Is there any sort of rules for mass building stuff via machines and such? As it is with the crafting rules even with successes and advantages things take a lot longer and cost much more in materials to make things by oneself or with some help than they could if I took some cues from Henry Ford. Say for instance I first crafted a Blaster Rifle with 1 encumbrance and Ion, and I wanted to build hundreds for outfitting an army quickly, so I then build a assembly line, get a few workers or droids or whatever and have them build the Ion Rifles for me from then on. Or suppose I built a Starfighter design and want to build a few squadrons worth but don't want to spend a week building each one as per the vehicle crafting rules, so I build up a factory somewhere to turn out a dozen in the same time frame give or take. You know, that sort of thing.
Edited by immortalfriezaManufacturing and Factories?
Not really. The game wants characters out having adventures, so side businesses are very limited. Far Horizons has rules for a shop in a town, but nothing like a factory even if you've purchased all of the upgrades. Even the crafting rules are more solo or small teams of artisans rather than assembly lines.
Unfortunate. Anybody got any house rules for this?
Keep in mind the crafting rules (which are some of the most broken rules in the game) don't allow you to flawlessly replicate something you've crafted once; you still need to roll every time you try to make another one. Like I said, it's all hand-crafted stuff. The broken rules allow you to make seriously overpowered crap but also just plain worthless crap too. I guess once the randomness is removed, what you'll get is stuff that performs like the stuff in the book, and there's really no use in manufacturing more of that because you'll never hit the economy of scale that the big manufacturers have without investing millions of credits (minimum).
4 hours ago, immortalfrieza said:Unfortunate. Anybody got any house rules for this?
Yup, it's called ask the GM.
6 hours ago, HappyDaze said:Keep in mind the crafting rules (which are some of the most broken rules in the game) don't allow you to flawlessly replicate something you've crafted once; you still need to roll every time you try to make another one. Like I said, it's all hand-crafted stuff. The broken rules allow you to make seriously overpowered crap but also just plain worthless crap too. I guess once the randomness is removed, what you'll get is stuff that performs like the stuff in the book, and there's really no use in manufacturing more of that because you'll never hit the economy of scale that the big manufacturers have without investing millions of credits (minimum).
Plus it's cheap because we don't have to pay for the crafting time. It's like making anything yourself, it's cheaper only if you don't cost your own time.
10 hours ago, 2P51 said:Yup, it's called ask the GM.
Either actually answer or don't say anything.
He has a point. This is going to be incredibly GM-specific. Are they the type to let you wing things they think are interesting but a bit tangental to the plot (e.g. I let my players build about 50 fake-lightsaber-glowsticks in the hold their Lucrehulk with a single Mechanics check), are they going to want to make it a whole adventure in itself to set up a factory...
I'll second that 2P51's correct, even if a little glib. You could string together Negotiation, Leadership, Computers, Mechanics and Knowledge checks, maybe with some proprietary dice pools, to simulate the working of a factory (let alone the design and assembly of the factory itself). That's certainly the strength of Genesys, which is mechanically identical in most respects to Star Wars.
But it really does go far afield from the essence and rules of the established game that some discussion and GM ruling, maybe with a formal roll, would suffice. And if there are house rules floating around, they're not widely known about.
2 hours ago, immortalfrieza said:Either actually answer or don't say anything.
Tough. Either accept the answers or don't post.
The easy way to go about it is to have a series of mechanics checks to create the machinery to mass produce the item in question. Maybe with a bonus or negative trait to the item based on how well you rolled.
”Make a series of 3 hard mechanics checks to set up your droid assembly line. Triumphs may be spent to reduce the per unit price of each blaster to manufacture. Dispairs may be spent to add the inferior quality to some or all of the produced items.”
My thought here would be to have the Blaster Rifle schematic development involve a story of research or puzzle solving. Then the materials needed would need to be supplied in the right amounts which might mean that pirates who took the materials need to be chased down. The blaster rifles have to be assembled form subcomponents like the receiver/frame, barrels, optics and sights, gas handling module, etc.
In my game I have some manufacturing units by type that can be used to mass-produce items. They require a power supply and someone to operate them who will want to be paid unless slave/droid.
- Material Recycler/Converter 12,200 cr Rarity 4 - can take raw materials and refine them for use in the Manufacturing Station.
- Electro-Mechanical Manufacturing Station 18,500 cr Rarity 5 - could make 100 units of Blaster Rifle from schematics at a rate of about 5 a day* (considering you will have to print subcomponents and then do final assembly). Buying more stations would be a way to make them faster.
I try to make manufacturing more time consuming and arduous than just buying the finished product from someone else.
*This is a figure arrived at by GM guesstimation.
13 minutes ago, Archlyte said:My thought here would be to have the Blaster Rifle schematic development involve a story of research or puzzle solving. Then the materials needed would need to be supplied in the right amounts which might mean that pirates who took the materials need to be chased down. The blaster rifles have to be assembled form subcomponents like the receiver/frame, barrels, optics and sights, gas handling module, etc.
In my game I have some manufacturing units by type that can be used to mass-produce items. They require a power supply and someone to operate them who will want to be paid unless slave/droid.
- Material Recycler/Converter 12,200 cr Rarity 4 - can take raw materials and refine them for use in the Manufacturing Station.
- Electro-Mechanical Manufacturing Station 18,500 cr Rarity 5 - could make 100 units of Blaster Rifle from schematics at a rate of about 5 a day* (considering you will have to print subcomponents and then do final assembly). Buying more stations would be a way to make them faster.
I try to make manufacturing more time consuming and arduous than just buying the finished product from someone else.
*This is a figure arrived at by GM guesstimation.
That sounds suspiciously like a high-tech version of a 3D printer (or a nano-fabricator from some sci-fi settings). I'd be very careful with making this 'normal' tech in Star Wars. Star Wars sticks with the kinds of factories (and the need for factory workers) that were common in the 1970s for most goods along with hand-crafted artisan pieces for high-end gear.
On a bigger scale, if this is your game, you have to decide how much manufacturing you want characters to be able to accomplish. The galactic economy would be about materials rather than products for the most part if end users have cheap and easy methods of production. I always assumed that there was some sort of equipment on the moisture far Luke lived on to make some of the machinery from raw parts or materials, but that power converters and droids were too sophisticated to build on the little home E/M Manu Station, so Luke was going in to Tosche Station to buy them or they would get them from traders (Jawas).
If production requires much more sophisticated means then the big corporations are the only places to get a lot of this stuff, and working on equipment is dependent upon parts from manufacturers that are too difficult to build at a home forge.
Or somewhere between those two descriptions.
Many GMs will simply tell you it's not a video game or a resource game but is instead a role-playing game, but I think there is some room for mixing the features of them. I would just be careful to make sure you aren't stepping on other people's fun by getting into this, or pestering a GM who just wants you to adventure.
Just now, HappyDaze said:That sounds suspiciously like a high-tech version of a 3D printer (or a nano-fabricator from some sci-fi settings). I'd be very careful with making this 'normal' tech in Star Wars. Star Wars sticks with the kinds of factories (and the need for factory workers) that were common in the 1970s for most goods along with hand-crafted artisan pieces for high-end gear.
It's a good warning Happy and I agree. I do feel though that there would be some ability for far flung homesteads and remote outposts to fab up parts and equipment after 10,000+ years of it being commonplace, mundane tech. But there has to be some trade off (time, money, reliability, etc. ). Also being able to replace a hyperdrive motivator might be too much, but I'm sure there are a lot of lesser parts that could be fabricated on the ship with a small crafting unit of some kind.
While Star Wars does seem to lack things like Nano-fabrication(outside of ancient lost technology like the Star Forge), manufacturing does seem to be quite advanced. At least to the point where stuff can be mass produced fairly easily. The main bottleneck seems to be raw materials.
If anything, ease of mass production actually depresses people's willingness to make stuff themselves rather than buying it. Why set up a local Blaster manufacturing plant when you can just hop in your freighter and go pick up a bunch on the nearest trade hub?
Just an example. I have access to a drill press and your basic garage variety tools. Thats all I need to manufacture real firearms out of component pieces which can easily be bought off the internet. I could probably churn out maybe 5-6 AK-47s or AR-15s a week if I really wanted to. Legally, this volume would need me to get an FFL, but only if I was selling them. If I was keeping them all or just selling a couple here and there it would be legal. Tons of people could easily do this as well. But most people don't do it, they'll buy a gun from a gun shop instead. Now if I wanted to make a firearm totally from scratch, well its a little harder and needs some additional tools, but well if little kids in Africa can bang together AKs out of sheet metal then just about anything is possible with enough ingenuity.
8 hours ago, Archlyte said:It's a good warning Happy and I agree. I do feel though that there would be some ability for far flung homesteads and remote outposts to fab up parts and equipment after 10,000+ years of it being commonplace, mundane tech. But there has to be some trade off (time, money, reliability, etc. ). Also being able to replace a hyperdrive motivator might be too much, but I'm sure there are a lot of lesser parts that could be fabricated on the ship with a small crafting unit of some kind.
If recycling and refabrication were easy and commonplace, there wouldn't be junk planets and whole species of scavengers
2 hours ago, HappyDaze said:If recycling and refabrication were easy and commonplace, there wouldn't be junk planets and whole species of scavengers
So in your view nothing can be crafted by PCs, or is there a threshold? I certainly don't want every character to be making things, but it seems a bit much to have it be a completely disposable society across all situations. I believe there is a lot of waste, and for me that explains why there are so many **** boxes all over the place. You literally can't go anywhere without seeing boxes of some kind.
I think that feel-wise you are right, and players should mainly be buying things or acquiring things that are already made, but I don't know if the OPs blaster manufacturing enterprise is right out. Someone is making the things after all.
Edited by ArchlyteIt’s a variant of the stealing and selling ships issue. If that is better income than adventuring, why adventure.
bulk manufacturing should make a profit, after investment, recruitment, and time. But it won’t be insanely profitable or the competition would undercut, unless you have a product that is hard to reverse engineer (or protected by enforceable patent).
I have no objection to things being crafted (even though I think the crafting rules are terrible), but I don't agree with being able to break things down in fabricators and spit shiny new things out. That's just not where I see the tech of SW going.
Can't really argue with that. I think that maybe I have to adjust my view on this.
2 hours ago, Archlyte said:Can't really argue with that. I think that maybe I have to adjust my view on this.
WHAT? Somebody is willing to change their views after a discussion on the intranet?!?! This is unheard of--surely the End Times are upon us!
9 hours ago, HappyDaze said:I have no objection to things being crafted (even though I think the crafting rules are terrible), but I don't agree with being able to break things down in fabricators and spit shiny new things out. That's just not where I see the tech of SW going.
That depends. The World Devastators in the expanded universe were just that.
24 minutes ago, Edgookin said:That depends. The World Devastators in the expanded universe were just that.
And they were an exotic superweapon, not something that was miniaturized and made commonly available.
I've been thinking about this and I have decided that since I use the anachronistic approach to Slicing I should do the same thing with the crafting. This means that it might take a big building to turn out a quantity of something like datapads or comlinks that are production quality.
In the spectrum of quality of items you have stuff that is built from pieces and just barely works and looks terrible, to custom built items that are production items but with optimization from an engineer with the resources of a large company at his disposal.
Stuff that players make should maybe be fragile and have one or two levels of disrepair even brand new, and/or ⬛ . Without an R&D process, extensive testing, and production quality assembly the prototypes would be kind of irregular and shoddy looking next to their factory contemporaries I'm thinking.
I think when it came to the crafting thing I was influenced by an old MMO I loved and wasn't thinking about whether or not I should have that level of crafting even though I could. Thanks for the input Happy I appreciate it.