Okay, this is a fairly common question that gets asked qutie regularly by the younger members so I figured I would make a write up on this, as something people can point to whenever someone asks the never ending question "What's a 12 point smith?" and "why's it so important?"
For most smiths who have been around a short time but long enough to know the ins and outs of the trade, achieving 12 points is often one of the holy grails for an Armorsmith, and it is often times more difficult to accomplish then making a full suit of RIS. Even I am having a hard time finishing up my 12 point suit, as demand for experimentation tapes far out weighs supply, often resulting in very heated auctions.
A 12 point smith basically takes advantage of modified clothing with bonuses to armor experimentation. For every 10 points of armor experimentation you recieve 1 experimentation point that you can use in crafting. A normal standard master armorsmith has a score of 100 armor experimentation, or 10 experimentation points, and is refered to as a 10 point smith. Someone who has found, bought, or aquired bonuses accumulating to 10-19 armor experimentation has an armor experimentation score of more then 110, and gets 11 experimentation points, and is refered to as an 11 point smith. And finally, someone with at least 20 experimentation point bunuses and has an armor experimentation score of more then 120 gets 12 experimentation points when crafting, and is refered to as a 12 point smith. Did you catch that all? Okay heres a lil chart:
Standard Armorsmith "10 point Smith"
Armor Experimentation: 100 - 109
Armor Experimentation Bonuses: 0 - 9
Real Crafting Experimentation Points: 10
"11 point Smith"
Armor Experimentation: 110-119
Armor Experimentation Bonuses: 10 - 19
Real Crafting Experimentation Points: 11
"12 point Smith"
Armor Experimentation: 120+
Armor Experimentation Bonuses: 20+
Real Crafting Experimentation Points: 12
Now it should be noted that the cap on all bonuses of any stat in the game is 25, having any more then 25 armor experimentation is a waiste of your credits, but the 5 aditional points over 20 helps you achieve more critical succeses in experimentaiton and helps you avoid more critical failures.
Special Note about Force Sensitive Crafters:
I figured I Should add a note in here as well, in force sensitive crafting there is an experimentation tree that gives you a bonus of +20 force experimentation. This bonus does not give you any additional crafting experimentation points like tapes do. So they do not make you into a 14 point smith, however, the higher your experimentation score the better your chances of amazing successes and lessening your chances of critical failures. Often times when crafting layers and segments you will "grind" through a couple trying to get a good combiniation of amazing successes to create a slightly better product, and they can be the difference of something great and something awesome. It is still possible to make just as good quality products as someone with FS crafting, however it may take a couple extra combines to get the same success rates as them. This of course makes it the prefered choice for something that you don't get a second chance like RIS where the components are so expensive.
So now that we know what a 12 point smith is, let's get into the nitty gritty and find out exactly how it helps, I am going to post examples of crafting a suit of composite armor using 10 points, 11 points, and 12 points on two very common variations of composite, tripple layered kinetic and tripple layered stun armor. For those who are truely curious I will post a list of my resources at the bottom of the guide, they aren't the best mind you, so this won't be your uber armors, but it should still give you a good idea about armor in general.
I will be using the AS little helper to help me crunch the numbers, and save a lot of time.
Triple Kinetic 10 point:
Layers:
We combine the layers first by maxing out base with 8 points of experimentation, bringing the base Resistance to 4.64, we then throw our remaining 2 points into durability to lower the encumberance slightly. Resulting with a 4% base 4% kin 13 enc layer.
Segment:
Combining the layers into the advanced composite segment we have very good resources and are able to put 9 points into the base, bringing our base score up to a very impresive 35.13, we then put our last point into resistance to bring up the electrical score to 11%
Final Combine:
We put together our suit, 9 points into base quality, 1 point into encumberance the entire way. Our final produt: 69% Base, 80% Kinetic, 80% electricity, and a total suit ham of: 915, 846, 941. A very heavy but very effective suit none the less, very sellable, and very profitable for a starting smith.
Triple Kinetic 11 point:
Layers:
This time we get one extra point to put into durablity, allowing us to reduce the encumberance down to 11.99 enc per layer, while still maintining the exact same base score on the layer
Segment:
This time with the segment we can throw an extra point into durability to reduce the encumberance a bit, while still mainting the same resistances.
Final Combine:
We put together our suit, 9 points into base quality, and 2 points into encumberance the entire way. Our final product is still 69% Base, 80% Kinetic, 80% electricity, but this time with a total suit ham of: 852,780,871. With the addition of just one extra experimentation point we where able to drop our hams down more then 50 points, not too shabby.
Triple Kinetic 12 point:
Layers:
Once again we max out base, and this time we are able to put 4 points into durability to reduce the encumberance down to 10.39 per layer.
Segment:
We put 9 points into base again, 1 point into resistance, and 2 points this time into durability to drop the encumberance some more.
Final Combine:
We put together our suit, 9 points into base quality, and 3 points into encumberance the entire suit. Our final product's resistances still haven't changed, but the total suit HAMs have dropped down to 790, 718, 808.that's around 125 per stat less then a standard 10 point smith. Very very nice.
Now for where 12 points really shine, Stun armor. A quick note: Crism on my server has been awful so my stun will not be very good for most people's standards
Triple Stun 10 point:
Layers:
This is a bit more tricky, we want to keep the base high while still having decent stun, so we try to go half and half, put 6 points into base and 4 points into resistance, our results is a base of 3.5 and a stun resistance of 8.35
Segment:
We combine the layers and put 9 points into quality, and knowing we're not gonna hit 80% electric and that it's going to be heavy we try to help a little bit and put 1 extra point into durability, our layer has a base of 31.96% and a stun of 24%
Final Combine:
We put together our suit, 9 points into base quality, 1 point into encumberance the entire way. Our final product: 65% Base, 24% Stun, 74% electrical, and a very nasty looking ham: 995, 927, 1022
Triple Stun 11 point:
Layers:
This time we're going to push for a bit higher stun, so we only put 4 points into base and 7 points into stun, we get a bas of 3.1 and a stun of 11.71
Segment:
We combine our layer and put 9 points into base and 2 points into resistnace hoping this time to come up to or get close to 80% electric, our final layer has a base of 30.52, elec of 14.36 and stun of 35.12
Final Combine:
We put together the final suit, 9 points to base 2 to durability the whole way. Our final product: 64 base, 35 stun, and only a slightly improved suit ham of 995, 922, 1014
Triple Stun 12 point:
Layers:
Here we have a chance to finally get our base up to a decent level while still keeping good stun, we put 5 points into base and 7 points into stun resulting into a 3.42 base and 11.71 stun layer.
Segment:
We want to get as close to 80% as possible with our electricity so we put 9 points into base, 2 points into resistance, and 1 point into durability to try to shave off a bit of encumberance
Final Combine:
All the way down we put 9 points into base and 3 poitns into durability, this produces a final product of 65% base, 79% Electric, and 35% Stun with a suit HAM of 970, 898, 989. Still heavy, but a bit better then compared to the other two suits.
Conclusion:
The best advantage 12 point smiths have by far is in making stun layered composite. I suggest to most starting smiths only making small runs of stun utnil you are at least an 11 point smith. And even then remember that most high end PVP armor users will expect high end stats, and I suggest you hold off on making high end armor until you are a high end smith with 12 points. But once you reach that goal in your career, nothing can hold you back from making the best uber armor on the server. But remember, 12 points can only help you so much, proper experimentation and resources contributes greatly to even a 10 point smith's armor.
The Guts, My armor resources:
Kinetic Layers:
Metal
MA: 260, OQ: 951, SR: 862, UT: 825
Polymer
MA: 338 OQ: 886 SR: 997 UT: 139
Amorph Gemstone:
MA: 596 OQ: 991 SR: 956 UT: 864
Stun Layers:
Ferrous Metal
MA: 464 OQ: 946 SR: 914 UT: 933
Vertex Crystal Gemstone
MA: 361 OQ: 930 SR: 892 UT: 974
Crism Silclastic Ore: (I swear our stun armor is cursed for ever on tempest, haven't had a spawn above 500 OQ in 6 months!)
MA: 541 OQ: 447 SR: 196 UT: 361
Advanced Composite Segment:
Colat Iron
MA: 329 OQ: 976 SR: 795 UT: 798
Kiirium Steel
MA: 40 OQ: 811 SR: 700 UT: 505
Polysteel Copper:
MA: 971 OQ: 904 SR: 787 UT: 755
Composite Armor:
Intrusive Ore
MA: 472 OQ: 779 SR: 948 UT: 937
Solid Petro
OQ: 931
Naboo Fiberplast
MA: 299 OQ: 923 SR: 896 UT: 174
Aluminum
MA: 947 OQ: 702 SR: 826 UT: 832
Beyrllius Copper
MA: 662 OQ: 934 SR: 443 UT: 480
Wooly Hide
OQ: 280 OQ: 822 SR: 858 UT: 345
Once again, I know my resources aren't the best of the best, but I wanted to give this test a more of a average joe kind of work out, some of this stuff is a tad out of date from what I currently use
Update Log:
1-04-05: Touched up spelling and grammer errors
1-05-05: Updated to include info about Force Sensitive Crafting
Message Edited by Okram2k on 01-08-200505:19 AM
dddddddddddddddddddddddddddd Oa'kron of Tempest Retired Armorsmith, Architect, Merchant, and RSF Pilot! Armorsmith Correspondant: November 2004 - April 2005. Revolutionary: April 2005 - Present. " So instead of sticking to the thing that our players really love, we start changing it. And now we're alienating the players playing our game, losing our subscribers." - Jeff Hickman
(thinks he will be going through his guide about 10 times picking up all his mistakes)
knew I shoulda ran it through word first
dddddddddddddddddddddddddddd Oa'kron of Tempest Retired Armorsmith, Architect, Merchant, and RSF Pilot! Armorsmith Correspondant: November 2004 - April 2005. Revolutionary: April 2005 - Present. " So instead of sticking to the thing that our players really love, we start changing it. And now we're alienating the players playing our game, losing our subscribers." - Jeff Hickman
dddddddddddddddddddddddddddd Oa'kron of Tempest Retired Armorsmith, Architect, Merchant, and RSF Pilot! Armorsmith Correspondant: November 2004 - April 2005. Revolutionary: April 2005 - Present. " So instead of sticking to the thing that our players really love, we start changing it. And now we're alienating the players playing our game, losing our subscribers." - Jeff Hickman
While FS crafting skills do not directly add an exp point, with proper exp techniques and a bit of luck you can achieve the same stats(technically) that a 13pt smith would. It would also depend on how many points are useful in a single given line for this to be viable at all. In order to get that extra point to use, you must exp on 6 points at a single time, and you must get an amazing success on it. While this is doable without the FS crafting, it is much easier to accomplish with the FS crafting lines since they greatly improve your amazing success. With 6 boxes that achieve an amazing success status it gives you the same value as having 7 points invested into that line.
Ah nice. Finally a new thread we can link people to when they ask the same question over and over )
/salute
« DoWei - Wookiee Master Armorsmith of The Alliance [Naritus] » Five Vendors in the Wookiee Woonderland Mall™ - Naboo, Theed /waypoint -4858 3333 *** WAITING UNTIL THE CURB FOR MY NEXT RESTOCK ***
dddddddddddddddddddddddddddd Oa'kron of Tempest Retired Armorsmith, Architect, Merchant, and RSF Pilot! Armorsmith Correspondant: November 2004 - April 2005. Revolutionary: April 2005 - Present. " So instead of sticking to the thing that our players really love, we start changing it. And now we're alienating the players playing our game, losing our subscribers." - Jeff Hickman
Amazing successes can make a big difference in layers, especially stun. They are hard to get without the FS exp line but they are possible with patience.
Don't put any more points in electricity than you have to to get to 80%. A smarter shopper would probably prefer points in ham instead anyway, but resists are generally what sell.
On the final item experimentation. for composite and sentinel armor, the special resists will lag by one experiment. That means that when you do an experiment to raise the base, the special resists will not update until the next experiment. Try putting one box in ham to update it, if you suspect that you might need points in special resist (which you shouldn't at the final stage).
Furia, Kavala, Xana, Tarantella (Xana's alt, before NGE), all cancelled.(3 accts total)
Might be good to write up 80% kinetic 80% energy composite since it's also popular. This is typically done with 2 kinetic layers and one energy layer. The energy layer is the tricky part as you want the most points you can get in base while still hitting 80% energy.. amazing successes help alot for this.
Furia, Kavala, Xana, Tarantella (Xana's alt, before NGE), all cancelled.(3 accts total)
Thank you. I've focused on ubese only, and have started collecting resources to branch out. This will save me from much of my own stupidity.
Not all of it, probably, but every bit helps!
Morrow
____________________________________________________________ Did a large procession wave their torches As my head fell in the basket And was everybody dancing on the casket?
)
