Dumb question regarding the disassemble feat, but I think I'm missing something major - the idea behind it is to disassemble stuff you find and use those components to craft gear to sell, right? But since the components you get from disassembling items only have 90% of their original quality, wouldn't you just make more money by selling the thing made from the components in the first place? Or is there some kind of extra value modifier for things the player crafts or something?
Three things to consider:
1) When you disassemble then reassemble something, it is fully repaired.
2) Some items have a very high value modifier on their components. Firearms, crossbows, chemical & energy weapons, tasers, metal armor, and riot/tac armors all have high or very high value modifiers, so pieces you can pull off other gear and then use to make those things will be more valuable on high-modifier items than on low-modifier items.
3) Most items have a total value modifier that increases with the number of optional components. As an abstracted example, a weapon with just frame and barrel would have a 1.0 total value multiplier. With one optional mod, a 1.1; and with two, 1.2. That means you get 20% more value from each piece by putting four pieces together to make one gun than you would putting them together minimally. For the actual numbers, look here:
https://www.underrail.com/wiki/index.php?title=Blueprints#Value_multipliersIt may not be obvious at first, but once you grok the underlying process, you can cheese the everloving hell out of the economy, by using Disassemble. The tiny 10% item quality hit means nothing when you're just putting things together to maximize value, especially since most of the components you'll use won't have quality values anyway.