LemonPunch and nebulous HL2RP crafting system

[Hudson633]

The crafting system was possibly implemented in Sept 2013, and changed over time, but essentially the way it functioned was - ration packs and their contents could be broken down into plastic and metal. Suitcases could be broken down into wood and cloth. These resources could be turned into weaponry and armor, which may have motivated the theft of ration packs and suitcases, and the economy was a "nightmare to balance", but the positives were that it offered a sense of "progression" and likely gave rebel characters something tangible to focus on in a gamemode where they might otherwise struggle for ideas.

LemonPunch news post

A news post on the LemonPunch forum captured in a YouTube video uploaded in 2014 offers an insight into the system:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/gca1/discussions/0/3196989419234084048/

Reflections on the crafting system

This was a conversation on the history and impact of the crafting system used in the LemonPunch and nebulous HL2RP servers, touching on both the Clockwork and Helix eras of the nebulous server. The two communities were linked, as LP largely reformed as neb in mid-2016. The conversation was held on the nebulous forum in late 2021:

Originally posted by nnaM sitooP:

Lemonpunch’s crafting system and abundant script spawns made it really easy for any group of players to feel progression and grow. I remember having the most fun on garrys mod in that traincar in the slums on i17 searching for and peddling junk. I can’t speak for the current state of the server but I find it a great shame that the server head into a direction that simultaneously found scripts evil but still required hundreds of hours of mindless grinding of water cans to get anywhere

Originally posted by Rabid:

Why was the crafting system important?
It was mostly meant as a counterpoint to the BMD's - the idea being you could either use tokens to buy gear straight up or find and repair it via an arguably cheaper/easier method. And obviously the fact nobody could have all flags meant you were supposed to network together.

How did it change over time?
People learned the way the system worked and got good at 'using' it. I don't think it saw too many (if any) actual mechanical changes over LP's lifetime.

Were there any problems with it, or problems with the impact of it?
Putting all bias aside, LP's crafting system was arguably worse than the BMD was because it was so easily exploited on a personal and group level.

Whereas the BMD's relied on hard-coded costs done via an actual schema menu, crafters costs were entirely self-dictated and didn't need a menu other than to actually craft the item via materials. This mean crafters could (and did) massively undercut BMD's and other groups and churn out guns and gear to the latest generation of characters who'd probably end up back buying in a week anyway because of the PK's.

This was the main reason the only organised crafter groups that existed either worked for the BMD leads IC or were killed off by them and the crafters absorbed to strengthen their powerbase.

Pootis' post is valid but its the sort of view that most people had at the time - they felt like they were "getting somewhere" and could do things even when the average player not in any sort of friend circle would be lucky to get past an MP5K and a greenbean suit before they were PK'd.

Originally posted by Entora:

(In reply to nnaM sitooP) I find that as communities age, they tend to incorporate more bureaucracy and procedures. Some people get big heads and think it's their duty to "balance" the game. As a result, fun is sacrificed in favor of "balance". In addition, due to the ever growing bureaucracy present, any decision making or growth is stifled.

I find that loremaster types also tend to stifle progress on servers due to their oppressive nature.

I think, on any server, when people start thinking more about "how do we make players have fun", the end result will always be successful on some level.

Originally posted by Rabid:

(In reply to Entora) Honestly that's sort of the issue I guess.

To the average player (or the people who were affiliated with it or leading it) the crafting system was great and worked super well for them. They brought some dude tokens and materials and they got a gun or a new suit (or they got loads of tokens for next to nothing).

For the people who got PK'd to keep power or for the staff team from a management perspective it was horrible. There was no balancing that could be done to it and it ended up being used as a tool to take and keep control in RebelRP, much like BMD's were.

Originally posted by Havok:

I'd take a monopoly rebel rp over no rebel rp.

Always have, always will.

Originally posted by Havok:

(In reply to Havok) no monopoly over rebel rp doesnt equal no rebel rp tho

Continued...

[Hudson633]

Originally posted by Mute:

Hello I think I can give some input on the Helix era crafting system since I got quite deep into it

Why was the crafting system important?
For Helix it was mainly shifted over to being the main replacement for BMDs when we swapped out of Clockwork, so it functioned (or it was supposed to function) as the main way for players to obtain loot, I'll go over some issues I noticed later

This was basically it's main function and most important aspect

How did it change over time?
If I remember correctly it was restricted to two paths, that being independent and "Railway"

In total there were five crafting "flags", these basically gave you access to different and more complicated recipes

Originally there were A, T and E flags, in October of 2019 F flags were added which allowed players to make basic firearms (pistols), before that you could only repair broken variants which were found through spawns, I am unsure when the L flags were added but they allowed you to craft more advanced ammo and resistance outfits

Independent traders were restricted to two of those flags, A and T, A allowed you to craft basic melee weapons and T allowed you to create some basic suits, alongside some other misc. items

The EFL flags were restricted to "Railway" members, these were traders/crafters bound by OOC neutrality, the group which was mainly governed OOCly similarly to Union factions, which was intended to stop large groups from forming that would hold all the power and lock people out of progression (a point of controversy but I'll give my own opinion later), these people were largely forbidden from engaging the Combine through attacks

When Nexus (a staff member) took up the mantle of the crafting/railway lead the faction became further liberalized, eventually independent traders could get the E flag (which allowed them to repair various broken weapons like SMGs).

Around the middle of summer in 2021 the Railway as a faction was completely disbanded and now anyone could obtain any flag (through applications of course), following the timeline reset in October(?) all application requirements were removed and people were given the flags by default (if they were part of the citizen faction of course)

Were there any problems with it, or problems with the impact of it?
Yes, the Helix crafting system was always an issue and remained an issue til the end of the initial timeline, it was highly discussed and debated, although I think a large point of contention was the OOC lead at the time who was largely disliked by the community, as when Nexus took up the role of lead a majority of those complaints subsided despite very little change happening initially

That's not to say the system had it's issues through the entirety of its existance though (some of which were eventually ironed out)

My personal gripe with the system (and a gripe that many other people shared) was its very VERY big grind to accomplish pretty much everything, the system was orientated around "groups", so multiple people would pile together resources to get stuff done, although the grind at times was absolutely insane

The system functioned on a few core materials: plastic, metal, cloth and wood

Plastic was easy enough to get and very abundant, you could simply salvage your ration bags and obtain it

Metal was so-so, you obtained it by smelting down 2 empty cans which you would get from your rations (extremely inefficient since you only got 1 can every hour), vending machines (which were usually unstocked and expensive since it largely fell on CWU workers to restock them, so if they were inactive or just didn't bother you had to wait til the server restart early in the morning), costing 15 tokens a can at its cheapest with more expensive ones costing more, and shipments you could order for your store. The price varied for the shipments, but this generally lead to people hogging store locations to create can farms, which would usually result in them not actually operating the store, or creating stores orientated around "roleplay" which they would not need to man (like arcades or dry-cleaning/laundromats). The CWU leads attempted to fix this by limiting each store to 5 shipments of cans a day (25 cans total), which some groups circumvented by indirectly owning multiple stores (which would also usually be unmanned and sell very basic items that provided the most profit, like cans or backpacks). I think this only lead to worsening the grind for newer players/groups in the end and stifling store creativity.

Cloth was obtained by breaking down clothes, suitcases or inventory items (backpacks, pouches). Clothes were not worth the price for most people as they usually costed a good 5-6 hours worth of rations and provided minimal cloth, so most people fell on bargaining for suitcases (which I'll get into in the wood section) or owning a store and buying backpacks (or just buying them from established stores) which were significantly more cheaper. Cloth wasn't that important as it was only used to make suits/armour and was relatively cheap all things considered.

Wood was a large issue for a long time, initially the only way to obtain it was by breaking down suitcases, this lead to a lot of people running around the city attempting to buy suitcases off people (which ruined immersion greatly) or by scamming new players out of them since they didn't know better. Wood was largely used to create melee weapons and as you can tell extremely rare if people went to those lengths to get it, it was also used to make charcoal which was an especially important ingredient, used in various advanced/expensive recipes like guns and end-game suits. People circumvented this for a long time by roleplaying chopping down trees with an SAs supervision, which would grant them 5-6 wood, although this practice was banned by headstaff. Later on (literal) farming as a system was added, and you could harvest wood from various trees leading to a general abundance of it in the hands of larger groups with established farms.

These changes/fixes eventually worked, but a large issue I had with the system personally is its overabundance on luck through scriptspawns to obtain anything even mildly of use. This lead to an ammo scarcity basically throughout the original timelines entire tenure, as a large part of its ingredients relied on luck (scriptspawns), events organized by the event team/staff, or caravans (which served as a gathering and market where players would buy/sell various items from eachother, and would sometimes be supplemented by staff characters who sold newly spawned items like ammo, or ones that were especially unique/uncraftable like certain books, crafting components, etc.)



As mentioned previously The Railway was a large issue throughout its existance. I may be biased as I was a part of it for a good year, where I also reached a pretty high position, but as a person relatively detatched from RebelRP aside from that I saw its existance as generally good despite the issues.

It did its job well enough when it was actually active (which is an issue I'll get into later), but there was no standard set of prices so it was down to the person you were trading with, leading some people to get scammed or pay extraordinarily large prices for items since the Railway was its only source of items in the end. But in the end nobody was locked out of RebelRP progression since no group held a monopoly on crafters.

A big issue with it was activity though, in the end it relied on players/crafters, and if they werent active RebelRP died since nobody could attain essential gear. This largely boiled down to its very "boring" nature, one where crafters were essentially reduced to NPCs, combined with their ban on attacking the Combine and the general dislike of the Railway basically ostracized them, leading to a lot of people quitting. Those that did stick around long enough eventually did get quite wealthy simply due to the nature of the faction, but you could do very little aside from selling it as giving items away was forbidden (this also meant every item you sold had to at least make a minimal profit, you couldnt sell it for its crafting price or below), and you had no way to use them outside of self-defence either.


I proposed a few changes while I played, mainly focusing around being able to craft anything from the ground up (AKA not relying on luck/itemspawns for any part of the process), allowing people to gain all crafting flags to balance the Railway's inactivity and the demand for it while the Railway remained a parallel entity so people wouldn't get locked out of RebelRP in the end, lowering the prices on some stuff. Although most of these ideas were denied/ignored for one reason or another. Some fixes were added but they were kinda half-assed most of the time and never fixed the core issue.

I don't blame the devs for it though, the "economy" was a fucking nightmare to balance since nearing the end any change could disproportionatley affect rich players since they had hoarded a large amount of materials/items compared to new players, but the change paralysis was very infuriating for a lot of players, myself included, especially considering how much they had to campaign and argue to get anything changed.

Originally posted by Rabid:

The main thing I think is important to archive is the crafting system was never meant to incentivize the sort of RebelRP people demanded (and then didn't want again). People pretty much universally hated the idea of armed sewerrp before Helix launched but that was exactly what the system was then forced to cope with as Helix went on, and at that point any real changes would have only caused chaos.

(Now replying to Mute's part that reads: "Although I think a large point of contention was the OOC lead at the time who was largely disliked by the community, as when Nexus took up the role of lead a majority of those complaints subsided despite very little change happening initially")

Honestly I feel like I wanna expand on this a little. On CW if a group had issue with another in RebelRP it was common to either find a reason to PK them all, absorb them into your group via whatever means you could or simply circumvent and undercut them until they went away. This was the bread-and-butter of things.

None of there were an option for the Railway because they were designed to resist all of the above so nobody could be locked out of RebelRP due to OOC ostracization.

This annoyed people, especially the people who were used to doing just this on CW. This only got worse when people in the Railway got guns that they wanted and refused to sell them or sold them for prices they considered unfair and extreme and they had no way to get at them like they would have done. I fully admit the lead at the time didn't always help himself with his attitude, though.

This then led to the bulk of those people "boycotting" the Railway and what started as a joke turned into something serious. From there people started jumping through hoops to justify why the Railway was directly comparable to the CW monopolies but without any real better reason than "uh well you could maybe kill the CW monopolies..." even though it literally never happened once other than when the guy who made two of them killed off the first one. What made it worse was that the people making the suggestions for change were either the people most guilty of making monopolies beforehand or they weren't very well thought out so had no room to work with.