I thought this deserved it's own thread. I found some really good information today when searching on different crafting material. http://www.firefallthegame.com/community/threads/crafting-is-complicated.86886/ http://neontwister.blogspot.com/2013/03/patch-06-upgrading-your-frame-and.html Please read this all before voting! The Materials: There are 15 materials in the game now, broken up into 5 families of 3 materials each. Each family has a high CPU (occasionally called Cores), high power, and high Mass variant. Each of these can be found in the game world from thumping, surface deposits, or drops from supply crates or melding resources. Carbon Electroactive Carbon (CPU) Energized Carbon (Power) Carbon Composites (Mass) Ceramics Ceramic Dielectrics (Power) Ceramic Composites (Mass) Ceramic Insulators (CPU) Bio-Organics Bio-Organic Smartgels (CPU) Bio-Organic Compounds (Power) Bio-Organic Sintergel (Mass) Polymers Conductive Polymers (Power) Hi-Strength Polymers (Mass) Electroactive Polymers (CPU) Metals Hi-Tensile Metals (Mass) Conductive Metals (Power) Computational Metals (CPU) In addition, there are 6 other crafting items are based on crystite, 5 of which are tied to the 5 families of materials, and the other can come from any of them. You get these materials when you refine any of the above families, you generally get one hybrid and 1 seed crystite from every 1000 raw materials processed. Blue Crystite Hybrids (Carbon) Green Crystite Hybrids (Ceramics) Purple Crystite Hybrids (Polymers) Red Crystite Hybrids (Metals) Yellow Crystite Hybrids (Bio-Organics) Seed Crystite These 21 materials create just about everything in the game. I'll refer to these as the base materials. To make things even more confusing each material has a quality level. The higher the quality, the higher the primary stat is. So a high quality Conductive Metal would have an even higher Power stat than a lower quality Conductive Metal. The only other crafting items are the enemy specific drops (Such as DNA or tech), and the Accord reward merits that are used for progression. The Battleframes: Now, the 5 families of materials are directly tied to each of the 5 families of frames, and each specific material is tied to a specific frame. Carbon (Dreadnaughts) Electroactive Carbon (Accord Dreadnaught) Energized Carbon (Rhino) Carbon Composites (Mammoth) Ceramics (Assaults) Ceramic Dielectrics (Accord Assault) Ceramic Composites (Tigerclaw) Ceramic Insulators (Firecat) Bio-Organics (Biotechs) Bio-Organic Smartgels (Accord Biotech) Bio-Organic Compounds (Recluse) Bio-Organic Sintergel (Dragonfly) Polymers (Engineers) Conductive Polymers (Accord Engineer) Hi-Strength Polymers (Bastion) Electroactive Polymers (Electron) Metals (Recons) Hi-Tensile Metals (Accord Recon) Conductive Metals (Nighthawk) Computational Metals (Raptor) Upgrading a trait line beyond level 5 requires a large quantity of that frame's specific material. For example, upgrading the mass trait line for the Firecat to level 6 requires 10,000 Ceramic Insulators. That's the same amount needed for upgrading power or CPU to level 6 as well. The Tigerclaw however, would require 10,000 Ceramic Composites for the exact same upgrades.. In total, each trait line requires 2,420,500 experience, 325,000 materials, and 1 progression token (10,000 Accord Merit Points). To process the 10,000 Accord Merit Points into a progression token requires 278 hours of processing time (half that if you use your workbenches in parallel). Now, even though each frame requires a specific material to upgrade its trait lines, crafting items for that frame doesn't follow the same guideline. There doesn't seem to be any sort of theme, weapons for the Rhino take metal and ceramic, while weapons for the Firecat take Carbon, Polymer, Ceramic, and Metal... Crafting So, how does all of this come together into an item? Let's start at the top, we'll make a tier 2 Heavy Laser Machine Gun for the Rhino. Heavy Laser MG II Heavy Laser MG Spinner II (Spin Up) 250 Metal (CPU) Heavy Laser MG Reactor II (Damage) Basic Matter Energizer 300 Metal (Mass) 1 Basic Seed Crystite Module Power Relay 150 Metal (Power) Heavy Laser MG Capsule II (Clip Size) Basic Fusion Capsule 200 Metal (Mass) 1 Basic Seed Crystite Module Basic Fusion Shielding 200 Ceramic (Mass) 1 Basic Seed Crystite Module All of the above turns into the Heavy Laser MG II, and if you chose your materials correctly, it will have improved stats, but at the cost of using more power and weighing more than the stock accord one. One more thing to note, tier 2 equipment generally has an additional requirement. In this case, the Heavy Laser MG II requires you have unlocked the Zero-Point Energy Inductor on your Rhino, which is the level 6 upgrade for the power trait line (148k exp and 10k Energized Carbon). So to create a high quality version of this gun you would need: 250 high quality Computational Metal, 500 high quality Hi-Tensile Metal, 150 high quality Conductive Metal, and 200 high quality Ceramic Composites, as well as 3 high quality Seed Crystite. It would take you a total of 11 individual steps of inputting things into your crafting station, and would take approximate (I HAVE NO IDEA THE SERVERS ARE DOWN SO I CAN'T CHECK!!!!) minutes. Now that you've read all of this, you are allowed to vote. What do you think of the new crafting system? Also, side note to devs: The Firecat's T2 weapon (Thermal Cannon) is currently uncraftable. It's missing the Basic Plasma Muzzle, a sub-component of the T2 Thermal Cannon Barrel.
That cleared some things up a bit, thank you. I'm not saying anything about the crafting. It's work in progress, so I'll give them time to tweak it a bit. It's a bit confusing and tedious at the moment but the concept is good.
It is a cool system, and even with T1 gear you can get some pretty decent buffs just by making sure you are using the best material quality for that given stat (power/mass/CPU). Also sometimes the higher quality is not always the best option because of what is available. Like the highest quality metal is 218, but for power components the 195 is better because it has a higher power attribute.
Here is another good link: http://www.firefallthegame.com/2013/03/26/rudikazooties-rudimentary-crafting-guide/
More Links http://astrekassociation.com/reference/new-firefall-resources/ http://www.firefallthegame.com/community/threads/list-of-all-raw-and-refined-resources.88151/
it's a little... complicated, and non-intuitive, definitely a work in progress, it could be interesting but it's going to need some serious work if it's going to become something the average player is going to enjoy using.
Its worth noting the entire system of crafting and progression was re-done about a week ago. It is still technically closed beta and the progression in the game is only for testing purposes. In the future they will actually have a tech tree you work through that you unlock certain things with. So I imagine the crafting will make a lot more sense. But no, it is not a simple 2 iron makes a glove type system. But honestly, I am really glad it is not. I am sick of games where the crafting is brainless, useless and incredibly boring. This integrates crafting into the progression and makes it interesting.
