I recently decided to spend some time working on the crafting portion of the game. I have found that as a lot of people here have said, it is indeed bare bones of a crafting system, it isn't completely terrible. I have enjoyed my time so far leveling my crafting. And I see a lot of potential for it to become a decent system.
A few suggestions I feel would help to flesh it out a bit would be:
1. Giving each class their own learned crafting skill such as a tactical officer being able to adjust someone else's weapons to improve them. Engineers being able to improve engines and science officers being able to improve deflector arrays. This will allow us to be able to interact with people who want these services from us. The excuse that the replicators can do everything shouldn't apply. I see engineers tinkering with technology all the time to improve its efficiency in the shows. So there is no reason we cannot offer our learned skills for a better crafting economy.
2. For those like me who would like to be able to refit their old tier ships, perhaps this can be a rare discovered proc ability while crafting higher end items. For example while crafting high end items you have a small chance of make an accidental discovery which will allow you to refit a certain part of a ship to upgrade it's tier by adding weapons slots bridge officer slots.
3 Class specific items like stembolts(example only - i know you can already buy stembolts. But items like it.) that others will need to craft their items Or others will need to upgrade or refit their ships.
4. Unknown alien technology. Uncommon drops or items found while in space or on away missions. Or these items might turn up at rare random times at a number of Ferengi merchants. I would assume that while traveling in space a Ferengi might encounter a number of unknown races and have procured rare objects and might want to make a profit from them. These items can be brought to Memory Alpha. There are a lot of fun looking machines there that at the moment do nothing. Why not make one a research station where you can study these items. Put them in the machine that disassembles and analyzes them. In most cases you might only get a variety of materials like DNA sequences and radiation samples or some rare materials. While there is also a rare chance you will discover how the new technology works so you can use it to enhance your own weapons engines or other players items for a price. Also you could study unknown Borg technology you might find in the raid-a-sodes. Discoveries from Borg technology can be used to enhance shields or weapons against The Borg.
5. Crafting related episodes. Quests that rely on your current crafting level. Fixing someones ship for them. Or doing some work on some technology on the surface.
Please let me know what you think and please add your own ideas here. I know the dev's do read these. and Maybe they will take note on a few of our ideas to expand the crafting system. I am having fun with it as it is but it can be so much more.
I've said this before in the few Crafting threads I've seen...
I'd like to see ship refitting, on several levels.
- Upgrading a ship's BO slots by 1 tier. This would allow you to use higher skills with a lesser ship, without making the higher tier ships meaningless. The lower tier ship will still have all the same weapon and console slots, but can use higher ranking abilities.
- Upgrading a ship to include canonical abilities. Off the top of my head, I can think of three in particular.
1) Galaxy class: Saucer Separation
2) Prometheus class: Multi Vector Assault Mode
3) Defiant class: Cloaking device
Now while everyone argues against the Cloak, hear me out. This is something you'd have to grind through a significant amount of Mem Alpha before you could achieve. And then you'd have to hand over a great many MA tokens to unlock it.
As for the separation abilities, I think they could easily be implemented as a single special attack. The problem with earlier implementation seems that Cryptic couldn't figure out how to allow a single player to control what amounts to several complete ships.
So instead, you press the button, and temporarily lose control entirely.
The ship separates into 2-3 pieces.
The saucer sections execute what would amount to Beam: Fire At Will
The engineering sections execute something akin to Torpedo Spread
And then the pieces come back together, and player control is restored.
It wouldn't be anything game breaking, but it would be cool to watch.
I think we should stop calling it a "crafting" system. It's not. You aren't creating anything.
Sure, I'd like more options as well. I'd like to see the ability to make extra device slots, or console slots, and stuff like that. But I doubt it's going to happen. I think the trade-in system that we have is what it is because it's a non-PvP way to get to the end-game gear. It's not better than the PvP stuff by design.
I think we should stop calling it a "crafting" system. It's not. You aren't creating anything.
Sure, I'd like more options as well. I'd like to see the ability to make extra device slots, or console slots, and stuff like that. But I doubt it's going to happen. I think the trade-in system that we have is what it is because it's a non-PvP way to get to the end-game gear. It's not better than the PvP stuff by design.
Agree, Crafting in mmo terms means to make something from raw materials. Until Cryptic actually adds a crafting system, the new system should be called "Upgrading" or "Improving" or "Enhancing"(Enchanting lol - since that's what it is).
The even mk drops need to actually drop, Im dead in the water in the Enhancing system right now since i am LtC 8 and only got like 3 mk iv drops. It's severly FUBAR as is stands and I guessing the MK VI stuff wont drop when I am Commander.
Comments
I'd like to see ship refitting, on several levels.
- Upgrading a ship's BO slots by 1 tier. This would allow you to use higher skills with a lesser ship, without making the higher tier ships meaningless. The lower tier ship will still have all the same weapon and console slots, but can use higher ranking abilities.
- Upgrading a ship to include canonical abilities. Off the top of my head, I can think of three in particular.
1) Galaxy class: Saucer Separation
2) Prometheus class: Multi Vector Assault Mode
3) Defiant class: Cloaking device
Now while everyone argues against the Cloak, hear me out. This is something you'd have to grind through a significant amount of Mem Alpha before you could achieve. And then you'd have to hand over a great many MA tokens to unlock it.
As for the separation abilities, I think they could easily be implemented as a single special attack. The problem with earlier implementation seems that Cryptic couldn't figure out how to allow a single player to control what amounts to several complete ships.
So instead, you press the button, and temporarily lose control entirely.
The ship separates into 2-3 pieces.
The saucer sections execute what would amount to Beam: Fire At Will
The engineering sections execute something akin to Torpedo Spread
And then the pieces come back together, and player control is restored.
It wouldn't be anything game breaking, but it would be cool to watch.
Sure, I'd like more options as well. I'd like to see the ability to make extra device slots, or console slots, and stuff like that. But I doubt it's going to happen. I think the trade-in system that we have is what it is because it's a non-PvP way to get to the end-game gear. It's not better than the PvP stuff by design.
Agree, Crafting in mmo terms means to make something from raw materials. Until Cryptic actually adds a crafting system, the new system should be called "Upgrading" or "Improving" or "Enhancing"(Enchanting lol - since that's what it is).
The even mk drops need to actually drop, Im dead in the water in the Enhancing system right now since i am LtC 8 and only got like 3 mk iv drops. It's severly FUBAR as is stands and I guessing the MK VI stuff wont drop when I am Commander.
Fix your Enhancing systems now Cryptic! FFS!
Captain Flavius.