Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Devs: Weaponsmith Community Bug List [Wednesday September 10th, 2003]
SmugglerSnake wrote:
One thing I've noticed is that my vibroknucklers, using regular BVUs, won't get any better damage-wise than 30-134 damage, 2.1 speed. Granted I'm not using 1000-stat resources, but I have gotten experimental damage (through many trials and non-great successes) to 95%. Contrarily, I've also gotten the experimental damage to 70% through not-so-hot experimentations. The problem here is that the stats were exactly the same for these two knucklers. 30-134 damage, 2.1 speed on the 70% Exp. Dam. knuck, and the same on the 95% exp. dam. knuck. Is this cap as-designed and the UI is misinterpreting something or should I be able to make my knucklers "25% better"?
Looks like you hit the damage cap on the weapon.
Oh yeah, another thread reminded me of a gripe I had:
How many of you honestly prefer the current method of shifting (gradual over about 4 days) over a drastic full-shift (one full shift of every resource once a week)?
Honestly, I cannot stand having to check resources every day. There is no consistency whatsoever, we had a bunch of steels that lasted for 10 days last week, along with no radioactive on several planets for 4 days, then finally they shifted, just to shift again in another 3 days. Ugh.
One Phrik pops at Monday, do a full galaxy scan, no other Phrik. So I spend some 3 hours trying to find a good spot, plant, and then two days later another Phrik spawns while the old one still exists, soI spend another 5 hours pulling old harvesters up and going across three planets trying to find a buildable spot. Why couldn't they just both spawn at the same time! I couldn't care less about immersion and reality when it comes to this, bring me the full shift that comes every Friday at 5AM that I can always rely on to be there!
Yah Logix kinda annoying at times...but I can see both sides of the coin, here is my view on it, and the pro's/con's...
Pro's:
- Helps ensure that everyone wont always have an infinite supply of the 'best' resources from every shift.(and by infinite I mean 100k+ which lasts a long time for most items). In my opinion this helps stimulate the economy and differentiate peoples quality of goods.... and note this is a dynamic which will swing back and forth hopefully, so customers : weaponsmiths will change...which again is good..there may be some balancing required, but the Dev's would quickly pick this up from their reporting numbers (still surprised at the level of reports they have on their side, is good to know).
- Makes Miner's a viable profession. Because weaponsmiths cannot keep up with this and craft goods it allows for a new 'player invented' profession (since miner profession isnt in place yet), and opens a new area of economic growth. Resource distribution...
Con's:
- Frustrate's some of the weaponsmith community because it is hard to multitask resource mining, and weaponsmithing together.... causes burnout. Self explanatory...
- Inconsistent resources and shift times. This makes it hard to gauge when resources will shift out so you end up wasting cycles due to placing harvesters at the wrong location at the wrong time...
- Cost associated with constant shifting.. Most weaponsmiths that are new to the profession cannot afford to buy bulk of all the best resources or hire multiple 'miners'...which leads to frustration...
Just my opinion, but there is a sort of balance here... thing is with any crafting profession I think there will ALWAYS be some level of frustration on one side or another.... this frustration will keep people fluxing in and out of the profession, which is good for the overall growth of the game... if we kept on just adding and adding with no attrition, then eventually prices would be Nill, and there would be no money flowing in.
I took the "no infinite supply" thing into account. Honestly, I cannot see it very likely that any Master Weaponsmith who had a full week to stockpile the best Steel he's ever seen, will be able to use it all before a better Steel appears. On Lowca, we went for about a month and a half before we actually saw real shifting. But since we've had real shifting, we have already seen a.) Better Iron than we've ever had, b.) Better Copper we've ever had, c.) Better SR/UT metal than we've ever had. I mean, when shifts happen every week, it's pretty hard to go for very long before seeing a better version of [resource] than the previous.
Additionally, it's not as easy, but still pretty feasible to get the "infinite supply" mark. Resource shifts now: The most active and the most pursuant will get the most resources. More casual Weaponsmiths will fall behind, there is no deterrant to the powergamer vs. casual. But with the shift the way it is now, casual gamers take an even bigger hit, and it widens the gap between casual gamers and powergamers. They just do not have the time to check shifts every day, whereas powergamers still do. So while supplies may be arguably less infinite, the average powergamer is going to have a great deal more supplies than a casual gamer with this method of shfiting, versus a 1-week scheme.
As for mining, it is my opinion that this also hurts those who choose mining as a side job. It is already hard enough to get competent, well-informed miners who actually harvest something other than Random_Crap_Grind_Steel_00 and power. But tossing more frequent shifts in the mix to already-less-than-knowledgeable miners, and all they're going to continue to do is macromine the closest Steel vein. It'd make my life easier if most miners took their businesses more seriously, but unfortunately, most of them suck. :>
For those that don't suck, it ties into #1. The easier it is for miners to do their job, the more "infinite" supplies being thrown into the market, so there are fewer younger smiths going completely empty-handed because they weren't a Weaponsmith during Shift_02 that had Polonium. They can more easily find something being sold in ample amounts still on the Bazaar.
Anyway, that's just my argument for it, feel free to tear it apart. :>
Very good points Logix... especially bringing attention to the casual vs powergamer... didnt really think about that aspect, and it hurting the casual gamer... that part is definitely true and would go to the con side 
I think on the point of 'miners' making it 'difficult' will make the people that arent very good at it (successful) start to fizzle out and be replaced with people that can handle the constant shifting... and im sure its different per server, I would just think this would be a dynamic that will work itself eventually... but could be wrong.. happens alot
I know on Radiant we have some very good miners..one of my personal supplier has his own network of miners, where he controls 160 lots that other people control and he manages....
Needless to say I get 100k+ of what I need very quickly... this kind of operations is the future of resource management I think..... just takes the visionary type people to run it
Hope it all works out, but would love to hear more discussion on it
ideal range is messed up. i can place a ideal range hit bonus power up on it and the power up will once applied will show an effect of 0% and the guns ideal range hit bonus does not change. you can experiment on range and it will not alter the guns stats.
also as already mentioned the control units add nothing to the end product that is visible.
general bugs in ideal range:
lets takes the two versions of dh17 carbine for an example. the two guns are identical except the ranges. the dh17 snub-nosed version will always have a much much lower ideal range hit bonus than the long barrel version which actually requires lower skill. why would the version that is higher in the skill tree actually be worse? more than a few guns seem to have some sort of problem with the not having ideal range hit bonuses being calculated properly. here is another example of a weapon that doesnt follow the "norm". the scout blaster seems to get its bonus in the point blank range. i cant name all the models that have inconsistant ideal hit bonuses but off the top of my head around a half dozen seem to.
crafting station/tool issues:
personally i also think that crafting tool effectiveness has no benefit over a super crappy tool. but what i have observed in more than one occasion is a trend where no matter what i am making (even the least complex items) the end results are terrible! moderate success after moderate success which means that a stat is being reduced. this will continue until i log out or change locations (possibly crossing server boundries). then when i log back in i am making everything with great successes again. something is definatly wrong with that.
experimentation problems:
a failure can sometime result in the stat being increased. the math involved is somehow messed up. i think that whatever problem is causing this may also be causing the craftig station problems.
We might be able to have our cake and eat it too with resource shifts just by slowing down the shifts a bit. Maybe if the cycle were closer to 2 weeks instead of 1 week?