Crafting System Ideas

[MaliksKid]

This is something i've been thinking about for a while now. I think this would offer a more balanced experience for all crew skills while just making the whole process more accessible.

 

Crew Skill Missions.

 

Allow players more say over the missions they can run. One of the big problems is you don't always get the mission you want or the yield you are after and this makes the system feel very random. How about a system whereby as you level you unlock new options from which to select missions. Here is an example.

 

Level 0 - Unlocked 2 types of mats available, Rank 1, Moderate Yield

Level 60 - Unlocked Rank 2, Extra Mats/Mission Types Available

Level 120 - Unlocked Rank 3, Abundant Yield

Level 180 - Unlocked Rank 4, Extra Mats

Level 240 - Unlocked Rank 5, Bountiful Yield

Level 300 - Unlocked Rank 6, Rich Yield

 

The way it would work is when you select the skill you have 3 drop boxes with options so you can tailor the mission the way you want and then it would give you a price and a time to complete. It would work for both mission types. So by Rank 2 you can get all types of mats, then later you unlock more ranks with better yields. Give all companions a slot for changing out their crafting stats so you can customize your crew to give you a balance around the skill you picked. Another idea would be some way to reskill them either through extra missions or something so you can build them up in a certain way. So you could have them all crit, or you could maybe have 2 for quick runs or 2 for crits. Probably the second idea would be better as it would be easy to keep swapping out mods whereas if you had to relearn something that took time you'd most likely just build once. Not to mention it would be a money sink.

 

Reverse Engineering

 

I'm just going to say it, RNG is not something that should be used in crafting. Lucky people love it, the unlucky hate it. One way to get around this would be to take the way that augment kits work. You buy a green item from the trainer for credits. Then you start crafting that item and reverse engineering it. For each RE you earn a token, once you have so many tokens you can go back to the trainer and buy a blue or purple schematic. To keep the progression there you would make it so you'd have to have bought the green and blue schemes in order to buy the relevant purple. At the moment you have a situation where a high level shield for example has a 1 in 10 chance to give a schematic and 4-5 schematics per shield at artifact level, and they take a while to make each one. Meaning you have to craft and average of 50 of each shield to get the exact schematic you want. This way you can pick and choose what to buy. If you wanted you could still include an RNG element of learning a schematic you don't know by RE'ing the item. So you can be lucky, but even if you aren't you get a sense that you are getting somewhere.

 

Crating

 

First off I would remove all on stat gear from the game. Maybe the stuff you earn on your origin world but by level 10 make people start to buy orange gear (put the basics in your gear pack you get from the trainer at level 10). The whole orange gear thing is played up so much in this game and the fact you can look however you want, so why bother with on stat gear, make implants and earpieces moddable too. Maybe even give them a visual element in the game. So if I equip an earpiece maybe it glows with the color of the crystal in it or something to add a new way to customise my character. Not to mention for synthweavers, armortechs and armormechs the amount of schematics is overwhelming. With RnG you have to spend the vast majority of your time looking for mats to be able to get all the schematics you want.

 

So with that in mind here is how I would distribute the remaining crew skills.

 

Synthweaving - Orange Armor (Force), Color Crystals, Augments (Resolve, Accuracy)

Armormech - Orange Armor (Tech), Armorings, Augments (Reflex, Alacrity)

Armstech - Orange Range Weapons and Offhands (Tech), Barrels, Augments (Skill, Surge)

Artifice - Orange Melee Weapons and Offhands (Force), Hilts, Augments (Might, Shield)

Cybertech - Orange Earpieces and Implants, Mods, Augments (Overkill, Critical)

Biochem - Stims, Adrenals, Medpacks, Enhancements, Augments (Fortitude, Defence)

 

I'd also change all shields and focuses to either have a barrel or hilt slot as this makes more sense than putting in armoring and gives a better balance for artifice. I would do away completely with schematic drops from mobs or missions unless they were ultra rare and for a legendary item. This would give you a way to go above your crew skill to show you beat a certain challenging boss enough times to get the drop. Going back to the commendation idea, maybe orange gear RE's for Augment components and gear mods RE for schematic tokens. Another way to get people into crafting or to improve the crafting economy would be to limit the items you can pick up in the world, so bosses drop things like blue/purple crafting mats instead of mods and armoring.

 

This is a major change, but I wouldn't mind having to start again if the system was a better and fairer one to play through. I'm sure others would QQ about they would lose loads of schematics and things, but they are the lucky ones who got the schematics. I've got quite a few, but nowhere near as many as I would like, but I don't want to donate a lot of time to something that may or may not come about, because of RNG.

 

If you guys have any other suggestions on how this could be refined, other than "I hate it", please leave a comment.