Shipwright Archive

Hello folks,

I recently - to my horror - came to realize, as have others, that armor does indeed loose it's effectiveness not after every death, as I had thought, but after every engagement where it takes damage and requires repair.

Suprise suprise, that lvl 7 armor plate thatI seem to recall cost me about the same per side asmy lvl 7 shieldis now 10% less effectiveafter justbeing singed a bit.

Now, the vendor may just not have been aware of the extremely perishable nature of armor relative to shields. He saw the overall effectiveness of that armor, how it compares favorably to shields, and priced it at the same level (which was about the same price as his level 7 weapons and other lvl 7 compoenents). But...I'll need to find another armor vendor or stick to lootedI guess because having armor that expensive becomimg basically worthless after 3 or 4 fights (not deaths, merely taking dmg in battle) makes that armor prohibitively expensive for me to maintain.

Okay, rant rant etc. Lesson learned. My real question is to the shipwrights out there: In my opinion the value of a piece of armor that is only effective for me for a few repairs is significantly less than the value of a shield that holds it's strength right up until it falls apart. Is the expense of making that perishable armor in any wayappropriate relative to the expense of making a shield? In other words: based purely on cost of resources, what SHOULD a levelX, Y or Zpiece of armor cost relative to a level X, Y, or Z shield (or weapon, or engine/reactor, etc) given a certain desired profit margin.

I'm not looking for exact figures, just a 'relative to'. I guess I'm wondering if armor is balanced with other items in terms of cost to produce. I may just have to search for a better vendor. But ifit'scostis totally out of whack with it'seffectiveness given it's quick decay, then it definately needs to be addressed by the Devs.

Thanks in advance,

Mik

Most of the major crafters would like a pleased customer over money anyday.

The thing is, cpu wise, it might not be feasible to reduce the price greatly.

If you want quality, your gonna have to pay for those resources.

Maybe you could work out a deal with a SW or something. Loots = Armor?

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Minass (was minas but i hate trandoshans so now im minass)
Former Master Bounty Hunter
Retired PvP'er
Master of Opportunity
Vendor: -3459 -5668 Mos Nova, Tatooine (Offers Go Here!)

I think that most shipwrights price their products based mainly on the cost of the resources used to build them. Most parts of the same level use more or less the same amount of resources (in terms of cpu). So I doubt you will see prices on armor go down relative to shields. You just have to consider armor to be a more costly item to have over time.

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A Silver Bullet: Jedi Anonymity on BH Terminals
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All 3 accounts cancelled on 2005-04-29 due to the CU.

True, I'm sure there's a few deals and what not a person could make to help alleviate the cost. But I'm thinking more in terms of basic game balance and game design.

Eg:

If a lvl 7 shield has an effectiveness of 1500 and a retail of 75k

and one plate of lvl 7 armor has an effectiveness of 1200 and a retail of 75k

The shield will still be valuable, or at least provide the same shield protection for 42 deaths. That could be 3 or 4 weeks of playtime for some.

The armor may not last 3 or 4 hours as far as offerring it's value as a 75k level 7 item.

So I'm off to the vendor to purchase another plate of armor for 75k--and another a few hours after that, or the next night, whatever.

When all is said and done I may end up very easily spending 500k to 1 million credits on that armor to achieve the same consistent

protection as a similar level shield that only cost me 75k.

Combined with all the other costs of maintaining, upgrading and repairing ships and their componentsit just seems a little out of whack.

But if the cost of producing a lvl 7 shield was 60k and the cost of producing a plate of lvl 7 armor were 3k and sold for a retail of 5k, then we start to have some balance. I'd buy it by the crate as I would muon and would burn through it about as quickly, knowing the costtome issomewhat in line with other ship items and with my ability to make enough money to pay for it all.

I know this thread can, and probably will, quickly devolve into a debate on how decay is necessary to ensure SW surival. But I'm more curious in the actual costs of producing armor relative to shields and other equal-level components. Decay is fine and I fully support that, but right now I can see armor costing solo-groupless players the most of any ship component, including chassis. At least at the price I paid for mine, that's for sure

Thanks again,

Mik

In order for the price to come down on armor relative to shields the cost of making it also needs to come down. So I guess what you are really asking for is that the devs lower the amount resources used for making armor. I can fully support that.

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A Silver Bullet: Jedi Anonymity on BH Terminals
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All 3 accounts cancelled on 2005-04-29 due to the CU.

All Components of the same Mark Level require the same amount of resources to make them.

All Components I make I use enhancers. I am at work so I am going off the top of my head for the numbers.

A mark III Armor needs:

250Steel

250Aluminum

250Ore

250Inert Petro Chem

Enhancer. Optional. A mark 3 enhancer is 350 Steel and 150 Crystalised Steel for a reinforcment Segemnt.

That is a total of 1500 units of resource for 1 Enhanced armor. To beef it up.

A Mark III Shield needs:

250 Steel

250 Carbonate Ore

250 Inert Gas

250 Copper, or something else, I forget atm.

Enhancer. Optional. A Mark 3 enhancer, I use shield intensifier uses 350 steel and 150 Galvtronic Fiberblast. For a beefer Shield.

That is a total of 1500 units of resource for 1 Enhanced Shield.

Bottom line is that they both require the same number of resouorces, enhanced or not enhanced. I know that most SW will price all their components based on cpu across the board as some things, especially steel, is getting to be expensive these days. I feel your pain in that armor is taking abuse on hits and not death, but from a SW financial standpoint, I do not see any SW dropping prices on armor.

You might talk to a few SW and see if they will make some for you at a reduced cost if you bring them the resources in advance for the job. It is an idea, but you need to find a SW on your server that would do it. That way you get charged for labor and not resources on top of labor. Just an idea.

Another idea is, of course, that you ask a shipwright to make you some armor using grinding quality resources. That way you may get the price down to 4-5 cpu. You will have to live with armor that isnt as good but you can replace it more often.

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A Silver Bullet: Jedi Anonymity on BH Terminals
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The real purpose of the SWG forums

All 3 accounts cancelled on 2005-04-29 due to the CU.

Thanks for the replies everyone. That certainly answer's my question, and gives me the targetat which to direct my ire ( /rude Devs ). Hmph

If it's costing SW the same to produce this armor as any other component, than I wouldn't dream of asking them to lower prices 'just cuz'. Not their fault the game is designed the way it is.

I think...well, simply put, unless i can strike up a deal with a SW, or find looted components, I may have to curb my JTL playtime quite a bit, or at least curb my heavy-mass ship playtime anyway. I see armor as being a mandatory, ubiquitous piece of equipment that should be maintained at peak level--on slow, heavy mass ships--in order to survive the high level PvE and PvP game content. I never noticed this game 'feature' until i loaded up my first ever TIE Bomber with expensive level 7 gear and saw my armor decay after I just took a light sliver of damage in a throw-away skirmish against some Tier 3-5 blacksun (the one in Dant...). On my mass-challenged Advanced the cost of armor was low enough I never really noticed the hit my lvl 3 and lvl 5 armor was taking, so didn't put 2 and 2 together.

But since the slow brute-type ships really make up for their sluggishness--at least in theory *ahem* PvP damage *cough*--by being able to carry max-level shields and armor, it really will be a heavy burden to have to swap new expensive armor in all the time to stay 100% effective. It all adds up to just being a tad too expensive for my playstyle to support that habbit.

Too bad too. I can only hope the Devs see the imbalance and tweak it. If JTL had been shipped where armor's effectiveness didn't decay, only it's hit-points or 'condition' on death like any other component, I doubt anyone would look at that situation and say it was out of the ordinary.

And if they do change it so it behaves more like shields, then armor will decay like any other item.Customers will return to the SW for an armor re-purchase at the same pace as other items. Yes it mean SW sell less armor/customer over a given time period, but it puts it back in line with the weapons, shields, reactors, engines etc that cost the the same to make. Fair is fair (and I know most every SW would agree with this, this 'rant' is directed 100% at the devs. SW shouldn't adjust armor retails one creditunless resource requirements change).

All that being said, I kinda like the variety in dynamic of armor being 'beat up' and needing replacement a hair faster than other items. Again, just for variety sake if nothing else (being more 'realistic' and so forth). If I was picked to redesign the armor system it would be:

1. Make armor not decay 10% on repair, only on death. And decay BOTH it's Hit pointsand Armor values. Ie: All that blaster fire does wear armor a bit thin after awhile. A nod to those who want realism in a computer-game-based-on-fantasy-sci-fi-movie

2. To offset it's more 'disposable' nature: Have it cost much less in terms of resources to make, thus leading to cheaper retails

Anyway, I won't beat the point to death. I'll just stick to flying light-armored ships and lend myself out as turret-man to those richer than me

-Mik

Man, this has been noted in other posts and I'll repeat here, if you need money, sell loot to the chassis dealer, they now buy loot at 1k per RE level. On a normal run through space for say, 30 minutes, and you kill say, 10 ships, you should get about 4-5 pieces of loot, say 2 level 1s, 1 level 2 and a level 3, that translates into 7k, not great, but it'll add up as you loot higher leveled stuff. And my estimates are pretty conserative in the amount of loot you'll get, I think. So in one battle where you lose at a bit of your armor, you can about make up the price by selling loot.