Weaponsmith Archive

Broken Schematics (adv chem, barrels etc)

Weapon complexity (rocket launchers.... **edit**?)

Factory speed increase would be nice.

Specialist resources (fine if some actually spawned sometime)

Everyone has seem to brought up the major issues of the weaponsmith forum. Mine is kinda a cross between weaponsmith and marksman. The E11 rifle and E11 carbine have similar stats for guns (which they should considering they're an E11 type) and same goes with the laser carbine and laser rifle. You can also make lasers a box after the E11 box. Up till now, all good. The marksman however, can you an E11 carbine 1 box before a laser carbine, also, so far so good. if you go up the rifle tree however you can use a laser rifle 2 boxes before the E11 rifle. The E11 has lower stats by nature because it can be built earlier which means no one in there right mind would buy and E11 rifle. I think this needs to be brought to the dev's attention and I thought I'd suggest it in here because I'm dealing with it from the weaponsmith side where I just want to sell a few E11 rifles to people. Good luck with the fixes!

Okyweon Epo

Weaponsmith on Lowca outside of Moenia

1) Expirimentation on Feed mechs needs fixed

2) Expirimentation on HAM needs looked into as it's pretty ineffective ATM

3) Split up Damage and Speed from Effictivenss to add more diversity in Weapons

4) Add tag to Sliced Weapons

5) Fix Certs on Republic Blaster and Beam Rifle

From my post yesterday :

Something that's been bugging me : the resource costs for grenades are almost prohibitively expensive. You're talking > 3000 resources for a -single- crate of Imperial Detonators. And these are expendable munitions. You have to charge 50k to make any kind of reasonable payoff on these. C12's, C21's and Cryobans aren't -quite- as bad, but they're still pretty ugly. They chew through your stores of stuff faster than they're reall worth.

If they cut the mineral requirements for grenades by 50%, they'd be a lot more useful to everyone, buyers and sellers.

On the grenades, my impression (both from making them and from playing a commando) is that they're not intended to be used in mass quantities. They're expensive to make, yes. They also have relatively high HAM costs to use. But when they work, they are hideously effective - I've used C22s and Glop grenades against NPC enemies and it's almost better than having a pet. The only real problem I see with grenades right now is that accuracy is very poor. Most commandos end up missing three times for every one grenade that hits. Couple that with the high HAM cost for throwing one, and well....that's why most commandos I've met simply don't use grenades.

I don't think the requirements need to change, although I do think that the schematics need to shift around a little bit. The C22 needs to move up to Munitions 2, and the optional components need to come down to Munitions 2 or 3. Cryobans, C12s, Protons, and Thermals are fine the way they are now. Glop grenades are almost too good considering that one of their main components is bugged and you can't experiment on damage. Imperial detonators are bugged, or at least it looks like they are. I haven't actually thrown one yet. The certs on commandos need to be moved around so that there's an actual use for the C12 and so that people aren't trying to buy imperial detonators before they can use thermal detonators (which is backwards from how it should be).

Oh, and the schematics for the XG mine and DRXmine need to switch places, since we're on the subject of munitions.

My top issues:

1) We need to have what exactly the slice did on a weapon - just like the power ups now.

2) We need more weapons and more certs for professions. I'd love to see things like brass knuckles for low level brawlers and more high-end melee weapons, pistols, carbines, and rifles for high level characters.

3) The bazaar needs serious work (this is tangential but very important for any crafting profession). We need more class breakdowns (minerals into at least ores, gemstones, and metals and ranged weapons at least into carbine, rifle and pistol if not individual weapon type,etc). Bazaar needs a search engine and when you click on a heading it orders the entire list, not just the page you are on.

4) We need better differentiation in weaponry and some way for non-masterWS to compete with master WS. Maybe non masters make lower end weapons better?

5)Experimentation is still quirky. Success can decrease stats sometimes mild failures increase them. I have no idea what to expect for the middle set of experimentation statements.

I posted this once before without much response. These are areas that I think could improve the game. It's written from a Weaponsmith's point of view, but can be applicable to other crafting classes. I marked each section with asterisks to represent how important I feel the idea is.

Auto-Split (*)
Splitting resources is essential in selling goods, and an auto-split feature that can split a resource stack into equally sized containers would be extremely useful.

Bazaar Vendors (****)
Since there is a huge radius surrounding cities, it is impossible to have vendors near the cities selling your wares. Eventually one might earn enough experience in the Merchant class to get a map listing, but even that is inadequate. Players have absolutely no way to see what a player's vendor might contain without traveling to the vendor. Allowing crafters to earn certain number of bazaar vendors might solve the problem.

Bazaar vendors are a way to link a player's vendor to a bazaar in a specific city. Whenever someone browses the bazaar at the city, a list of the registered vendors also appears. Notice, I said registered vendors and not local vendors. Each crafting class should get one or two bazaar vendors (the actual number will have to be balance-tested) that can be registered with bazaars on other planets. Maybe, to make the class more appealing, Merchants can craft and sell bazaar vendors.

Purchases from the bazaar would enable a waypoint to the player's vendor and then the buyer would, of course, have to travel to pick it up. Also, these vendors would have a higher maintenance cost than the regular vendors, with perhaps a percentage paid to the Merchant.

Deliveries (*)
An extra surcharge could be added to each purchase where the buyer would like his purchased shipped to his bank's safety-deposit box.

Renting Rooms (*)
Some people do not have the cash, need, or necessary lots to run their own house. It would be nice to be able to rent rooms out to players. A daily maintenance fee could be paid to the house owner.

Evolving Schematics (*****)
Similarly leveled crafters can rarely differentiate their products from each other. For the most part, every crafter has at least some access to the same resources as each other crafter. If, in addition to experimentation, a schematic evolved with use, then crafters can begin to specialize in certain products. For example, if after a certain number of CDEF Pistol craftings (say 10,000), that crafter would then have access to an Enhanced CDEF Pistol schematic that might contain more specific resources, but can produce a better CDEF Pistol. The schematic could evolve several times. If done properly it would be next to impossible for any one crafter to make the highest evolved schematic for every object. Several constraints could be placed: no more than 1 or 2 evolved schematics, exponential crafting requirements, very precise schematic requirements (specific type of Kammis Iron instead of just Kammis Iron), etc.

Eventually people would try to buy their Laser Carbines from Jimba because she specialized in them, but buy their Scout Pistols from Fitz. It wouldn't ruin the businesses of other Weapon Smiths because the specialized smiths would be charging a significant premium, and players would have to make due with "lesser" weapons until they can generate enough funds for the better weapons or wait for the smiths to craft the items.

Direct Selling (****)
There is no way, without meeting a player in person, to directly sell to that person. Sometimes long-term deals are made and would be nice to allow vendors to have the capability to sell only to a specific person. Tied to the delivery option, this would be even more usefu

Breakpoint Selling (**)
Not all crafters like to put everything that they have online in their bazaar in the various-sized resource stacks to show quantity breakpoints. Personally, I'd like to put 90k units of ore for sale and let people pick how many units they want to buy. I'd set the price breaks on the vendor for that particular item and they'd show up in the product's description.

Consumables (**)
Every crafting profession should have at least one item that is a mandatory consumable. While I am not positive on what that should be for every class, some immediately come to mind. If food (Chefs), ammunition (Weapon Smiths), armor field-repair kits (Armor Smiths), and building maintenance packages (Architects) were required, then these classes could make some decent money at the lower levels. The master craftsmen would probably not want to bother with the consumables since they will need to be focusing on making more advanced weapons. To further prevent the masters from dominating these items, a maximum efficiency could be set that even novice crafters could reach. Alternatively, make what few consumables there are more essential.

To combat the possibility that no consumables are available for sale, the bazaar should offer extremely basic consumables: food that does not satiate enough, ammo that does adds no damage bonuses, etc.

Note: my idea for field-repair kits for armor would require armor to take damage (in addition to degrading) with each hit. It becomes less functional and would require some maintenance that could be done in the field. Eventually it will decay down to a point where it should be brought to an Armor Smith for repair or replacement. In real life, if a police officer's bullet-proof vest takes a bullet, the vest gets repaired before it gets used again.

Certification Difficulty (**)
At the novice levels, crafters have little recourse in making repeat customers. Usually the crafters make money by selling resources, not stuff they have crafted. In my experience as a Weapon Smith, very few D18, Scout Pistols and the like were bought from me since I can not experiment them to any decent degree. Unfortunately, since it is relatively easy to level-up in weapon skills and obtain certifications, the weapons that novice craftsman can make become obsolete very quickly.

Surveying (***)
There is almost no point in getting all four levels in surveying except that they are requirements for Master Artisan. Make the survey skill worth something. Several options are available: add more available lots to the player, placement of buildings in uneven ground (the ground would have to be automatically leveled so there will have to be a tolerance level), more effective harvesters, the list can continue.

Power Lines (*)
We have laser guns and space travel, but we can't link power sources to harvesters? Power generators generate y amount of energy per minute, and harvesters consume x amount of energy per minute, so it should be simple math to figure out how many harvesters a single power generator can support.

Those are all the suggestions I’ve stocked-piled so far. And as a note, I am not claiming that these are all original ideas. I have read through some of the message boards and may have been influenced by something I read a while back.

Of course, all comments and further refinements of these ideas are welcome.

Koro Burn
Novice Weaponsmith
Doaba Guerfel (4020,4355), Corellia, Kauri Galaxy

1. Bugged experimentation on chem/projectile components

2. Multiple power handlers stats not stacking - Some lower end weapons that are better than higher end weapons (especially pistols)

3. " Weapon has been sliced"tag - Possibly with details on exactly what the slice did (like a powerup) and who sliced it

4. Broken cert for republic blaster - also does any profession have a cert fot the beam cannon yet?

5. The rocket launcher still seems overly complex (proton grenades) for a charged weapon with only about 40 uses

1) Broken Schematics- Chem Dispersion Mechanisms can't be experimented on, Projectile Feeders experimentation is really odd (just ask a Dev to try it with 10 Experimentation points, done in different combos), Projectile Barrels are gated at 10 and 20% maximum effectiveness for normal and advanced respectively.

2) See thread here, too long to list. Basically, weapon schematic overall problems and possible fixes. http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=weaponsmith&message.id=14693

3) Schematic rebalances- Differs from broken schematics, since they are perfectly usable, simply ineffective. Stocks still have too high of a HAM impact due to wood being inefficient for the task of creating them. Advanced stocks follow the same rule. Advanced Blaster Rifle Barrels are simply worse than normal barrels, and are not worth using in a replacement.

4) Sliced Tag- A definite must. Let the Devs know to add this tag to Containers as well so that they can be told apart from untried containers.. Might as wellget two bug/features with one stone.

5) Certifications- Republic Blaster Certed to Pistol Specialist or Novice Pistoleer. Beam Rifle certed to Advanced or Expert Rifle.

err yea shoulda been beamRIFLE in #4 (not much sleep)

#1 Experimentation in general. Getting the experimentation to work on the components, along with making the gains/losses consistant with messages received.

#2 Indicator for if a weapon has been sliced and how it was improved.

#3 Specific resouce requirements/qualities need to be completly rethought. i.e. There are a lot more than just 5 qualities on minerals. Why would you care about conductivity in a striker?

#4 Weapon balancing so that all weapons have their role. i.e. getting damage type and AP rattings working correctly.

#5 Something to allow for more diversity in the weapon crafting community and allow for Novice WS to actually sell a weapon before tech 4.