Shipwright Archive
Thread: Shipwrights in Live, Read, Discuss, etc. (Regards Factory Support)
I, while in beta, tried my hardest too get a little broader factory support. I was ignored, flamed by few, and overall agreed with in this thread Here [BETA LINK, I'll quote my original post directly below this post].
I with my work and life schedule don't have the time to be the Correspondent, I would love to be, but what needs to happen is the community as a whole needs to think about and visualize, as all the things we made theories about in the beta will now either flop, or come true.
So the question goes out to the shipwrights in Live, do you as a whole want the factory support broader or are you happy with only being able to mass the sub-components, and the missile packs/cm packs? I have so many more thoughts ideas, and reasons why they should add broader support, but I'll wait and see the general reaction of this thread before gauging what needs to be added or if this is even going to be a concern of everyone.
Thanks for your time.
Mariki wrote:
I feel there will be a need for factory support on sub systems. Ship Wright will be a burn out occupation if one has to hand craft every item. I don't think anyone wants to spend all their time just crafting but there is going to be this constant demand as people can upgrade equipment. I suppose there will be a lot of resales also though.
I enjoy hand-crafting and I'm sure there are others who do as well.
SOE cannot cater to everyone's play-style. Those who say they don't have the time to dedicate to beinga shipwright don't get to be the type of Shipwright they want to be. It's that simple.
4Bidden wrote:I feel there is no need for factory support on blueprints.. Some ships take 150k in resources, that means you would have to waste 150k to make a schematic. I prefer hand crafting the blueprints.
I think everyone can agree on this. What factories would be useful for is components however. Right now only SUB-components can be factory crafted. That is, the optional "enhancers" to components. A component is a projectile weapon, engine etc. These cannot be factory made.
Since I don't plan to go shipwright at this point, I won't comment with a preference. However I did want to clarify the distrinction.
)I'm tired of hearing this "it's not fair, all the other crafting profs can make everything in a factory" (try starting out and competing as a 10pt weaponsmith ROFL) lame argument. Learn to communicate and build a relationship with your pilot customers. You are not just a car manufacturer... you are also the car salesman and the car's mechanic.
*Kettemoor
LonelyGhost wrote:
I am very very glad this profession will not be dominated by a half dozen power-crafters. I am really hoping that there will be *hundreds* of active SW operating in the black on each server.
Message Edited by Rolassk on 10-26-2004 09:46 PM
Rolassk wrote:What needs to happen is all the multi-account / lot swapping shipwrights need to step back and realize what the profession is about. If any of you can't see that this crafting profession was designed with much more care towards game balance (yes this includes the decision to not add full factory support) over the ground crafting professions, then you are a moron plain and simple.
I'm tired of hearing this "it's not fair, all the other crafting profs can make everything in a factory" (try starting out and competing as a 10pt weaponsmith ROFL) lame argument. Learn to communicate and build a relationship with your pilot customers. You are not just a car manufacturer... you are also the car salesman and the car's mechanic.
I'm here to tell you that you *CAN* use a factory AND build a relationship with your customers. You *CAN* use a factory without being one of those multi-account / lot swapping Evil Monopolistic crafters that destroy whole server economies single handedly.
I've heard all of the arguements about why we shouldn't have factories. I assume that you've heard all of the arguements about why we should have factories. I don't believe that at the moment either of us will change our minds. I don't believe the developers will re-open this decision till we get some experience under our belt. I'm fine with shelving this discussion and revisiting it in a couple of months - I'd rather we spend our time on all of the other issues facing us.
I don't issue moral judgements about people who don't want factories, or ascribe evil motivations or gross stupidity to them. You might consider adopting a similar approach. We *will* be working together on the other issues - let's do it with mutual trust and respect.
But let me touch on this:
MaxSteele wrote:I enjoy hand-crafting and I'm sure there are others who do as well.
SOE cannot cater to everyone's play-style. Those who say they don't have the time to dedicate to being a shipwright don't get to be the type of Shipwright they want to be. It's that simple.
Max... to say 'tough luck' to someone who pays for this game, every month, and wants to be a shipwright but can't because he doesn't have time to hand craft everything for 12 hours straight isn't going to cut it. This Profession, building ships, has been what I wanted to do the day I bought the game, on the false pretences that space was already in the game. I after waiting a full year and then some am finally able to do this, but now I'm told that since I'm busy, work, school, real life, etc, that I cannot be the type of shipwright that I wanted to be because unlike everyother crafting profession in this game that this ONE doesn't have the same depth as the rest of them.
Estan wrote:
WHy don't this die? Lets face the facts SW is not like weponsmith and never will be.
So trying to get the DEV to change there mind is like asking for the combat balance to come out befor JTL.
NOT JOING TO HAPPEN
HAte to brake your back but sorry. We could not change it in beta and its not going to happen in live.
Why doesn't this die? Because it is the most insane design decision SOE has made after their failed attempt to ruin crafting some months back with their crafting revamp. And this also answers your second claim:
IT CAN HAPPEN
It can happen if enough people use proper arguments as to why this needs to be reconsidered. There have been many good arguments already. I would like to explain my main problems with this design decision.
Crafting in SWG is designed around a degree of randomness. You make several attempts (aka. prototyping) at crafting an item until you get only "Great Succeses" during experimentation. This causes you to lose resources because your failed prototypes will generally be of no interest to customers due to their poor stats. This is why we can make schematics once we reach the required result. We can then put those schematics into factories to produce identical items without the risks of losing more resources. This is all well and balanced today. Experimentation, prototyping,lost resources, schematics, and factories all go hand in hand to make this balance.
Now SOE has suddenly chosen to remove an important part of this balance: schematics and factories. That means we are now left with experimentation, prototyping,and lost resources. Considering that shipwright is now the most resource intensive crafting profession, they have created a huge problem with the randomness in crafting. Every ship and ship component is now a prototype.
One of the practical implications of this are that ships will cost a lot more. Shipwrights need to take lost resources into account a lot more than other crafting professions. It also means that the customers will not know what they are buying in advance. If they are rich, they will agree to pay for all the lost resources until the shipwright finally produces a good prototype. If they are not rich, they will have to settle for poor prototypes that might not even fit into their ship because of too high mass or too high energy usage.
There is just no way I can see this design decision as being good for the game. Adding more randomness than needed into a highly complicated crafting profession is a bad thing. Bad for the shipwrights and bad for the customers.