Shipwright Archive

1. (Optional) State what way you voted (or would have voted) in the poll.




• (Optional) Why you voted (or would have voted) this way.
  


2. If you believe factory support should be increased, please state how you think this would be best achieved with minimal reprocussions to those on the other side of the issue.
   


3. If you believe factory support should not be increased, please provide (if any) proposals you would be willing to compromise on.

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PLEASE do not start major arguments or flame wars here. This post will be deleted and/or restarted if it gets out of hand. This will be a post the devs eyes will see, so lets make it good.

Also, I have a dev statement about why factories are the way they are. I will post when I get the OK.

Message Edited by styx66 on 11-25-2004 01:34 AM

1. I voted NO to increased factory support.




• I voted no because I feel this brings shipwrights to a level of a more personal crafting relationship with the customers, very similar to how i once operated my armorsmithing business. It brought a great deal of respect, and more gratification than churning out crates while afk could ever have given me.
  


2. N/A
   


3. Sometimes I find myself creating the same (not customized - more on this from dev standpoint later) item over and over, because it is what everbody wants.




• The only proposal i can come up with right now is fairly far-fetched and likely to be impossible, but I think it might be neat if you could factory make components, and then be able to customize the stats upon sale (pull one out of a crate, then perhaps a radial option to 'experiment' or 'tune', with the same rate of failure etc.) This would keep the interpersonal relationship and custom catering that we currently have, but somewhat reduce the repetetive 'clickiness' of it all.


• This idea stinks but its all i've got right now

I like the hand crafting and therefore limited factory support. On the other hand, it IS a pain crafting a lot of components. I don't want to see factory support like other crafters, where you make a Schematic once and craft 1000 items without thinking about it.
I would suggest two things as a compromise.
1. Allow Limited Shipwright component factory support. The manufacturing Schematic should be limited to 10 items and chassis have to be hand crafted.
2. The resulting components are not stacked in a factory crate but as individual items (or crates of size 1).

This would relieve a little crafting effort from a busy shipwright, but would require enough dedication and interaction to make dedicated crafters happy I think. It also would not unbalance the current system to much (storage space needed still the same, so no hoarding of hundreds of components and no lucky success and then crafting this 1000 times).

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styx66 wrote:

Also, I have a dev statement about why factories are the way they are. I will post when I get the OK.

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I think it would be very helpful for the discussion if we knew what the devs had to say on this. It is a big shame that they didn't share their reasons with us earlier. It could potentially have changedmany of the heated arguments and possibly even the poll results (either way).

Message Edited by pervel on 11-25-2004 11:36 AM

1. I voted yes..




• I voted yes, so I could free up more time, and not sit in my basement crafting all the time..
  


2. Yes, Factory support should be increased. Why this is a issue I can't see the reasoning, no one is forced to use factories.
   I attract alot of customers, because I have stocked vendors. I do just as much custom work as everyone else, if not more.
   


3. For the nay-sayers. They are mostly part-time crafters, too unstructured or unorganized to see the big picture.
   An eventual compromise would be, increased factory time. Making it an option, but not too desireable. (Not talking
   about 1000second factory times, but 300-400secs)

1) I voted no. My reason for this is, that without factory support it takes a larger number of shipwrights to supply all the ships and components needed by the server population, thus allowing more crafters to have a part of the pie. Furthermore, as mostly a custom crafter the benefits of a factory would be very small for me. No factory support allows me to compete with the industrialists. It also negates the effect of x-server lot trades somewhat, because the amount of components produced has a more direct relationship to the time spend crafting.

3) A compromise would require, that the benefits of factory support are balanced in some way. As a handcrafter I would need an edge to compensate for the volume advantage of factories. A way to compete. One thing, I suggested earlier is: No experimentation for schematics.

Or maybe reduced experimentation schematics. How about, it costs 5 experimentation points to create a schematic. Then handcrafted items would usually be stronger the factory crafted components, thus balancing the factory advantage.

I also could imagine something along the lines of higher resource requirements for factory crafting. Then, the advantage of factories would be volume and quality, but the drawback would be price. (Quality would factor in, because only optimal builds would be made into a schematic).

However this difference would need to be significant.

Regards

Niacia

Message Edited by Niacia on 11-25-2004 12:22 PM

I haven't been active on the boards too much, so I didn't vote at all. I would have voted no to changing factory support.

Certainly, now isn't a good time to change it - with the loot being tweaked, the stats being tweaked, there being a huge influx of SW's, a lot of who will quit regardless of factory support - there's no way you can really judge what long term demand and supply will be.

Give it three months, then look at the state of the market.

People don't like sitting down and crafting item after item after item.. Well fair enough, but then perhaps they would be happier as Weaponsmiths, or perhaps they should team up with other SW's or just restrict themselves to custom orders.

Certainly addition of factory support would probably damage my low-throughput, low-key, low-price custom build business model. Since I don't have the game time to compete on the high volume trade I'm not in favour of a change. (Crafting for low-volume isn't so bad, resource shopping for high-volume eats time and inflates prices. Since I'm not going for the credits high-score I want to keep prices low, and just supply a small friendly market with custom equipment.

The lack of factory support in SW makes it distinctive from professions like Weaponsmith, which adds a little play variety and improves the breadth of appeal of the game. It's sad that it means some people can't play SW the way they'd like to - but I've seen people not manage to play Weaponsmith the way they'd like to because factories rendered their business model unworkable.

Maybe in several months time we'll see there isn't enough supply of components because the 'stable' number of SW's for the game isn't high enough. Then would be a good time to reconsider the factory position. Certainly if by then, once the initial 'boom' has finished, I'd consider voting for increasing the factory support slightly, if the evidence was there.

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Niacia wrote:
Or maybe reduced experimentation schematics. How about, it costs 5 experimentation points to create a schematic. Then handcrafted items would usually be stronger the factory crafted components, thus balancing the factory advantage.

I also could imagine something along the lines of higher resource requirements for factory crafting. Then, the advantage of factories would be volume and quality, but the drawback would be price. (Quality would factor in, because only optimal builds would be made into a schematic).

However this difference would need to be significant.

Regards

Niacia

Message Edited by Niacia on 11-25-2004 12:22 PM

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I could be persuaded to vote for factories if there was a bonus of a minumum of 5% or extra experiment points for hand-crafted items. (Or a penalty of 5% for schematics, which would probably be easier to code)

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1. Didn't vote. Been away
   


2. I wish for an extended factorty support. Current state is ridiculous.
   


3. As said above, a moderate increase in factory time.

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I voted no on further factory support. Unsurprisingly, it's both for personal and ideological reasons.

Personally, I prefer to have a modest stock of standard components on my vendor, and supplement that with a lot of customized work for friends and customers who need their parts created in very specific ways. It's my idea of fun, of using the full scope of the profession rather than just as a way to rake in the credits. I like working with people, and when I load up a ship until it's just got a few dozen mass to spare, it makes me feel like I've done something most people couldn't. With factories rolling out components by the hundred, I'd see less business, feel like I was accomplishing less, and generally wonder why shipwright was so much better than being a weaponsmith or an armorsmith or whatever.

Ideologically, I think it's far, far better for the economy to be able to have a large number of shipwrights making good money than it is for a small number of SWs to be making absurd money--which is what will inevitably happen with more factory support. I see the super-rich as more liable to hoard their credits; one person can only buy so much, whereas a bunch of fairly wealthy SWs are much more likely to spread some of their money around. Furthermore, these fairly wealthy SWs are going to be spending their cash at many more locations than the handful of super rich dudes who are buying all their resources from one guy, all their uber weapons from another, loot from a third, etc., as they'll know a much broader range of people and use a much broader range of vendors. With the money more evenly dispersed, we have less economic stratification, which leads to less inflation on the high-end and luxury items, which allows more of the not-so-wealthy players to compete when it comes to resource auctions, krayt weapons, quest decorations, and so on. No factories would mean a few of us will have to settle for lighting our cigars with Jacksons instead of Benjamins, but for the playerbase as whole, it's much healthier.

There's a ton of money flowing into the shipwright profession right now. And with our current factory limitations, anyone new to the prof can carve themselves out a market if they do it right. I think that's ideal. But with factories, those who have the capital to take full advantage of them will create a strangehold on the market. Businesses follow power laws/exponential curves: a very few will command a huge market share, a modest amount will have a modest share, and a vast number will have an insignificant share. The implementation of factories will sharpen this curve and create more stratification between SWG's rich and SWG's poor. If factories are instead kept as they are, the distribution of wealth will be (relatively speaking) significantly more even, a condition which benefits the entire game. Not only that, but it will benefit the majority of shipwrights. We can't all be billionaires--only a small percentage of us will see a big benefit. A much greater percentage of us will see our market and profits shrink and continue to do so as the hugely wealthy become better known, are able to pay higher than the rest of us for the best resources, and push more of us out of business.

I know many shipwrights think factories would mean less hassle for more money, but there are only so many pilots out there. The more of the market is collected in the hands of the few, the less business the rest of us will see--until for a lot of people, they won't need factories at all, as they simply won't have the orders to fill to justify one.

The longer I think about it, the more I'm convinced that factories are the single greatest threat to what is currently the most varied and innovative crafting profession in the game.

Er.. end manifesto.

Message Edited by Jadin1 on 11-25-2004 08:49 AM