In the previous update that came out a long time ago at this point I added affixes to turrets and allowed them to drop as loot. The idea was to increase the amount of cool stuff that could drop as loot, while also broadening the surface for ship customizations. I also added module components and introduced some new tuning kits, all to accomplish the same.

Well I've been playing around with crafting for a while, and with the creation of world engine I realized I could do some pretty cool stuff with it. I wanted a system with a lot of depth where maxxing out a trade skill was really worthwhile, and I also wanted to extend the list of cool things I could drop as loot in order to continue the trend of more ship stat customization and more cool stuff to find.

How it works

Trade skills are named professions, and you have a level representing your skill at crafting in that trade skill. You level up your trade skill by crafting items from that trade which will grant exp depending on their difficulty. You also have a maximum skill at crafting in any particular trade, and this is the part where world engine makes things more interesting. Scattered across all of human civilized space are a series of universities, or trade schools, which offer your character increases to your maximum crafting level in the trade skill specialization of that university. Each university degree becomes subsequently more expensive, and the final one may even involve doing a quest.

Travelling the galaxy will now be necessary to become the best crafter, but you will also need to collect recipes. Recipes now drop as loot with procedural affixes on them that modify the difficulty of crafting the recipe. These affixes either increase or decrease the trade skill level required to perform the craft.

With this system, very high level recipes that create the best items may not be easy to craft unless you can get your maximum crafting level very high, or find the recipes with an affix on them that makes them easier to craft. However recipes that are easier to craft will also be more expensive requiring increased components required to craft them.

I'm really hoping that trade skill recipes make it feel more interesting to find random crafting materials in loot.

Trade Skills

So far I have created 4 trade skills. The beauty of procedural world generation based on stories is that when I make a new trade skill, the world generation automatically populates the galaxy with all of the universities you need to reach max level crafting in that profession. I've been sorting out the different recipes and crafting materials for each trade, and setting up university library stations to sell a set of basic recipes to get you started in a trade skill

Weaponsmithing

Weaponsmithing aims to solve the problem of "I found a cool turret but now I want a matching set" as it has recipes for crafting every turret in the game. Because recipes drop with affixes, I have made weaponsmithing recipes roll affixes that can cause the recipe to add affixes to your turrets when they are crafted. The most difficult to craft recipes will be the ones that produce a high tier turret with guaranteed specific affixes. If you find one of these recipes with affixes that you like, you unlock the ability to craft your favorite turret over and over.

Weaponsmithing recipes also include recipes for creating small arms for shooting crew, ammunition, and missiles, as well as some intermediary crafting components needed by other weaponsmithing recipes.

Engineering

Skilled engineers will be the best at stacking up the ship-wide stat multipliers they want by crafting modifications to their ships. All tuning kit types can now drop as recipes with affixes, and the affixes control how many times that tuning kit can be applied to the same ship. Better recipes will allow for better tuning kits which allow for bigger stat multipliers for the stats you want.

Engineering recipes also create module components, and tools such as better repair guns and fire extinguishers.

Artificing

Artifacts have been reworked and they are now gear for your character to equip. When you check out your character inventory you will notice you have 5 new item slots:

Of course if you can equip gear now, there has to be a trade skill for crafting gear. Artificing is all about recovering restoring and re-activating lost ancient alien technology so that it can be used to give combat bonuses to your ship. You can of course also find working artifacts as regular loot, but just as with turrets you are probably going to want loot with special stats and crafting your loot gives you more control over optimizing for exactly the stats that you want.

Smelting

Hey, just because trade skills exist doesn't mean they all have to be interesting right? Turning raw ore into ingots may not be exciting but it is vital skill because you can't build stuff out of rocks. Smelting creates the base metals needed as materials by all other professions, and just like the other professions smelting recipes with affixes can be a lot more efficient and profitable, if you have the skill to craft them.

So keep an eye out for that ultra rare gold smelting recipe that lets you run the most efficient forge in the galaxy. People are never going to stop needing gold.

Development status

I've recently finished up some changes I wanted to make to ship stats which will be discussed in an upcoming blog. Finishing that I have moved on to integration. I sat down and planned out my changes needed to create a single player sandbox mode with this, and it isn't too much work. I am going to have to design a new screen for world generation parameters so that you can configure your sandbox world, and I need to hook up world engine to a number of locations in the code that do things like generate the contents of sessions. I've also figured out how I want to do workshop support which was important because it will tie into the worldgen screen. I'm not sure I will actually do workshop support before the patch, but its good to have the plan up front so it doesn't require a code overhaul to implement later.