Shipwright Archive
Thread: Shipwright Quest Focus Thread
1, allows a SW to make components equal to the pre nerf reward items, limited use would be fine
2, think it would need to be space related as most are pure artisans
3, also the final reward would be a multi type ship capable of being run by the pilot,ie fire weapons
4 gives something,, a bone even would be nice after being left out of the ROTW( texture/paint kits excluded)
thanks SOE!!!!!!!!!
It has to be a new ship, something extraordinary, something rare, better than most (not all) other ships in the pilot professions, and usable by all.
The quest would be something like :
A) an instanced area of space, somthing like a giant junkyard with various wrecks that need to be targeted and destroyed (looted) to provide the required number of diferent salvaged pieces required for the next stage. Patrolled by droid ships which will need to be kept at bay whilst searching for the required wrecks.
Some sort of mission would be required to actually get to this instance of space.
B) the shipwright needs to analyse the salvage from the wrecks in the hopes of designing a new ship, or at least an improved version of an older ship, maybe a hybrid.
In the instanced junkyard there is the remains - mostly intact of a larger ship (repair ship) which can be docked with. This ship contains working terminals and tools for analysing and fixing components.
With the aid of an armoursmith, weaponsmith and droid engineer, the shipwright would be able to assemble a single use schematic for a light, medium or heavy starfighter chassis which when built would be able to take normal components. The shipwright would choose the type of ship prior to analysing the components. The analysis could be some sort of puzzle game - with a chance of failure.
The other crafters are required to make sense of the weapons, armour and droid interface requirements for the new chassis to enable the standard components to fit.
To make it more fun - the repair ship could contain rogue droids etc. which need to be overcome before using the terminals.
Failure would require getting another part from the wrecks outside.
The quest could be done over and over again - each time resulting in a single use schematic for a light, medium or heavy starfighter
2. What sort of role could NPC's (on ground or in space) provide?
Location to the quest area could be gained from an NPC.
NPC droids on the repair ship could be used to give directions on the analysis
3. How could other professions take part in the quest?
as described above, using armoursmith, weaponsmith and droid engineers would be feasible.
4. How hard should the quest be to complete?
Very hard - these ships would be as rare as Firesprays. It should take mutiple attempts by the team to be able to craft a single schematic, much like the DWB.
Here is my idea of a quest that would motivate me.
Giant Space Wasp Mining Vessel (comes from WEG paper back game book, The Tales of the Jedi Companion)
Mission to find an ancient part (subcomponent for a ship part) NPC would give you a 1 misson use item that mounted in the missle slot to use to detect the asteroid with part. Then you would have to use the mining laser to break up the asteroid and tractor beam to retrieve the part. This item would require a shipwright to build a part using the subcomponent which would change the look of ship when installed.
2. What sort of role could NPC's (on ground or in space) provide?
Cloud be either or both could also make a ground quest to kill an mob like a krayt to get a scale that would enhance armor.
3. How could other professions take part in the quest?
With these types of quest any profession could go do it also think if you get a group of 6 all with the same quest all should recieve the reward and not have to do the same thing 6 times.
4. How hard should the quest be to complete?
It should be by the level of item when you except the quest a box should pop up asking if you want a level 1 - 3 - 5 - 7 - 9 part. Or 18 different quest npc's 9 for space 9 for ground with random drops which make it more interesting.
The difficulty should be in level of part level 1 goto 5 different places to deliver messages and back to quest giver (the fedex mission).
L9 would need a good group to go into DWB or kill a Krayt.
I may be taking a shot in the dark, I have no idea if this is a direction the game will go, but it seems like a good step.
Thanks again!
Message Edited by IIscandar on 05-10-2005 05:11 PM
I'm not a Shipwright (yet), and don't have RotW (yet), but I hope I'm not out of line making a brief suggestion here.
Sid Meier (the guy behind the original Civilization, among other things) once noted that his definition of what makes a game fun is "interesting choices." With that in mind, maybe there's a way to serve both quest recipients and crafters here.
Crafters have a choicewhen they have fantastic success filling in and experimenting on a schematic:we can either go ahead and make a fabulous item, orwe can create a manufacturing schematic. What if the folks who earn quest items had a similar choice?
Option 1:Take the reward as anitem, which would giveyou a very powerful itemthat decayed rapidly.
Option 2: Take thereward as a schematic, which a crafter can turn into a usable item that has slightly less burly stats but which decays much less rapidly.
Comments?
--Flatfingers
Message Edited by Flatfingers on 05-10-2005 07:09 PM
Flatfingers wrote:
I'm not a Shipwright (yet), and don't have RotW (yet), but I hope I'm not out of line making a brief suggestion here.
Sid Meier (the guy behind the original Civilization, among other things) once noted that his definition of what makes a game fun is "interesting choices." With that in mind, maybe there's a way to serve both quest recipients and crafters here.
Crafters have a choicewhen they have fantastic success filling in and experimenting on a schematic:we can either go ahead and make a fabulous item, orwe can create a manufacturing schematic. What if the folks who earn quest items had a similar choice?
Option 1:Take the reward as anitem, which would giveyou a very powerful itemthat decayed rapidly.
Option 2: Take thereward as a schematic, which a crafter can turn into a usable item that has slightly less burly stats but which decays much less rapidly.
Comments?
--Flatfingers
Message Edited by Flatfingers on 05-10-2005 07:09 PM
This could be extended to the current quests that reward players with the deed for a ship chassis of one type or another. Give these players a choice to either accept the chassis in deed form with some limitation or another, or as a schematic and take it to a shipwright who can experiment past those limitations (but at a cost to the player or course; that is, shipwright's time and resources).
Jagged-F3l wrote: This could be extended to the current quests that reward players with the deed for a ship chassis of one type or another. Give these players a choice to either accept the chassis in deed form with some limitation or another, or as a schematic and take it to a shipwright who can experiment past those limitations (but at a cost to the player or course; that is, shipwright's time and resources).
I could go for that, too.
Getting here is really a two-step process.
First, youdesigneachusable itemin the gameto have bothadvantages and disadvantages. For everycharacteristic that offers something you want, there's some other undesirablecharacteristic that goes along with the good stuff -- for every benefit, there's an unavoidablecost. This insures that there's not just one item that everyone takes (*coughcompositecough*).
The next step is to apply thisapproach to the characteristics of loot/reward items and crafted items,and then allow players todecide whichcharacteristic they care more about maximizing. I like the idea of power vs. decay (plus a timer on how often you can take the same quest), but there are other combinations that could work equally well.
As long as you're careful to insure that the alternatives are balanced -- that one class of objects is never always clearly better than another class -- then you're creating a world of "interesting choices."
On rereading this, it seems pretty abstract -- maybe an example would help.
Let's say you've won SOE's "DeveloperFor A Day" contest, and you've decided youwant to offer anew class of crafting tools that have more effects on crafting.
The first step (from a functional point of view)is to think about what effects the object will have. Just for the sake of discussion, let's say you decide that the new crafting tools will have the following characteristics:
- Assembly Effectiveness -- influences assembly result
- Experimentation Effectiveness -- influences experimentation results
- Manufacturing Output -- influences the number of items manufacturable in1 run
- Construction Speed -- influences speed of producing prototypes or manf. items
Eachof thesecharacteristicswould bea 0-100 result that modifies the baseline result.That is, if a tool has an Assembly Effectiveness of 50, it doesn't do anything to the basic assembly calculation; if it had an AE of 100, it would add some nice amount to your chances of getting a great assembly result; if it had an AE of less than 50, it would actually reduce your chances of getting a desirable assembly result. (Note that you could use some other scale if you wanted; "0-100" isn't the thing to focus on here.) (Also note that you don't actually have to make "undesirable" mean "worse effects" -- just preventing you from getting the best effects could seem like enough of a disadvantage.)
Soif 50 is the "no effect" point, that allows you to assign "desirable" (above 50) and "undesirable" (below 50) valuesto each characteristic.
Next, you decide how you want to group benefits and costs. In this example, for crafted toolsI'd suggest giving Assembly Effectiveness and Experimentation Effectiveness an inverse relationship, increasing ManufacturingOutput should significantly reduce ConstructionSpeed,and increasing Construction Speed should decrease the typical values ofall three of the other characteristics.
By setting up these inverse relationships, you create a kind ofitem for which there is no "best" form -- each player will decide which is best for his or her personal needs.
And it doesn't stop there. Now you can also allow for a new kind of crafting tool that is dropped as loot or as a quest reward. All the characteristics still apply; what changes are the benefit/cost relationships. Maybe for a looted crafting tool, you can get a great Experimentation Effectiveness but it always comes with a very slow Construction Speed. Maybea crafting tool presented as a quest reward lets you crank out many more units than usual in Manufacturing Output (and at an acceptable rate), butcrafting itemswith that tool will suffer significant penalties toAssembly Effectiveness and Experimentation Effectiveness.
By specifying that usable items will have multiple characteristics that have meaningful in-game effects, and by further specifying that high values of one characteristic will always be balanced by low values in some other characteristic(s), you can balance the perceived value of items no matter how they're provided.
This seems like it might help to address the "crafted vs. looted/quested" item qualityconcern in a way that doesn't undercut anyone. Is there a problem with it that I'm not seeing?
--Flatfingers
Message Edited by Flatfingers on 05-12-2005 07:11 PM
I was just thinking about something I read on one of the boards but can't remember who posted it but I wouldn't mind a reward being a subcomponent better then what shipwright can craft (I am a Master Shipwright myself) that we can then use to make an item so we still need to get our great resources, hope for no fails, pray for amazing success etc but instead of making an optional component for a reactor or weapon or any other part, We can use a reward component that say gives more damage with no expense to power usage, or extra shield power without extra energy drain. Or maybe a component that gave 2 bonuses and had 1 drawback. Faster firing weapon for more damage but weighs more or more power per shot.
As was said above I would hate to see a shipwright targetted quest involving ground combat especially against really hard NPC's After all as a Master ShipWright and I also have an elite combat class ( Squad Leader so not real big on the damage or anything) I got a cl of 54. Why throw cl 80 enemies into a crafter quest when I am positive I am one of the exceptions of some of the Shipwrights out there. I don't have merchant skills at all in favor of doing anythign I could to get the cl up to live.
For me when other crafters are involved in a quest I can see Droid Engineer being involved but just my opinion I can't see Armorsmith or Weaponsmith that involved in a Shipwright quest. My reasons being an armorsmiths specialises in making protective clothing and a weaponsmith in hand held weaponry. Shipwrights already make the large scale armor plating for ships and starship mounted weaponry. Now it's just my opinion in this matter but I feel myself that a shipwright is already capable of making these items as a specialist so for me I can't see what the otherswould need to be involved. As I said just my opinion.
Someone mentioned that one part of the fun could be illegal ship modifications-- I think this makes an ideal tie-in with the Smuggler profession, and not just because I'm a Smuggler/SW. :>
In fact, let's tie-in to more professions. How about say, a quest that gives you two schems. One for you, and one for a WS. The WS, being a weapons specialist, uses this schem to create a sub-component that is used in the main schem to produce a super-component. You can find things to do with ASes and archetects and probably other craftrs, too along these lines. Or one schem with several sub-schems that go to diffrent crafters before the final combine.. maybe, just for added coolness for the other professions, they could get something they can use from their part. Say, A SW brings a sub-schem for a sub-component of this thing, and in addition to the SW's sub-component, the WS also gets a power handler out of it. That they can then use in their own products to produce a few truely exceptional guns.
Skilltapes were mentioned as a possible reward. FANTASTIC IDEA. Considering how many experimentation skillmods we have, some quests that could help us with such tapes would be great. Even if we could just get a couple of random +20 tapes and need to find the rest ourselves, it would be a huge deal for us. Better yet, just let us quest for a full set, or a special set of MSW skill gear. Gloves, shirt, apron, workpants, boots, and maybe some cool headgear with magnifying lenses over our eyes or something... maybe a toolbelt heavy with SW tools... each with it's own experimentation skillmods. Instead of making 12-point MSW cost a hundred million in skilltapes, let us quest for a bunch of specialty clothing. that would be awesome. Heck, I'd say do away with experimentation tapes entirely, and put in questable skillmod clothing for every crafter in the game. I don't think paying millions for some stuff a swordsman ran through a cave to find is all that essential to the player economy. Heck, I'll draw up sample outfit concepts and present the idea to all the other crafter boards if the idea's any good. :>