ME A Crafting: What do you expect? What do you want?

• Resources far too limited to justify creating disposable mechs
• Not at all portable
• The combat effectiveness of the average drone isn't greater than its equivalent weight in grenades, guns, and armor in the hands of experienced soldiers
• None of the mechs in the previous Mass Effect games have been all the mobile, so I can't imagine any walking mech being super handy when exploring

But that's just story feasibility. Mechanically, I think the idea could work, but only if the mechs are small air drones. Anything bigger or grounded would be far more cumbersome than its worth.

I've always liked the idea of an engineer class whose attacks were nearly all based on drones. Rather than having attacks tied to cooldowns, the engineer would have a set of abilities that could all be used instantaneously via drones, you would just need to craft all the uses beforehand. Essentially, you could craft up to 4 drones and load each of them up with a number of different utilities (bullets, shield reinforcement, temporary cover, shockfield, etc.) and your progression would be based on how well you maintained and equipped them.

I don't expect that kind of alternate gameplay from Mass Effect, however. It's just yet another complicated system to balance.

I'm actually curious in general wtf we'll be crafting. And whatever we do I hope they don't pull the DAI tier'ed schematics, and if they DO pull that BS that each 'visual' schematic is represented in each tier. The whole visual density getting crappier as you get higher in level is pretty terrible. You'd think the material tiers would be enough for the pointless base weapon leveling system.

As far as Mechs, your getting past the feasibility of 3D printing manufacturing stuff like guns and smaller equipment like they did in ME1-3 (lore wise, anyway). Where as making a Mech requires massive parts, not some light weight polymer shit some relatively small machine by comparison can crap out on your ship.

I mean your entire cargo-hold would have to be setup just to create mechs and wouldn't be able to house any vehicles at that point. Just think car manufacturing, that's what we're talking about. Tiny Drones though I could see like RoboticWater said. Not entirely sure how those would be deployed. Would it take up a grenade/power slot? Would you just always have one following the party if it's available? If so then it's a completely new mechanic all on it's own that'll have to be fully supported not just a 'class' thing.

Making it purely a class thing your gonna have to explain why you went from an unlimited omidrone that explodes and zaps things to a resource hog that's limited in uses I feel.

I sincerely hope crafting is not a thing in this game.
For one, it makes no sense. How can we craft high tech weapons and armor? we need precision machinery for that, tons of other technical stuff to create the alloys and everything. You can't just mix some eezo + steel + ducktape and get a gun out of it.
And second, crafting is a bit overrated these days imho. Every single rpg out there has crafting as if it were a must for an rpg.

That's already part of the lore in ME2-3. Anytime you 'bought' a weapon, if you remember, it was the rights to manufacture it. They basically have machines that print all the parts to make the guns on your ship. Which may seem crazy but consider every gun has a little magical thing that can shave off little bits of metal to turn into projectiles.

Sooo... not the craziest nonsense so far in ME universe. Guns them selves are already pretty bullshit.

Either way, already explained in lore. We'd need the  minerals and alloy for the printer I'm sure but yeah. Personally I hope it's all extra stuff not the guns them selves but we'll see.

I'm extremely interested in the the engineer class if crating is a thing, to see what we're able to do with it. Especially seeing as what, only like 2% of players played as an engineer? I'm already on record as saying that I think they'll be able to lay down trip mines, pressure mines, etc. I'm just interested in what else they'll be able to do.

Perhaps they'll be able to build a better version of what we can already make. Like say the Pistol Cranium, which gives you like 20% (I think) better damage on headshots, will give an engineer (who builds it) 30%. Or the assault rifle barrel mod that gives you extra damage, will increase the percentage of damage that it does. Maybe, if you have an engineer in your party it'll increase it all the way across your party, but that might be stretching it just a tad.

Maybe they'll be able to increase the abilities of the clones, making them able to fire from the clone's location at 50% effective rate. Maybe make robots like the Gremlins in XCOM.  Small remote hacking robots.  There's lots of stuff they could potentially do.

Just please not a random 90% crap generating vending machine ala Borderlands.  The only thing worse are random crap generating encrypted crates ala ME1.

I like the idea. I wouldn't mind being able to use claymores or at least something similar.  I

I don't

So I really loved the crafting system in Dragon Age Inquisition.  It was the only crafting system I have actually enjoyed instead of viewing as a chore/ neccessary evil.  But as with many of the other aspects of DA I that I really liked, I cannot see the areas where they really can improve on it.  But, I know that people should always be wanting to improve their gameplay, and I recognize that improvement is more then feasible in this case, I just do not know how.  Regardless, the crafting system in Andromeda is likely to have to deal with two big differences between Andromeda and DA I.  

1.  Dragon Age has 'RPG stats' (Constitution, Strength, magic, etc) ME....really has not to this point and I would be shocked if ME A introduced them.  This means that one of the main things you could do with DA I crafting implements is increasing those states, but you will not be able to do so in ME A.  

2. In ME 3 the weapons had a lot more stats then they do over in the DA universe.  I could easily see, for instance, that you make a weapon out of a certain material which will make it a lot lighter.  

Thoughts?

Constitution is Health
Strength is Melee Damage
Magic is Talent Damage
Dexterity is Movement Speed
Cunning is the convo bonus
Willpower is Cooldown Bonus

All of the Inquisition stats have analogs in Mass Effect, so I expect crafting to work exactly the same, but with better UI elements.

Crafting will also be where we make the ME3 style weapon mods, likely in a more permanent fashion versus a per mission basis.

Problem I have always found with things like Constitution is not what they increase, but by how much.  DA has always told us the what, but not the how much.  It would be far, far, far, simpler to have a certain material applied to your weapon say 'increases your health by 150' rather then 'increases Constitution by 21'...what does that mean? Which one is more beneficial?  It will just cut out te middleman if we do not have those things in the game. 

I would loooovveee this.  Either in ME 2 or DA I it was so annoying to spend a lot of time collecting materials, have like 200 Silverite left over, and then start a new PT and you just have to start over from the beginning.