Greetings!

This week and most likely next week, we're going to talk about crafting.

You can find the question of the week in its original form here:
http://forums.play-earthrise.com/index.php?topic=4322.msg78118#msg78118

Q: Will there be ways to mass produce off schematics to make replicas of the rare, elite item? If so, what would be the limit? If not, what is in place to make crafting, not less time consuming, but less tedious?"
 
A: What makes an item extremely rare or "elite" could be one of many factors - Quality of used ingredients or Designs used along with the manufacturing Technology. Crafters can mass produce items that are "elite" due to their powerful Designs as long as they don't "wear off" their Designs. Each Design, upon creation either by a crafter or receiving it as a reputation reward from an Organization, comes with an Edge property. Once placed in a Technology, each time the attached Technology is used to manufacture an item, Design's Edge will drop. If Design's Edge reaches zero, the Design is no more usable and vacants its slot in the Technology. This limitation requires crafters to stock in Designs and limits the mass production of excess of powerful items. Access to "elite" items is constrained by the availability of Designs on the market. While Crafters will always keep the demand for Designs high, it depends on players who either provide resources for the Blueprinting process (the way Designs are created) or those who trade their reputation with Organizations to gain Designs as reward and sell it on the market, to support the economy with the means to create so called "Designer Items".

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And now, time for our Earthrise Fun Fact:
All shaders in ER are created from one uber-shader called Amber.

Amber is called that because all object shaders in Earthrise are but a shadow of the true capabilities of this one proto shader. The system that determines the correct 'shadow of Amber' that has to be compiled for some object is called Dworkin. This is a tribute to Roger Zelazny.

Tune in this Wednesday - we've got another Earthrise Fun Fact for you. Come follow us on Twitter to get the exclusive Fun Fact before it appears in the forums, but be sure to read QOTW to get more information.

Coming up next week, a little more about crafting. See you then!

~ m.

 

Am I understanding this correctly that "Edge" designs can be created by a crafter alone? Can a crafter create an "Edge" design without ever receiving an "Edge" design as a reward? Or is it that "Edge" designs only can only be received as a reward?

Wow, nice!

I think the same rthing and it makes me wonder how the resources that go into making a design affect it Edge.

Ick, "mass produced rare elite items". 
Can you say "oxymoron"?

I suppose it depends on where the true bottleneck in production lies.
If the bottleneck is in design availability, then that is where the value lies
and there will be great compeition for the materials to make designs.
(and faction mission runners will be rich). 
This means that the materials to actually make the items will tend to be less valued.

If the bottlenect ends up being the materials to make the items,
then the design simply becomes another hoop to jump through
and design prices will drop.

Sounds to me like the intent is to keep designs rare and the materials to
"mass produce rare elite items" will be widely available via territorial warfare.

That's how I see it as well.  Either the resources, the design or both will be the challenge in making a healthy production run of elite items.  I like this system, not only will resource availability factor into production, but so will design accrument.  This crafting system is sounding better and better.

"Elite" was just a word Moll pulled from the original question (notice it's always in quotes in the OP). I think it's just a stand in for "high end items" or other such similar terms.

I think you're taking "50/50" statement to literally. The point is that both the materials and the edge of the design are major factors.

Let's try to avoid semantic arguments.