Engineer weapon crafting needs to be rethought (if what we suspect is true)

[DrBo42]

As it looks in the livestreams/newsletters every aspect of a weapon augmentation is determined in 1 player roll. You can re-roll 10 times to get the perfect primary stats but your secondary stats might be terrible. On top of that, you could get the special effect on the weapon you wanted, an effect you don't want, or nothing at all. This is all too much to randomize in 1 roll, FD. Unless you have a system in place to further re-roll an engineer augmented weapon for higher costs.

Now you can look at that and say "Okay, well I guess I can live with 3 RNG rolls within the 1 attempt." Which you really shouldn't by the way but it gets worse. Now you have to remember you have 2 or more of those weapons to craft for the rest of your matching hardpoints. At the end of your rolling you have identical types of weapons with varying range, power draw, damage, even effects. The current system does not appear suitable for outfitting more than 1 weapon class ex: crafting the 1 huge weapon on your FDL works great...but the 4 weapons on top will all have different stats.

If you don't want us to lose our minds, we need some sort of batch function. So if I have 4 large multi-cannons I want to put on a ship, let me roll them all together so they at least match. Or implement some sort of cloning function.

 

[Lightspeed]

You make a good point. We shall have to see how it is in beta, I suppose. But there might be advantages in having a spread of weapon enhancements across our armory, rather than having them all do precisely the same thing.

 

[cluelessforumuser65578]

having to upgrade one weapon at a time is the only thing that disappoints me, if youve got the matts and 4 weapons of the same type and size, it would be nice if you could apply the upgrade to all of them

 

[Wylie28]

We don't really know how it works as we have seen 1 video of it and if its that big of a problem to you don't use it

 

[SirAdelaide]

Especially since we still only have 2 fire triggers. Lasers on 1 and heavy weapons on 2 means the heal laser gets fired along with the normal lasers.

 

[Henri]

Especially since we still only have 2 fire triggers. Lasers on 1 and heavy weapons on 2 means the heal laser gets fired along with the normal lasers.

heh! that had not occurred to me

 

[Kaocraft]

Especially since we still only have 2 fire triggers. Lasers on 1 and heavy weapons on 2 means the heal laser gets fired along with the normal lasers.

Doesn't matter. The heal laser acts as a normal laser unless you fire it at a wingmate.

 

[Loskene]

Doesn't matter. The heal laser acts as a normal laser unless you fire it at a wingmate.

Yeah but the normal lasers still act as a normal laser when you're trying to heal your wingmate.

 

[vrseven]

FD really needs to leave out the crafting part. A commander gets contacted by an engineer to meet at his or her base and to bring X materials so the engineer can perform upgrades to modules. Simple. Unless the engineer is TEACHING me how to become an engineer myself, there should be no crafting aspect in ED. This random, unknown, or last minute surprise reward stuff sucks. Didnt FD learn from the Community Goal efforts? Tell us what the reward is so we can get it as it is advertised OR not, if not interested the reward. Again, simple.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

FD really needs to leave out the crafting part. A commander gets contacted by an engineer to meet at his or her base and to bring X materials so the engineer can perform upgrades to modules. Simple. Unless the engineer is TEACHING me how to become an engineer myself, there should be no crafting aspect in ED. This random, unknown, or last minute surprise reward stuff sucks. Didnt FD learn from the Community Goal efforts? Tell us what the reward is so we can get it as it is advertised OR not, if not interested the reward. Again, simple.

Then don't use it.....see, easy fixed.

 

[Grumpy181155]

FD really needs to leave out the crafting part. A commander gets contacted by an engineer to meet at his or her base and to bring X materials so the engineer can perform upgrades to modules. Simple. Unless the engineer is TEACHING me how to become an engineer myself, there should be no crafting aspect in ED. This random, unknown, or last minute surprise reward stuff sucks. Didnt FD learn from the Community Goal efforts? Tell us what the reward is so we can get it as it is advertised OR not, if not interested the reward. Again, simple.

I agree. An engineer should be able to craft an item to the same specifications EVERY time. If not then then they aren't engineers but instead are magicians or medicine men dealing in magic.

 

[Tinman]

I agree. An engineer should be able to craft an item to the same specifications EVERY time. If not then then they aren't engineers but instead are magicians or medicine men dealing in magic.

Heard about process variation?

Here you go:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_variation_(semiconductor)

If you still want to go with a fantasy analogy (magic/medicine men) use blacksmiths instead. A blacksmith will be able to make a sword of a certain quality, but there will still be variation between the swords.

 

[vrseven]

I agree. An engineer should be able to craft an item to the same specifications EVERY time. If not then then they aren't engineers but instead are magicians or medicine men dealing in magic.

And that should apply to any secondary bonuses or effects for upgrades. These are engineers in space from the future NOT some sketchy crafter that uses a hammer and hot iron over a pot of molten iron.

 

[AJW]

I agree. An engineer should be able to craft an item to the same specifications EVERY time. If not then then they aren't engineers but instead are magicians or medicine men dealing in magic.

Nope, you've got it backwards. Engineers can work within reasonable tolerances, but are incapable of making absolutely identical parts - that would require magic.

 

[vrseven]

Nope, you've got it backwards. Engineers can work within reasonable tolerances, but are incapable of making absolutely identical parts - that would require magic.

Tell that to the Cylons. Try again.

 

[Tinman]

And that should apply to any secondary bonuses or effects for upgrades. These are engineers in space from the future NOT some sketchy crafter that uses a hammer and hot iron over a pot of molten iron.

Have YOU heard about process variation?

 

[kofeyh]

I agree. An engineer should be able to craft an item to the same specifications EVERY time. If not then then they aren't engineers but instead are magicians or medicine men dealing in magic.

Frontier have already admitted that engineers are as much 'tinkerers' (and partly crazy) as anything else. These aren't all men in white coats with multiple doctorates in dozens of fields. Those are employed by Lakon and other ship builders.

The 'engineers' we're being introduced to, are pilots, mechanics, crazy people; who have figured out smart ways to hotwire stuff and make it more cool. If you are thinking these guys are into exacting tolerances, and get overly excited (below the belt) when someone whips out a micrometer, you haven't been paying attention.

So what they do is part science, part 'force it till you break it'. This isn't actually that unusual; cutting edge technology is often made up of a combination of highly engineered components, and some theory driven guesswork. Engineers aren't building modules from spec sheets and designed plans. They are hot-wiring and forcing and pushing all the dials to 11.

In short; the partial RNG is to represent that a lot of this is theoretical guesswork and straight up hacks. As much as I don't think RNG was a good idea, it does support that 'out there' tinkering and tweaking model they've chosen.

Besides "Disruptive Synergies Update" and "Emergent RNG in Design Update" or "Hackathon 12000 Update" don't really have the same ring, as "The Engineers Update", to be fair.

 

[vrseven]

Frontier have already admitted that engineers are as much 'tinkerers' (and partly crazy) as anything else. These aren't all men in white coats with multiple doctorates in dozens of fields. Those are employed by Lakon and other ship builders.

The 'engineers' we're being introduced to, are pilots, mechanics, crazy people; who have figured out smart ways to hotwire stuff and make it more cool. If you are thinking these guys are into exacting tolerances, and get overly excited (below the belt) when someone whips out a micrometer, you haven't been paying attention.

So what they do is part science, part 'force it till you break it'. This isn't actually that unusual; cutting edge technology is often made up of a combination of highly engineered components, and some theory driven guesswork.

In short; the partial RNG, is to represent that a lot of this is theoretical guesswork and straight up hacks. As much as I don't think RNG was a good idea, it does support that 'out there' tinkering and tweaking model they've chosen.

Just like the Community Goals, interesting stories but crappy rewards and they dont even let you know what the reward is until around the ending of the CG. So people dont participate in CG's much unless the reward is good.

 

[Julio Montega]

Nope, you've got it backwards. Engineers can work within reasonable tolerances, but are incapable of making absolutely identical parts - that would require magic.

Depends on how he works.
Let us say he is knowledgeable and competent.
He would thus know the tolerances of each and every part of a weapon,
the general and special concepts of how it works.

He then could simply reasearch and test which parts need changing,
buy parts of very thin tolerances and create something with a very
very low tolerance, optimally to the point where it is insignificant.

Let us take a simple example:
Flashlight with different light settings (steady light/flashing)
What the engineer would do is take it totally apart and check the basic components,
be it circuit, logical chip or even the basic wirings connecting each component.

The customer states he wants a flashlight that has a flashing option at 5 Hz,
that is 5 times a flash per second.
The engineer then would pick the best available clocking device to get a steady 5 Hz
and eliminate all other attributes possibly interfering with the frequency of 5 Hz.

So why gambling when it all simply is horribly complicated math, quality assurance and construction,
but can be narrowed down to insignificant tolerance rates?
After all a smart person said:
"Every technology that is sufficiently developed comes close to magic."

Frontier have already admitted that engineers are as much 'tinkerers' (and partly crazy) as anything else. These aren't all men in white coats with multiple doctorates in dozens of fields. Those are employed by Lakon and other ship builders.

The 'engineers' we're being introduced to, are pilots, mechanics, crazy people; who have figured out smart ways to hotwire stuff and make it more cool. If you are thinking these guys are into exacting tolerances, and get overly excited (below the belt) when someone whips out a micrometer, you haven't been paying attention.

So what they do is part science, part 'force it till you break it'. This isn't actually that unusual; cutting edge technology is often made up of a combination of highly engineered components, and some theory driven guesswork.

In short; the partial RNG, is to represent that a lot of this is theoretical guesswork and straight up hacks. As much as I don't think RNG was a good idea, it does support that 'out there' tinkering and tweaking model they've chosen.

With that statement i could agree,
but i would highly suggest renaming the "engineers" into
"black-modders" or something.

 

[Dweezil_Moon]

For what it's worth, i like the randomness. It reduces min-maxing and adds uncertainty to encounters. Sounds good to me.