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[Devastator]

Just wait til Nameless gets frustrated and starts navigating aggressively. You might gets some company at the bottom of that waterfall.

That's more or less the centerpiece around my considerations for the next orders.  (along with considerations based around continuing to not post stats, but the possible necessity of dodging mandates me doing so.)

[Devastator]

Knowledge for what? The thing you're not researching?

To stack up like Scrooge McDuck, of course.

In all seriousness, though, I'd rather not make you balance powers this early in the game, but I'd still like to have it to keep score, so to speak.  Or as fuel for a power should I decide to go for one at a later date.

[Radio Controlled]

Knowledge for what? The thing you're not researching?

To stack up like Scrooge McDuck, of course.

Take a dive into your vault of knowledge.

Or, I dunno, start saving knowledge for something. ^{_{One that gives extra fight when murdering filthy meatbags.}}

[NAV]

Spoiler: Work in progress (click to show/hide)

[piecewise]

Spoiler: Work in progress (click to show/hide)

Sweet. Also pretty accurate. The only thing missing is the arm spooling out coms wires and the glass dome cockpit. It looks something like this

http://www.trentglass.co.uk/images/6.jpg

[Pancaek]

But seriously, if you guys want to discuss alternative ways of limiting builders so that they can't crank out 50 things a post, I'm all for hearing it.

Can we all put our heads together for this? Because this time limit thing really isn't going to work in the long term, at least for me. I'm not sure what the rest of you think about it, but having builders spend upwards of 10 posts saying "keep building" doesn't sound like much fun. It also means non-builders will have to wait on the builders often, so everyone loses.

Maybe we could split up knowledge? Right now knowledge stands for the actual knowledge required to make something, as well as the resources you've accumulated that are needed to make it. I think we discussed this briefly a few posts ago. Basically give everyone an X amount of resources each mission cycle and have each build project cost Y amount of said resources. Extra resources can be earned by going on missions, thus also giving an incentive for builders to go on mission so they can make more stuff.

Alternatively go back to a list of standard equipment which can be bought with currency and have special/unique items drop as loot from missions, and just completely cut out building stuff from the game. A bit drastic, I know, but if the idea is to limit "Tinker by another name" it will make sure you'll never have to deal with it again.

[syvarris]

Cutting out equipment creation won't really help.  The system is built around character advancement being from knowledge, and if knowledge isn't spent on equipment, it'll be spent on techniques.  Arguably, techniques are a much worse form of Tinker, exactly because they don't arbitrarily increase skills.  It's harder to balance a fancy technique with various conditionals than a simple "+20 to Endure" or whatever.

I could see making even basic equipment cost knowledge being a good solution, even if the costs are very cheap.  Maybe remove build time altogether along with that.  As-is, I don't see much reason for us not to just wait a few weeks to make full plate armor for everyone.  Making said armor actually have some cost aside from time invested would instantly fix that.

[Gentlefish]

Well, the machining table I'm planning on building is supposed to help with that; a build roll for quality of parts, then you leave and fuck around on mission while it machines, then a build roll for quality of assemble. The first roll shouldn't necessarily ruin the armor or gun, but affect damage or defense stats, for better (For, like, a critical roll) or worse (failure or crit-fail even requiring you to fix the machine).

Then when the parts are machined out, there's a build roll to assemble it, which may take some time depending on the complexity, but considering the length of "turns" here, a single roll or x rolls with y successes minimum (if complex) should be doable in a single turn. Failure requires either a partial or total rebuilding.

[piecewise]

I'm gonna go have a shower and think about the possibilities of crafting. I'll be back, hopefully with ideas.

[Egan_BW]

Scrap metal resource for building most things, shared by everyone on bore. Will slowly drain as people build things, requiring resupply from settlements or such. Some items also require knowledge, or certain exotic materials acquired in the field. Build times are simplified and lowered. Eg you can build an unlimited number of simple items during a travel, up to three complicated items, or one specialized item. This isn't measured in travel tiles, but just happens between each mission. No building during a mission.

[Radio Controlled]

I'm gonna go have a shower and think about the possibilities of crafting. I'll be back, hopefully with ideas.

And clean bones, presumably.

[piecewise]

Ok, Here's the things I thought about and the current conclusion I've got.

Possiblity 1: Time based constraints. Current. Crap

Possibility 2: Traditional crafting constrained by access to specific materials.  Pros: retrains crafting in a realistic fashion. Cons: Requires each item to have a list of components, a lot of book keeping and limited custom utility. Meh.

Possibility 3: Single item crafting. The idea that each project needs one specific rare item to be done.  Pros: restrains crafting without requiring as much bookkeeping or fiddly searching.  More simple than classic crafting. Cons: Effectively just a level of abstraction; if one item is all thats needed than really why not just find the object itself as loot because thats effectively what you've done. Its like a voucher for your gun or armor or whatever. Not to mention it also means that we run into the thing where  I'll have to start doling out these specific items in specific ways to keep things balanced. Also has limited custom utility.

Possibility 4: Builder tickets: You can make whatever instantly so long as you're on the ship and meet certain requirements,  but you can only make so many things in a single time period.  Pros: It would work, maybe. Cons: Completely artificial and thus annoying and bullshit. Could say it represented time or whatever but then things get increasingly abstract. Also it becomes builder foodstamps and I don't like being that guy handing out cans of value brand weapons on the government dime.

Possibility 5: Tag system: So I got this idea thinking back about the test we did a while back with perplexicon as objects.  Specifically rather than basing crafting on specific item recipes, I base it on specific tags and give these tags to items. For example, lets say you want to make a gun, a pistol specifically. The pistol has a recipe of

Pistol: Structure 3, Blast 1, Projectile 1

That means you need a material with the tag of "Structure" at quality 3, a material with Blast quality 1 and material that is projectile 1 as well.

Structure would be found on just about anything that is solid enough to build out of. Wood, metal, bone, brick, stone, etc. Stronger materials have higher quality.

Blast would be on things that burn or explode, higher quality, bigger boom.

Projectile would be on anything that can be used as a projectile, from ball bearings to pebbles to darts. Better quality would mean bigger damage.


So basically what we would have is a big list of tags  and I would look at an item and say "That looks like it needs these tags of this quality" and crafters could try to find literally anything that fit those tags (or higher) and use those things. No recipe calling for the specific snot of some critter that you may never find.  Instead we may end up with lots of weird but interesting stuff like people carving pistols out of whale bones and using bullets made of fire elemental blood and golem eyeballs.

But hey, thats pretty neat.

[Radio Controlled]

Option 5 sounds sounds quite interesting, but also potentially a lot of work (on your part at the very least, needing to come up with a tag list) and still quite some bookkeeping. And I could see a lot of haggling/balancing what materials can satisfy which tag requirements to what degree and what the end result looks like. Still, it could lead to some weird and unique combinations. Might give a lot of room for tinker though, fair warning.

After that, option 4 seems straightforward and easy, though indeed perhaps too abstract to be very immersive.

[piecewise]

Option 5 sounds sounds quite interesting, but also potentially a lot of work (on your part at the very least, needing to come up with a tag list) and still quite some bookkeeping. And I could see a lot of haggling/balancing what materials can satisfy which tag requirements to what degree and what the end result looks like. Still, it could lead to some weird and unique combinations. Might give a lot of room for tinker though, fair warning.

After that, option 4 seems straightforward and easy, though indeed perhaps too abstract to be very immersive.

Let me look at some stuff and try to make some braining about what that tag list would be.

[Radio Controlled]

Maybe also think about how knowledge requirements (and gathering, eg by finding items or parts) would slot into this system?