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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Assembly Line Crafting and the story of Copper
Radical_Johnny
Member
I first started following Ashes of Creation back in 2017 (I believe), and one of the things that first peaked my interest - and has since kept me coming back - are the theoreticals of what the crafting system could look like. The inter-dependencies of gathering, processing, and crafting by not allowing one character to master all, the different qualities in which resources have, and the overall depth Intrepid has given to customization, has my hype level at an all-time high. Which also means my potential level of disappointment would be just as high should expectations not meet. Nevertheless, should expectations be met and themes be realized, I would like to give my understanding of an in-depth artisan-ship system drawn from my experience playing Star Wars Galaxies, a game ion which AOC devs have been open about having influence on their systems, especially crafting.
For those of you who never got to experience Star Wars Galaxies pre-CU (pre Combat Upgrade), I feel for you. It was the MMO that got me hooked on the genre, as it truly allowed a player to immerse themselves into different play styles that allowed you to experience the Star Wars world is many different way. You could spend 100% of your time crafting and mastering the trees of being an artisan by venturing off into Weaponsmithing/Armorsmithing or Architecture, or perhaps Bio-Engineering. One of my ABSOLUTE favorite systems that supported the crafting classes - and in many ways dictated the economy of the server - was the work of harvesting resources. Players would spend hours on end surveying and building harvesting tools to best exploit the
Star Wars Galaxies would have different resource spawns in different areas and those spawns would change daily/weekly. To harvest those spawns, you would have to decide on where to build a resource gathering tool based off surveying the land and finding the highest density of that resource. How surveying in SWG worked is that an artisan class would have a tool that would read percentages of a gatherables in their area - so under 40% is obviously going to return less than if you found an area with over 80%, and very rare instances you would be able to survey and find an area with over 90% - AND NEVER would you find 100% on the reading. http://wiki.swganh.org/index.php/Survey_Resource_(Ability) <-- Here is quick Wiki about the resource surveying.
So, you now understand how to survey, but now you get to figure out the different resources that you can gather. First, you can harvest for Organic vs. Inorganic materials, and within the inorganic tree for example, you would choose between Ferrous and Non-ferrous metals, and your different types of metals - steel, iron, aluminum, etc. - would break off into different types of that metal and.... you know what. Just go to this link and see just how many types of resources there are: https://galaxyharvester.net/resourceType.py? Here you will find both organic and inorganic materials from Star Wars Galaxies, and be able to click on each resource to go to another page that will tell you more information. So let's give it a try!
If you click on Copper, under Mineral>Metal>Non-Ferrous Metal, you should be brought to this page https://galaxyharvester.net/resourceType.py/copper, where you will find general information about Copper like what it is used for, but also about the different characteristics that Copper resource contains. Each resource has one or more characteristics that would determine how good its application would be towards certain craftables, and these characteristics were based on a number scale between 1 and 1000. The characteristics and their abbreviations are as follows: (CR) Cold Resistance, (CD) Conductivity, (DR) Decay Resistance, (ER) Entangle Resistance, (FL) Flavor, (HR) Heat Resistance, (MA) Malleability, (OQ) Overall Quality, (PE) Potential Energy, (SR) Shock Resistance, (UT) Unit Toughness. So for example, the highest-end craftable Rifle in the game might need a Copper with high Conductivity (CD) and Overall Quality (OQ), but a weapon used on a Spacecraft will need a Copper with high Cold Resistance (CR), Decay Resistance (DR) and Heat Resistance (HR). So literally, no one Copper was the same.
So you might be saying, "cool, then if you need Copper with high CD and OQ, then just go harvest it!" Well, it wasn't so simple. Sony implemented a resource shifting system that would spawn resources irregularly on a 6 to 21 day lifespan, and once its lifespan was up, it would despawn forever. F-O-R-E-V-E-R. So if you needed a Copper or other Mineral with a certain high-value characteristic, you might be waiting for some time. Let's paint a picture here - say a random Copper Ore spawned, and it was REALLY good: it had high CD and OQ, with other stats that were solid as well. This Copper is essentially a Weaponsmiths wetdream, as most of their weapons require high CD/OQ. But, this spawn ONLY was available on a far reaching planet that had many, MANY treacherous creatures , such as the fabled Rancor! So like any simple tradesmen, you hire men/women to help escort you to survey the land and find the best area to build your harvester. You finally find a spot with a concentration of 56%, which is pretty low, but for a Copper this rare and high valued, you just want to break ground. Eight days later you come back to your harvesters (after once again hiring an expedition) and collect your reward: a solid 1000 units of this rare Copper.
But this spawn of Copper is now forever gone, its lifespan of 6-21 days settled at 8 days, and it just so happens that you were the only harvester in the Galaxy that was able to make it the rare spawn and harvest. You have a Copper who's rarity is best compared to Valyrian Steel (from Game of Thrones), where only the highest of bidders will even have the opportunity to craft with such a resource. If you go back to the link showing the details about Copper, and scroll to the very bottom, near the middle of the page you should find
Now imagine a system like this implemented into a high-fantasy world like the one in which intrepid is trying to bring to life. On Asmon's interview yesterday, there was a question about how craftable items could be worth just as much as dropped raid items, and this is how! A system that allows for temporary spawns of materials that may never been seen again before to create truly unique items, or even legendary items, owned by select few. Steven has said it many times before that Ashes of Creation will not be a participation award game where everyone achieves the same level of experience. No two servers will be the same, and never will a server remain static, and if Intrepid can successfully replicate that concept into their gathering, processing and crafting system, then I think this could be the game that many have been waiting a long time for.
Here's a couple quick links if you want a better understanding of the SWG crafting system as a whole, which is supposedly heavily influencing AOC.
Harvesting - https://swglegends.com/wiki/index.php?title=Harvesting
Resources - https://swg.fandom.com/wiki/Resource
Crafting - https://swg.fandom.com/wiki/Crafting
For those of you who never got to experience Star Wars Galaxies pre-CU (pre Combat Upgrade), I feel for you. It was the MMO that got me hooked on the genre, as it truly allowed a player to immerse themselves into different play styles that allowed you to experience the Star Wars world is many different way. You could spend 100% of your time crafting and mastering the trees of being an artisan by venturing off into Weaponsmithing/Armorsmithing or Architecture, or perhaps Bio-Engineering. One of my ABSOLUTE favorite systems that supported the crafting classes - and in many ways dictated the economy of the server - was the work of harvesting resources. Players would spend hours on end surveying and building harvesting tools to best exploit the
Star Wars Galaxies would have different resource spawns in different areas and those spawns would change daily/weekly. To harvest those spawns, you would have to decide on where to build a resource gathering tool based off surveying the land and finding the highest density of that resource. How surveying in SWG worked is that an artisan class would have a tool that would read percentages of a gatherables in their area - so under 40% is obviously going to return less than if you found an area with over 80%, and very rare instances you would be able to survey and find an area with over 90% - AND NEVER would you find 100% on the reading. http://wiki.swganh.org/index.php/Survey_Resource_(Ability) <-- Here is quick Wiki about the resource surveying.
So, you now understand how to survey, but now you get to figure out the different resources that you can gather. First, you can harvest for Organic vs. Inorganic materials, and within the inorganic tree for example, you would choose between Ferrous and Non-ferrous metals, and your different types of metals - steel, iron, aluminum, etc. - would break off into different types of that metal and.... you know what. Just go to this link and see just how many types of resources there are: https://galaxyharvester.net/resourceType.py? Here you will find both organic and inorganic materials from Star Wars Galaxies, and be able to click on each resource to go to another page that will tell you more information. So let's give it a try!
If you click on Copper, under Mineral>Metal>Non-Ferrous Metal, you should be brought to this page https://galaxyharvester.net/resourceType.py/copper, where you will find general information about Copper like what it is used for, but also about the different characteristics that Copper resource contains. Each resource has one or more characteristics that would determine how good its application would be towards certain craftables, and these characteristics were based on a number scale between 1 and 1000. The characteristics and their abbreviations are as follows: (CR) Cold Resistance, (CD) Conductivity, (DR) Decay Resistance, (ER) Entangle Resistance, (FL) Flavor, (HR) Heat Resistance, (MA) Malleability, (OQ) Overall Quality, (PE) Potential Energy, (SR) Shock Resistance, (UT) Unit Toughness. So for example, the highest-end craftable Rifle in the game might need a Copper with high Conductivity (CD) and Overall Quality (OQ), but a weapon used on a Spacecraft will need a Copper with high Cold Resistance (CR), Decay Resistance (DR) and Heat Resistance (HR). So literally, no one Copper was the same.
So you might be saying, "cool, then if you need Copper with high CD and OQ, then just go harvest it!" Well, it wasn't so simple. Sony implemented a resource shifting system that would spawn resources irregularly on a 6 to 21 day lifespan, and once its lifespan was up, it would despawn forever. F-O-R-E-V-E-R. So if you needed a Copper or other Mineral with a certain high-value characteristic, you might be waiting for some time. Let's paint a picture here - say a random Copper Ore spawned, and it was REALLY good: it had high CD and OQ, with other stats that were solid as well. This Copper is essentially a Weaponsmiths wetdream, as most of their weapons require high CD/OQ. But, this spawn ONLY was available on a far reaching planet that had many, MANY treacherous creatures , such as the fabled Rancor! So like any simple tradesmen, you hire men/women to help escort you to survey the land and find the best area to build your harvester. You finally find a spot with a concentration of 56%, which is pretty low, but for a Copper this rare and high valued, you just want to break ground. Eight days later you come back to your harvesters (after once again hiring an expedition) and collect your reward: a solid 1000 units of this rare Copper.
But this spawn of Copper is now forever gone, its lifespan of 6-21 days settled at 8 days, and it just so happens that you were the only harvester in the Galaxy that was able to make it the rare spawn and harvest. You have a Copper who's rarity is best compared to Valyrian Steel (from Game of Thrones), where only the highest of bidders will even have the opportunity to craft with such a resource. If you go back to the link showing the details about Copper, and scroll to the very bottom, near the middle of the page you should find
Best Spawns. The Copper in which we just went to the far reaches of the Galaxy to reach is on that list of best spawns, named hiforis, a type of Platinite Copper. This is an actual Copper resource that I believe was found on a SWG emulation server (the community is still out there!), and it looks like it was recorded almost 4 years ago.
Now imagine a system like this implemented into a high-fantasy world like the one in which intrepid is trying to bring to life. On Asmon's interview yesterday, there was a question about how craftable items could be worth just as much as dropped raid items, and this is how! A system that allows for temporary spawns of materials that may never been seen again before to create truly unique items, or even legendary items, owned by select few. Steven has said it many times before that Ashes of Creation will not be a participation award game where everyone achieves the same level of experience. No two servers will be the same, and never will a server remain static, and if Intrepid can successfully replicate that concept into their gathering, processing and crafting system, then I think this could be the game that many have been waiting a long time for.
Here's a couple quick links if you want a better understanding of the SWG crafting system as a whole, which is supposedly heavily influencing AOC.
Harvesting - https://swglegends.com/wiki/index.php?title=Harvesting
Resources - https://swg.fandom.com/wiki/Resource
Crafting - https://swg.fandom.com/wiki/Crafting
~Simus Deathmax
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