I think the main issue is that new players don't know exactly how the game works yet and what the possibilites of crafting are, so they assume that damage rating is all that's important, which is oh so much wrong.
For me the strongest adavantage of weapon crafting is customization and versatility. It's true that if you get unlucky with the components you find and very lucky with weapons then bought/found stuff is going to have slighty more damage, but it will be missing all the crucial stuff that benefits your build the most. Let me elaborate:
Tygrende wrotes:
And about for the crafted rifles bing useless, you have no idea how wrong you are. Crafted gear is better than anything you can find/buy and most uniques
like i sad, not for me. it is my second playtrough and this is simply not true or you have had extremly luck to find this high quality components.
the details:
my char: level 17, mechanics+electronics 95 (highest possible on this level)
buyed a chimera assault rifle frame with 101 quality, which needed 96 mechanics (i can craft the rifle due my house workbench)
results: damage 22-41 (8.6mm)
a 8.6mm marauder rifle i found on level 13 and that i still use has this damage: 18-51
understand?
shields: the best shield emitter i have found/buyed has qualtiy 89 (required electronics 71 - i have 95)
high quality plasma cores can be found but not shield emitters or energy converter.
without a high quality energy converter the crafted shield is only slightly better then the best shield i found.
the main problem is: the merchants sell only crap stuff. most of the time they dont have the needed parts (i.e. energy converter) or
if they have, they are of poor quality, most of the time 20-50 levels under your crafting skill.
can you tell me on which level you have crafted this shield and where you found/get the needed components?
First off, you are not taking into account that different frame types have different advantages and disadvantages. Chimera frames have slightly lower damage potential that any other frame, but make up for it with 130% crit damage as opposed to plain 100% (or even 90% on Hornets) on all other frames, while Marauders have big damage potential, but at the cost of wide damage spread. Just look at the min damage on both.
Which is exaclty my point, customization and understading of the in-game mechanics. Without crafting you are bound to use whatever RNG hands you instead of what complements your build the most, and all you were looking for is damage values and ignoring all other factor which are far more important.
Second, crafting is all about choosing the mods you want and having 2 of them. You could install an anatomically aware scope to have a whooping 180% crit damage on that Chimera, and a muzzle brake to shoot 7/9 round bursts instead of usual 5/7, or maybe a smart module that will increase the damage of all special atack by at least 20+%, or the brake that increases the burst accuracy, all up to you and all of them are insanely powerful and unobtainable otherwise. What were the mods on the Marauder you found again? Because mods and frame type usualy matters a lot more than just damage.
As for the shields, high quality components are easy to find as long as you keep your eyes open every time you visit any electronics trader and looting computer racks. No one is saying you need to find 100+ just like that because that takes time and luck, but if you find a 100+ plasma core and a medicore converter/modulators it's still going to be way better than anything you can find/buy. My first shield right after Depot A had 400 capacity, the 2nd one around 700+, and since level 15 or so I was able to craft 1000+ shields with no problems. Just really browse through what traders are offering.
As for the merchants selling crap: Yes, they mostly sell crap. But from time to time you will get lucky and find something great like 108 converter or even 130 smart module, it's just that, as I said before, you need to keep your eyes open.
All my componets are either found of bought, but mostly bought as it's more reliable. Ezra sells really good electronics parts, the Core City guy also has some decent stuff from time to time, Coretech trader is just great and almost always has high quality parts to sell. As for the frames/mods, most of my frames/mods were bought from Core City weapons trader or Blaine, and rare mods from Dirty Tom/Scavengers in Upper Underrail.
I often see people here on forums say that crafting is overpowered, but all of them ignore the important details:
- Only certain schematics are very powerful and only certain components.
- Some crafting schematics are very underwhelming in most parts of the game.
Instead of blindly defending the current balance as some sort of holy relic, I suggest being constructive and help make a coherent suggestion for developers so they may improve balance without breaking anything.
In my playthrough I used to craft (or at least tried) the following quality based items:
- Crossbows. Completely pointless in early game, because I've found whole crossbows with much greater damage. Any combination of addons could not justify much lesser damage range, as they only provide slight bonuses. Was able to craft somewhat better crossbows only somewhere in the second half of the game.
- SMGs. Was pretty good. +25% burst fire accuracy that you can get is noticeable. Also you can put Rapid Reloader on a 8.6mm SMG to make it cost the same as 7.62mm SMG to shoot.
- Sniper rifles. While I ignored them for the early game (wanted to focus on crossbows for ranged), somewhere in the underpassages I have found an extremely powerful Harbinger 12.7mm rifle, which deals about 84-130 dmg. Much later I was able to find Sniper Rifle frame of the same type with about 90 mechanics requirements (don't remember the actual quality), and it still was about 15% weaker than the early weapon I've found. So basically it means in early game we have weapons with base quality somewhere above 110-120...
- Shield emitters. Now these are much powerful than what you find/buy, BUT only because there are no whole emitters with a Converter installed which greatly increases capacity at no cost whatsoever. Personally I've found no reason to use any other addon, and if not for the Converter (which is very rare in good quality, but I managed to find one by some luck), shields I could craft would have been much weaker in terms of capacity than those you get as quest rewards in mid game, for example. I suppose you are expected to take Power Management which basically gives +35% to capacity of your shields, night-vision goggles and cloaking devices, otherwise you will never find good enough Plasma Core.
My Suggestions:
- Add better quality crossbow, SMG and Sniper Rifle frames to vendors (especially early game).
- Double check quality of crossbows and sniper rifles that enemies use in early game/mid game.
- (maybe) slightly decrease mechanics skill multiplier for some weapons.
- Increase the minimum quality of variable quality crafting components as you progress through the game. I know that vendor stock is somehow related to a progress you make in the game (player level?), so the same reference point could be used. In late game shops you just find a lot of crafting components of poor quality (everything below ~110 quality is crap, when you want to craft some half-decent weapon in late game), thus you end up traveling back and forth between merchants in a continuous hunt for components.
Pretty much all of the stuff is better than anything you can find, it's just that some things are more powerful that others.
I disagree with your opinion on crossbows/sniper rifles, as I again see that just like the others you look at damage like it's the "be all end all" stat while ingonring all others.
Crossbows you find early on might have slightly higher damage than crafts because RNG is strong early in the game, but I assure you that a crossbow with super string and anatomically aware scope is going to be miles ahead of anything you can find/buy in terms of damage, and anatomically aware scopes can be found as soon as you hit Junkyard.
Sniper rifles without crafting are just miserable and painful to look at. All that matters on Sniper builds is stacking crit damage and stealth, and later on letting go of some damage to shoot twice each round. The highest crit damage on found/bought sniper rifles is 125% or 150% on unique AWP, as opposed to 175% on crafts. The highest amount of shots on found/bought ones is 1 or 2 with low damage and only 100% crit damage on unqiue Dragunov, as opposed to 2 shots with reasonably high damage and 150% crit damage on crafts.
Also, you complain about weight problems while also using a 12.7 sniper rifle, which is the heaviest wepaon type with the heaviest ammo in the game. All I can say is choices and consequences, everything has its price. No such problems with my 7.62 Spearhead that still one shots everything.
I am also very dissapointed with crafting (I am level 16 now). Trying to craft a decent sniper rifle but there is no way: the ones sold by merchants are always better. Add to that the resulting weight of carried components. I am always discarding things because I am at my weight limit (and I took the pack rathound feat). I think this is due to the fact that my char isn't very optimized for a crafting character. I should have chosen different base values when creating it.
I think this game needs some sort of packing mule: a robot or a tamed rathound...
As I said before, found/bought sniper rifles are junk solely because they have pitifully low crit damage and can't shoot more than once each turn no matter what.
This is how the be-all-end-all sniper rifle should look like, look at the attached image. Notice the considerably low damage, high crit damage and low AP cost. That rifle one-shots everything in the game with Snipe/Aimed Shot and can do it twice each turn, something I wouldn't be able to achieve without crafting.
