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Merging Automaton Crafting and Smoggers


Reckless Banzai Screamer
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Title says it all, I'm a fan of both of these lore pieces but feel it's silly to keep these two engineering feats separate with a 16x redstone filter. They fill two branches of the same archetype and feel better hand in hand. I'll list a few reasons why;

 

1.) The alchemical component of these alchemy feats is near identical - Alchemical lifeblood and red oil are the same recipe except the latter has a portion of red stone added to it. Red oil also isn't feat-locked and any alchemist can make this when taught.

 

2.) Assembly is free form mostly in both feats with similar components. Automaton crafting is based more so on mimicking real life with artificial components whereas Smoggers is making artificial bodies without intelligence meant to output more force. The root of both of these crafts though is gearwork and assembling together an artificial body capable of whatever action the crafter wills within logical reason.

 

3.) Although there are talks of a Smoggers rewrite, as it currently stands there's very limited things one can pull off tastefully under tech-lock and it's not often used. As Smoggers currently stands I think it would serve better as an addition to Animii Crafting overall as a sub section.

 

I'm unsure how a merge would go about with current separate FA's. I don't mind grandfathering one side personally since we got some good guides out now but what are the general thoughts of this proposed merge?

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Automaton/Animii Crafting

 

Sintel's Smoggers

 

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The reason smoggers still exists on LotC and hasn't been shelved is due to said filter. The players who have iy don't use it a lot, likely due to fear of it being nerfed into oblivion if it was abused.

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19 minutes ago, Elennanore said:

The reason smoggers still exists on LotC and hasn't been shelved is due to said filter. The players who have iy don't use it a lot, likely due to fear of it being nerfed into oblivion if it was abused.

 

I don't like this reasoning because there's already a decent amount of red tape around smoggers (and justifiable I'm not knocking it). What can be abused? Weaponized smoggers and machines of a certain size need approval through the MArt system and are generally event limited (with coordinating ST approval) without approval from War Moderation, and anything else is purely aesthetic to RP and subject to the tech lock (examples are the factory in Freeport, the water pump system in Niseep, smaller 'spider walkers', walking homes within 2 stories height). A good chunk of us are minecraft larpers and the only filter for me is building because I gotta rely on Islamadon and Titanium builds. The feat still remains very limited in usage and shares much of the same background and roleplay as animii crafting.

 

If it's separated to filter people from getting access to it to avoid the abuse of it, it should be rewritten or shelved if this were the case.

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Smoggers was actually originally an animiii crafting addition. The two were under a single FA for some time. The problem is, Animii Crafters people at the time (myself included, sure) were antsy about spreading it en masse whereas Smoggers was intentionally designed for widespread use.

 

The two were split because ultimately Smoggers are far simpler than Animii Crafting. Making a car with legs - whilst in real terms clunky and unnecessary complex - can and should be far easier than creating a sentient humanoid using only clock parts and a protein shake. My hope in splitting them apart was to democratise Smoggers as many players were annoyed that the concept of 'tinkering' was gatekept by Animii Crafters when realistically it shouldn't have been. 

 

Personally, I don't think we lose anything by keeping them under two separate apps. Nor do I think we could gain anything from merging them. Though ultimately I'm indifferent.

The only issue I can fathom coming from such is the creation of two TAs instead of one... But with the current TA system I don't see that as as much of a problem as it would've been in the past.
They're both feats of further alchemy and therefore don't consume magic slots. They're just different ends of the 'tinkering' paradigm, and with apps being a realistically OOC tracking mechanic I don't see how them being apart or together would ever really impact anyone's roleplay.


The main reason Smoggers is underused currently is it has no real tangible benefit to most players beyond relatively offscreen mechanics like modreqing for a building to be moved (and sometimes still having to pay mina for a 'paste' as I encountered) and emoting your MC horse as being something far cooler. Neither of which I really intended to be its be-all-end-all, and I hope those rewriting it take my suggestions for how that might be improved onboard.

This lack of use was made infinitely worse when for some godforsaken reason ST management decided to make the Red Oil recipe painfully expensive when it in reality does very very very little for day to day RP and nothing for CRP. A decision I at the time argued about when I discovered the change had already been made but to no avail.

This was compounded with the fact that around this same time ST released guidelines for steam powered contraptions (see: everything the dwarves make) which required no such applications, OOC or understandings of alchemy, ST approval or above all else prerequisite RP yet as it currently stands any player can realistically replicate most of Smoggers' aesthetic in a build justified as 'steam engine' with current techlock verdicts effectively making the FA redundant

 

Whilst I'm glad to see Animii Crafting is now being spread much further than in those days and the post-loregames climate has seen its core concepts expressed in more objective, RP friendly words instead of going mostly off of good faith with a vague theme as the old lore did, I can't really see how merging it again with Smoggers will make Smoggers themselves used more. Yes, it will be encompassed by more people's apps since nowadays having an app in something almost always equals knowing every possible application for that thing once the countdown to Tier 5 ends, but I still don't think we'll see more Smoggers out in the world as a consequence of that.

 

Further, Animii Crafting is something that is still coveted by many players and adding that baggage to Smoggers will surely only curb the enfranchisement intended by the original separation. As it stands I feel once players find a Smoggers teacher they have to jump through far less hoops than an Animii Crafter might request whilst dangling that FA over their head. I will admit though my perspective is coloured far more by the way things were circa 2019 as opposed to how they might be now.

 

Further, there are characters (like mine) which only have Smoggers and not Animii Crafting. There's also likely others who have the inverse. I don't know how at all this integration would be handled in terms of tracking and grandfathering, but ultimately that's a bridge that could be crossed with enough thought should we come to it. 
 

 

  

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Go bigger bro.

Tinkering Feat, includes Animii, Smoggers, and also theoretically other engineering that isn't necessarily alchemy related. The feat then serves as a way of tracking engineer archetype, with specific skillsets within it that aren't mutually guaranteed but grouped together on feat for ease of tracking (most people that have one will have another).

 

Unpopular opinion I'm sure, but I think Alchemy is a great example that not all feats have to be magical related, and organizing tinkering beyond alchemy into a feat would give us a better way of tracking and writing redlines for the type of Engineer RP that people often do beyond Animii and Smoggers and did beforehand for years. 

 

That would be a big project though, but one that ultimately I think would be really good for server. :)

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Mordu's point is essentially the one I'd make, +1 to the lad. 

 

Also on the LT spectrum the logistics of merging these two feats would be immense for very, very little payoff

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48 minutes ago, The King Of The Moon said:

-snip-

 

  

 

While I appreciate the effort of trying to make it more accessible at the time, I think in practice and in the current era (I dont got access to any stats on apps this is just from what I've seen) smoggers got the same accessibility as animii crafting which is improving but IMO it feels as though is serves as more bureaucratic hoops to jump through for a craft that's essentially the same in practice but both FAs are dangled over a student's head instead of one being more coveted than the other.

 

You may have misinterpreted my OP somewhat, I don't intend to see more smoggers in use as the main goal (beyond just increased accessibility if the feats were merged somehow). I do argue though that the differences between the crafts are inconsequential to separate them.

 

From the purely alchemy standpoint, the following is the recipe of Alchemical Lifeblood using both harvestable node regents and legal open regents:

Spoiler

d7d84744f087fa60f93aaaa2a0076904.png

 

And if you wanted red oil, you simply add 16x redstone dust to your portion your making. If they were kept separate, I think at the very least red oil should be made cheaper and/or unrelated to alchemical lifeblood to at least better justify their separation because in practice these are genuinely the same crafts that follow slightly different rules for different end products.

 

From a Tinkering standpoint, you have to be a veteran alchemist anyway to participate in further alchemy and the main difference as you've pointed out, yeah we make more complex modules to imitate life with animii crafting. But both feats are locked behind tier 3 alchemy to begin with and alchemical treatment of these artificial modules is really the only separation from say creating a pulley mechanism with pistons in your smogger machine. Perhaps for animii crafting you would need a prior understanding of descendant or animal anatomy for your craft, but you still have to have an overall idea of how the anatomy of your machine will operate whether it's going to be intelligent or not so that its fuel circulates through.

 

And from my personal teaching perspective, I prefer teaching both feats together or closely together because of how they compliment each other. While Animii can certainly stand on its own, Smoggers feels as it was originally intended and that being just another facet of animii overall. Admittingly I don't know how integrating would work either but unless smoggers was fleshed out more in a rewrite to differentiate itself in a more significant way I do think it should be seriously considered for merging back into animii.

 

57 minutes ago, Nooblius said:

Go bigger bro.

Tinkering Feat, includes Animii, Smoggers, and also theoretically other engineering that isn't necessarily alchemy related. The feat then serves as a way of tracking engineer archetype, with specific skillsets within it that aren't mutually guaranteed but grouped together on feat for ease of tracking (most people that have one will have another).

 

Unpopular opinion I'm sure, but I think Alchemy is a great example that not all feats have to be magical related, and organizing tinkering beyond alchemy into a feat would give us a better way of tracking and writing redlines for the type of Engineer RP that people often do beyond Animii and Smoggers and did beforehand for years. 

 

That would be a big project though, but one that ultimately I think would be really good for server. :)

 

I don't think this is a bad idea if mundane forms of tinkering were fleshed out. I'm familiar with steam engineering to a degree. However at the same time why would we need to lock mundane tinkering behind a tinkering feat app? I feel it goes to the other side of the spectrum of red taping.

10 minutes ago, Valannor said:

-snip-

 

This is negative nancy talk, anything can be accomplished when jannies unite 🤓

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@Battle UnitI think having the steam tech along with the combined feats wouldn't be a bad idea. It would prevent the endless arguments on how people learned it and it really wouldn't change the rate its taught in my opinion l.

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5 hours ago, Tabby64 said:

@Battle UnitI think having the steam tech along with the combined feats wouldn't be a bad idea. It would prevent the endless arguments on how people learned it and it really wouldn't change the rate its taught in my opinion l.

 

I'm fine with steam tech as a concept but as it stands you're only able to do aesthetic pieces and steam boats really akin to smoggers but even more free form in its application. And as previously stated it makes smoggers reduntant. I don't like the idea of red taping something mundane behind another application.

 

If it's differentiated more and were to take in other applications of mundane tinkering, I'd be more in favor of it being taught akin to how we do smithing on the server. And I'd encourage yall to flesh out steam engineering into a proper trade that stands on its own as a third alternative to the tinkering aesthetic.

 

Otherwise I think all dwarves should just have racial buff access to steam tech. it's very inconsequential and only builds on dwarven/tinkering vibes.

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