Issues With Crafting (Q&A of Sorts) Thread - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

This is a simple post asking the community or those who care about the crafting system in Anomaly. The question is simple; what is your biggest issues with the system, and what could be done to improve it. I'm looking into a possible addon to improve said system but I need a good direction first to take the said addon.

-I would like to be able to set a desired amount for an item to craft, assuming i have all necessary parts available.
-I made a specific kit to craft ammo but the way the script handle amount of ingredient is not good for it. If for example if i need 9x18 bad ammo to craft good ammo, the game don't count rounds, i can get a full box of good ammo (like 40 rounds) with a partial amount of bad ammo (like only 1 round).

Besides that i like the craft system as it is, it's far better than the dead air one imo

Sounds interesting, could be opening a can of worms though. I do have a few suggestions and annoyances with the current crafting system.

Missing recipes for base crafting items:

• Basic sewing thread, could be made with rope as it isn't used for much and some other items.
• Rusak gun oil, could use a mix of industrial grease, alcohol or Kerosene in a plastic jar.
• There are some Drugs that can only be bought or found, could make them using mutant parts.
• Joints, how can there not be a recipe? There are paper sheets and marijuana, its that simple

More uses for crafting items like Copper wire, Fasteners, resistors and plastic film, probably just a re-balance of the current recipes would work.

Dismantle Repair kits for some or all of the crafting items, I find a lot of weapon and armor repair kits that have no use and just end up selling them.

EDIT

I use this addon Moddb.com but altered it so that damaged ammo requires 2 for 1, maybe add something like this.

I also made a few changes in my version to how IEDs are made.

• ied_rpg = (ammo_og-7b,1,prt_i_scrap,4,prt_i_copper,4) It didn't make sense that the OG-7V IED wasn't made with one.
• ied = (explo_metalcan_powder,1,grenade_gd-05,1,prt_i_scrap,4) There was no use for the powder can and the weight was about right, I also added the Thermite grenade for the chemical reaction as stated in the IEDs description.

But as these drop quite a lot, especially from Monolith, they aren't worth making. Might be an idea to bring back the old gunsmith toolkit that didn't need a workbench.

Edited by: Acemax

My issue is that it is simply not worth it. In 9 out of 10 cases it is simply more convinient to buy the desired item.
Even though in my current playthrough I increased the prices of all items by 50%.

Though I actually think it is worth it to craft the better PDAs and NVGs, because the parts are easy to find and you can craft them early in the game.

I think item prices need to be remade from scratch and completely redone. IMO that is one of the biggest issues of Anomaly anyway.

Would also be great if you could earn money by crafting items (or repairing weapons) and sell them to traders for profit.

Repairing russian wepons and crafting NVGs and selling them to the Duty trader would be a fun way to earn cash.

The main issue of the crafting system in Anomaly is that it's not worth it. When you reach the point when you could craft desired items, you've already collected enough money to buy them few times before. Literally. I have that in my every playthrough.

How to fix it? Hm...

• Amount of crafting parts that exist cut by around one third or half OR dissasembled items give more parts.
• Weight of Transistors, Capacitors and Resistors down to 0.1. General weight adjustments.
• Ability to craft without Mechanic's Vice OR ability to craft/buy and place your own vice where you want.
• Start with all crafting recipes known OR be able to buy them from mechanics.
• Crafting recipes in the PDA use visual in-game note system to show recipes.
• Same types of items in crafting recipes are grouped on single notes, not spread across multiple pages.
• Prices of items reviewed and reworked, to make crafting more worthy.
• Crafting window doesn't close automatically.

That would be it, from my side.

Edited by: pierce.oneal

The one BIG QoL if possible to be made, will definitely -- auto fetching of materials from nearby stashes.
Right now you gotta check the material list on vise, rush to your stash and look for the mats, stock it to your inventory, rush back to the vise... urgh.

Dunno if that's even possible, I had no knowledge of this game engine and what not.

The second issue, as mentioned countless time already, is definitely the problem of NPC services render the crafting system useless. How to solve this? Kill all merchant NPC? Kill all technician? Make their service more expensive? Make crafting cheaper? I dunno. There is definitely need some good reasons to give the player incentive to craft themself rather than rely on NPCs. Better value is one method. Maybe self crafting should also unlock some unique features not available from NPC, that can be one incentive as well.

The current crafting mechanism of needing xxx-kit to replace parts or do upgrade is just... very gamey. In reality you can dismantle and replace gun parts easily with just simple tools. The whole "kit" idea is simply too "gamey" in my opinion, it is one of the thing that makes the current crafting not worth it. As the kits are simply too darn expensive. Remove the kits totally, and suddenly repair and upgrade yourself will become a lot more feasible and reasonable.

digitalifeless wrote:

Right now you gotta check the material list on vise, rush to your stash and look for the mats, stock it to your inventory, rush back to the vise... urgh.

You can right-click on any item you want to repair and select "Details" - scroll down and you can see a "Replacement Parts" section which shows you the parts needed to repair, straight in your inventory (no need for vice). Also, if you hover your mouse over the item you want to repair, it will highlight compatible items such as upgrades, repair kits and parts. This feature is a little quirky, and it depends what you hover your mouse on before as it might not work (sometimes it highlights, sometimes it doesn't), and sometimes you need to hover your mouse off and back on the item in question for it to highlight. One giveaway of this "highlighting" working is it will highlight cleaning kits as well, so if you know a cleaning kit is compatible but not getting highlighted, the highlighting is not working.

ElShotte wrote:

digitalifeless wrote:

Right now you gotta check the material list on vise, rush to your stash and look for the mats, stock it to your inventory, rush back to the vise... urgh.

You can right-click on any item you want to repair and select "Details" - scroll down and you can see a "Replacement Parts" section which shows you the parts needed to repair, straight in your inventory (no need for vice). Also, if you hover your mouse over the item you want to repair, it will highlight compatible items such as upgrades, repair kits and parts. This feature is a little quirky, and it depends what you hover your mouse on before as it might not work (sometimes it highlights, sometimes it doesn't), and sometimes you need to hover your mouse off and back on the item in question for it to highlight. One giveaway of this "highlighting" working is it will highlight cleaning kits as well, so if you know a cleaning kit is compatible but not getting highlighted, the highlighting is not working.

He is talking about crafting, not repairing.

Damn you are absolutely right and I completely missed it. In that case, you can always look at Notes for materials, either by looking at them in your Inventory, or PDA.

pierce.oneal wrote:

The main issue of the crafting system in Anomaly is that it's not worth it. When you reach the point when you could craft desired items, you've already collected enough money to buy them few times before. Literally. I have that in my every playthrough.

How to fix it? Hm...

• Amount of crafting parts that exist cut by around one third or half OR dissasembled items give more parts.
• Weight of Transistors, Capacitors and Resistors down to 0.1. General weight adjustments.
• Ability to craft without Mechanic's Vice OR ability to craft/buy and place your own vice where you want.
• Start with all crafting recipes known OR be able to buy them from mechanics.
• Crafting recipes in the PDA use visual in-game note system to show recipes.
• Same types of items in crafting recipes are grouped on single notes, not spread across multiple pages.
• Prices of items reviewed and reworked, to make crafting more worthy.
• Crafting window doesn't close automatically.

That would be it, from my side.

I have to second this.
I would suggest stripping the need for tools to disassemble weapons, for three reasons. First, most modern weapons are build with disassembly in mind, like military service rifles. Second to increase the amount of spare parts you have floating around. Third, make it all parts from a gun appear. Also putting replacment parts into a gun should not cost you any ressources (since you are literally just swap them).

I often found myself holding two identical guns, looking up the condition of the worse one, finding it had a part in a better condition, disassembling it, and never getting that. With the propsed fixes implemented, I could scrap the gun, throw away all bad parts, get the good one and at a vice include it in the game, ending me up with one better gun.

Basic sewing thread from ropes (as mentioned above) and/or from outfits. And it should be stackable, like a new one can be used twice so it would use less inventory space.

I often find myself packed with single use oils, cleaning rods files and whatnot, at least some of them should stack.

And also mentioned above:

being able to buy recipes

your own vice

PDA uses a visual system for recipes

crafting window not closing automatically.

A mobile workshop (sort of) where you can do all things related to repairing like fixing those kevlar plates, sewing and glueing your headgear etc.

Glues made from mutant parts.

Edit:

I can see the problem with outfits that give helmets when dismantling them, like an exoskeleton yields the exo helm. The Parts.ltx is also used in the repair section, so if you wanted to remove the helmet from the repair parts (As it doesn't work) and replace it with a fabric, then you wouldn't get a helmet when disassembling the outfit, like with all the SSP's.

You could add the relevant helmet to death_outfits.ltx and also add the missing helmets to Parts.ltx, so when you dismantle the helmet it will yield the fabric added to the outfits repair parts. This will also add the helmets to the workshop repair section if you wanted to repair a helmet to wear with other outfits.

Here is my attempt at headgear disassembly, I left out the trader only ones as I don't see the point if the player is the only one using them.

Edit2: Lowered the number of components for balance.

;;-- Helmets
helm_cloth_mask = prt_o_fabrics_1, prt_o_fabrics_3
helm_rp_bala = prt_o_fabrics_1, prt_o_fabrics_3
helm_bandana = prt_o_fabrics_4
helm_resp = prt_o_fabrics_2, prt_o_retardant_4
helm_respirator = prt_o_fabrics_2, prt_o_retardant_5
helm_respirator_old = prt_o_fabrics_2, prt_o_retardant_5
helm_respirator_gp5 = prt_o_fabrics_3, prt_o_retardant_4
helm_ppm88 = prt_o_fabrics_3, prt_o_retardant_6
helm_protective = prt_o_retardant_3, prt_o_retardant_11, prt_o_retardant_16
helm_m40 = prt_o_retardant_4, prt_o_retardant_6, prt_o_ballistic_19
helm_m50 = prt_o_retardant_4, prt_o_retardant_15, prt_o_ballistic_20
helm_tactic = prt_o_fabrics_4, prt_o_retardant_9, prt_o_ballistic_18
helm_battle = prt_o_fabrics_4, prt_o_retardant_11, prt_o_ballistic_17
helm_exo = prt_o_retardant_5, prt_o_retardant_6, prt_o_ballistic_4, prt_o_ballistic_7
helm_metro = prt_o_retardant_7, prt_o_ballistic_1, prt_o_ballistic_5, prt_o_ballistic_13
helm_spartan = prt_o_retardant_8, prt_o_ballistic_2, prt_o_ballistic_6, prt_o_ballistic_14

;;-- Trader Only Helmets
;helm_hardhat
;helm_ach7
;helm_ach7ex
;helm_ranger

I removed all the helmets from Outfits and replaced them with a fabric. Added helmets to death_outfit.ltx for Exo and Nosorog.

Edited by: Acemax

I was running into a similar problem with the crafting of weapons. I believe that you can only use up to 4 parts to make any 1 item. So sadly, that means that many of the rifles which have 5 parts could not be crafted in that manner. I could simplify it or make it so you need the barrel, one other part and something like metal scraps or what not but I think that might make them too easy to craft. I'm sure there is a file some where which controls the max amount of crafting parts but I have yet to find such an item.

Anyhow, I like your idea Acemax with the helmets! That would certantly be an interesting implementation that would be easier than the guns or even outfits.

I'm just interested in the whole crafting thing and think your add-on is a great idea. So I thought I would throw in ideas and test them as well, while we wait for the new update to be released "soon".

So far the changes to helmets have helped gain more fabrics for outfit repair and crafting. It also adds the ability to repair headgear at the work bench which I thought was good. It was a bit odd looting outfits like an exosuit and getting a exo helmet as well, as the outfit image shows the helmet, so I removed them from all the nbc, exo_light, seva and nosorog outfits in death_outfit.ltx (for now). I wish the devs would just make all outfits helmet-less, that would solve the problem.

That's an interesting idea to craft weapons and outfits, but not something I would personally use though. I believe the script you are looking for is ui_workshop.script, this controls the mechanics of repair, upgrade and crafting. I think Tronex limited the amount based on the UI's layout and to add more parts you would have to adjust the ui_workshop.xml's and ui_workshop.script. There is also the question of recipes and creating new sections for outfits/weapons. I did some testing myself with handguns and it works fine, but I have a basic understanding of scripts and xml, so writing the stuff is beyond me.

Edit:

Something I did do with ui_workshop.script was to stop the crafting window from closing automatically, I didn't bother with Repair and upgrade because I liked the feature, but with crafting it was tedious for things like ammo.

Here are the changes I made from line 2532:

-- Effect
txr_actor_effects.play_item_fx("craft_dummy")

self:OnButton_cancel()
end

Removed effect and refresh craft section.

-- Effect
-- txr_actor_effects.play_item_fx("craft_dummy")

self:Update()
self:OnMenuSelected()
end

This will keep you in the Crafting window until you choose another section, quit or the timer runs out.

Edited by: Acemax

Thanks for that little heads up. I much more familiar with the base game files for this game so the new ones added for Anomaly are still something I'm learning. Their not hard but some like crafting have a lot of files associated with the whole. I would still like to make a mobile workbench of sorts however. Even if it just had a certain number of charges or durability I would still love that but as you said I'm really waiting for that next major update... Have you heard anything about when it may be coming? I'm really not trying to do too much until I see what comes of it.

I probably know less than you about whats coming in the next update, all I know are things mentioned in the comments on here and thats not much.

A mobile workbench sounds interesting, but without charges or durability, it would make the workbench pointless. You could just use the existing Basic toolkit and change it a Booster again, but I don't know how you would link the Workshop UI to it. You might know this already, but back in 2018 when the first 1.5.0 Beta was released, crafting worked using the toolkits that are now given to the Technician, it was called AWR.

Hmm, thanks for the little knowledge there. Yeah, I have found what I believe to be the files related to the Workbench or at least I believe they are. There called tiski or something of the other. However, the bigger issue is making it so that it opens the proper UI for the item and making it use charges. Anyhow, I'll look more into that feature.

I'd had the very same idea about a mobile workbench, i could not for the life of me find what i believed to be the workbench files (i had found some, like the .script file)

What i had envisioned was something where each mechanic would have a dialog option where you'd be able to order a portable vice at a super high price point - similar to the dialog option for Sakharov and the psi helmet.

The workbench would be placeable using the functionality used for sleeping bags, except with its own custom physics model and would leave a large holdall in your inventory that you'd be able to use to pick it back up.

The workbench itself would call the same function as an unowned workbench and would read the toolkits from your inventory.

Thats the idea anyway, i havent the foggiest how to put the whole thing together. The separate parts are not difficult to acquire but i think i'd need more experience in order to make it work as i'm pretty new to modding this game.

I'd thought about trying to make a tiny new map using the SDK where this would all be available to the player but after several unsuccessful attempts at getting it to work (it does NOT want to play ball...lol) i've shelved that idea for now.

Well I had a go at the mobile workshop and got it working with the basic toolkit. Here are the files for you to look at. Better than me trying to type all that on here.

(Files removed, obsolete)

This is the basics, I haven't added the durability or charges, but its setup in items_tools. You can mess around with it and see what you want to do. I changed the Advanced toolkit to match the old basic toolkit so the other kits wouldn't crash. If you have just the basic toolkit then it will only let you do basic recipes, putting the other tool kits in your inventory will give you the other recipes, the same applies to drug kit and ammo kit. I've only done a quick test with repair, upgrade and crafting, they all work fine. I'm also going to see if the technician will execpt the basic toolkit for his task, but I don't see there being any problem with that.

To get the UI to work, I had to create a new section in itm_manager which I called itms_workshop (Genius name huh?) Then linked the Workshop UI through that.

Edit:

Fixed the problem with Basic toolkit not found in the item spawner, but unable to fix the base value of 1 ru when buying or selling. I've shelved this for now as I have another idea.

Edited by: Acemax

Ah cool, thankyou - i'll have a look at that, cheers dude =]

yeah i think i see what you did there, just had a little lightbulb moment lol.

so...does anyone know how the sleeping bags work? in particular how they are placed, interacted with and picked up? =] (another thing that i just could not find..)

Edited by: Obletus_Grix

First off, thanks for the files! That should really help a lot in what I want to do. Secondly, I think the charges part or durability might be easier than you think. It's just the problem of making it so that when you make something with it that it actually properly applies to the item.

Obletus_Grix wrote:

Ah cool, thankyou - i'll have a look at that, cheers dude =]

yeah i think i see what you did there, just had a little lightbulb moment lol.

so...does anyone know how the sleeping bags work? in particular how they are placed, interacted with and picked up? =] (another thing that i just could not find..)

Files to look at are items_tools.ltx as the sleepbag and tent is there, Bind_tent.script controls both and at the bottom of the script you will see itm_manager.script entries. To make a placeable workbench you should also have a look at bind_awr.script. There might be more files involved, but thats all I can see.

Ok, so after messing with your files a little I made the item a separate item from the basic toolkit (description and name and everything, but that's easy to do) and made it function as it should including having a price of 25,000 rubles (just a random price for the time being as a filler). The only issue Is the use aspect and the release function which is now attached to the item. I'm looking into those two things but If I can fix those up I would have a working work bench! Great work man! I think I know what I need to do but I'll report back when I have something substantial to report.

AGoodSetOfPistol wrote:

Ok, so after messing with your files a little I made the item a separate item from the basic toolkit (description and name and everything, but that's easy to do) and made it function as it should including having a price of 25,000 rubles (just a random price for the time being as a filler). The only issue Is the use aspect and the release function which is now attached to the item. I'm looking into those two things but If I can fix those up I would have a working work bench! Great work man! I think I know what I need to do but I'll report back when I have something substantial to report.

I used the basic toolkit as a test item because it already exists and was easier to modify for getting the menu to display. But when I got it working and found that the toolkit also activated the basic recipes, I thought I would try and implement it fully. But as I mentioned in my previous post, I ran into problems with the existing toolkit that would require additional files to fix and I was trying to avoid that. Hopefully you creating a separate item will solve the problem.

I've stopped working on this as the main issue of getting the workshop UI is solved and gone back to other ideas for crafting.

Edited by: Acemax

Again, I thank you for your great work. The UI was what I was having most trouble with anyhow. Rest of the issues are mostly solved with making it a separate item. Like I said, I'm just working on the number of uses aspect of the item.