Not necessarily - A GM could easily handwave the time:

"So you guys dodge the last TIE and make the jump to hyperspace."

"Cool! How long will it take us to get to Ryloth?"

"Oh, about 60 hours"

"Fantastic, I put 30 of that into working on my Bithin' Armor"

*player makes note on sheet*

"Right, so screen wipe to you guys dropping out of Hyperspace in high orbit above Ryloth. . . .”

Giving them free time now is like giving them free money, so you’ve got to account for that in your plans. Otherwise, they quickly wind up with their super-ultra-duper-bithin-armor that is better than anything else in the Universe, and you have no way to hurt them short of having Boba Fett sneak up and steal it from them.

I’m just saying that the time you give them is now a significant factor that has to be taken into account, whereas before you could just handwave the time for pure PLOT reasons without having to worry about what might have happened during that time.

I wouldn't necessarily consider it free after 8 weeks of real time (assuming 20 points a game for the 175 XP with no detours into other XP expenditure) and an investment of five grand of in-game money. And even then, the hypothetical armor I rolled up was only "Eh, not bad".

Oooh - and thinking about it, the return on their investment is pretty poor. Selling it on the open market without a buyer only gets you 10% of the materials cost (plus perhaps another handful of 5% and 10% depending on the advantages spent for cool upgrades). A generous 35 percent of 1,250 credits is about 430. The Entrepreneur with some tricked out investment talents will be pulling in 500 a session without actually lifting a finger.

I guess I'm thinking that by the time mass producing Bithin' Armor is a factor, the Gambler will good enough to be playing at the High Stakes table at Monte Carlo, the Politico will be smooth talking sweet deals left right and center, and the Marauder will be tearing apart great swaths of minions with his pinky.

Mind you, this is all with the caveat that I've not actually used the rules beyond this hypothetical scenario or seeing the Bithin' Armor Factory in play yet. I reserve the right to change my mind.

Personally, I am very excited about the crafting rules.

My group is about to start the 3rd iteration of an ongoing (with breaks obviously) star wars campaign. I don't know why, but I have always been enthralled with playing a mechanic in the setting (even in saga edition where we started).

This time around, before the crafting rules even came out, I decided I was going to play a droid "technician", likely starting in gadgeteer and going towards the more technical careers.

As far as time goes, my group spends a lot of time in hyperspace (sometimes a week or more) and therefor have a lot of downtime. We expect it and plan around it. You can imagine my joy when the crafting rules came out. I am running a droid, so no need to sleep or eat, and in hyperspace you cant really do too much in the vein of repairs, so I will have plenty of downtime in this campaign to craft weapons and armor.

On the order 66 Podcast episode 71 they ask one of the Devs, Sterling Hershey, whether the advantage options on armor crafting, can stack multiple times unless otherwise stated. He confirmed that unless it says otherwise in the books they do stack [end quote], which means that you can take schematic until it becomes a Simple [-] check even on the most challenging crafting projects.

That being said, I personally do not think that the crafting rules are overpowered. Keep in mind that instead of putting xp into brawn, agility, ranged, melee or brawl, the mechanic put it in Intelligence and mechanics. So the mechanic is dumping time (which may be an abundance or rarity depending on the campaign) and credits into creating the perfect set of armor instead of doing pushups to increase his brawn. He is investing XP to make his/her creations better instead of putting it in Feral Strength. This being said I do not see any reason why a dedicated mechanic should not benefit fully from these rules. But at the end of the day, each group is different and should be treated differently, but I do not see it as Munchkin-y.

On the order 66 Podcast episode 71 they ask one of the Devs, Sterling Hershey, whether the advantage options on armor crafting, can stack multiple times unless otherwise stated. He confirmed that unless it says otherwise in the books they do stack [end quote], which means that you can take schematic until it becomes a Simple [-] check even on the most challenging crafting projects.

Really? That's cool.

Mind you, to take your Augmentative Armor from five difficulty to zero will take you 600 hours - or fifteen 40 hour work weeks or just about four months. That's assuming you get enough advantages and triumphs to pull that off each roll - which is not a guarantee, even with 3 yellows and a couple of blues from assistants and the right tools.

***EDIT*** Whoops, forgot about the SmartBox that cuts your crafting time in half. That's still 2 months of hard, hard work.

Oh, and don't forget the 22,500 credits in materials it'll cost you.

So yeah, you could be AMAZING at making that one set of armor, but man. Quite a time sink. What was it Bruce Lee said? "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

On the order 66 Podcast episode 71 they ask one of the Devs, Sterling Hershey, whether the advantage options on armor crafting, can stack multiple times unless otherwise stated. He confirmed that unless it says otherwise in the books they do stack [end quote], which means that you can take schematic until it becomes a Simple [-] check even on the most challenging crafting projects.

Really? That's cool.

Mind you, to take your Augmentative Armor from five difficulty to zero will take you 600 hours - or fifteen 40 hour work weeks or just about four months. That's assuming you get enough advantages and triumphs to pull that off each roll - which is not a guarantee, even with 3 yellows and a couple of blues from assistants and the right tools.

***EDIT*** Whoops, forgot about the SmartBox that cuts your crafting time in half. That's still 2 months of hard, hard work.

Oh, and don't forget the 22,500 credits in materials it'll cost you.

So yeah, you could be AMAZING at making that one set of armor, but man. Quite a time sink. What was it Bruce Lee said? "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

Loving the Bruce Lee quote