Weaponsmithing suggestion

Here's one idea that I thought about for a bit. Give me some feedback on this one, please?

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To build a weapon via a construction kit, you usually need a number of parts, and over ten isn't uncommon. You also have to do a fair bit of shift-right-clicking.

What if.. the construction kit itself functioned like a 'bag' in the sense that it opened up a new area in the inventory like a normal bag, but with numbered slots where you could place the parts required to build the weapon, corresponding with the numbers of parts the building manual for the weapon suggests?

Every part would have to be checked upon being placed into the numbered slot, for being the correct type of part and having the minimum QL or above for the construction kit.

Upon placing the last part into the correct slot, the weapon construction kit would complete itself and turn into the correct weapon, considering the array of parts and QL.

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Sounds like a good suggestion that would immediately be discarded because of the amount of new coding required to put a totally new system in place. But given the fact that weaponsmithing as it stands seems hopelessly broken, perhaps it would be simpler to just scrap the existing system totally, rebuild it from scratch and stop trying to patch the holes. After all, in every other aspect of life (cars, appliances, electronics...) there comes a point where it makes more sense to replace than to repair.

Fair comment, I think.

The existing building system does work perfectly well for certain types of item. No-one I know has reported any problems with making nano-crystals, or robot trimmers. However, weapons are a different story, with entire categories of weapon broken. Worse, some QL's appear to be bugged even for recipes that are otherwise working, and now we have reports that one particular gun both works and doesn't work at QL6. Obviously, what's going on behind the scenes is rather more complex than we might have imagined, and represents a mammoth task to overhaul.

Trimmers work because they're a simple recipe, and a unitary QL band from 1 to 200. XU-11 Serum into Chemical Impact Injector into Trimmer Casing yeilds an Aggression Trimmer. With weapons, an Ill-Treated Kolt 58 is a different item in the database to a Cast-Off Kolt 58. Anarchy apparently decides whether the finished product will be Ill-Treated, Cast-Off or Premium by checking the recipe that was used, instead of by looking at the QL of the kit and as a result most weapons have no fewer than ten different recipes to make the entire QL range.

Perhaps the simple solution would be to for the game to name the finished weapon dependent on the QL of the building kit, and to have a single recipe per weapon that worked all the way through the QL range.

However, while we're at it, why not take the opportunity to overhaul the rest of the process as well?

I think that using the building kit as a receptacle is a good idea in principle, but puts us in the situation of having to make one single skill check against perhaps three or four different skills to put the weapon together. That means that you can't collaborate with someone else if, for instance, your Chemistry skill is lacking. One person has to have the skills to assemble the entire weapon in one go.

One way around this would be to keep the current method of step-by-step assembly, and simply add a display window feature to the kit so that instead of shift-left-clicking on the kit for a description, I right-click on it to bring up its build window which shows me the parts that have already been installed. Added functionality might be the facility to strip parts out again, starting from the latest and working backwards.

A couple of other possibilities: prime the kit using the construction manual, so that it knows what sort of weapon it's supposed to be. This would have the added benefit that parts yet to be added could be displayed in the kit's build window, so that you don't have to constantly refer to the manual during the build.

The logical corrollary of this is the weapon deconstruction kit. Funcom toyed with the idea of reverse-engineering weapons some time ago, but never implemented it. Fair enough, considering the problems with the existing system. However, if each type of weapon has only a single recipe, why not add a reverse-engineering kit that can be used on a weapon to determine how to construct it, assuming the user has a high enough weaponsmithing skill. Have it spit out a manual if successful, which can then be used to prime weapon construction kits etc...

Comments?

~R~

1. The system is fine, but could be made simpler (and bug-free) with Soyuz's idea : 1 recipe per gun, QL of Construction Kit determines QL of finished gun. No new code needed, just a few lines deleted. (Armchair coach here :) )


2. Building kit = receptacle ? New coding... given the record of "bugs per new code" around here, I wouldn't ask for this out loud again twice...


3. Building Kit displays the parts it needs, as opposed to only the parts assembled as of today : I like that idea !!! :) But I have a printout of every recipe fo any gun deemed of interest....
I'd rather FC work on : more than 2 "open bags" at one time, and more than 1 ID window open at one time. Or be able to "block" 1 "open bag", and make the other one cycle. Or show which item/bag in one's inventory possesses a shortcut.


4. Reverse-engineering is very nice & all, but too powerful IMO : in a matter of a few days, everyone and their mother would be running around with the "weapon of the week/month"... Gamma Ejector, Kerrans, Claws, whatever the uber weapon for the profession's level would be...


5. Has anyone tried to assemble parts in an order that was *not* described in shop-bought Weapon Recipes ? i.e. : come up with a SFA 3297 by accident ? or a Gamma Ejector ? :D :D

Quote:

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Originally posted by Vercingetorix
4. Reverse-engineering is very nice & all, but too powerful IMO : in a matter of a few days, everyone and their mother would be running around with the "weapon of the week/month"... Gamma Ejector, Kerrans, Claws, whatever the uber weapon for the profession's level would be...

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I should have added a caveat to the effect that not all weapons would necessarily have a recipe in the first place. Of course, all it'll do if your Weaponsmithing is too low is give you an "inconclusive results" message. If it's high enough you either get a manual or a "This weapon cannot be reverse engineered" message.

Quote:

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5. Has anyone tried to assemble parts in an order that was *not* described in shop-bought Weapon Recipes ? i.e. : come up with a SFA 3297 by accident ? or a Gamma Ejector ? :D :D

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No-one has managed to make anything really useful this way, although someone on the Engineer forum (I think) claimed to have followed a recipe correctly and recieved a First-Aid Kit for his troubles...

Cheers,

~R~

OKay, good suggestions here, priming the building kit with the manual is a nice idea.

A modification to the receptacle to allow it to be constructed by other people than yourself:

Make the skill-check for the added part only when it is added to the receptacle, forsaking the combined skill-check when all parts are complete. This way, the receptacle can be passed to other people who can add the necessary parts if the character's own skills are insufficient. The receptacle still transforms into the completed weapon upon adding the final part.

I would also like that you don't have to necessarily put the parts into the receptacle in the right order, as long as they are put into the slots.

Eventually, the slots could be disposed of entirely, just as long as the right parts were successfully added.