My opinion on crafting in Terra Tech.

[Elijah]

So I have played through Terra Tech many times before, hitting the end game on several dozen of those runs, and one thing that has bothered me is how little incentive there is to crafting. I get that the developers wanted to give people options but setting up a scrapping/selling base is both easier, and quicker than setting up a huge crafting base. The couple of times where I did try to give crafting a shot, I spammed silos so I had one filtered off for different materials (raw, refined and components) but my game started lagging like crazy when I got that filled up (mind you, I don't normally lag on here, unless I spam mortars or whatever).

So at the end of the day, with nothing unique available to crafting and everything you can craft able to be bought in infinite quantities from the Payload Terminals, is there even a point? You know, other than saying that you set it up?

[Zargn]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Elijah:

So I have played through Terra Tech many times before, hitting the end game on several dozen of those runs, and one thing that has bothered me is how little incentive there is to crafting. I get that the developers wanted to give people options but setting up a scrapping/selling base is both easier, and quicker than setting up a huge crafting base. The couple of times where I did try to give crafting a shot, I spammed silos so I had one filtered off for different materials (raw, refined and components) but my game started lagging like crazy when I got that filled up (mind you, I don't normally lag on here, unless I spam mortars or whatever).

So at the end of the day, with nothing unique available to crafting and everything you can craft able to be bought in infinite quantities from the Payload Terminals, is there even a point? You know, other than saying that you set it up?

There was plans to make crafted blocks have more hp, and a bit higher damage over the regular parts you find/buy.
Sadly I havent heard anything about that in a long time, so if it ever gets added, it will probably be after 1.0.

[Kharn]

Look into ZG's 1million speed ruin guide. and look into his Perhonen example tech for scrapper crafting. its the least laggiest wait to sort the blocks and its pretty efficient.

[traviniperv]

You cant buy something until you have either found it, or crafted it. In all my games I get bored hoping to nab a cool part from a reward crate and find its faster to make a production facility and produce the part I need.

But I agree, once you are able to buy something from the payload terminal, its much easier to just refine and sell everything, stockpile cash, and then purchase exactly what you need for your perfect tech.

[Killer🔥keys]

There was plans to make crafted blocks have more hp, and a bit higher damage over the regular parts you find/buy.

This seems like a great idea !!!! Im all for this idea :)

[ZeroGravitas]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Elijah:

with nothing unique available to crafting and everything you can craft able to be bought in infinite quantities from the Payload Terminals, is there even a point?

I worried that too many people will only think about it after all the excitement of mission based levelling is done with. Because at that point, of course, there's now little point doing anything beyond than Erudite farming for Payload terminal money (pretty shallow).

But crafting is actually really powerful, if you do use it during the main game progress. Something I've been trying to show with my crafting series. It's arguably too powerful, in that it lets you unlock all blocks of your current level, and have as many of the best parts as you want! (As traviniperv says.) But it's also a great approach if you want to have a more creative play style, rather than just improvising barely functional franken-techs.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Kharn Tehfury:

and look into his Perhonen example tech for scrapper crafting. its the least laggiest wait to sort the blocks and its pretty efficient.

Thanks for referencing my stuff! My guide's here, incidentally (with links to workshop items, some of the videos, etc): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1191458767

And, unfortunately, it turns out that Payload won't have the coder resources to fix the many crafting bugs, so the guide should be useful (and I should actuall bother updating it with the new 0.8+ bugs...Sigh).

Oprindeligt skrevet af Zargn:

There was plans to make crafted blocks have more hp, and a bit higher damage over the regular parts you find/buy.

Oh, the higher stats blocks was a crafting related angle... Cool. Or rather, bah, something else that us enthusiast players are missing out on. Well, maybe when the fixes *do* finally come in, we'll get that, plus a few more interesting crafting additions, in a nice big lump.

[Elijah]

The main issue to me is that everything is available in the Payloads that is also available to craft. And once you've gone through the game several dozen times, it only takes a couple of hours to have all 4 Payloads. So yes, crafting COULD be useful for those couple of hours, but is it really worth setting up the whole thing just for some wheels and weapons when GSO grade 3 stuff is sufficient enough to power through the missions? Not particularly. There's also the factor of exploration leading to more trade stations and thus, getting multiples of whatever you would normally be crafting. If you are like me, you like exploring (especially to unlock more missions). I have never once while progressing thought "Oh man I need to set up crafting or something to get these items more reliably." simply because I know that I will have that Payload shortly thereafter.

Even the perk of items having slightly higher damage/health is a bit irrelevant. The endgame is incredibly unbalanced and lacks much depth. You just need to outrange the enemy tech and you win. Now there are enemies that will spawn with 10-12 cruise missiles so outranging is the requirement at this point. To be honest, a LOT of the game needs rebalancing in order to make crafting viable, and to make the endgame more varied and interesting.

It's been awhile since I brought it up before but they need to implement a 5th faction that is sort of a hidden faction. One focused on research and crafting. They can have perks that you can unlock through certain missions or by crafting certain blocks that require intense setups. That way it makes both missions and crafting more viable and it will make it to where you progressively get stronger while the enemies remain the same. If you are able to get upgrades that allow you to make shields absorb explosive damage better (or at all as it seems currently) and then another upgrade that increases shotgun damage, boom you have close range becoming more viable.

That faction could easily become the solution to a lot of the issues Terratech has in both the crafting and the end game. They could also make crafting only items for that faction that help increase the production line efficiency even better and thus give more options for crafting as well as enjoyable. Obviously it would take a lot of work to implement such a faction, but its the kind of overhaul that could easily solve MOST of the issues the game has.

The one obvious thing with that idea is that the 5th faction should NOT have a Payload terminal. That would ruin the whole concept of it.

[ZeroGravitas]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Elijah:

it only takes a couple of hours to have all 4 Payloads.

You can max all levels in a couple of hours?! I think it took Zed at least 15 to complete a playthrough (in one sitting).

Oprindeligt skrevet af Elijah:

To be honest, a LOT of the game needs rebalancing in order to make crafting viable,

I'm hoping that they might put a little more emphasis on crafting after it's been fixed up - it'd be a very bad move to force/'encourage' players to use it now, when it's so broken and flakey.

There was also a bit of community push-back against perceived necessity to use craft, I think, about a year ago, when I first started play. I think it was with the removal of being able to buy techs (or sell blocks directly). So we need to keep in mind that the majority probably really don't want to fell like they're being made to craft. The fools. ;-)

[Elijah]

Oprindeligt skrevet af ZeroGravitas:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Elijah:

it only takes a couple of hours to have all 4 Payloads.

You can max all levels in a couple of hours?! I think it took Zed at least 15 to complete a playthrough (in one sitting).

Oprindeligt skrevet af Elijah:

To be honest, a LOT of the game needs rebalancing in order to make crafting viable,

I'm hoping that they might put a little more emphasis on crafting after it's been fixed up - it'd be a very bad move to force/'encourage' players to use it now, when it's so broken and flakey.

There was also a bit of community push-back against perceived necessity to use craft, I think, about a year ago, when I first started play. I think it was with the removal of being able to buy techs (or sell blocks directly). So we need to keep in mind that the majority probably really don't want to fell like they're being made to craft. The fools. ;-)

That's why the "5th corporation" would be focused on upgrading things. The catch is you have to craft to access it. If people dont want to bother with crafting they can ignore it, but they will be missing out. And yeah it really doesn't take long to max out the corporations, as long as you focus on a speedy craft rather than a tank. The key is spamming missions which requires a lot of traveling to trade stations.

[Zed]

Oprindeligt skrevet af ZeroGravitas:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Elijah:

it only takes a couple of hours to have all 4 Payloads.

You can max all levels in a couple of hours?! I think it took Zed at least 15 to complete a playthrough (in one sitting).

12h35min to complete all non-recurring quests.; typical breakdown is usually 4-5hrs to fully max GSO before moving onto the other corporations which the three remaning corps tend to take another 5 or 6 hours to max.

its the quests which tend to take time mostly sgt smash kill 10-60 techs / GC miner missions.

My guess would be a speed demon uninterrupted could max all 4 corps to payload drop in ~9 hours.

files available @ https://forum.terratechgame.com/index.php?threads/0-8-stable-synopsis.16181/ , twitch video has expired.

[traviniperv]

If I ignore the crafting/harvesting quests and just sprint thru all the others, I think I can max each faction in 9 hours or so. I sincerely hope they get the new factions completed ASAP. Getting bored.

[ZeroGravitas]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Zed:

12h35min to complete all non-recurring quests.; typical breakdown is usually 4-5hrs to fully max GSO before moving onto the other corporations which the three remaning corps tend to take another 5 or 6 hours to max.

Ah, thanks for clarifying that - I was hoping you'd turn up and give us more specifics.

Oprindeligt skrevet af traviniperv:

I sincerely hope they get the new factions completed ASAP.

Console development first (currently in mad progress). Then crafting bugs and AI fixes, hopefully. Then expanding out the number of levels of the existing corps - they must have a lot of new blocks backlogged (having seen nothing new from the 3 man art team since February), and some of the wheels and weapons, in particular, are already overloaded in level 3 licences.

That should extend out a few more hours, then I (personally) would prefer to see an end-game added (ahead of new corps), unless they are integral to it. Something (worthwhile) that might double a game length for the enthusiast, completionist players...

[rubydreamer]

Would be awesome if we could continue leveling, with further levels adding to the stats of items.

[rubydreamer]

Maybe even have specific quests that give boosted stats as a reward!
+20% GSO Battery storage!
+10% Reload speed for GSO Megaton Cannon
+20% HP for GEO Basic Block

Go around hunting for quests to buff up your fav blocks!

[rubydreamer]

And imagine if these buffs could be CARRIED INTO CERTAIN MULTIPLAYER GAMES!

[Elijah]

Oprindeligt skrevet af rubydreamer:

Would be awesome if we could continue leveling, with further levels adding to the stats of items.

Next time could you please just edit your comment rather than posting 3 different comments? But anyways, as far as those buffs are concerned the missions would have to be extremely difficult and also have nerfed rewards. As the game currently is, any mission becomes a joke once you build a plane/helicopter with cruise missiles and people would abuse that. Those buffs should NOT be carried into multiplayer for two reasons. One: someone with every buff would greatly overpower those with none. Two: what would stop someone from making multiple single player games in order to farm those quests and stack the buffs?