Shipwright Archive

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Golrok wrote:

I have only looted two level 10 somethings and I'm 3443 unless I'm real unlucky, 10's are rare.

If devs totally nerf loot to oblivion we will have no customers in the future with there being no rewards in space after their honeymoons end they'll redeed their ships for good with nothing good to loot, IMO. Thats really the only thing left thrilling about space is the chance of looting something good, spectacular backgrounds and killing AI? That honeymoon ends quick, and with no one pvping, loot is all there is to motivate ppl to launch.

If ALL loot is nerfed to be inferior to crafted, then ppl won't be enjoying space for very long and we will have very few customers to service, imo.

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pervel wrote:

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Golrok wrote:

I have only looted two level 10 somethings and I'm 3443 unless I'm real unlucky, 10's are rare.

If devs totally nerf loot to oblivion we will have no customers in the future with there being no rewards in space after their honeymoons end they'll redeed their ships for good with nothing good to loot, IMO. Thats really the only thing left thrilling about space is the chance of looting something good, spectacular backgrounds and killing AI? That honeymoon ends quick, and with no one pvping, loot is all there is to motivate ppl to launch.

If ALL loot is nerfed to be inferior to crafted, then ppl won't be enjoying space for very long and we will have very few customers to service, imo.

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Level 10 loot is rare. But the level is not really the issue. The stats are. You can quite easily find extremely good looted level 2 engines that have speed stats similar to lvl 7 crafted engines but mass and energy of lvl 2. Therein lies some of the problem.

If the devs do not do something about the loot, we will not have crafters in the future. Shipwrights need to be a profession that makes a difference in the game. Just like weaponsmiths are armorsmiths. It is the entire basis of this game that players depend on crafters to make them stuff. The chance to loot some really good stuff has been added as an extra excitement to the game. IMO, it is well and balanced for the ground-game today. But it is still severely unbalanced for JTL. Whenalmost no master shipwright use their own capacitors, boosters, engines, droid-interfaces, and weapons, something is clearly wrong.

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good looted components are quite rare, if you take out capacitators (looted are really better) and some reactors, is really difficult to find comps with very good stats, i loot a lot of comps to "craft" RE stuff and is not so common to see engines with crazy speed or awesome weapons, for engines i think they got rebalanced in the last patch as is a lot of time that i don't loot a low level one with 60+ speed and same for high end engines with 100+ speed.

Shields are similar i have yet to see a lv10 shield with more than 2.3k front or rear, or a lv7 (i'm "building" one) superior to 1.6-1.7k... probably with all the lv7 shields i looted i will end with stats quite similar to a good crafted one... not to say that i never found a shield with all stats superior to crafted ones.

again guns seem umbalanced, but again we must considers what level/stats they have lv 5-7-9 guns have low damage, lower efficency vs shields and armor but higher speed, lv 6-8-10 have huge damage but are sloooow, i think many time people underestimate the speed factor but is probably the most important one. for example i have a lv7 and a lv8 RE guns made with reward items the lv8 have around 1k more max damage than lv7, if you look at them you tell aaa this level 8 outdamages the other gun even if is slower... nope the lv7 is far superior to the other one. Same with the crafted guns, to beat a good crafted ion cannon you need an exeptional lv9 or 10 gun or a good RE one don't be fooled when you see 4+k dmg that if the speed is 0.42 or 0.43 the DOT will probably be far inferior to a good crafted lv9 weapon.

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Golrok wrote:
Please don't nerf the loot anymore. They already nerfed the reward engine to 78 to speed instead of 92.6, they nerfed loot already no need to do it more.

Exactly what was said earlier it adds variation to the game instead of one stereotype uber ship- composite in space and little variation is what we fear.

Loot is in no way going to bankrupt you. Players still are buying my chaff packs for 5k everyday. Not to mention what they'll fork out for space bombs..

Besides, with decay as it is (hopefully they'll leave decay in there) no ones uber loot will last forever, and someone always must resort to crafted. Its balanced especially with looted comps HPs so low.

Loot is fun. Let them have some fun or we won't have customers if there is no fun in space.

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Loot removed variation, not adds to it, because of Reverse Engineering. Shipwright crafted components are restricted in their top end values by the resources usd to make the component, luck during the experimentation rollsand the limited number of experimentation points. The limited experimentation points guarantees that all characterstics cannot be fully experimented, with further variation being forced in by resource availibility and good/bad/indifferent experimentation rolls.

Reverse Engineering, however, ensures thatthe individualcharacterstics of a component can be maximized creating your 'composite in space' scenario, as it takes the best value of each of the individual characterstics used in the process and augments them further based on the RE level. So it's completely feasible to create, for example, a RE lvl 4+ reactorwitheach of its individual characteristics maximized to theirlimitations via reverse engineering.

As for the topic of Loot vs Crafted, do crafted components have to be better than loot? No, not necessarily. One of the major advantages of crafted components over looted ones is its availibility. A crafted component is essentially availible on demand, with resource spawns affecting the quality in some degree (able to be worked around via resource purchasing to some extent). The customer askes themselves "Do I want to spend the next 3 days grinding NPCs in this sector on the chance I might loot a component that's 10%-15% better than a crafted one?". Some people will answer yes, though prolly most will say "No" (with various comments on SOE's sadistic tendencies). Decay is not a reliable sales factor. There are very few reasons, imo, to fret over keeping every component in factory fresh condition and I don't.

BUT looted components of higher quality than crafted ones cannot be commonly found. The 92.6 engine is a prime example of this.It wasn't commonly availible loot. It wasn't even loot. It was a guaranteed availible itemwith guaranteed characteristics. One that because of the abnormally low certifcation level and characteristics had a much longer usable lifetime than should be expected. Essentially it came availible too early and stuck around for too long. Its situations like that when Looted vs Crafted cause conflict that has to be resolved (aka, something is gonna get nerfed).

Shipwright as a profession is almost completely separate from the ground game. However, that means the reverse is true and present a large danger: the ground game is almost completely separate from Shipwrights. The onlysource of demand for Shipwrights is from pilots. Even Bio-Engineer has demand generated from Creature Handlers, Non-Creature Handlers and Chefs. Loot superior to crafted items cannot be common for the sake of people's desire to go

'Ooooo...shiny!'

Message Edited by Rhysen on 11-26-2004 01:04 PM

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Rhysen wrote:

Reverse Engineering, however, ensures thatthe individualcharacterstics of a component can be maximized creating your 'composite in space' scenario, as it takes the best value of each of the individual characterstics used in the process and augments them further based on the RE level. So it's completely feasible to create, for example, a RE lvl 4+ reactorwitheach of its individual characteristics maximized to theirlimitations via reverse engineering.

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true with RE youcan "maximize" your stats, the problem is that is not so easy, from what i saw every class/level of items have "common" and uncommon high stats. just an example

lv8 weapons

common:efficency vs armor, efficency vs shield

uncommon: speed

engines

common: YPR

uncommon: speed, mass

these are just example, as you can see is not that you can grab 7-8 random loot, put them togather and get some uber component, for example i have tons of lv8 to 10 engines but if i will put them togather i will have still a pretti slow engine because i have not a good speed one (so far i have looted only 1 engine over 100 speed)

same for example for lv8 weapons.. you can find a lot of these weapons with very good efficency but quite slow, generally 0.42+ the thing that can make these guns uber (exept the reward one ) will be a lv8 good speed one, but again is not so usual to find them, best i found so far is a 0.39 and i have a lot of them.

another thing to keep in account is that when an item drop with these rare stats it could be not overall a good item by itself, for example my engine had poor YPR values and high mass so in that case was "necessary" a RE to make it really worth, same for the shields and weapons... good or rare stat stuff generally have very bad mass in these case the RE is acting more like a correction than a real improvement.

i alredyREd some high level items but so far if i don't consider the ones in wich i used reward items, the only uber RE i've done is the one of the engine. The other ones i've done generally end up in good items but in my opinion comparable to good crafted ones, is true that i'm storing also some "rare" components, but to RE them to make some "uber" items i want to mix with some other with another rare value or very good mass, and as said these items are not so easy to find. Not to say that probably i will never use these items in PvP in wich i plan to use some full crafted ships.

as a pilot player also i like RE, is nice to hunt an item with some rare stats, and begin to know (and hate) various average quality components , also i see many complains about this, as SW see it as a lack of profit. In my opinion in this case is SW fault, RE is a service that a SW provide and as a player i don't see anything bad in paying a service, during beta i suggested that but probably now is too late to make to pay for RE.

• reactors


• boosters


• shields


• weapons

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lisasdarren wrote:

I am not a SW myself, but I am good friends with the SW in my guild and know what he is producing.

There are any number of SW's here complaining that they can't craft items to compete with loot:

• reactors


• boosters


• shields


• weapons

Well you can, I have yet to see a looted reactor that compares with the Mk II crafted one I use, weapons and shields he crafts out-do nearly all looted ones, heck I have done the sums on what looked like a fantastic looted one (0.8 vs A & S) and it was weaker than an equivelent crafted one (though I havn't looked and RE level 8 and above). We used to all use looted boosters, until he figured out the trick for making them and now his crafted ones far outstrip looted ones.

The only components that he cannot compete on are capacitors and engines. Even on engines he can make ones that are faster for their mass than most looted ones, and driving a bomber the YPR doesn't matter much.

So in summary, currently the only item that is always worse than looted are capacitors, and in many cases, but not always, engines.

Maybe with capacitors it is a case of finding the trick to producing them, or maybe crafted really are worse in all cases (which i agree is a bit borked, there should be some way to make it better under certain circumstances)

However crafted should not be best under all conditions, the fact that there is usable loot makes the game more fun, SW's still have the ability to make the best in most categories.

This gives you a sustainable business, maybe you need to spend more time learning your craft, maybe you just need to wait for better resources, maybe looted capacitors will always have the potential to out-do crafted, but there are plenty of components that don't.

I'd suggest waiting at least a couple more months to see the effect of new resource spawns, new tricks that are discovered by the SW community etc. before crying NERF on loot and alienating your main customers, the pilots who love the looting in space.

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