Hi there,

We've got more crafting details for you this week!

As you know, the crafting system in Earthrise is fairly extensive set of mechanics that we have been developing for the last several years, and all examples and explanations provided along the development course have tried to reveal small tidbits of information to keep our fan-base updated (but at the same time providing information about other things besides just crafting). However, we do understand that the fragmented nature of crafting information can cause just a bit of confusion among some of our fans. This week we've worked out a (not very) short example to cover the whole process of crafting an item from the viewpoint of a common player in Earthrise - from gaining the resources to its final manufacturing. It's awfully long, but we wanted to include lots of rich details for you, our devoted fans to discuss. We'll be returning next week with the rest of it, but hope you enjoy part one!

(Keep in mind however that the following example is provided only to illustrate the crafting process in further detail. Names of resources, ingredients and final items and values of any kind are likely to be changed as we continue testing, tweaking, and gathering feedback during our closed beta. With any system we present here, or elsewhere, it is also possible that some things may have changed or evolved from initial comments on our crafting system and will continue to evolve, and as presented, this is where the system currently stands in development.)
 

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THE PLAN
 
Tim is an Earthrise player who is planning to create his first Assault Rifle Mk3 specifically tailored for killing off Burzun mutants. The basic assault rifle is going to be enhanced with two Designs providing additional damage and chemical compounds that slow down and paralyze the enemy before he could get a chance to cut the distance.
 
THE SKILLS
 
If Tim is to create the Assault Rifle Mk3 from raw resources, he must learn a required number of skills. It costs money to pay for education to add the skill to his repertoire, and some experience in the crafting field that allows Tim to unlock Technologies required for creating items on every step of the technological chain. Each skill has 10 ranks, and each rank provides access to a Technology to create an item.

Assault Rifle Mk3 requires that Tim has learned the Portable Ranged Weapons skill at rank 3. Every standard issue Assault Rifle Mk3 is made of two modules - Rifle Frame RF-2000 and Small Pulse Generator. To manufacture them, Tim must learn the skills associated with each module. Rifle Frame RF-2000 requires Compound Ranged Engineering skill at rank 2, and Small Pulse Generator requires Pulse Weapons skill at rank 3. Because each of the modules is made of raw resources, if Tim were to gather those resources from parts collected by killed enemies, he would need Recycling Skills - Alloy Metallurgy for recycling metallic resources and Synthetic Transformation for recycling synthetic resources. Tim plans to add Designs to the Technology, and he must have access to the following Technologies used to create Design Blueprints - Organic Skin Piercing (for dealing more damage to mutants, requiring Combat Prototyping skill at rank 3) and Necroskeletal Paralysis (for slowing down Burzuns and similar mutants,  requiring Mutant Tactical Analysis skill at rank 2). In total, Tim must learn up to 7 skills to be able to create the Assault Rifle Mk3 all on his own with the two desired Designs.

In Earthrise, knowing all the skills required to make an item from scratch is a serious investment of money and time. Often players will seek out to specialize in a specific niche of the whole manufacturing process - making the best Small Pulse Generators on the market, for example. In a real setting, Tim would have to seek out other crafters or use the global market to outsource or purchase directly the ingredients he needs rather than spend time to learn how to do them on his own. But Tim is our guinea pig, so he will do all the work on his own!
 
GATHERING PARTS
 
After securing skills at required ranks, it's time to hunt down ingredients.

Assault Rifle Mk3 is made of Rifle Frame RF-2000 and Small Pulse Generator, and Organic Skin Piercing and Necroskeletal Paralysis designs. Rifle Frame RF-2000 is made of 25 units of Refined Metal, 5 units of Conductive Material. Small Pulse Generator is made of 12 units of Conductive Material and 8 units of Voltaic Load. Summed together, the basic module requirements are 25 Refined Metal, 17 Conductive Material and 8 Voltaic Load. That's quite a list!

Engineering of Thick Hide Piercing and Necroskeletal Paralysis designs requires a different sort of ingredients that Tim will have to experiment on. Thick Hide Piercing requires 70 Thick Hide (collected from thick-skinned mutants throughout Enterra's mutant infested grounds), and Necroskeletal Paralysis requires 400 Burzun DNA (extracted from Burzun item drops, collected from all Burzun-named mutants). Tim plans to gather some of these resources by killing opponents and recycling parts gathered from their remains, while others will come from protecting certain mines on the island of Enterra from mutant threat. Tim locates group of rebellious robots that he destroys gathering their metallic limbs and mainframe wiring for recycling. He also visits a Voltaic Mine that is attached by constant waves of mutants aggravated by the mine's activities. For his support in securing human control over the mine, he receives tokens traded for Voltaic Load. While fighting for securing the Mine's operations is a risky business, it spared him the grind of collecting Voltaic Load. Finally, Tim visits the dangerous Burzun breeding grounds. Killing off Burzun monsters, Tim collects required amounts of Thick Hides (as Burzun's are thick-skinned mutants) and Burzun Rotting Meat and Burzun Legs. He will later on extract Burzun DNA from the latter body parts.
 
RECYCLING RESOURCES
 
The required amount of Voltaic Load is secured but Tim must go through recycling process to strip Refined Metal and Conductive Material from those robotic limbs and wiring he has amassed. Tim plans the Metallic Recycling and Synthetic Recycling processes at a local Factory. Not every Factory provides all recycling processes. He has to explore for a while before he finds a Factory that covers both processes. The Recycling process attempts to extract raw resources from collected parts but depending on player's skill, a fraction of the contained resources cannot be extracted and are lost in the process. Tim uses the Recycle process to break Robotic Limbs. Each Robotic Limb contains 10 Refined Metal and 5 Conductive Material, but because Tim's rank in Allow Metallurgy is low (at rank 2), the factory calculates that projected losses from the contained resources would be 8 Refined Metal and 4 Conductive Material, leaving Tim with estimated recycle gain of 2 Refined Metal and 1 Conductive Material per recycled Robotic Limb. Tim tries to recycle Mainframe Wiring next. Each Mainframe Wiring contains 10 Conductive Material, but because Tim's rank in Synthetic Transformation is even worse (at rank 1), Tim loses 9 Conductive Material out of 10, leaving him with a measly 1 Conductive Material per recycled part. Luckily, he had collected enough of both drops to secure the required amounts of resources needed for the manufacturing of the rifle modules. What about the Designs? Because this Factory does not contain any Production Units that process organic matter, Tim cannot work with his organic parts. He visits a nearby Bio-laboratory, a Factory specialized in organic matter. There Tim can recycle Burzun Rotting Meat and Burzun Legs to Burzun DNA. Burzun Rotting Meat contains 20 units of Burzun DNA, while Burzun Legs contains 5 units of Burzun DNA. The process is same as recycling non-organic items - because Tim's skill at Advanced Biogenetics is exemplary (at rank 10) he will not lose any DNA while recycling organic tissue. He gains 400 Burzun DNA out of 16 Burzun Rotting Meat and 16 Burzun Legs.
 
Tim's first work with recycling at Factory reveals to him the Quality mechanics in Earthrise. Each item in Earthrise has a Quality Level properly, a value between 1 and 5. Each resource inherits the Quality of the items it has been produced from, but depending on the player's skill level and the provided tech assistance of the Factory, there's a chance that the Quality Level of the produced items may deteriorate or improve. Tim's Metallic Limbs were Quality 2 (worse than average) and units of Unrefined Metal and Conductive Materials recycled from them also have Quality 2, yet due to sheer luck Tim has managed to make 5 units of Conductive Material with Quality 3 (Average). Tim's Mainframe Wiring had Quality 5 (excellent premium quality) and units of Conductive Material inherit that value; while the quality could not improve further, due to unexpected manufacturing malfunction 2 units of Conductive Material had their Quality lowered to 4. Tim's Thick Hides are at Quality 4 and Tim's Burzun DNA is as follows: 320 at Quality 3, 40 at Quality 4 and 40 at Quality 5.
 
Next week we will continue Tim's crafting example into the fields of Manufacturing and Disassembly. Tim's got a bit of work ahead of him, but as you can see he's off to a great start.

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Last week's Earthrise Fun Fact:
Flooid was first designed for another element of the game, but reworked a bit into the final form you hear today.

Stay tuned for a new fact this week!
~ m.

Seems straightforward enough. As far as recycling goes a constant rate of returns at 10% per skill level with the chance for each recycling process to yield greater or lesser quality materials. Will be good to find out later whether higher skills in that particular area increase the chance of higher quality. IE does a rank 9 Alloy Metallurgy have a higher chance of getting the higher quality returns than a rank 2? A nice aspect of the recycling would be the apparent system where a factory calculates your returns without actually needing to process materials, allowing players to shop around for their best returns. It will be interesting to hear how player-built factories at guild territories are structured in terms to specializing and quality control.

I'm curious if this means experimentation is needed to actually find out what said designs are needed, or simply refers to learning the skill on the character in question. If its the latter and all skills required for an item are displayed I wonder what sort of system they have in mind for displaying the required skills to help crafters track down people who can handle the other needed components. (I truly hope they won't rely on a 'Trade' channel for communication between crafters)

Thanks for the great QOTW, this answers a lot of questions!

But... (and there's always a but isn't there?)

... the way this crafting system is laid out in this QOTW and hinted at in a few others is that it goal driven - you need to know what your final products is (or what niche you want to occupy) and work backwards. Is this the intended design philosophy you wanted to convey?

For example, I'm personally surprised that a basic Assault Rifle enhanced with hide piercing and chemical paralysis has a predefined designator: an Assault Rifle MK3 as if its a known entity.

Is there a recipe framework that lays out all the possible combinations of designs and items, or are we free to experiment with the number and type of designs we add to items when creating them?

Furthermore, in view of Chibi's comments today in the crafting comprehension poll, are we free to add additional modules like a Scope ad hoc, or is there a recipe system that restricts what can be added to an item?

Or in contrast, are we free to look into our backpack, note that we have a rifle frame, a pulse generator, a scope, and a targetting system, and play at combining them together to see what it creates?


Here are a couple other points of interest:


Interesting. I wonder if this holds true for combat skills as well.


I get this, but where are these Technologies in the rest of the example? Are the frame and the generator each a technology and the prodcut of combining them into an assualt rifle a third technology?


I'm surprised to see that there's the possibility that the crafting system includes hard lock outs. My preference is that anyone is free to try to crafting any portable ranged weapon once they have acquired the skill but the lower one's skill the more likely they are to fail or create a lower quality item, more so for items that are more difficult (similar to how the recycling skills were presented).


How do combines work with this? For example, are we free to substitute the refined metal for any combine that includes refined metal? Does using combines still create a Rifle Frame RF-2000 and correspondingly an Assault Rifle MK3?

What design philosophy doesn't start with the goal of the end product??

Tim is building a MK3 tailored for that purpose with those additions. It's pretty clear from the first section that the basic design, the MK3, is being enhanced with the paralysis and hide piercing.

But that brings up another question, what is the final product named? Do you leave it as "Assault Rifle MK3" and players have to look through the states to see the additions?

I know you don't like it when, but this sounds alot like the system of Tech 2 or Tech 3 production in EvE Online 

It has been stated that designs are optional, so you should be able to construct the basic rifle alone.


During an interview it was mentioned that there would be 4 slots for designs in a technology.

I am grateful for this explanation of the crafting process.
It really helps.

(now for the ingratitude).
I hope next week's installment talks a little about how and where Tim is gaining experience in this whole process.
Did he get it in the salvaging process?  or does he have to wait till assembly?

Hmm 4 you say, k, that probably adds up to alot, but I know I'll always be thinking, "Ooh, if I had one more slot, I could make the gun do this" XD.

 But  going back to the experimentation, I don't think  it's like the EVE's (sorry..) blueprints, where you have to have an object that lets you make an object - as in you can experiment, or if you know what you want to make, just make it from your knowledge. You are making the mold not making by the mold essentially.... I think... right? ...please...?

It seems like you find a place that will let you just combine two objects, and the outcome is what it is.

Edit @Xyleya: Oh, got it - barely familiar with Eve T3 system, had to look some stuff up (In response to your next post >.> - didn't want to add an extra side discussion post in here)