Best crafted weapons suck vs high end store bought ones?

[Cian]

I just realized weaponsmithing is basically worthless compared to even stuff you can buy at the Scraphouse shop.

Armorsmithing can make masterwork stuff that is the same as anything you can find or buy, but weaponsmithing is just lousy for two reasons:

1. In the unmodded game, you're limited to Edge 2 as a crit success with Edge 1 crafting.

2. In addition to this, the top a manufacturers get an extra 10% that your home made weapons don't get.

Plus you have a level even above Edge 3 that you can get from special NPCs. The 10% combined with the lower tier results in damage numbers like this:

Meitou Nodachi: 2.64
Edge 3 purchased Nodachi: 2.19
Best crafted (edge2): 1.89

That's an almost 40% increase in damage from the best found weapon class to the best crafted weapon class, and about 16% increase just from the stuff you can buy at merchants.

And even if you mod the game to give yourself the ability to crit craft Edge 3, you still only produce the equivalent of Edge 1 due to the missing manufacturer bonus.

Is this intended, or an oversight? It turns weaponsmithing into nothing but a money maker, with which you run and trade your crap for the quality stuff you want to use. You could do the same just by training up armorsmiths and trading armor for weapons and not even bothering to research the whole, long weaponsmithing path.

[S̷e̸p̀ưlch͡ŕąl҉]

Agreed, wholeheartedly.

Weapon smithing feels fairly underwhelming for the time, tech and resources required to produce anything of merit short of; 'just doing it for the fun'. Weapon smithing is further crippled by the fact that Joe-blow down the road in his shack, or any random ruins can contain items better than your level 100 Hanzo Hatori master bladesmith could ever produce.

[Bored Peon]

While this may sound bad.....

Edge 2 weapons are already overkill with any decently skilled unit.

The intent was to give players something to spend their money on. Those edge 3 weapons are about the only thing a player can or will spend their money on late game.

Honestly I never like thed weaponsmithing system. I think it would have been a better money sink to require different teirs of weapon grades to require different qualities or kinds of metals.

Originally posted by Cian:

And even if you mod the game to give yourself the ability to crit craft Edge 3, you still only produce the equivalent of Edge 1 due to the missing manufacturer bonus.

That has been that way for a long while. I think their is a mod out there that did manage it somehow.

Originally posted by Cian:

Plus you have a level even above Edge 3 that you can get from special NPCs.

Those weapons never restock. They are only generated once per game. Importing will refresh them though. They were meant to be rare, but importing has trivialized them, which kinda falls into the self restraint and cheesing category.

[yippeekiay]

Damnit, wasn't sure if Edge 3 were craftable. I've had my guys making stuff for ingame weeks.

Got all my guys now kitted out with Masterwork armour but noticed my weaponsmith weapons were inferior. He only just got to level 90 and has been knocking out a huge amount of Edge 1 & 2 Guardless Katanas. He now has a 40% crit chance so I have 50 Edge 2 in stock while I've been selling all the Edge 1's he had made.

I thought once he hit 90+ he may knock out an Edge 3 on occasionI so was holding out for them, then I was going to sell all the 2's I've been keeping. Glad I kept hold of them as I guess I'll have to equip them now to my guys. I'm not "too" disappointed as it'll be a big upgrade for all but the best guys I have.

[Cian]

True, the Meitou are a bit overpowered and limited. I still think we should be able to craft at least equivalent to the top of the tier short of that which is available in stores.

You CAN mod it to fix things by giving the player weapons the 10% bonus and allowing Edge 2 to unlock, but it would also apply to other weapon types that don't get the bonus too since it's a manufacturer bonus. I just think it should be adjusted in the base game, since otherwise weaponsmithing is effectively useless.

[RawCode]

because instead of playing as you like you are forced to "explore"

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Cian:

True, the Meitou are a bit overpowered and limited. I still think we should be able to craft at least equivalent to the top of the tier short of that which is available in stores.

If you think about it this way in generic MMO terms...

The stuff you craft on without a crit is uncommon green quality.
The stuff you craft with a crit is rare blue quality.
The edge 3 weapons because the no restock limit would be considered purple epic quality.
The quality above that would be like legendary artifact quality.

Now some MMOs allow you to craft those "rare legendaries" (which quickly become common) however they require really rare ingredients. Those really rare ingredients do not exist in Kenshi. Which is why I have always said the higher end weaposn should require a harder to get material. So because those rare ingredients do not exist then allowing that stuff to be crafted ruins your game in terms of balance and goals.

I think the main issue is the store concept. If those weapons did not exist in that store but instead existed as loot somewhere we would not even be having this discussion. Simply because they are found in a "store" people forget that those weapons are unique and never restock (unless you import.)

[Cian]

Edge 3 stuff isn't limited, though, is it? I've seen it all over the place. I've gotten Edge 3 weapons off of high level npcs (npcs in Tengu's Palace, the elite hive guards, some guy in Mongrel, all the UC nobles) and i'm pretty sure the scrapyard vendor restocks it, as I've picked up a dozen or so Edge 3 weapons over the course of my game that I don't recall seeing there in the first stock. Not to mention that all Edge weapons are better than what you can craft on a critical success.

Meanwhile, to get the ability to craft something slightly weaker than Edge 1 as a critical result (Edge 2 without the 10% bonus) you have to use at least 4 AI cores and 14 ancient science books to research all the way up the tech tree and then train a weaponsmith for days and days. Or you can just buy far superior Edge 1 - 3 weapons at the shop.

[Erei]

Meitou is the best of the best but is limited. As in, 1 max per category, unless you cheese and import. Consider it "unique" weapons, so yes, it's better, as it should be.

Originally posted by yippeekiay:

Damnit, wasn't sure if Edge 3 were craftable. I've had my guys making stuff for ingame weeks.

Edge 3 used to be craftable, but it was nerfed. The idea is to force the player to explore.

I don't think it's a good idea, honestly, because the exploration will yield random reward. And you might have for example 3 edge3 jitte, while nobody use them, and you really want a katana.
Also, if you don't explore in this game, that's more an issue with the player. Most of the game is about exploring, not to mention tech item being hidden in ruins.

[SnugSnug]

self crafted weapons are still better than nearly all looted weapons and provide a good progression through the game until near the end when one has the knowledge and resources to go pick-up the higher tier weapons.

Some of the locations mentioned in the post above aren't exactly immediate starting points, i think it would be fairer to say weaponsmithing has its limitations and becomes of less worth for fully developed characters but provides mass production throughout.

[Cian]

Originally posted by SnugSnug:

self crafted weapons are still better than nearly all looted weapons and provide a good progression through the game until near the end when one has the knowledge and resources to go pick-up the higher tier weapons.

Some of the locations mentioned in the post above aren't exactly immediate starting points, i think it would be fairer to say weaponsmithing has its limitations and becomes of less worth for fully developed characters but provides mass production throughout.

If you are only focused on starting points and early game, then we can compare the early game options for crafting without the ancient science books and AI cores. So that would leave us with basic weaponsmithing. So after researching basic weaponsmithing and the repeatable basic grades tech a bit, which takes about 10 books I believe, and finding the blueprint you want and buying it, you can produce Refitted Blades, which are the weapon you can find on most basic bandits.

The problem is, all the better npcs (ninjas, bounty hunters, samurai) you can find the Catun Scrapmaster weapons, which are way better. And on better npcs (skeletons, bounty hunters, police, caravans) you can find skeleton smith stuff, which is even better. And both of these far superior grades can be found in most weapon shops too. Heft, Heng, World's End, and Mongrel all have Skeleton Smith stuff. Some of the Shek cities have it too. The swamp and most of the rest of the world have the Catun Scrapmaster stuff.

To duplicate the readily available skeleton smith stuff, you have to have 11 ancient science books and something like 72 hours of research. If you just spent your money on buying the weapons you could outfit a pretty big squad before you got to a point where it costed more to buy them than to do all this research and produce them. Granted once your smith is trained up enough you can start crit rolling fake Edge 1 weapons (without the 10% boost), but by that point you should have found several superior Edge 1-3 weapons in the bases you looted for the science books - and finding the Scrapyard completely invalidates anything you can make even if you find AI cores and tech up to the max.

[Devastator]

To get the best weapons in the game you have to try very hard, I like this approach

[Cian]

Originally posted by Devastator:

To get the best weapons in the game you have to try very hard, I like this approach

How is having a character camp out at the scrapyard and buy weapons trying very hard? It's more work to research and train a weaponsmith for weeks and find the AI cores necessary to unlock the tech than it is to just buy the vastly superior stuff at the vendor.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Cian:

Originally posted by Devastator:

To get the best weapons in the game you have to try very hard, I like this approach

How is having a character camp out at the scrapyard and buy weapons trying very hard? It's more work to research and train a weaponsmith for weeks and find the AI cores necessary to unlock the tech than it is to just buy the vastly superior stuff at the vendor.

While I agree with the comment on not working for it. I do not agree with the crafting issue because crafting would trivialize having them. At least with the the shop ther eis still a limited quantity because once again the shop does NOT restock.

[Cian]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

While I agree with the comment on not working for it. I do not agree with the crafting issue because crafting would trivialize having them. At least with the the shop ther eis still a limited quantity because once again the shop does NOT restock.

... except the shop DOES restock?

Every 48 hours it restocks with a fresh load of Edge 1-3 weapons. The only thing that doesn't restock are the research artifacts. It spawns a lot of them too - I bought up all of them from the shop to see and it had 40 of them and cost well over a million credits. I guess it IS the game's only credit sink right now, but it makes the process of acquiring good weapons rather silly. Instead of crafting your own stuff to use, you craft your own crappy stuff to trade to the guy who stocks an endless supply of the good stuff. Your "Edge 2" are weaker than his "Edge 1" because, um, he's special I guess.

If the amount of Edge weapons in the game were limited I could kind of understand the whole not allowing us to craft anything as good as Edge 1 weapons, but they endlessly restock - so weaponsmithing is completely useless. All you really need is money. Armorsmithing, on the other hand, lets you craft the absolute best armor in the game - stuff that is hard to find even in the Armor King's shop is easily craftable. And the armor sells for plenty, so you can just craft more armor and trade it for the best weapons.

[Nox]

Well the difference isn't all that great. It would matter for one guy, but the crafted stuff is pretty much the stuff you turn out for the grunts.