Lets Talk about the Fabricator and Deconstructor changes/exploits and why there both good and bad.

[Nattie98]

So EVERYONE is very polarized about the nerf to the Fabricator and Deconstructor and since i played before the update I would say I abused the heck out of it but not just for EXP.

You see the problem with the change is the deconstruction either gives less or the same with the fabricator requiring more with the reason they provide is because when crafting you gain exp if you used the same resources you deconstructed to make it again letting you farm EXP for your skills but people are asking the wrong questions here the real question is how powerful is it and why is it both bad and good.
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From my experience the skill farming is about a yes and no you see it is strong but it takes a lot of time it took me about a good hour or 2 to get 20-30 points in two skills that seems like a lot but that is 1 to 2 WHOLE hours of doing nothing but deconstructing and fabricating by myself essentially in a normal game where sub stops are at most 10 to 20 minutes in a multiplayer game your only going to get a few skill points here and there from doing that.

Another exploit with it is that the devs did not even point out is when you deconstruct stolen goods you can remake them into non stolen goods made even worse that people who are from the station dont do a thief check on the Deconstructor.

(For if your curious what the thief check is its how the game checks on when you steal something it does it when you put things into your inventory, or move stolen goods around your inventory or to your equipment and if someone from the station is watching you they will force you to hand off all considered stolen goods.)

With one exception the Deconstructor so when you put things in the Deconstructor that's stolen people dont bat an eye letting you Deconstruct there stolen goods so you can deconstruct it with the stations Deconstructor. Then reconstruct it and resell it so this change does pseudo stop this but not actually if you have the resources to reconstruct it or you have the resources from your thievery to do it then you still can its just not as effective.
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Now then why this change is bad.

Because if I am gonna go down the list of what it potentially stopped I am gonna go down the list to what this change hurts. You see the Fabricator and Deconstructor are not some small optional piece there a integral part of the game to make resources from your stuff to make new resources from your stuff. So when you up the costs to the fabricator or reduce what you get from the Deconstructor you effect that WHOLE part of the game making resources less valuable as you need more to fulfill the construction requirements.

This effects some big things like tool quality upgrading as now you cant just deconstruct tools or equipment and reconstruct them to improve there quality if your skills are good enough or you have the special perk that ups the quality of certain things. You need to throw in some kind of resource to do that now because of this additional cost made even worse that the Deconstructor used to tell you what you got because putting something in the fabricator would tell you what its made of.

And because the Deconstructor was 1:1 you could find out what you got out of deconstructing the tool or piece of equipment before you deconstructed it this change makes that impossible you don't know and that means you could deconstruct something trying to upgrade it and not know what resource you need only to not have it and instead of upgrading it you just lose that tool or equipment due to lack of knowledge.

Also some equipment conversions are completely impossible now like take for instance a fuel tank when the tank was done you can convert it into an oxygen tank from deconstructing and reconstructing it as now you cant do that because the spent fuel tank only gives some aluminum and not enough to make a new oxygen tank out of it despite it being a empty tank with a different color lid and thats the common example but there are quite a few in the list of craftable items like some things that would logically give resources but now dont like storage crates. They used to give steel but they dont when you cant construct them it also means you cant turn crates into storage containers. I know you get them for free but its a nice reward for going out of your way to deconstruct them and not just toss them.
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Overall I feel this change was done to target one problem without considering the ramifications it has to this integral part of the game while many argue its an exploit being fixed casual players who will never use such a exploit are now wrapped in more tedium to simply prevent the game from being broken. Essentially pulling a move to give it a more hardcore feel like FTL when the problem stems you need to consider the full player base and not just this one small subset of the community.

Ontop of the fact there are other means of approach to fix or discourage such a problem without such a aggressive change. My approach would be to remove/reduce EXP gains from proficiently crafted items and not from improficent items because the amount of time it takes can be a few minutes and it makes sense you would learn cause your doing something new where as you would learn less from something you know fully.

My point is regardless of what your fixing or adding you need to consider what other things it effects or you may be hurting your game/project more then your helping. A classic example of this is Feature creep where a dev lets features they want in there project or game without considering its effects both negative and positive on the integral parts of the game.

[Nattie98]

And for those that are here wondering about my opinion on the Duffel Bag and Headset battery slot. The Death Duffel Bag is not meant to be a permanent storage item its a bag that's a temp storage for a dead crew mates resources. I will say they need to add a actual craft able duffel bag and actual craft able/buyable storage cause that is a lacking part of what can be crafted outside of the storage container.

And the battery slot is a hold over from when the game was trying to be immersive the battery slot did not do anything but check if there was power in the battery it didn't even drain when in use. And people only used it as a pocket for a battery because some people consider the inventory size in this game to be to small for a lot of instances and would do things like that for any inventory space they could get there hands on.

[shadain597]

Y'know, this is the first time I've heard anyone mention stealing in relation to the deconstructor. And, though I still hate this change, adding that to the argument makes it more compelling; as has been mentioned multiple times, the skill gain issue could easily be addressed directly--if it even needed to be, aside from individual server rules.

Stealing would be harder to address, though there are options for that too, like making it so that stolen goods can't be deconstructed in the station's deconstructor. Or that all mats received from deconning stolen goods are marked as stolen, as are any goods crafted from stolen mats. A bit silly from an immersion perspective, but probably a moot point since I'm not convinced any of that is even necessary.

[cyclical1]

Originally posted by Nattie98:

And for those that are here wondering about my opinion on the Duffel Bag and Headset battery slot. The Death Duffel Bag is not meant to be a permanent storage item its a bag that's a temp storage for a dead crew mates resources. I will say they need to add a actual craft able duffel bag and actual craft able/buyable storage cause that is a lacking part of what can be crafted outside of the storage container.

And the battery slot is a hold over from when the game was trying to be immersive the battery slot did not do anything but check if there was power in the battery it didn't even drain when in use. And people only used it as a pocket for a battery because some people consider the inventory size in this game to be to small for a lot of instances and would do things like that for any inventory space they could get there hands on.

Is the game not immersive?

[Nattie98]

Originally posted by cyclical1:

Is the game not immersive?

it is, its just that it was made as a idea that the headset should use a battery to make communications more realistic but that idea never went anywhere, and people just used it more like a freebie battery slot instead of its actual purpose. also considering the battery did not drain when it was in the headset it makes it a understandable change if you ask me.

[Nattie98]

Originally posted by shadain597:

Y'know, this is the first time I've heard anyone mention stealing in relation to the deconstructor. And, though I still hate this change, adding that to the argument makes it more compelling; as has been mentioned multiple times, the skill gain issue could easily be addressed directly--if it even needed to be, aside from individual server rules.

Stealing would be harder to address, though there are options for that too, like making it so that stolen goods can't be deconstructed in the station's deconstructor. Or that all mats received from deconning stolen goods are marked as stolen, as are any goods crafted from stolen mats. A bit silly from an immersion perspective, but probably a moot point since I'm not convinced any of that is even necessary.

Its subjective imo the real problem is the steal check is not initiated on putting it in the stations Deconstructor and id tell you that would go a long way to stopping that. But even then this adjustment doesn't even fully remove profits the deconstructed materials can still be sold so that's why I said it kinda just Nerfed it but whats stopping someone from going back and fourth between the station and sea to rapidly steal, deconstruct and sell even with this Nerf that can still be done.

[Doctor Darling]

The dufflebag doesn't bother me much. Nothing a mod like a pelican case can't fix.

[kratos]

Making resources scarce is the intended effect. They are open to tweaks. But it sounds like the system we got is here to stay. You can find the dev's reasoning here.
https://github.com/Regalis11/Barotrauma/issues/9370

I don't really like the changes my self. One such reason is the change feels targeted towards serious campaign servers. And less so everyone else. But its their game after all.

[Nattie98]

Originally posted by Doctor Darling:

The dufflebag doesn't bother me much. Nothing a mod like a pelican case can't fix.

Dufflebag 2.0 is my recommendation if you really need more space just make sure to get the one from Milord as its updated for Urban Expansion. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2803439172&searchtext=bag+2.0

[shadain597]

Originally posted by kratos:

Making resources scarce is the intended effect. They are open to tweaks. But it sounds like the system we got is here to stay. You can find the dev's reasoning here.
https://github.com/Regalis11/Barotrauma/issues/9370

I don't really like the changes my self. One such reason is the change feels targeted towards serious campaign servers. And less so everyone else. But its their game after all.

My interpretation of that is a bit different; he claims that item scarcity was the main goal, in which case the decon change isn't necessarily "locked in." Though it sounds like they've got a "vision" of sorts and they aren't too concerned about how the playerbase feels about it.

[Nattie98]

Originally posted by shadain597:

Originally posted by kratos:

Making resources scarce is the intended effect. They are open to tweaks. But it sounds like the system we got is here to stay. You can find the dev's reasoning here.
https://github.com/Regalis11/Barotrauma/issues/9370

I don't really like the changes my self. One such reason is the change feels targeted towards serious campaign servers. And less so everyone else. But its their game after all.

My interpretation of that is a bit different; he claims that item scarcity was the main goal, in which case the decon change isn't necessarily "locked in." Though it sounds like they've got a "vision" of sorts and they aren't too concerned about how the playerbase feels about it.

Well in either case if the Dev locks it into this and I play and disagree to it ill turn to the workshop and hope for modders to revert/change it. Because resource scarcity done via this way limits you with more tedium then fixing problems imo.

[The Flaming Pike]

Concerning the headset, I think I should mention that it had a working draining battery cell in the beginning, but bots wouldn't realize when the battery cell was fully drained and would not recharge/replace it, resulting in them not hearing you when you gave them orders from afar since their headset was not working anymore.

It was then decided that batteries in headsets would not drain until the devs figured out a way to have bots interact with them appropriately.

I haven't asked a developer myself, but I'm assuming working battery cells are still planned for headsets, but until then I guess they decided to slash it off for now to prevent human players from using the headset as a potential spare battery slot for other, unrelated things. I guess there are bigger priorities with AI at the moment.

As for the deconstructor, once again I have to go back to how it was several updates ago. About two years ago if my memory is correct we had similar deconstructor mechanics, with more items giving "portions" of items such as aluminium. I don't recall players complaining then. I also don't remember people complaining when medical items were turned into single use items - you could apply bandages or morphine more than once before the item was "destroyed".

I think this is the kind of update that requires a bunch of hours of "testing" gameplay in a campaign to be sure whether or not these changes have the drastic effect some believe they have.

I regularly play Barotrauma and I usually play multiplayer campaigns. After a few missions, the amount of items that were stored in the sub quickly became astronomic. We just had too much stuff for our own good. I think we were spoiled for a year or so with this abundancy and now we are going back a bit closer to how it was before - and even then the game is still much easier now than it used to be.

[The-Champ]

The fabricator/deconstructor also needed a nerf because it was TOO flexible. Now that you get less from deconstructing and put more into fabricsting, fabrication decisions are more likely to be based on scarcity, adding dificulty, meaningful choices, and skill to the game imo.
Sorry to the noobs who cant deal with that but this is an early access game and the devs have the right/duty to make big changes when they see fit.

[Haridmon]

Originally posted by The-Champ:

The fabricator/deconstructor also needed a nerf because it was TOO flexible. Now that you get less from deconstructing and put more into fabricsting, fabrication decisions are more likely to be based on scarcity, adding dificulty, meaningful choices, and skill to the game imo.
Sorry to the noobs who cant deal with that but this is an early access game and the devs have the right/duty to make big changes when they see fit.

The problem with your whole viewpoint is thinking everyone plays this game like you do. This isn't a hardcore survival resource management game for me, and I dont care to play it as such. This is a fun simulator I like to play with my friends and experience absurd scenarios and disasters mostly of our own making. So when you say "noobs who cant deal with that" just lets me know never to play with you even in a serious setting. The issue is this forces playstyles out of the game and limits choices to your line of thought instead of being much more up to the player how to experience the game.

[Nattie98]

Originally posted by Haridmon:

Originally posted by The-Champ:

The fabricator/deconstructor also needed a nerf because it was TOO flexible. Now that you get less from deconstructing and put more into fabricsting, fabrication decisions are more likely to be based on scarcity, adding dificulty, meaningful choices, and skill to the game imo.
Sorry to the noobs who cant deal with that but this is an early access game and the devs have the right/duty to make big changes when they see fit.

The problem with your whole viewpoint is thinking everyone plays this game like you do. This isn't a hardcore survival resource management game for me, and I dont care to play it as such. This is a fun simulator I like to play with my friends and experience absurd scenarios and disasters mostly of our own making. So when you say "noobs who cant deal with that" just lets me know never to play with you even in a serious setting. The issue is this forces playstyles out of the game and limits choices to your line of thought instead of being much more up to the player how to experience the game.

Yep imma have to agree with Harrid on this no one way to play should gate keep creativity and other ways to play. And that such changes should be acknowledged that they effect other things then just fixing problems when its changing something integral to the game.

[The-Champ]

Originally posted by Haridmon:

Originally posted by The-Champ:

The fabricator/deconstructor also needed a nerf because it was TOO flexible. Now that you get less from deconstructing and put more into fabricsting, fabrication decisions are more likely to be based on scarcity, adding dificulty, meaningful choices, and skill to the game imo.
Sorry to the noobs who cant deal with that but this is an early access game and the devs have the right/duty to make big changes when they see fit.

The problem with your whole viewpoint is thinking everyone plays this game like you do. This isn't a hardcore survival resource management game for me, and I dont care to play it as such. This is a fun simulator I like to play with my friends and experience absurd scenarios and disasters mostly of our own making. So when you say "noobs who cant deal with that" just lets me know never to play with you even in a serious setting. The issue is this forces playstyles out of the game and limits choices to your line of thought instead of being much more up to the player how to experience the game.

It doesnt matter at all if "thats not what the game is for you"

THAT'S WHAT THE GAME IS.
THAT'S WHAT THE DEVS WANT THE GAME TO BE.
Dont like it? Mod it, enable cheats, or find another game.

PS. you can still goof off and not be a total ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that wants a hardcore game to be babymode.