» Mon Jun 22, 2009 9:49 am So I've addressed Territory, and Resource. With this installment set to cover Crafting and manufacturing, which should need the two to be truly successful. So let's get on with it shall we?
Crafting and Manufacturing
Everyone has plenty of examples of manufacturing from other games.
Type 1(Magic Production): Some use items that have nothing whatsoever to do with a 'real' model to make items
Example: Bring 400 magic crystals to make the white sword of +4!!!! Production time is click a button and the items disappear from your inventory and are replaced by the item you want instantly.
Type 2 (Gathering-Production) The next uses bits of a real model, but combine it with said magic or 'instant' production. Counting the time spent gathering all those materials as part of the 'production time.
Example Gather 20 copper, 10 leather, 2 hard rock, 1 rope, and 2 coal produces 1 copper long sword. Production time once all items are gathered is 30 seconds.
Type 3 (Real time production on character) This next one uses everything from Type 2, but it also includes an artificial time restriction. Such as 'gold bar ENCHANTED!!!' 24 hour cool down! To make the item you usually also need special components (made from other people with cool downs), buy from a special vendor or worst yet, items that drop only from extremely rare monsters OR only spawn in a single location that can only be accessed in a limited way.
Example Character must be lvl 20, a magic user of xyz school and have Gold bar, Magic crystal x10, Magic crystal LARGE x4, item only found by a miner ABC (rare as well) and has a cool down of 24 hours.
Reasoning Most of the time people think it's to keep a certain rarity in the game, the true reason, and usual reason is to make it a time sink that takes forever and gives a false sense of accomplishment for, finally, getting that item you've spent 3+ months making yourself.
Type 4 (Real time production, limited by FACILITIES in game, with or WITHOUT a time factor) This one I really can get behind because if implemented correctly it means that players not only have a reason to build certain buildings (more customization of zones and territory) but to defend them as well. This one is a tad harder, but it can incorporate a larger sense of teamwork and value to actually holding territory.
Example Character must have access to a heavy metals smelter and Heavy metals factory to be able to build laser Gatling guns. Fluff of 'the sheer amount of pollution generated by these facilities makes the NPC nations ban their private use within their borders, only the rad zones or converted G.E.C.K. territories can have them (see installment 1 for a blatant plug of past ideas) expand story ideas as necessary from there. Incredibly complex items (like maybe a G.E.C.K. kit could take months to make)
With these four you can have a system that never changes until the player base practically SCREAMS for a change that is long long overdue. Or you can make it progressive by nature and evolving. Let me explain that a bit to show how not only players make a difference, but they actively want to and hope to make the world a place of change and progress.
I believe you can honestly go from Type 2 in the beginning to a limited form of Type 3 and then progress into Type 4 as the server grows and ages.
Stage one will have Type 2 Manufacturing/Crafting, where players will find items and resources, take them to an NPC controlled factory/craft shop and the item will 'pop out'. This will work well to get players to be used to at least gathering the materials they need, making sure the right tools and the facilities they need are available.
Stage two will have Type 2 progress into Type 3 Manufacturing/Crafting, where players need a set number of items already made and ready to go, that would combine to form more complex items. This will add in a certain amount of time, and hopefully if they hand the entire process over to an NPC worker they can come back in say anywhere from a few hours to a few days and the entire item will be done. There will be a cost for the NPC to do the 'work' but the player will be able to go into the wilds instead of sweating in a hot factory for 4+ hours. (Examples include making the scope, the grips, the sights, the barrel, the firing mechanisms, the clips and the calibration for using hand tools to make a single gun or set of guns)
Stage three will have Type 2 and Type 3 but will add elements of Type 4 Manufacturing and Crafting into the mix. Now we have characters able to produce items, gather materials, and have some time take place so not everyone can turn a pile of scrap and resources into a plasma rifle in under 3 minutes. Stage 3 will add in Facility control for M & C activity, as well as a set of bots, workers or slaves that will handle the activities that would take hours and hours of player time to create the most complex and difficult pieces that players can output.
Example of Stage Three M & C
A player nation/Tribe has finally gotten access to their zone, they've cleaned out the worst monsters and mutants that made it a Rad zone. They've deployed their G.E.C.K. and now have a small town in place, of which they've upgrade a few times and now have a factory/smelter. In the factory/Smelter they have a few bots and human workers that are able to preform a set number of 'jobs' per day based on how upgrade the Factory/Smelter is. (This encourages the Player Nation to upgrade past the first level of Factory so all their players or at least a vast majority of their players can have access to M & C without having to go all the way back to an NPC town to do so).
So the Player nation has a level 3 factory which allows say 60 concurrent M & C at any time. Since the jobs are able to be queued up by the factory foreman jobs by different players can start and end at different times. This allows players to simple 'park' a few jobs at a Factory and go do other things instead of clogging up the area and making crafting into a job.
Some benefits of Player Nation facilities over NPC facilities.
The Player nation factories can build anything at any time.
Player nation factories would have the 'prices' and profits of it's factory or 'cut' (in the case of smelters) go to the player nation leadership.
Player nation ownership would allow a true sense of belonging to an empire or community and not just a solo event.
Player nation facilities can be upgraded independent of NPC territories as a whole. (An NPC faction has to have an entire camp, town or city upgraded to make the factory there better. With Player nation zones you can simply upgrade the Factory itself while the rest sits without upgrades.
This allows all sorts of ways for players to make money, for Player nations to have a 'piece' of the income without destroying player profits (since they'd simply go to NPC zones if the prices were cost prohibitive) and for player nations to have real 'internal economies'.
I'm going to go into specific ways to make crafting more enjoyable to all in another installment, but for now I'm hoping by tackling this as a more 'top down' view will give players and the devs at least a few ideas of what might be a good future goal (since I doubt they can DRASTICALLY change the game at this stage) Minor tweaks tho, that I'm hoping these installments will directly effect).
The next installment will look at Trading, which will touch on Barter, Selling, Currency and Markets. Hopefully this is having a positive effect and giving people a reason to look up for a few moments and say "hrm.."
Have a good night and more posts to come!
-Banlish
) and some other junk.... we disassemble them to parts , imagine that we are able to assemble 1 fine working shotgun from parts that we got out of thees 3 broken shotguns . but we got ammo wheel and automatic trigger from Tommy gun, maybe we can assemble automatic shotgun, but tho ... we have no idea how should it work (except if your char got engineering lvl 200 ) we need goddamn blueprint and that's different story, maybe the friend with lvl 200 engineering could draw you 1 or maybe you could buy it from market, or maybe hammer the guy who have it 