Politician Archive

From TH's post on the In Dev board:

Crafting System Enhancementsne of the top concerns for crafters of all types was the issue of "critical fails". Critical fails are a risk that all crafters take when attempting to create an item. This basic dice roll function is the gamble crafters take as part of the risk of crafting, but as a resounding player concern, the developers looked at the system to see how the relationship of crafter and crafter-risk could be made to have a stronger relationship to the fictional act of crafting. Toward creating a stronger crafting experience, a new modified die roll model has been implemented to enhance the experience so that now, a crafter’s raw ability will have an effect on how often critical fails occur. Crafting still works on the same risk/reward principle of a 5% critical fail chance, but is now modified with the player’s assembly or experimentation skill.As crafters progress from Novice to Master they will have a reduced chance of a critical failure.

Experimentation Resource Quality:Crafting experimentation has been enhanced so that the amount of change that each experimentation point will affect an item attribute will now be calculated by the maximum value for the item. Therefore, regardless of the quality of resources used, each experimentation point will affect the attribute by the same amount. Now, the maximum value upon which a resource attribute is allowed to be experimented is affected by the quality of resources used. This will have a much more noticeable effect on the crafting experimentation process, making it more interesting, challenging and easier to understand. This will noticeably reduce the effectiveness of experimenting with low quality resources by all players. However, this will give master crafters more of an advantage over less skilled crafters, as they have more experimentation points to use, and will be more likely to produce an item with maximum attributes.

What affect will these changes have on the main specializations that most cities have? It sounds like they've basically done away with the need to have either Manufacturing Center (for the non-crit fail bonus) and Research Center (for the increase in amazing success chance). What gives?