Hi there!

Last week, we took off on a tour across the expansive crafting system in Earthrise and what exciting feedback we got along the road! All of our design team is happy to see that our community has enjoyed the look so far at what the game will offer to boost its player-driven economy to a new level. Now it is time for part two.

Tim is ready to create his weapon from all the resources he has collected from recycled Parts. The next logical step is to start manufacturing the Assault Rifle Mk3, as well as preparing the Designs that will tailor the weapon to his needs. As an extra, we’ll also show an example of the Disassembly process where Tim will prepare himself to move on to higher, more advanced technology without having to start from scratch.

(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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MANUFACTURING PARTS

Tim has everything needed to create the modules that form the Assault Rifle Mk3 - Rifle Frame RF-2000 and Small Pulse Generator. Each module and the final item as well require that Tim locates a Factory that contains two exact Production Units. Each Factory in Earthrise contains 8 Production Units, and their combinations reveal what types of items can be manufactured there. While Recycling is fairly common in almost all factories, manufacturing requires that Tim finds a Factory with two specific Production Units required by the Rifle Frame and for the Small Pulse Generator. Tim's task is further complicated by the fact that each Production Unit has a Level between 1 and 5. The higher the level, the more advanced is the Production Unit and the better odds are for successful Manufacturing, including coming up with premium items with better Quality. So while several Factories may provide the machinery needed to produce Rifle Frame RF-2000, it's in Tim's best interest to find the one that contains the highest-ranked Production Units. This requires a fair amount of exploration and planning from power crafters, but once Tim consults with other players and travels along, he finds the best suited factory for his needs.

The Manufacturing Process is fairly simple as well. Tim provides all required ingredients by the Technology. Each Technology has a Difficulty property that lowers the chance of successful Manufacturing. Using higher quality ingredients and choosing a factory with high-tech Production Units can help offset the Difficulty and minimize the risk of manufacturing malfunction. Tim uses the ingredients required to manufacture Rifle Frame RF-2000 and the result is a success, but missing the slim chance of coming up with premium quality item of Quality 4. The result is Rifle Frame RF-2000 at Quality 3. Tim is about to manufacture Small Pulse Generator when he is approached by his friend, Damon. Damon tells Tim that Small Pulse Generator has a technical quirk - it allows to use Hyperconductors as a substitute in place of the required Conductive Material, as long as amounts are the same. If he chooses to do so, he may get a massive boost in his crafting chance for coming up with better manufactured items. The substitutes, called Combines, are alloy resources made by combining amounts of two raw resources via Manufacturing. Damon offers Tim to sell him Hyperconductors and Tim takes him on the opportunity. When manufacturing Small Pulse Generators, Tim puts Hyperconductors instead of Small Pulse Generator. He gets huge boost of his manufacturing chance and it allows him to produce a premium quality Small Pulse Generator of Quality 5.

Now that the basic modules for the Assault Rifle Mk3 are ready at hand, Tim decides to work on the Designs. Design Experimentation differs from Manufacturing modules because it requires comparably larger amounts of ingredients and therefore Tim had to work harder to acquire them compared to the basic modules for his rifle, but only a portion of those ingredients will be destroyed in the process with remaining ingredients risking a chance of lowering their Quality. Similar to Manufacturing modules, Designs have Difficulty that must be offset by using high quality ingredients at the Factory with best Production Units. Tim experiments on 70 Thick Hides in order to come up with Organic Skin Piercing Design. The experiment is successful and he is awarded an Organic Skin Piercing Blueprint (physical item in his inventory) with an Edge property of 95. All Design Blueprint will have a property called Edge calculated based on the average quality of experimented on items and the successful outcome of the experiment. Edge is a measure of how many times the Design can be used once it is placed into a Technology - once used on a Technology, Tim's Organic Skin Piercing Blueprint can be used to create 95 items with the design's enhancement bonuses before the Design becomes unusable and is destroyed. Out of all Thick Hides used for experiment, some are destroyed, some lose 1 level of Quality and others return to Tim's inventory intact for future experimentation. Tim also uses 400 Burzun DNA to experiment on to come up with Necroskeletal Paralysis. But this time it is a failure! He doesn't come up with anything, and this time the majority of Burzun DNA is destroyed, and the rest lose 1 point of Quality. Tim simply cannot repeat the experiment without acquiring more DNA, so he decides to head for the Global Market and buy a Necroskeletal Paralysis Design Blueprint from another player. This one has just a short-term Edge because the other Player has almost spent it out for his own personal crafting - only 7 points but even one point is enough for creating the weapon Tim envisions.

MANUFACTURING THE RIFLE

Tim has to find the best Factory with the best Production Units suited for mid-grade weaponry such at the Assault Rifle Mk3. Before Tim starts Manufacturing the rifle, Tim must also place the two Design Blueprints from his inventory "into" his Assault Rifle Technology. This process will destroy the Design Blueprint and its enhancement bonus will become part of the items that are manufactured using the Technology. Each time the Technology is used to create an item, all Designs placed in it will lose 1 point of Edge. Tim can later on "remove" the Designs from the Technology, which will return them as Blueprint items in his inventory but the removal process also lowers the Edge value of every removed Design. Right now, Tim places both Organic Skin Piercing Blueprint and Necroskeletal Paralysis Blueprint into the Assault Rifle Mk3 Technology. Now if Tim manufactures an Assault Rifle Mk3, it will carry on all enhancement bonuses provided by the two Designs. Tim starts Manufacturing the final item. Using one unit of Rifle Frame RF-2000 and Small Pulse Generator as ingredients, he has an Average Quality of 4. Because the Production Units have high Levels and the Difficulty of the Rifle is about average, he is almost guaranteed a success. At the end of the process Tim receives at last his desired Assault Rifle Mk3 at Quality 4! As the Quality of the rifle is above average value of 3, it receives tiny bonuses to certain properties such as damage and durability which makes it last longer than usual rifles in constant use.

EVENTUALLY, TIM HAS TO MOVE ON…. (THE DISASSEMBLY PROCESS)

Tim is rapidly advancing his character and no matter how much love and effort he put into his personal "Burzun Exterminator" rifle, it's getting old and he has to move on. Luckily, the Assault Rifle Mk5 he envisions as the perfect weapon for his level of advancement will not require him to go through the whole process of manufacturing every required module. It requires Enforced Nano Frame NF-550 and Small Pulse Generator. If Tim were to disassemble his old Assault Rifle Mk3 and reuse the Small Pulse Generator, he would cut the effort in half. Tim visits a nearby Factory where he can use his Structural Analysis skill at Rank 5 to disassemble Metallic Items such as the Assault Rifle Mk3. If he did not know the Technology required for the manufacturing of the disassembled item, Tim could have received a significant penalty. But because Tim is the manufacturer of the weapon, he sure knows the Technology used to make it. His disassembling is a success, and a critical one! Usually, when an item is disassembled, resulting parts inherits the quality of the disassembled item. His Small Pulse Generator would have ended Quality 4, but because he made a critical success it has a chance of coming out at Quality 5 which it does! Rifle Frame RF-2000 if not so lucky, and remains at Quality 4. Tim can now reuse the Small Pulse Generator in his next crafting project. What about the Rifle Frame RF-2000? He won't throw it away! Tim can further disassemble the Rifle Frame RF-2000 to its ingredients, Refined Metal and Conductive Material.

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We hope you now have a good idea of how the crafting process works, and we'll be sure to return to this topic in a future QOTW to discuss things in further detail and answer further questions you may have. Feel free to discuss the entire system below, and post any new questions you might specifically want us to highlight in our QOTW thread.

 Last week's Earthrise Fun Fact:
There are 51 music tracks composed for Earthrise so far. (And while you've heard a few of them, keep in mind this means there are many more just waiting for you in the world!)

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

Glad to finally see how this ends. Nice little bonus with the deconstruction of items as well.

It's definitely complex, but we must keep in mind that this scenario is a character who has spent massive amounts of time getting to the point where he can do it all on his own. All of these steps will not be possible for one person for quite some time. We will specialize in different areas, at first, and work together with other people who focus on those other areas (for a while it seems).

I'm going to read again to make sure I'm understanding it all, but it's definitely sounding complex and very interactive.

BRB later on when I've had a chance to fully digest.

I expect that there will be a minimal loss rate. 

If it is 50% per assemble/dissasemble cycle
then it limits the value of quality steps.
So, if quality 1 "stuff" costs 1 credit then if a skilled player can always turn
that stuff into quality 2 "stuff" at a cost of half the materials, then quality 2 stuff
will tend towards 2 credits each.  and therefore 4 credits for quality 3.

I think you're expecting too much at once. This system is light years ahead of most, progress on such things is gradual.

I agree with this concern. A salvage crit shouldn't raise an item's quality, it should keep it the same. A good result is lowering quality by 1, typical is lowering it by 2. And how do the components not lose quality over even if the gun itself is losing quality?

Sorry Ael but I can't figure out what you're describing. The point was raised with respect to the disassembly and reassembly of modules. No resources are consumed in either process. Nor do I understand where the credit costs are coming from.


Hyperconductors went into the small pulse generator, not the rifle frame so no surprises here.


Hmm, am I correct in paraphrasing this as "other games have had poor crafting systems therefore my expectations should be lower"? That doesn't fly with me. I'm don't think some rotten apples in the crafting barrel should be grounds for another developer to not strive for a great crafting system.

9 years since the launch of SWG and I still haven't seen a game approach, let alone supercede, the creativity and fun one can have crafting. 9 years! I wish things would have gotten better in nearly a decade.


Ya, its a interesting mechanic considering they previously said that any disassembly or recycling produced products at a level of quality lower than the source. Oh to have been a fly on the wall during whatever beta discussions resulted in this change.

Yes quite possibly but my first instinct is to assume that a failure only produces a module at a lower quality than the source item. Perhaps a critical failure would consume something. However thats the reason I specified "until they burn out the modules or  max out their quality" - it seems like there are two possible end conditions to a repetitive cycle of disassambly and reassembly; high quality items or nothing.

We will have to keep an eye on the ingame math to make sure the risk of loss be a sufficient deterent, otherwise some specific min-max character build could lead to a profitablly consistent production of high quality modules or assemblies. Since such a cycling could foreseeably allow someone to risk the cost of a quality one item to gain quality 5 modules or assembly. Considering that there's going to be a cost difference, a player could lose some number quality 1 items and still make a profit producing the occasional quality 5 item.

This actually reminds me of SWG's crafting system.  If I recall correctly, SWG was all about the quality of the resource for the quality of the item.  The quality of your tool and crafting machine improved your chances of success with experimentation and thus your final item.

SWG had experimentation points, but this seems to be replaced with the ability to get a critical success through use of quality production items (high-level factory, combines, etc.)

Even designs seem to mimic how in SWG you could add on a scope or a stock to a rifle, however designs seem to be more versatile.

The only thing that SWG had differently (although it has not been confirmed that ER has this or not) is the ability to choose between different like modules.  Most sub-components in SWG had "Advanced" counterparts.

But overall ER seems to mimic the SWG crafting system pretty well.