Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Schematics limited to 100
Holo I will not be as nice as most, First we all KNOW this is due to YOUR database issues. Frankly no-one ever thought thru the problems associated with identical components. People are leaving this game in scores due to these un-thought-out changes to solve YOUR database problem. There is absolutely no reason to post the millions of reasons this effects every crafter, HOW ABOUT YOU POST 1 yeh 1 reason why this should be 100. There is only one YET AGAIN your database issue.
Well add me to the list leaving when this goes live for i feel its my responsibility to help you with your database issues. Thats one less person paying you to take up precious database space.
Good luck if this goes live, this could be the best thing swg did to just end there misery once and for all.
I think max 500-1000 would be good, with the ability to pick any amount in between.
Actually, I'd prefer no limit, since resources and output hopper space should be the limiting factors.
FIX CHEF!!!!! Not rebalance, FIX!!!!! It's broken!!!!!
Ezran Shisme, Valcyn, Naboo
I have to agree with the big crowd here telling you that 100 item limits are:
A) Doing nothing but adding tedium to the game. I now have to go back to the factory 9 more times.
B) Making it difficult for doctors like myself, or armorsmiths or tailors making large runs of cloth, or anyone else who uses large numbers of small components in making a run of finished items.
C) Pointless. We've been using 1k schematics for a while now, what's the potential benefit in nerfing them?
Granted, I always knew that was a bug, and that you clearly intended to nerf it to 100 some day. So I'm not screaming about that. I just don't understand the logic in making the lives of crafters even harder, for no benefit that I can see. It won't help your database, you'll still have me making the 1000 components, but I'll be doing it in 10 runs. What a pain.
The problem with a limit to 100 items in a schematic is not so much the end run, but the component runs. As schematics require multiple (from 2 to 10) identical components, you force us to make very small runs of these items. For my profession, armorsmith, it will be impossible to make more than 25 chest pieces (requires 4 armor segments each) or 33 MK III shields (requires 3 Particle subcomponents) at once. I'd like to second whoever said that babysitting factories is no fun.
In addition, a run of 50 sets of armor (nine pieces) already require me to make 450 fiberplast panels/synthcloth and 450 reinforced fiberplast panels. I find it likely that if we are forced to make smaller series, we'll be stuck with alot of half-empty crates of these subcomponents, where each crate is not big enough to be used in any factory run. If all have the same ID (like now), we can use these leftovers in later runs instead of having them laying around forever.
Last but not least this will quite likely increase dramatically the number of uniqueIDs in the game as we are now forced to make ten schematics where webefore could make one, andif this is a subcomponent, the schematic for the composite item must also be made especially for all ten schematics. At worst, you could look at ten times as many unique item IDs from factory produced items in the game. If that is important for your database, I'd reconsider this move.
If you want to reduce the number of items, increase the max number of items in each crate instead.
If this was a bug, it was a very fortunate one.
- Vedi Eife, Master Armorsmith (Eclipse)
I am a Master Artisan. I can sell 2 things right now:
1. Nemoidian Bird Cages renamed "Torch Stand"
2. Powerups
The only reason I find it worthwhile to make and sell powerups is that there is:
A. A large market for them.
B. I can mass produce and sell them in factory crates.
Powerup stats are random. In order to create a powerup with particular stats which people will purchase, I need to create a number of them, on average 30-40 in order to get the stats I want. This is worthwhile because for every 30-40 I create (about an hour of gametime, with experimentation factored in),I can create 1000 iterations of that powerup. I invest an hour, I get a powerup I like, I mass produce it. I don't particularly enjoy the process, it is tedious and slow, but it is worthwhile from an income point of view.
If this change is put in place, creating 30-40 powerups will yield 100 powerups instead of 1000. So for every 10 crates of powerups, I will have to spend 1 hour doing random experimentation to get the stats I want. I don't want to play the game in this manner. It is not worthwhile to me to do this, and I will not do this. Which would mean that my master artisan skills allow me to produce torch stands. Which means it ain't worth the 70ish skill points, so the game will have 1 less crafter. If the goal of this game is to have a player-run economy, then people have to be able to produce items in large enough quantities to sell them. Making a factory limit = 100 hurts crafters to such a degree that it becomes impossible to produce large numbers of certain items without a great deal more wasted resources and effort than before and many items, such as powerups and Stim-E's, will simply become not worth producing for sale at all. It hurts the player economy. Crafters will burn out much more quickly, and basically no reasons have been presented as to why this is being done.
As for it being a DB issue, as an earlier poster pointed out, if I have the resources to create 1000 items, I'll do it regardless of whether I have to create 10 schematics or 1. The only thing DB space this saves is that I now have to create 10 schematics, so instead of 1000 items, I'll produce 990. Plus, since these 1000 items will now have 10 separate serial numbers instead of 1 serial number, your Database will now have 10 new objects in it, instead of 1 new object. So I doubt this will save you DB overhead, in fact, it would increate DB overhead and degrade performance.
-I AM WARGHUL
It must be at least 153, although 500 would be better.
Small Stimpack-E requires 3 identical biological effect componets from a factory crate.
Currently you can make a crate of 50 Stim-E's by producing 153 identical biological effect controllers. Use 3 to make the Stim-E schematic and then use the other 150 to produce a single crate of 50 Stim-E's.
With a limit of 100, we'll use 3 for the schematic and then only have enough biological effect controllers for a crate of 32 stimpacks.
In the end you're going to increase your database usage because where we used to sell 1 crate of 50 we must now sell 2 crates of 25 (because a crate of 50 is no longer buildable.)
I cant even decorate my house because I can only fit 150 items in it. All 150 spots are taken by resources.
I know most people store all their resources in their factories, but thats a pain because you have to get a schematic for the certain resource to be able to put it in the input hopper.
The worst thing is that I have nearly 150 resources now.... and I still dont have every kind I need to make every type of weapon in the game. Not even close. I made a list based on the attributes needed with certain types of resources and its over 70 items long.
Everytime theres a resource shift I get to start another pile of 3-7 resources because the same stuff never spawns twice.
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Ok now I have some very simple suggestions here to help you manage your DB better.
-Let us use items directly from crates!
-Let items with the same serial number stack charges.
-Make npc drop items used in crafting stackable. (armor mods/weapon mods) Would be nice if they were all the same serial number also. I dont see the difference between one piece of +30dmg -.5 speed tissue and another with the same exact stats.
-Make resources/items such as food of the same type combinable regradless of serial number. Just adjust the stats occordingly. For example a chef makes 2 tantoinne sunburns. One adds 1700health and 1700 action, the other adds 1800health and 1800 action. Let us combine the 2 for a total of 1750 health and action. (this might not be doable)
-Or you could just give us more space in our homes to store things and get a larger DB. 150-250 items is unrealistic to say the least.
As to the factory limit, I think we should be able to make as much as we want of anything. The only thing that limits us is our resources and were going to use them one way or another. Why make it harder on us? Id also like to see the input hopper be able to hold more items. Letting us put crates in there is a step in the right direction. But if we can only make 4 crates with the same serial number theres not much point.
Any crafter that makes high usage, charged items (ie. medical packs) for business purposes will be extremely hurt by this change. If you change the schematic size to 100, you will:
A) Never be able to make more than ~33 items of a final product that takes 3 of the same type of component
B) Have to check on the factory every hour and a half to start yet another stupid factory run of another 100 components
C) Move casual gamers OUT of the crafting field because they cannot babysit the factory
I craft medical supplies for a profession. I have over 100k of credits changing hands every day...from customers to resource gatherers. I spend 2 hours every day messing with my business...most of it with the 4 factories I run (4 because of the demand). If I have only 3-4 hours to play every day, I will certainly stop crafting medical supplies because I cannot "run" back every hour and half to start a new schematic. By setting the schematics to 1000, I am able to go back to the factories once a day instead of 10 times a day (which of course I have no time for).
Here's a suggestion if you do implement this. Make all items crafted in factories take 1 sec per item. So if I wanted to make a full schematic, it only takes me 100 secs to finish those up. That way, I can spend the same 2 hours of my day dedicated to running business, just pumping resources and/or components into the factories and churning out the supply that my business demands. Then maybe I can actually go out into the field and enjoy some of the other content...like a destroy mission or two on a planet other than the one that has my factories on it.
I just cant believe that after all the wonderful factory fixes, this kind of stuff just suddenly needs to be "fixed". Is it an exploit? Does it cause anyone grief? Does it unbalance the game? Or does it just need to be borked? And the worst part is, I bet that this "fix" will break something else to bring factories and crafters down to their knees again.
All this change will serve to do is limit the quanity and raise the cost of high end equipment. A T21 requires 10 indentical power handlers. Assuming the weaponsmith only makes 1 schematic for the final build, he'll only be able to get 9 finished products from one crate of power handlers. Armor smiths will be even worse off. A full suit of composite requires something like 21 armor segments, right? As has been pointed out above, this change would be especially hard on the casual gamers who are trying to be crafters. Imagine for example that you're an armorsmith trying to produce composite, but you only have time to play the game a couple hours a day. Here's how your time would be spent...
Day 1: Doa factory runs of armor segments.
Day 2: Do a factory run of helmets.
Day 3: Do a factory run of chest peices.
Day 4: Do a factory run of left biceps.
Day 5: Do a factory run of right biceps.
Day 6: Do a factory run of left bracers.
Day 7:Do a factory run of right bracers.
Day 8: Do a factory run of leggings.
Day 9:Do a factory run of boots.
Day 10: Do a factory run of gloves.
Now assuming there were no critical fails and the armorsmith got a good schematic on his first try for each suit, what will he have to show for those 10 days of work? THREE suits. That's it. Right now with crates limited to 1000, he can produce THIRTY suits in the same amount of time. All this nerf would do is make it so that the power gamers will be able to keep pumping out high numbers of products, while the casual gamers get left WAY behind.
Furthuremore, there already are plenty of casual combat gamers who are complaining about the cost and availability of high end gear. This nerf will only make those complaints grow.
In my opinion this only griefs crafters. As for the database, wouldn't keeping track of 1000 of the same serial number be easier on it than all kinds of different serials? Also, if the database is the only reason, the schematic has been up to a 1000 for a while, and the database hasn't crashed yet 
.
Don't grief the crafters! Keep it at 1000, in fact raise it so that only the resources available are the limiting factor as it should be.
Why even have some arbitrary limit? We are limited by resources and storage space already.
The 1000 limit wasn't causing any problems so why change it?
If it isn't broke don't "FIX" it.
Groovykool
I don't mind that FINAL products are limited to 100. I've never found myself needing to produce 100 laser riffles or scout blasters at one time because with all the resource shifts I usually find better materials before I've sold the last 30 or so riffles.
What NEEDS to be left in is subcomponents should be left at 1000. Any item that counts as a subcomponents anywhere (this encompases proton granades) should be left the way its currently is in live. Requiring weaponsmiths to spend inordinate amount of time crafting blaster power handlers is rediculous and already detracts from the game. I usually do my BPH's at night right before I log because they take so long to produce the quantites I need. It detracts from gameplay of weaponsmiths where most believe it or not would not like to spend 100% of the time crafting in some basement of a house.
Consider this, I haven't heard any complaints about the current 1000 schematic. If it ain't broken then don't fix it.