Crafting - Elite style!
- Thread starter Echoes
- Start date
Kinda makes you wonder how trading takes place 15k LY away from an inhabited station dosn't it.
The Distance argument is kinda irrelevant in this case...
I like the idea, especially if you had the choice to craft modules/weapons etc. some of the higher spec modules are not easily found so why not have a choice for collecting the raw material and having it made to order, I'd feel more connected to my ship if I put the effort in to craft (well source the raw materials) the modules in it.
That is the big question. and also: Why would I need to? What would be the use?
Why would I want to craft a pulse laser and go through all that effort, when I can just go to an average station to buy such a weapon?
This is not a Minecraft situation in which you start out with your bare hands and need to go from there.
In Elite we live in a high tech society that has populated the stars. It would be nonsensical to have to craft a pulse laser, or thrusters. or anything yourself.
If you can come up with a concept that makes sense in an Elite context I'm open to it, but I cannot think of one.
Last edited:
Crafting could be:
.) Improving weapons and equipment (e.g. faster scanners, more powerful weapons, improved Shields, etc.)
.) Creating rare / unique equipment (e.g. combined boosters, better/colored weapons, colored/better shields, etc.)
.) Industrial, having industry that produces goods from raw material.
.) all of that
...
.) Improving weapons and equipment (e.g. faster scanners, more powerful weapons, improved Shields, etc.)
.) Creating rare / unique equipment (e.g. combined boosters, better/colored weapons, colored/better shields, etc.)
.) Industrial, having industry that produces goods from raw material.
.) all of that
...
I craft stuff all the time. Starting in the early 70s when my father and I put together a Heathkit color TV, up through last year when I built a hutch/shelf unit for my desk to hold my computer & radios. As soon as I feel up to crawling around under the house, I've got put in a grounding system so my HF antenna actually works.
But for in-game crafting systems, I think Star Wars: Galaxies probably had the best system. Miners went out and snorked stuff up out of the ground. Then you would take the materials and put them together in standard patterns to make stuff. You could either take generic "steel" and make a blaster rifle, or you could go out and refine super-high tech unobtanium steel, and tweak and refine the basic pattern to make special higher powered (or lighter weight, or longer range, or whatever). Then once you had a recipe, you could load it into your auto-factory along with a bunch of materials and it would sit there and churn stuff out 24x7. Everything in the game was made by other players, from clothing, to spaceships.
Last edited:
Have you even read what he wrote? He already mentioned "The crafting is not actually done by the player, Instead it is done through the station interface" Read what he wrote before you complain about what he wrote.
I would not be so confident in that assessment that everyone that plays a computer game is not able to tell a washer from a gasket.
Some of us (me included there) would be perfectly able to build a Class three gimballed multicannon from scratch even with todays workshops
at hand, not to speak of the workshops that a Codiolis station would have.
Just my 2 cents...
[edit:]
And i would TOTALLY have a lathe, a CNC mill, some Welders and an electronics lab aboard my anaconda (and the other big ships like the explorer asp or the python)
if i really WOULD live in the ED universe.
Last edited:
Yes have been thinking about the possibility of tweaking modules and weapons too. I even made a proposal out of it a long time ago. But that would not really be crafting I feel. There 'just' needs to be a dynamic system in place that allows for modifiable margins in the functioning of these parts. I would like that, but I do fear there is very little room for tinkering to make a noticeable difference.
We are talking about very high tech devices. We would all have to be rocket scientists so to speak to be able to craft such stuff. It feels wrong / unrealistic to me in the context of Elite's universe.
I would very much like to see different colored lasers by the way, but to implement that a crafting system would be overdoing it.
I don't think I get what you mean. Is that not already what is happening in the Elite universe, in the background? It is not a hands on type of crafting, but in Elite's high tech space faring society that would not work anyway.
There is no fundamental, build in necessity to craft in Elite's universe, like there is in a game like Minecraft. So far all proposals for crafting in Elite feel artificial and contrived.
Last edited:
Not to be rude, but i think that if we have thousands of stations in space, i think we have manage to streamline production. Modular factorys or whatnot to set up creation of stuff fairly easy.
I can see how EVE-style crafting can be good for the game, but alone it will not work and there is a long way to get any depth near EVE when it comes to gameplay.
Crafting sucks in pretty much every game ever, it is the very definition of grinding and to make it worthwhile they have to make the best items available ONLY by crafting or no one would bother so if you want the good stuff you are forced to jion in the long tedious, collect stuff, mix stuff, create stuff boredom train.
I'm a frickin' STARSHIP CAPTAIN!!!! I OWN several technological marvels that can bend space and moves hundreds of tons of cargo or lethal weaponry over vast distances of space with ease, speed and comfort!
I do NOT want to be collecting up bits of ore, machinery and plans to make slightly better pots, pans and hats .
Just gimme the chance to zip around the galaxy looking for those dudes who make customised weapons and ship modules and let me pay THOSE guys to improve my gear.
I'm a frickin' STARSHIP CAPTAIN!!!! I OWN several technological marvels that can bend space and moves hundreds of tons of cargo or lethal weaponry over vast distances of space with ease, speed and comfort!
I do NOT want to be collecting up bits of ore, machinery and plans to make slightly better pots, pans and hats .
Just gimme the chance to zip around the galaxy looking for those dudes who make customised weapons and ship modules and let me pay THOSE guys to improve my gear.
Deleted member 38366
D
--- Deleted ---
Last edited by a moderator:
I could see something along these lines being implemented via the new branching missions that are supposed to be being implemented in v1.3, depending upon how they work. For instance:
You get a mission from a new bespoke weapons manufacturer that's setting up shop in the station you're in. His shipment of prototypes were ambushed on their way to the station, and he needs you to go recover some canisters of prototype tech from a nearby system. That gets him on his feet, but he can't do any serious work without his fabrication team, who are nervous about all this pirate activity, so you have to go to a nearby system, wing-up with their transport ship, and escort them safely back. After that, there are some raw materials he needs that aren't available locally - a few tons of osmium and lithium.
Once you've brought together everything the manufacturer needs, you're given a choice - accept your full reward in cash, or take some of it in the form of one of a small selection of prototype weapons. Choose your weapon, and it gets dropped into Outfitting as though it were a module you'd just unequipped. You can 'buy' it for no cost to equip it to your ship, and you'll be able to buy more of the same weapon at that station.
You get a mission from a new bespoke weapons manufacturer that's setting up shop in the station you're in. His shipment of prototypes were ambushed on their way to the station, and he needs you to go recover some canisters of prototype tech from a nearby system. That gets him on his feet, but he can't do any serious work without his fabrication team, who are nervous about all this pirate activity, so you have to go to a nearby system, wing-up with their transport ship, and escort them safely back. After that, there are some raw materials he needs that aren't available locally - a few tons of osmium and lithium.
Once you've brought together everything the manufacturer needs, you're given a choice - accept your full reward in cash, or take some of it in the form of one of a small selection of prototype weapons. Choose your weapon, and it gets dropped into Outfitting as though it were a module you'd just unequipped. You can 'buy' it for no cost to equip it to your ship, and you'll be able to buy more of the same weapon at that station.
That would work for me. Mostly because of the multi tiered missions and special reward.
I would not call it crafting per se, but I like it.
Devs have repeatedly said they don't want players to have storage and the ability to hoard stuff they can buy and sell, it's to easy to gank the local economy and the game is supposed to be about starship captains making their way in a sometimes hostile galaxy, its NOT supposed to be about warehousing and spreadsheets.
There are already other games that do that and everyone is welcome to play those games rather than ruining this one.
Turreted beam lasers can cost 16 million. Why not pay people to scavenge parts off larger ships? That could make a lot of cash.
The best way I would imagine crafting is when ED has a player-driven economy at least partially. Since that's obviously not the case, let me bury this right now.
The other way I could imagine crafting to work is how Commander DrakeAurum described above.
Maybe it would be nice to set up a range of modules which are good enough to spend the necessary time making them. Two reasons:
- they are only accessible through crafting or
- they are expensive enough to make it worthy to do.
I don't think I would run up and down collecting materials or escorting traders for a simple beam laser which costs 200k credits. But would join the part hunt and other services if the weapon/module/whatever costs 15 million or it's not accessible through the general market like a new grade module which has its pros coming with cons and can help to outfit a ship for a role it may not have been designed for.
For example the Cobra is a nice ship but above a certain amount of credits I just don't go "back" to it or if I do, it's only for nostalgia and for 30 minutes. BUT. If the same Cobra could be equipped with an X kind of crafted element which gives an answer to a valid question of mine, I would not hesitate.
Maybe the crafted "specialware"-fitted ships could break the common judgements a commander has at first sight. Like "ah, this is just a Cobra, there's no way I can be harmed by it's medium hardpoints and it has a pretty weak shield. And it turns out to be different...
It's important to have fun with crafting: I mean a chain of activities on multiple levels where one is a prerequisite of the other. It could really utilize those game elements not that "profitable" in ED like mining, smuggling, exploring, etc.
EDIT: I just realized that all these stuff would move ED to a better single player game. Which I wouldn't mind by the way.
The other way I could imagine crafting to work is how Commander DrakeAurum described above.
Maybe it would be nice to set up a range of modules which are good enough to spend the necessary time making them. Two reasons:
- they are only accessible through crafting or
- they are expensive enough to make it worthy to do.
I don't think I would run up and down collecting materials or escorting traders for a simple beam laser which costs 200k credits. But would join the part hunt and other services if the weapon/module/whatever costs 15 million or it's not accessible through the general market like a new grade module which has its pros coming with cons and can help to outfit a ship for a role it may not have been designed for.
For example the Cobra is a nice ship but above a certain amount of credits I just don't go "back" to it or if I do, it's only for nostalgia and for 30 minutes. BUT. If the same Cobra could be equipped with an X kind of crafted element which gives an answer to a valid question of mine, I would not hesitate.
Maybe the crafted "specialware"-fitted ships could break the common judgements a commander has at first sight. Like "ah, this is just a Cobra, there's no way I can be harmed by it's medium hardpoints and it has a pretty weak shield. And it turns out to be different...
It's important to have fun with crafting: I mean a chain of activities on multiple levels where one is a prerequisite of the other. It could really utilize those game elements not that "profitable" in ED like mining, smuggling, exploring, etc.
EDIT: I just realized that all these stuff would move ED to a better single player game. Which I wouldn't mind by the way.
Last edited:
Scavenging should become a fully developed career with its own tools ans opportunities. I would love that. I think it could easily become one of the most interesting and exciting things to do in Elite.
I would not have thought of scavenging parts as crafting. Perhaps my idea of crafting is too limited.
Last edited: