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Game Mechanics

Schematics are basically blueprints for anything you can build. They include designs for weapons and other devices, recipes for foodstuffs, and patterns for items of clothing.

You Access your list of schematics through your Datapad (Ctrl+D). Double clicking on any schematic will bring up a description of that item, along with a list of the resources and other components required to build that object.

Every item in the game requires specific components to craft. In many instances, these components will simply be resources. To craft a survival knife, for example, you might need several units of metal and a few units of polymer alloys.

More complex items are actually composed from other crafted objects, or a combination of resource and crafted components. A blaster requires some resources, but also calls for a power cell, which is a separate craftable item. To build a blaster, you must first build (or buy) a power cell.

Some items allow for optional components (you might be able to add spices to a meat stew or a scope to a rifle). The components are not required to complete the item, but may enhance the final product in some way. You can view the components required for any item by reviewing the object's schematic in your Datapad or through a crafting device.

When using a generic crafting tool, you produce an actual object that can be used by you or others (a "prototype"). However, while at a crafting station and using a specialized crafting tool, you have the option of creating a manufacturing schematic instead. A manufacturing schematic can be used with factories to mass-produce the item.

Manufacturing schematics represent the stored form of a completed crafting session. The exact properties of the item that would have been produced by the crafting session that produced the manufacturing schematic are instead saved off as a manufacturing schematic, and allow multiple copies of that exact item to be reproduced at a factory of the appropriate type.

Because the crafting session was saved off and the attributes are being reproduced, all of the same ingredients that were used to craft the manufacturing schematic must be used when the manufacturing schematic is used at a factory to run off more copies of the item. It's very important to remember that exactly the same ingredients must be used.

For example, if the imaginary resource 'Benzoite', a type of Duralloy Steel was utilized to make a manufacturing schematic, then you'll need a supply of Benzoite to make items from that schematic. No other type of Duralloy steel will suffice. This also means that once Benzoite is no longer available in the universe, all manufacturing schematics that were made from it are no longer useable because the resource ingredient requirements can no longer be satisfied, and any desired manufacturing schematics will have to be created fresh using the currently available equivalent resource.

The idea of identical ingredients being needed for making items from manufacturing schematics carries over into the realm of component ingredients for manufacturing schematics. The copies of the exact same component that was used to create the manufacturing schematic will have to be used to create items from that particular manufacturing schematic. The key point to note here is that since all the components have to be identical, they all have to have been produced in a factory themselves, as that's the only way to get truly identical items.

For example, if a person generated a particularly good DL-44 blaster during the crafting process and decided that they wanted to be able to mass produce them in a factory, they'd need enough of the same resources that they used to craft the manufacturing schematic to meet the needs of how many copies of the blaster they wanted to make at the factory. If the imaginary ingredient "Terg's Blaster Power Handler Mark2" was one of the ingredients used, they'd need enough of those same blaster power handlers to make more blasters from the new DL-44 manufacturing schematic. They only way that those blaster power handlers could possibly truly be the same, is if they themselves had come from a factory assembly run.

Thus, Manufacturing Schematics that require components should only be built off of components that came from an extended factory production run, because that's the only way you'll be able to satisfy the identical component ingredient requirements, and thus be able to build more objects.

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