Weaponsmith Archive

OK, so I'm bored waiting for the RotW. And like any respectable geek thats bored, I decided to write a vision statement for weaponsmiths. This is a first draft of course, but I figured you guys might get a kick out of it. It follow some of the new themes in the CU as far as scalability goes, and provides weaponsmiths of all skill levels to create marketable products. So here goes:

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Corey's Weaponsmith Vision Statement (tm)

The weaponsmith is a crafting profession focused on providing the best weapons avaiable in the game for all professions and combat levels. By utilizing their skills they are able to craft weapons to meet the specific demands of their customers. The are able to possess the knowledge to craft every weapon in the game, except those that require a religious or cultural knowledge unknow to the crafter, such as the rights followed by Wookies to craft their bowcasters or the mysterious techniques used by jedi to craft their unwieldy lightsabers.

A weaponsmith should be able to craft weapons appropriate to their equivalent combat level, without giving higher level crafters a skill set advantage to crafting. The weapons created should be balanced to different combat levels, but any weapon should be able to fill a niche, from asthetics to combat performance, thorughout all levels. Higher level crafters have access to more schematics, and can craft the highest combat level items, but have no inherent advantage crafting a low level weapon.

Key Notes:

Care should be taken to ensure that a novice's weapon is just as marketable as a weapon created by a master weaponsmith.

1. A single schematic should craftedable to a range of combat levels.


2. Each schematic should correspond appropriately to the weapon certification in the combat trees.


3. Looted components should be valuable across all levels of weapons, not just the highest levels.

Whereit is, and whereit should be

TheGood

Most all weapons found in the game can be crafted by a weaponsmiths.
At the highest levels, master made weapons from good components are very desirable form of advancement fro combat professions.
Theres a fair amount of variety across all levels of play in the game right now.

TheBad

Looted weapons of superior quality that weaponsmith made items, detract from the player ecomomy which has been one of SWG strengths.
Looted components are not very useful for lower level weapons.
Lower level players can not compete very well with established weaponsmiths.
At each combat tier per profession, there is only a couple of viable weapons avaiable for the players to use. You end up with every rifleman carrying a T21 or ALR, when things could be much better.

The Process

1. Crafters should select which schematic they wish to create.





1. You are basicly choosing the graphic and basic speed/base damage/elemental damage/SAC ratios here.



2. The basic schematic does not require very specific resources by themselves.



2. Select the combat level that it should be designed for.





1. Via a UI slection, or through the use of item which modiy the combat level requirment via advanced components, or number of components.



2. More advanced components can be used on lower level schematics to rasie the required combat level, and in doing so, raise its damage and tier to be equivalent to weapons useable at that tier.



3. Optional components for the final appearance, and performance





1. Scopes, custom stocks, camoflage, which may or may not effect performance.



4. Experimentation on speed, SAC, damage.





1. 4.1. The experimental values will still determine minimum and maxium stats.



2. 4.2. Overall Quality will determine the number of available point to experiment with.



3. 4.3. An average of resource stats will determine success rates.



5. Name and finish.

Notes: Experimentation points need to be reviewed, they should effect success rate, not give extra experimentation points.

Note on resources: Resources will need to have their ranges removed, since all attributes will effect the final product. A named resource rarity provides difficulty in finding good attribute values.

Message Edited by CraftAddict on 05-05-2005 04:08 AM

I would edit this post away before a Dev comes across it if I were you, it sounds like a call to make WS what AS has become today.... Trust me this is something you do not want...

next

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Asir_SWG wrote:
I would edit this post away before a Dev comes across it if I were you, it sounds like a call to make WS what AS has become today.... Trust me this is something you do not want...

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Armorsmithing had specific implementation problems with it that keep it from being great. I love not having to wear composite armor now to afford its protection is a good thing. Separating looks from functionality goes a long way to keeping character customization high, which was one of SWGs strongest points when released.

Theres also the fact that 12 experimentation is really skewing crafting in favor of the master. I removes a lot of the potential for new crafters to get on thier feet.

Being stuck with 2 oe 3 wepaons at master is unacceptable as well, there should be variety in looks and stats between different weapons, morso than there is today. There's a lot of potenital under the hood of this new system, that currently isn't possible.

Is there anything is particular you found a problem with? Why? What do you suggest?

A single schematic should craftedable to a range of combat levels.

That is shouting out 'can we please have weapon cores for each combat lvl, then just skin it with a different apperance' so that visually people are running around with different weapons - just the stats are all identical....

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CraftAddict wrote:

1. 4.3. An average of resource stats will determine success rates.

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Implementor wrote:
next

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/nod

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Asir_SWG wrote:

A single schematic should craftedable to a range of combat levels.

That is shouting out 'can we please have weapon cores for each combat lvl, then just skin it with a different apperance' so that visually people are running around with different weapons - just the stats are all identical....

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No the stat would be different, but the levels would be same. The schematic would determine the BaseDMG/elemental/speed/wound/SAC, and that ratio would scale to different combat levels based on the components used or level selected during crafting. You are right, it is much like armorsmithing, but the stats can vary quite a bit depending on how I made the "core", which determine what it will look like. But it is different in that you aren't going to get a weapon that looks like a tusken with the same stats as a T21.

I thought I made that clear enough in the original post. The schematic maintains the essense of the weapon, but you can scale that to different levels depending on the need.

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U-Exports wrote:

I personally don't like this idea about weaponsmithing being based on combat levels at all. That would mean that you'd have to be a good fighter just to craft good weapons for the higher levels... I'm not sure that would even be possible to master both the weaponsmith proffesion and to get a combat level of 80. And anyway, what would be the point of the whole weaponsmith tree? Or should it just be a box you check "weaponsmith" and then you have to grind a combat proffesion to get better at it? Nah, I don't like this idea.

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I don't understand what you are saying.

You would still be able to be a non-combatant in this system. I'm just mentioning the need to move weapons at the very least to levels in the trees to correspond to levels in the combat trees where these certs are given. Meaning a low level crafter can craft weapons Useable by low level combatants.

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rotezora wrote:

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Implementor wrote:
next

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/nod

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You both are very helpful, would you care to elaborate, or are you just trying to increase your post counts?

Message Edited by CraftAddict on 05-05-2005 07:03 AM