Weaponsmith Archive

[Weaponsmith Bugs]

• The Chemical Dispersion Unit and Advanced Chem Disp Unit still CANNOT be experimented on for Damage, still stays at 0% when you try to raise it, even on great/amazing success. (Dev's stated this was fixed this patch, to date it has not been fixed)
  
  
  
• The Advanced Projectile Feed Mechanism and the Projectile Feed Mechanism experimentation problems (since beta)... These items initially shows up with the max available experimentation possibilties for the resources used (in this example lets say 75%). Upon your FIRST experiment run (no matter how many points you run at a time), the MAX experiment effectiveness drops down to where you can never hit that 75% target, even if you got all amazing/great successes... Also the Minimum damage is always set at 0...this may have some involvement with why the experimentation is messed up. This is unique to these 2 components, and gates all weapons utilizing it. This has been broken since beta. (See the request for a Balance pass on these items down below).
  
  
  
• The Advanced Projectile Pistol Barrel always starts at a MAX experimental effectiveness of 8% no matter how good the resources are. So you are gated to only getting like 10/10 dmg out of your experiments which gates all weapons using this component. Been broken since beta as well.
  
  
  
• The Projectile Pistol Barrel a lways starts at a MAX experimental effectiveness of 10% no matter how good the resources are. So you are gated to only getting like 10/10 dmg out of your experiments which gates all weapons using this component. Been broken since beta as well.
  
  
  
• Optional Components adding no 'value' to a weapon (or other Weaponsmith/Artisan functions). This has been validated on a few items such as the Control Units on Spraysticks... Microsensor suite/Control Units on repair kits,etc. Unless there is a stat that isnt displayed in our examination, then this needs to be looked at.
  
  
  
• 'Effectiveness' on Crafting Kits/Crafting Stations appears to not add noticable value. I have been going back and forth between utilizing 'basic crafting kits/low effectiveness crafting stations', and '99.5% effective crafting kits, and 33.5% ( I believe this is close to the best available) crafting stations; at this point I see little difference in functionality and crafting effectiveness. Some analysis shows that I receive around the same average of successes > failures as with the lesser kits. (Looking for more input from the community)
  
  
  
• Plumbum Iron and lack of Conductivity quality. This specific iron is required in a few of our key item schematics, yet the max quality most people have ever seen is around 1000-1100 / 2000 (combined conductivity and overall quality). This brings down the max stats on our weapons considerably for those prototypes. Was this by design in the balancing of those weapons? or an oversight?
  
  
  
• [Dev Acknowledged Issue] Stacked components, such as the Advanced Power handlers and Regular Power Handlers, Advanced Sword Cores, etc are not 'stacking' bonuses when more than one is required. Any update on this front, were these bonuses designed to stack?
  
  
  
• Stocks (Including Advanced Scopes and Stocks) are adding very little value to weapons and are under utilized.These components add a large amount to the HAM's on weapons they are bound to, and the dmg/spd benefit doesnt match up for this cost. Maybe a balance pass is required on these items.
  
  
  
• Stocks have the same crafting problem as the Projectile Feed Mechanisms. After you add your resources and start the experiment phase, you have a max possibly experiment points (lets say 50%). After the first experiment run, the max effectiveness goes down and you can never reach that 50%, even if amazing successes.
  
  


• Evaluation ofa fewRifles (I.E. Tusken and Spraystick) and their componentsshow that they would be a damage type other than energy. Was this changed on purpose or a bug? If not there needs to be more variable dmg types for rifles.
  
  
  
• UXP seems broken somehow (works rarely). Not sure if this is still related to having to be online, or if the 'distance' from weapon use is still a factor.
  
  
  
• Weapon Armor Piercing and 'Dmg Type Vulnerability' seeming to 'negate' each other. Now this will need developer's to investigate, but here is a case stated by Logix, one of our community members.

Pre-patch: Darth Vader has AR3 and acid vulnerability. You attack Darth Vader using a DX2, and Darth Vader no longer has any AR when fighting him, because his vulnerability to acid negates his armor. (Replace Darth Vader with any opponent with AR, yada yada.)

Post-patch: Darth Vader has AR3 and acid vulnerability. You attack Darth Vader using a DX2, and your DX2 no longer has any Armor Piercing bonuses. It is as though you are suddenly fighting an NPC with an AP0 weapon, even though Darth Vader is vulnerable to the damage-type. This is the opposite of what should be happening.

(Bugs Related to Weaponsmith Functionality)

• Factories seem to working much better, but fixed completely? (Looking for Community Input)
  
  

(Balancing Issues or Suggestions for Additions)

• Too Many Critical Failures for Master Weaponsmiths. This ties back to the 'effectiveness' of crafting kits/stations as well, but it seems that even as a Master Weaponsmith, the community in general feels we are getting too many critical failures for being a master at our craft (with the best crafting components, kits, stations, etc). The common ratio seems to be around 8:1 for Success/Fail, which still seems pretty extreme for our level of ability.
  
  
  
• The Advanced Pistol and Rifle Barrels need a balance pass. These items specifically add very little value to a weapon until around 65%+ Experimental effectivness.These were designed to add higher damage at the cost of lower (slower) speed. The problem is that a 1-6 dmg increase for a .2-.3 speed decrease isnt viable enough, and thats the stats you get with 65% or lower effectiveness.
  
  
  
• HAM experimentation needs to be revisited. Currently HAM experimentation isnt viable enough still on weapons, as the Dmg/Spd benefits outweigh the cost. Holocron has made a direct response related to the 'cost' statistics (strength, constitution, and focus... i believe thats right), and how he believes these dont add the kind of value that the pools/regen stats add. Maybe this is directly related. Bottom line is HAM experimentation doesnt have much of a market in the SWG economy right now, and probably for good reason. Please revisit.....
  
  
  
• Low Level Weaponsmithsbeing considered boring, andnothavinga 'value add' to the community until higher levels. Novice Weaponsmiths dont have anything they can make that allows them to be viable in themarket. Most of their goods are antiquated right off the bat, and people would immediately rather spend a few thousand credits and get something from a master. Of course this is a balancing act, but additions/adjustments need to be made to give the novice some viable source of income and enjoyment.
  
  
  
• Improvethe D-18 better and reduce theCDEF's effectiveness, also cap out how good they can be so they are never better then D-18's. Good suggestion.
  
  
  
• Add more 'uniqueness' to weapons visually, and in effectiveness. For the most part the devs have done a good job in making weapons in SWG 'situational' but there still is a ways to go to have different weapons play different roles... Possible adjustments to range (increasing the 64m cap), more dmg types?, etc.
  
  
  
• [My personal Suggestion] Make 'Amazing Success' add more value. Currently Amazing success just raises the percentage up a few extra points up to the cap.. What about making Amazing success be able to slightly 'exceed' the cap for the resources that were provided. Example: The way it works now, lets say you put in components for 1000 out of 2000 (cond/oq), and you have something like a 49-52% cap on what can be accomplished regardless of experiment points. Well the way its designed now an amazing success can just bring you to that cap faster, but doesnt allow you to 'exceed' your normal abilities, and the work you put into getting that success. What if amazing success could add 5-6% points AND increase the cap by that amount... That would bring about exceptional items and allow novice crafters to elivate there abilities for the extra money, resources, time they put into crafting.
  

Things I have noted from some posts from Devs:

• The munition line seems to be the **edit** stepchild at this point as I dont believe they serve any purpose yet, hopefully these will become more useful as vehicles are integrated. What I invision is they will probably start implementing ground vehicles like tanks and such (which will probably fall on the rebel side as it falls in more continuity with 'old technology' (rebels), vs new tech (imperials)...Hopefully with this these anti-vehicle munitions will be a powerful asset. I am curious what your opinions are.
  

[Recently Fixed] (Hooray!)

• Light Warhead Mechanism asks for Potential Energy but it seems none of the items required have any, so you end up with an item you cant experiment on.
  
  

Thanks to Everyone for contributing, its obvious we have a good community that is interested in making our class fun to play, and working as the design was intended.

Please help me out by adding on to this list, and I will keep it up to date. Thanks to everyone for adding on to this and your contributions.

Where are you supporting your opinion that Weaponsmiths receive too many critical failures? I'm not accusing you of misinformation, I'm just curious as to how in the hell so many Weaponsmiths would think as such, provided we're not confusing some Architect cross-post spamming in the WS boards again. We're all very blessed to not be Architects, and I think our crit fail rate is rather reasonable, if not too reasonable.

Anyway, Munitions line has vastly improved, grenades are absolutely fantastic compared to how they were before. It's a matter of passing this information through the player community so they identify grenades with being a good weapon, instead of bugged nonsense.

I'd like an addendum to the "stacking" components issue. Krayt tissues fall into this, as they go into Blaster Power-handlers. While this is not a problem for Launcher Pistols, Scatter Pistols, FWG5s and the like, it practically leaves no room for enhancements for much of the Riflemen and Carbineer professions. So, they are at a strong disadvantage, because for even a Laser Carbine, you need at least four Krayt Tissues (bearing no critical failures), all identical, just for the bonus of one of them. They should be removed from the handler enhancement slot and instead granted an enhancement slot directly on select weapons, to circumvent the need for multiple-identical tissues.

well done DarkCypher. I agree that there are few things a non-master weaponsmith can effectivly sell. But I would suggest selling WUKs to smugglers. At least it's something.

Logix .. I just discovered this... nasty ... my laser SHOULD do 468 IF the krayt enhancers stacked... it only does 408. VERY upset heheh ... please fix

On factories they are working much better but still a few bugs. If you forget to put an ingredient in or put the wrong one the factory will eat the needed amount of one item off the first resources before it gets to the missing one.

Example you put in the factory in this order

copper, ore, polymer, iron

and you need in this order on the schematic

1 copper, 1 ore,1 polymer, 1 gas, 1 iron

the factory will eat 1 copper 1 ore 1 polymerbut not the 1 iron because it will see the 1 gas is missing.

Here is an interesting bug that I have run into a few times.

-Start crafting a gun.
-Put three experimenting points into a stat.
-Click on experiment.
-Now you get lots of lag, and that "experimenting" msgbox stays on the screen for a while.
-Get bored, and click the "x" on the msgbox.
-the three points are still listed in the stat you selected before
-Click on experiment and get a successful experminent (meaning you didn't get stuck on the msgbox)
-Put three more experimentation points into a stat
-Click on experiment
WHAT??? The experiment button is greyed out, it won't let me click on it, even though I have three jewels green with experimentation points
-add another experimentation point or two into a stat, and the experiment button is now clickable
-cry because you have 2 experimentation points left, and after clicking on the stats you want to put those points into, the experiment button is still greyed out.


This has happened to me a couple of times, only when I do the above (close the msgbox while it's trying to experiment). To answer a few questions: I'm not a newb, been playing from day 1;I do know how experiment works, I have points in the right place; this always happens when I close the msgbox; I have not explicitly tried to make this happen, as I never wanted to waste the resources.

This is definetely not an urgent bug, or even an important one, as it can be easily bypassed. But I thought it might be worth mentioning.

Theros Ironfist BK
Master Weaponsmith

re: crafting station quality. While back I did extensive tests on this and posted. Here it is again. The executive summary is crafting station quality doesn't seem to matter (i didn't test crafting tool quality)

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Well, I wanted to find out of "good" crafting stations let me experiment any better than "bad" crafting station. So I ran a bunch of trials.

Executive summary: After 350 units produced, it appears that the quality of a crafting station either has NO effect on the quality of the output, or it has a REVERSE effect (where a good station results in WORSE output).

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Background: I'm a weaponsmith with tech4. My weapon assembly and weapon experimentation skill mods are both +75. I used 4 identical crafting tools, each with an effectiveness rating of 12.31.

I decided to grind and experiment on Gaderiffi batons. Complexity is 20. The primary attribute there is Shock Resistance. I made each one with 28 units of Kiirium steel (SR 558, Mall 63), and 20 units of Kammris Iron (SR 945, Mall 514). Since everytime I complete the initial assembly I got a 'great' or 'amazing' success, this meant that the base quality of every weapon was 18% before experimenting.

To experiment, I allocated all 7 points of experimentation into damage in one fell swoop. The listed risk was 17% (no matter which crafting station or tool I used). In terms of prose descriptions, when experimenting I got lots of 'moderate successes' and 'good successes'. I also got some 'failures', 'moderate failures', 'successes', and 'great successes'. (Of course, when I'm trying to make weapons to sell, I only concern myself with 'great successes'.)

All trials were conducted on Saturday August 23, and Sunday August 24.

THE SUCKY STATION (Functionality rating -12.846494, Day 1)

100 units attempted

3 critical failures on assembly (17.46% average initial assembly quality among all units)

Among surviving units, average experimented improvement was 27.1%.

Experiments included 9 'great successes', best single unit was experimented to +69% damage.

THE PUBLIC STATION (Rating unknown, next to bank in Keren, Naboo, Day 1)

100 units attempted

4 critical failures (17.28% average initial assembly quality)

Average experimented improvement among survivors: 27.3%

Experiments inluded 15 'great successes', best single unit was experimented to +67% damage.

THE UBER STATION (Rating +21.080246, Day 2)

100 units attempted

12 critical failures (15.84% average initial assembly quality). (3 of these crits followed immediately after a preceeding crit. So if you you want to be charitable, you could say it's only 9 crits)

Average experimented improvement among survivors: 25.9%

Experiments included only 4 'great successes', best single unit was +62% damage.

It's worth noting that the crafting *felt* really bad with this station, due to the high number of crits, and the low number of great successes when experimenting.

At this point, I began to worry that maybe i was going to have bad luck no matter what I did, so I busted out the crap station again:

THE SUCKY STATION (Functionality rating -12.846494, Day 1)

49 units attempted

0 critical failures (18% average initial assembly quality)

Experiments included 4 'great succeses', best unit was +68% damage.

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When I started this, I had the hypothesis that a +21 station would be 33% better than a -12 station. With the above results, if you compare experimented improvement, the 'good' station is about 4.5% worse than the 'bad' station.

To be honest I have no idea of what to make of the numbers. But I think I'm goinng to avoid the good station for now, if only because of the alarming number of critical failures during the trial.

PS - I only kinda-sorta kept track of 'amazing successes' on the initial build, since they don't have any impact on quality. The number of amazing successes seemed similar between the two stations.

PPS - it would have been useful to test this while my weapon assembly skill (and possibly tool quality) were worse, because if I ever got less than great succeses on initial assembly, it might shed more light on the situation.

Oh, one major gripe i've seen posted elsewhere (no personal experience with it), is that more advanced munitions take too **edit** long to produce. I assume this is because the complexity rating is high.

The gripe is mainly factory production time. This then trickles in to making heavy weapons sucky to produce. And not in a 'fun' way like requiring rare resources, or lots of resource, but just it in taking too much time.

Forgot one....

• When 'Canceling' a crafting session, sometimes you lose the components that were loaded into the schematic (power handlers, barrels, etc). This seems to happen only recently, and maybe it only occurs when you are at your inventory limit... not 100% sure yet.

Regarding the issue with factory crates, a pleasent YES, you are now able to load crates into the input hopper and factories will take out stuff. Yes, I have tried it and thank god this works. This makes working on all those higher level weapons a lot easier.

Iron does have a low conductivity.

I would like to add that as of now there doesn't seem to be any benefit from putting 1 expirementation point in every try or all of them at once. I've tried a few combinations for maybe 20-50 items (I know not a lot but should be enough to notice something), and I have had the same final results regardless of how the points were distributed.

Yah Rath I think that is by design ifI am understanding you right... for awhile alot of us took the mantra of doing like 3 max points, then run...at a time....now doesnt really matter, but it just lets you know if you got a good, or failure run in between those 3 pts... heck, I still do 3-4 pts at a time to make sure