*bump*

Hey man, I am about to hit Master Artisan and haven't needed a factory yet. From what I've read, certain Elite Profession items require items that are created in a factory--I think they're called 'identical' items or something. But until I start getting items that require that, I'm not worried about a factory simply because at this point the only thing that sells well enough for me to mass produce is powerups, and those don't even work right in a factory. I don't know if this helps, but it seems not too many other people were answering your call so I will share my limited knowledge.

Ok, let me see if I can explain the factory issue, without worrying about the reasons it was changed (massive exploiting).

Once you get to novice of your chosen main career, say, weapons or armor, in particular, you find that you have only one experiment point and your chances of succeeding are about 50% or so. This means you cannot improve your goods very much and it also means you will fail a lot and make them worse more times than you will succeed, since most pieces that you can sell have 2-3 components.

Now, in order to advance by any method but grinding, you need to sell your goods. If you cannot make quality goods, you cannot reliably sell them. As a Novice weaponsmith, for instance, you NEED to get a good schematic and then make it in a factory to get reliable sales, or you need to make 10 for each one you can sell. If you can only do that, why not just grind?

So, if you did not want to be a grinder, you needed a factory to make saleable items, such as good grenades. Now, however, you get almost no xp for making them, and since you are relying on sales to justify the making of goods, you stop advancing.

The second issue with factories involves armorcrafters. If you want to sell Mabari armor besides boots and gloves, you need to have synthetic cloth manufactured in a factory. Now, the tailor who is making this for you will get no xp so they will have to charge you a lot more to cover the resources costs. In the past, if I, as a tailor, sold you a crate of synthetic cloth at 4 credits per resource, I was happy because I also got 40 xp for each one. Now I get 4 xp. Well, so I just lost 18 resources that I could have used for my own advancement. I have to charge you for that, so now the price goes up to 8 credits per resource. Remember, they have to be from a factory crate for Mabari Armor. You cannot just make them by hand.

I hope this helps explain the problem. Those of us who used factories legitimately were not using them to blindly grind, but were only making what we needed and what we could sell. Now, we have no ability to do those things. For instance, I made 100 of each of my master artisan items that are heavily used and made up 50 micor sensor suites from them. I have sold most of them already. I also made up 50 nice grenades and 50 reasonable D18 pistols. Now, I cannot make any more except by hand experimenting, or throwing away resources in a factory.