PC Tool Crafting - level selection

Lonestarcanuck

Lonestarcanuck

New member
Please allow us to make the level of tool we want up to our max. for example if I can make T5 auger and it needs 15 tool parts but I have 10 let me make a T3 auger.

 
It's been asked many times and not likely to happen as a prompt.  Not sure how they will handle it eventually but it is very annoying being able to make something, improve your skill, and then no longer be able to make anything at all with the same components.

 
Yeah this is an absolutely terrible mechanic. Having to hold off on leveling up so that you don't become worse at crafting makes no sense and detracts from the game.

I modded the game so that leveling doesn't increase item cost but in theory you could also mod it so each item has multiple craftable versions at different part requirements and maximum quality levels.

 
Lonestarcanuck said:
Please allow us to make the level of tool we want up to our max. for example if I can make T5 auger and it needs 15 tool parts but I have 10 let me make a T3 auger.
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I completely agree, and this is the perfect way to implement it. The game simply makes the highest quality item possible with the number of parts you have in your backpack at the time (assuming you have the skill to craft that level). At most, it would be nice to colorize the parts in the crafting UI to highlight that you could craft higher quality with more parts, but otherwise no UI work is necessary.

 
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Crater Creator said:
I completely agree, and this is the perfect way to implement it. The game simply makes the highest quality item possible with the number of parts you have in your backpack at the time (assuming you have the skill to craft that level). At most, it would be nice to colorize the parts in the crafting UI to highlight that you could craft higher quality with more parts, but otherwise no UI work necessary.
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I see two problems with this, but would still rather have this method than the current way it is done.

  1. Parts get used up with no way to retrieve any of them (scrapping an item made with parts should return more parts, imo)
  2. If there is no confirmation or UI feedback before the attempt is made then people will most certainly cry foul about this implementation, too.
In short, TFP needs to build a UI that can handle building lower tier tools.  It can be done simply enough using the trader quest rewards selection UI as a template.  Make the XML friendly to pulling out a list of all tiers/variations for a given craftable item and you're done (if it isn't already easily possible).

Yes, I'm over simplifying but I don't think I'm far off.

 
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Why use the trader quest rewards selection UI?  Just add a second combo box to the crafting UI.  We have one for selecting quantity and should have one for selecting quality.  The value in the combo box would get capped to whatever your perk level allows in the xml (using the existing code that currently dictates the selected level) and would be used to determine the quality, adjusting the parts needed as required and the final product created.  This is how any other game would have done it and it's how 7DTD should do it.  That they don't have this kind of boggles my mind.

 
ElDudorino said:
Why use the trader quest rewards selection UI?  Just add a second combo box to the crafting UI.  We have one for selecting quantity and should have one for selecting quality.  The value in the combo box would get capped to whatever your perk level allows in the xml (using the existing code that currently dictates the selected level) and would be used to determine the quality, adjusting the parts needed as required and the final product created.  This is how any other game would have done it and it's how 7DTD should do it.  That they don't have this kind of boggles my mind.
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I was just saying that the trader quest UI could be easily morphed into what would be needed for recipe selection.  It checks all the boxes for what is needed, so to speak.

 
Maharin said:
I see two problems with this, but would still rather have this method than the current way it is done.

  1. Parts get used up with no way to retrieve any of them (scrapping an item made with parts should return more parts, imo)
  2. If there is no confirmation or UI feedback before the attempt is made then people will most certainly cry foul about this implementation, too.
In short, TFP needs to build a UI that can handle building lower tier tools.  It can be done simply enough using the trader quest rewards selection UI as a template.  Make the XML friendly to pulling out a list of all tiers/variations for a given craftable item and you're done (if it isn't already easily possible).

Yes, I'm over simplifying but I don't think I'm far off.
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The first problem I don't think is unique to my solution. In the current game, you could just as easily craft a low-quality weapon, then upgrade the skill, and then lament that you used up your parts with no way to retrieve them beyond scrapping the item you made. I'm just putting the choice in the player's hands of what quality to build instead of forcing max quality on them. Just to spell out the idea more, if for some reason you wanted an item at lower quality than you had the parts for, you could put away some parts and leave the rest you want to use in your backpack. But I'm sure the most common use case would be players that want to craft the best quality they can with the parts they have.

With that said, I would welcome higher quality items scrapping for more parts. And/or, there could be a skill that improves your ability to recover parts from scrapping. Heck, even with the system we have now, I wouldn't be as scared to craft a low-quality item, if I knew that I'd consistently only be down 25% of the parts when scrapping and rebuilding it to a higher quality.

On the second problem, yes, it should be clear when you could make a higher quality if you had more parts. That's why I propose colorizing the parts seen in the crafting recipe window, with the appropriate journal entries updated to document this. I admit colorized text isn't perfect since some people are colorblind, but I'm thinking in terms of a minimalist solution that requires the least UI work: less work than repurposing the trader reward UI or adding a new widget for quality selection and re-arranging the crafting window.

 
Or... just have the number of parts needed fixed and only increase the number of things you are able to craft (steel, springs, forged iron...) for every next level.

 
eXSe said:
Or... just have the number of parts needed fixed and only increase the number of things you are able to craft (steel, springs, forged iron...) for every next level.
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Or even just having the parts fixed by recipe and having the skill level affect the quality instead of quantity.  Pretty much any other scenario is better than what we have now.

 
Treb said:
But I've been told in other threads that the team doesn't care about what players have to say! 😋

More seriously, thanks!
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They care... but it's more like a "I care that there is a mosquito buzzing around my head" sort of thing.

 
I like this. 100% on board. 

I think someone mentioned being able to build up to the highest you can afford without having to ad additional UI fluff and I like that more. It' simple if I have the ability to build a tier 5 but the parts for a tier 2, showing me a tier 2 as the upcoming result would send the message. I do wonder if this could be confusing to newer players if implemented in that fashion however... Maybe a prompt? like "You can afford to build tier X, would you like to proceed?"

 
Lenny Lettuce Lips said:
I like this. 100% on board. 

I think someone mentioned being able to build up to the highest you can afford without having to ad additional UI fluff and I like that more. It' simple if I have the ability to build a tier 5 but the parts for a tier 2, showing me a tier 2 as the upcoming result would send the message. I do wonder if this could be confusing to newer players if implemented in that fashion however... Maybe a prompt? like "You can afford to build tier X, would you like to proceed?"
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You don't want it to be confusing, but you don't want to have to make an entirely new kind of UI thing either. And the game doesn't have prompts like you're describing, that I can recall. That's why I suggest e.g. colorizing the number of parts. But it could also be one of those notices on the bottom of the screen, or an informational buff, unless that's too hard to see under the crafting menu.

I'm not too worried, because at least the way I play, I wouldn't go to craft something without grabbing as full a stack of each ingredient as I have in storage. I'd have to go out of my way to grab 10 pistol parts when I have 30 - it wouldn't happen by accident.

 
I wish crafting recipes could specify the quality level as output.   So you can create a recipe that specifically builds a QL4 pick, for example.   Then you could specify what QL you wanted by picking the correct crafting recipe.   It would add a LOT of recipes, to be sure, but would nicely solve the problem, IMO.   It would also open up some neat modding options.

 
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