Shipwright Archive
Thread: Focus Thread: Factory Support
Niacia
Fri Nov 26, 2004 6:05 am
#40
pervel wrote:Removing the randomness in crafting is actually something I have been hoping for even since before all this no-factory stuff happened for shipwrights. I see that randomness as doing no benefit at all to the game - it only causes frustration. It is a poor attempt to simulate a more complex crafting scenario that would occur in the real world. But if I wanted to play a game of chance, I would go play a game of Yatzi.
TomoRainer wrote:
By the way, I do think your idea about removing crit fails and such from experimenting is worth some discussion, Pervel, especially if you consider it a serious alternative to factories. Having to destroy or discount so many components is a serious annoyance, and one that I'm not sure the devs intended us to have to deal with.
A tough one. Randomness creates variablity in products. Which means, not everybody is using exactly the same stuff. Which I like. Which is negated by factories.
However, I see your point. Simply removing experimentation....
Hmm, I probably would not like this.
Replace it by somewhat else. Something complex, that does not involve so much randomness. Then, you probably could count me in.
Regards
Niacia
Niacia
Fri Nov 26, 2004 6:11 am
#41
SmallpoxA wrote:However, I'm going to switch hats again. Other crafting professions that depend heavily on experimentation (as does shipwright) have an advantage over shipwright. When they are crafting an item and experience 3 or more amazing successes, they can turn the thing into a manufacturing schematic and make more than one of that incredible item. I do this all the tiem for ship component upgrades, but would like to do this with ship components as well.
I wonder, whether this is really a disadvantage. Such an exeptional success becomes common place, if you multiply each success by 1000.
This is one (minor) problem, I have with factories. To me, it cheapens exeptional success.
Regarding limiting the number of builds per schematic. If the limit is low enough, this actually might work. But not at 100 as suggested elsewhere. A limit of 4, I could live with. But then, would this not make factories useless again?
Regards
Niacia
PetaByte32
Fri Nov 26, 2004 6:18 am
#42
I voted yes to factory support.
Because of time. I like crafting but I also like hunting and flying and other aspects of this game. I am not the type of person who can just sit and do one thing for a month then switch over. I like doing alot of things during a normal day. Factories would free up time more.
The only thing I want to see is the ability to craft the things we make the most of. Like Armor Panels. Since they are sold more by me then even missile packs, I can see this as a good way to free up time. Also want to suggest a tool to let us name several items of the same type at once. So we dont have to type or cut/paste all the time.
Factories have one use. To make crafting large numbers of items easier. This in turns frees up more time for crafters to do other things. And from what I can seethat works with other professions. If a person wants to get chummy with his customers he still can. Even more so. It isnt like having 3 factories will stop a person from giving a more personal touch. The small time crafter will have a tough time with or without factories. Having them or not having them wont make it any easier or harder for them.
If you think having factories will stop you from giving the personal touch, then thats your own problem with self-disapline. Not mine. Dont punish me for it.
Tyranus
Niacia
Fri Nov 26, 2004 6:42 am
#43
IdleThought wrote:
Shipwrights only really compete with other shipwrights, so fairness across crafters doesn't really come into it at that level.
BE's for instance have fairly poor factory support I think, while weaponsmiths have great factory support and armoursmiths have great factory support that is somewhat counterbalanced by their resource requirements.
Chefs are similar - can produce somethings in vast quantities, but stuff rely on meat, hide or bone resources can be expensive and labour intensive in collection.
A better, maybe more interesting, experimentation method might make more sense. But anything that makes crafting take longer does make the argument for factories stronger. Perhaps a mini-game?
Here's an idea - add a 'schematic quality' experimentation line. The higher this line is the more consistent factory produced items are - so if you max it you can have perfectly consistent factory output, but have quite a few less points to spend on the normal experimentation lines. If it's less than 100% then the final schematic suffers some random stat penalty of an amount related to the 'quality' score.
This gives you a direct trade-off to consider between the ease and consistency of factory production versus quality - where the crafter gets to choose what they will tolerate.
That could be a nice idea. Could actually work for me. It takes away the quality advantage of factories and avoids giving factories all the advantages.
I have to think about this a little more, but my first impression is, that this might be a good idea.
Regards
Niacia
IdleThought
Fri Nov 26, 2004 6:54 am
#44
PetaByte32 wrote:I voted yes to factory support.Because of time. I like crafting but I also like hunting and flying and other aspects of this game. I am not the type of person who can just sit and do one thing for a month then switch over. I like doing alot of things during a normal day. Factories would free up time more.The only thing I want to see is the ability to craft the things we make the most of. Like Armor Panels. Since they are sold more by me then even missile packs, I can see this as a good way to free up time. Also want to suggest a tool to let us name several items of the same type at once. So we dont have to type or cut/paste all the time.Factories have one use. To make crafting large numbers of items easier. This in turns frees up more time for crafters to do other things. And from what I can see that works with other professions. If a person wants to get chummy with his customers he still can. Even more so. It isnt like having 3 factories will stop a person from giving a more personal touch. The small time crafter will have a tough time with or without factories. Having them or not having them wont make it any easier or harder for them.If you think having factories will stop you from giving the personal touch, then thats your own problem with self-disapline. Not mine. Dont punish me for it.Tyranus
The armour thing is a bug from the look of it (it might be a bug the Dev's have decided to keep) - certainly the Friday Feature on ship components contradicted the way it works in practice. Since everything else is consistent about HP being the thing that decays on repair it's almost certainly a bug. Also, if you look in the crafting screen, the HP and Armour HP are swapped around in stat window - normally things have the same order in the stats window and the experiment bar window - HP and Armour HP are not consistent though when crafting armour.
A change to the crafting screens that allowed you to repeat the last string entered would be an excellent change (or pick from a list of recently used..) - campaign for that and you've got my vote.
PugBalato
Fri Nov 26, 2004 9:01 am
#45
Now that's a really good idea. If we could repeat the last string entered (which also includes the same experimentation that would be a suitable alternative to factory support.
IdleThought wrote:
A change to the crafting screens that allowed you to repeat the last string entered would be an excellent change (or pick from a list of recently used..) - campaign for that and you've got my vote.
Golrok
Fri Nov 26, 2004 10:43 am
#46
I vote no because I like how it makes more variations, less predictable ships. No 2 ships are exactly the same since each one is manually crafted.
But in the end idc if factory support gets added. I'll still craft them manually. If ppl want factories thats np.
But in the end idc if factory support gets added. I'll still craft them manually. If ppl want factories thats np.
TomoRainer
Fri Nov 26, 2004 1:33 pm
#47
"As stated above I believe that full factory support would be best for the game. But since the poll showed a small majority against this, we have to come up with a compromise."
That's what you wrote, Pervel, and I took exception to it. The poll also showed that only 35% of shipwrights wanted any kind of increased factory support at all. The question wasn't do you want full factory support, but whether you wanted any more factory support at all--and barely 1/3 of the respondents said yes. That is in no way a mandate to compromise. Perhaps if someone can come up with a brilliant compromise, opinions will shift, but don't try to use that poll to justify the exact opposite position of what it voted against.
I'm with Shadwe in that this third question is biased. It asks that, if we don't want factories, we should come up with ways to use them that might not be so bad. What kind of a question is that? Both the game mechanics and, according to the information we have so far, the majority of shipwrights don't support factories. You'd think, then, that the proponents of factories would be the ones prompted to suggest compromises. I know this question was intended to help deal with the problem of the tyranny of the majority, but we've already made our position clear. If there's a significant minority that wants to change our view or make some sort of deal, the burden to do so falls on them.
In case it isn't obvious, I'm against factories and will accept no compromise. Maybe those in favor can change my mind, but there is no way I'm going to spend my time coming up with a way to achieve an end I currently don't want to see.
By the way, I do think your idea about removing crit fails and such from experimenting is worth some discussion, Pervel, especially if you consider it a serious alternative to factories. Having to destroy or discount so many components is a serious annoyance, and one that I'm not sure the devs intended us to have to deal with.
That's what you wrote, Pervel, and I took exception to it. The poll also showed that only 35% of shipwrights wanted any kind of increased factory support at all. The question wasn't do you want full factory support, but whether you wanted any more factory support at all--and barely 1/3 of the respondents said yes. That is in no way a mandate to compromise. Perhaps if someone can come up with a brilliant compromise, opinions will shift, but don't try to use that poll to justify the exact opposite position of what it voted against.
I'm with Shadwe in that this third question is biased. It asks that, if we don't want factories, we should come up with ways to use them that might not be so bad. What kind of a question is that? Both the game mechanics and, according to the information we have so far, the majority of shipwrights don't support factories. You'd think, then, that the proponents of factories would be the ones prompted to suggest compromises. I know this question was intended to help deal with the problem of the tyranny of the majority, but we've already made our position clear. If there's a significant minority that wants to change our view or make some sort of deal, the burden to do so falls on them.
In case it isn't obvious, I'm against factories and will accept no compromise. Maybe those in favor can change my mind, but there is no way I'm going to spend my time coming up with a way to achieve an end I currently don't want to see.
By the way, I do think your idea about removing crit fails and such from experimenting is worth some discussion, Pervel, especially if you consider it a serious alternative to factories. Having to destroy or discount so many components is a serious annoyance, and one that I'm not sure the devs intended us to have to deal with.
Kinot33
Fri Nov 26, 2004 5:18 pm
#48
I have head two very good ideas from both sides of the issue that would be a really interesting and limiting way allow full factory support for shipwrights
Triki suggested a limited Starship Factory that only Master Shipwrights could get and that was limited to 1 or 2. At the point of being a MSW, perhaps it is feasible to create such a thing. Maybe make it take up 1/2 a players lots to drop it and you have to be a MSW to get a qualification to drop it, like a hospital does with MD.
Niacia suggested factory runs take more resources but left it a little unfinished. Do you mean per item the factory pumps out? Cause IMO that would be an excellent compromise. The small crafter can take time to minimize resources consumed and thus use fewer of them to make an item, but the factory will be more wasteful in a trade off for speed of creation. And infact I think that would be an excellent idea to apply to factories in all professions since there is no current penalty for a factory's speed manufacturing in the first place. Say 5% more per item and now you would be losing 1 item for every 20 you create (which is still a fantanstic percentage versus real world manufacturing waste) in addition to the 1 item you lost to being a schematic.
My own contribution to this idea-party would be to leave the current Shipwright factory craftables as they are, craftable in a regular factory, since they are consumables and lower level SW's would still need to have the ability to craft those in abundance. But the Starship factory ould require you be a MSW to use and can craft any SW schematic.
Would the combination of these two ideas help to minimize the possibility of Guild-Conglomerates pwning the Shipwright industry, yet still allow for the GM's and Ford's to exist? Or do you feel that even this level of factory support for SW's is too much?
As for my own take on WHY Shipwrights would want/need factory support:
Not all Shipwrights are pure crafters. MSW only takes up 97 skill points. Master Mechant is only another 82 skill points if you try to run your own business by your self instead of within a guild. That's 179 Skill points leaving 71 for whatever else you want (and some choose to throw that into Prospecting). But some want it as their crafting skill-set and still want to be a fighter (since that is the only way to get Star Wars world immersion for some reason). Factory support lets them do both. It lets them provide support for their guild with their crafting profession and leaves them time to support their guild (or friends, or PA or whatever) with their combat profession. It really is about time, especially for those who are trying to help their guilds.
Now, you can argue that these people just want the best of both worlds, crafting and combat, but its more than that. They want to PARTICIPATE IN THE WORLD and that absolutely requires time and a combat-capable character. I offered a proposal in another thread about the factory issue, and if people like it I may ask that it get its own thread at some point, to create more "immersion" for crafters. Other games have crafter missions, why doesn't this one? SWG is doing a bang-up job in starting to address issues about the game itself. JTL has its problems, but nothing like the horror stories from game launch. I see a lot of things here making me think that SWG is NOT slated for a "SWG 2" anytime in the next 2 years, and that makes me happy. To me, sequel games mean the first one stopped being fun, and fun is what it should be about. And it looks to me like SOE et al are trying to put mor fun into this game, rather than abandoning it and starting over with a sequel. The Combat Revamp, the additional JTL content coming in 11.3, the additional GROUND content coming in 11.3 and other stuff lets me know SOE gives a hoot about this game. Past wrongs are past if they come through on their promises, and people can change. I don't know why I added this here, but felt it needed to be said. Ignore it if you wish, I won't respond to comments about SOE's actions past or present.
Message Edited by Kinot33 on 11-26-2004 04:31 PM
falacy
Fri Nov 26, 2004 5:38 pm
#49
I'm voting for no further factory support.
My reasoning: The game has been out long enough that there are some really large guilds, mine included. If we were able to factory crate ships and components we could flood the market with amazing and amazingly cheap parts, spread them all over or server and effectively ruin everyone elses fun. Now, nobody in Arcadia would actually do this, but there are several guilds on Intrepid that would do this, as they have done with other 'high end' craftables.
Plain and simple, people are cheap and they will buy the cheapest items, always. Factory crating ship parts would severly handicap the whole idea of a free market for Shipwrights, especially the non masters, non guilded ones who need the business more than the rest of us.
pervel
Fri Nov 26, 2004 6:42 pm
#50
I very much like the idea bout making a ship factory that can only be placed by a shipwright and that every shipwright can only place one. It should only cost 1 lot to place. Otherwise it would not benefit the small shipwrights much.
Although it is not the theme of this thread, I think this could be extended to all crafting professions. Architects can only place one structure factory. Tailors and armorsmith only one clothing factory. Doctors, CMs,Chefs and Smugglers only one food factory. Equipment factories should probably be placeable by all crafting professions.
Kalano
Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:03 pm
#51
I am not a supporter of the factories, not now. maybe in the future but not how SW is now. Needs a few tweaks.
I would compromise if the schematics were limited to 100 max. I don't see really anyone doing a run of chassies, big waste of resources and i don't really see anyone willing to try to save up that much for a run on one type of schematic. So, no chassies anyways to just remove that possibility, because some will do it anyways.
what would sway me over to the factory side would be if the resources were a bigger influence on the parts, along with the qualities of the resources affecting different qualities of the part itself. ie: OQ would affect maybe mass, PE affected accel/decell, UT affected armor/hit points, DR affected speed, ect. that way, no one can mass produce a cookie cut engine, reactor, ect. you would have to seriously pick and choose what qualities you want in the part. Make it more challanging so no engine is the uber engine unless it was RE from really good loot or that very rare resource with awsome qualities, and we all know that is rare.
Not every part will fit every ship, and it needs to stay that way if we do end up with more factory support. It keeps the competion, makes more options for consumers, cuts the cookie cutting, and provides a challenge for the crafter.
I don't want to see SW become cookie cutting crafters like weaponsmiths and armorsmiths are. I never can find theitem that fits me best, i just find the items that has been said is the uber only way. Keep it challanging to make the best item because not every part is the best part for the chassie someone has. then bring factory support under schematic limit restrictions. Someone might corner the MP ship engine market, but someones else will get the A-wing market, no cookie cutting factory support.
Kalano
Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:11 pm
#52
pervel wrote:
I very much like the idea bout making a ship factory that can only be placed by a shipwright and that every shipwright can only place one. It should only cost 1 lot to place. Otherwise it would not benefit the small shipwrights much.
Although it is not the theme of this thread, I think this could be extended to all crafting professions. Architects can only place one structure factory. Tailors and armorsmith only one clothing factory. Doctors, CMs,Chefs and Smugglers only one food factory. Equipment factories should probably be placeable by all crafting professions.
you haven't done a lot of the crafting proffesions have you? Limiting to one will hurt many also. some items take several factory runs for the sub components and even they take a long time to make. Unless you cut down a large amount of factory time and sub components, one factory only will really hurt the unguilded and friend supported crafter. I know, because i am not part of a guild and not supported by others. I have used more that one factory at times because i didn't want to wait three days to get an end product as master artisan. it gets worse the higher you go.