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Post by ganondorf on Aug 4, 2014 9:09:28 GMT -8
I'll be the very first to admit I haven't looked much into the new crafting system, so Crafters, please correct me if I'm wrong in any of this.
I've got a few issues and questions I'd like to bring up regarding Fleet Crafting, and find out what you guys think...
The first one might be a deal-breaker on the whole notion of having Fleet Crafters, so I think it'd be better to know right now if this is an issue. Does anyone know if the later stage craftable ultra-rare items will be bound to account or bound to character? I assume they'll be tradable (hence the new ultra-rare category in the Exchange), but I'd really rather know now before we get too far into this.
Second, (assuming these items are tradable), how will we go about trading the requisite dilithium from the person who wants the item to the Crafter? Back at Memory Alpha, the uncommon unreplicatable materials served as the intermediary. People would buy those materials with dilithium, trade them to the Crafter, and the Crafter would use the research items in the fleet bank, do some witchcraft, and hand out an Aegis ship set. Do you Crafters know of a way we can get around this problem? Dilithium itself is not tradable, nor is Zen. One obvious possibility is that the Crafter might simply use his own dilithium to cover the cost, and the buyer would be expected to make up the difference in the next Dilithium Surge event. Any other ideas?
Third - and this may end up solving the second problem and to a lesser degree, maybe the first - what do you Crafters think about splitting up the duties of Fleet Crafting among the fleet at large? We may be able to each take responsibility for one school (or two, or three, and have some overlap so if one fleet member leaves we don't suddenly lose the ability to craft beam arrays, for instance). Under this scenario, the official Fleet Crafters might still be leveling up intensely in every school while the rest of us specialize in a few.
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Post by ryvaken on Aug 5, 2014 8:09:36 GMT -8
First: We're good. Bound on equip for everything I've bothered to look at.
Second: All dilithium costs are bound up in tradable components...the problem is that those components are themselves crafted, and they all need tier 5 crafting. This gets...complicated.
Third: Specialization is actually more expensive than generalization.
Okay, the complicated bits.
The new system has three different types of crafting assignments. Craft an item to use, craft a component, and gain bonus crafting experience. Each assignment can be in use only once at a time, no matter how many research slots are unlocked, although you can run bonus experience in multiple schools simultaneously. This allows for easy generalization, just run a bunch of bonus experience and you'll level up 2-4 schools at a moderate pace for basically no cost. To level a school faster means dedicating actual play time and cost in materials to building stuff. Without spending dilithium this can easily double the rate of XP in one school, and that's a low estimate. But the cost is much higher, both in material resources and player attention.
Additionally, and this is a way all non-crafters can help out, there's a special duty officer assignment available from the personnel officer at the Academies. This assignment is with the recruitment lists and costs 1000 dilithium to run, and it generates components and rarely duty officers. THESE OFFICERS ARE NEEDED TO RUN THE BEST CRAFTING ASSIGNMENTS. Additionally, the components generated often cost more dilithium than the cost to run the assignment. This is a bargain and should be run regularly by anyone that wants to commission a crafter.
Now, let's ignore the mechanics a moment and ask two things: what can a client expect from the crafter, and what should the client provide?
Expected return:
Let's be clear that the results of crafting are random. The crafter can control the mark and type of the item (IE, Mark 10 resilient shield versus Mark 12 regenerating shield), but not the rarity or the modifiers applied to it. The maximum rarity of a normal item is purple. A top-tier item maxes out at ultraviolet. Expecting such high results, however, is foolish. These are critical successes, not reliable products. And there's no guarantee that the results will be beneficial to your build.
Expenses:
You can bring up the crafting window for anything, even if you yourself can't craft it, so the list of ingredients is always available.
Raw materials of white and green quality are sufficiently abundant not to worry about. Blues can likely be found in the fleet bank.
White, green, and blue components don't cost dilithium can be made by anyone in a few seconds, but they award R&D experience which the crafter may value The client should offer to make these himself and offer any that he has in inventory.
Purples materials should be provided by the client in most cases. These are generated by specific elite PvE queues. For example, all space-based Borg queues, elite STFs, can reward Trellium-K. Elite ground STFs can reward Plekton Particles. There are a total of six rare materials generated in such fashions.
Purple components cost dilithium and are a critical issue. They require TIER 5 to craft at all, which is an easy hurdle, but the high-tier crafter has a much better chance of getting a critical success and these components have a good experience return. The client can be reasonably expected to reach tier 5 and craft these himself, but the crafter can suggest alternate arrangements.
The crafter should never be expected to use his own catalysts for the benefit of a client.
A client should at least consider lending a duty officer that enhances the end result of crafting the desired item, if the crafter doesn't have a high quality DOFF of the appropriate type. By the same token, fleet crafters should prioritize obtaining such DOFFs.
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Post by ryvaken on Aug 5, 2014 8:15:26 GMT -8
Oh, forgot to add. There are seven dilithium-costing components.
Cheap (500 dilithium per craft): Isolinear Circuitry (from Beams, Cannons, and Ground Weaponry), Warp Field Regulator (from Engineering and Projectiles), and Emitter Array (from Science and Shields)
Expensive (2000 dilithium I think): Isolinear Chip (from Beams and Cannons), Intermix Chamber (from Engineering and Projectiles), Particle Alignment Matrix (from Ground Weapons only), and Signal Enhancement Module (from Science and Shields)
This means that to craft any component in the game a player only needs tier 5 in four fields:
Beams OR Cannons
Ground Weapons
Engineering OR Projectiles
Science OR Shields
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Post by ryvaken on Aug 5, 2014 12:30:14 GMT -8
On a related note, we should probably try to compile a list of where rare materials can be found. The anomaly scanning of the old system seems to have been replaced with material deposits, deposits which are set rather than random. Missions with easily accessible rare deposits could be very valuable.
The rare materials are Rubidium, Tetrazine Gas, Beta-Tachyon Particle, and Z Particle.
Of course anyone that does elite queues will get a fair number of random rare particles and the following very rare particles
Dentarium: Elite Undine ground queues
Argonite Gas: Elite Undine space queues
Plekton Particle: Elite Ground STFs
Trellium-K: Elite Space STFs
Craylon Gas: Elite ground Tholian and Romulan queues
Radiogenic Particle: Elite Crystalline Catastrophe
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Post by ganondorf on Aug 5, 2014 15:33:26 GMT -8
Thanks for the great analysis. This answered everything I've been wondering. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the way I'm seeing things going down...
All fleet members who wish to obtain items from our crafters will...
1. Reach Tier 5 in Crafting skill themselves in Beams or Cannons, Ground Weapons, Engineering or Projectiles, and Science or Shields.
2. Craft his or her own components and obtain catalysts using their own dilithium through the R&D tab.
3. Obtain their own very rare particles from elite missions, and consider picking up doffs from the Academy.
Seems reasonable to me!
On a somewhat related note, I wonder if we might make an event out of harvesting these very rare particles for the fleet. Some of those missions are much more difficult than others. I think we'd do well to enter into them as a coordinated unit, as opposed to PUGing it and hoping for the best.
I'm noticing a pattern forming that we might enter into... Dyson BZ, Undine Ground, Nukara Hard, STFE Ground, Defera Hards (if fleet marks needed) then up into space for STFE, CC, and Undine Space. It'd be busy, but so productive. Mmm productivity.
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Post by ryvaken on Aug 5, 2014 16:18:35 GMT -8
Unless we're grinding dilithium, we can skip the battlezones. Defera likewise provides no crafting materials. Nukara does, since it's a queue now. The elite queues, specifically, award 25 materials: 5 common only, 10 common or better, 7 uncommon or better, and 3 rare or better. Each material is chosen individually at random, rather than in blocks. (So the 3 rare or better materials could be 2 different rares and the very rare, for example, not 3 of the same material). Since only the very rare is preset by queue type, any such run is going to produce a wide variety of lesser materials to keep our crafters funded.
I've taken to grinding crafts for XP so I can add a few things to that analysis.
First, very rare components aren't a factor until mark 11 gear, and that's only one 500 dilithium component. Mark 12 becomes expensive, to say nothing of the end game tier gear.
By corollary, very rare materials are not needed for anything but crafting very rare components.
Second, mark 10 gear takes 3 hours per craft. This can be accelerated with dilithium but I think we can all agree that's dumb.
Third, you see the results of a craft at the start of the countdown, not the end. So the crafter can tell his client "in three hours I'll have a piece of junk for you" if the dice go wrong.
One thing this means is that all lower level characters in the fleet can start asking for consoles and weapon types of any mark below 11 and I, for one, welcome the opportunity to earn XP while providing a useful service.
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