SWSE: Outlaw Tech

[AvatarVecna]

So, as part of a techie character I'm finally getting to play where I can actually mod my friends gear, I've been reviewing the rules for doing so, and I'be come across something that seems odd: scratch-built versions of sn upgrade cost twice as much as the commercially-purchased version, are more difficult to install, and take longer to install. AFAICT there is no reason to build your own scratch-built upgrades. I am wondering if either of the following can be confirmed:

1) Scratch-built upgrades are supposed to be made using the Build Item rules, where building something costs half the market price of thst thing, and they accidentally reversed which was supposed to "cost teice as much" as the other. This would mean Scratch built upgrades are cheaper but more difficult to install, which is a fine tradeoff, and this is corrected in some errata.

2) There is some benefit to scratch-built upgrades that I missed.

[Torpin]

you also have to find the commercially availible ones, which might not be possible, then there is licensing,

RESTRICTION RATING LICENSE FEE1 BLACK MARKET COST SKILL DC TIME REQUIRED
Licensed 5% x2 10 1 day
Restricted 10% x3 15 2 days
Military 20% x4 20 5 days
Illegal 50% x5 25 10 days
for example if you want a shadowskin upgrade, if you are buying an upgrade thats restricted, im assuming since you are an outlaw tech you operate outside the law so you are going to need to spend 15000 credits on it instead of the 10k it would take to build it yourself
Thus if its a common item, just buy it
if its a licensd buy it
restricted make
militarty make
illegal make it

[AvatarVecna]

you also have to find the commercially availible ones, which might not be possible, then there is licensing,

RESTRICTION RATING LICENSE FEE1 BLACK MARKET COST SKILL DC TIME REQUIRED
Licensed 5% x2 10 1 day
Restricted 10% x3 15 2 days
Military 20% x4 20 5 days
Illegal 50% x5 25 10 days
for example if you want a shadowskin upgrade, if you are buying an upgrade thats restricted, im assuming since you are an outlaw tech you operate outside the law so you are going to need to spend 15000 credits on it instead of the 10k it would take to build it yourself
Thus if its a common item, just buy it
if its a licensd buy it
restricted make
militarty make
illegal make it

1) The name "Outlaw Tech" is a bit misleading - it's more a general "gear modification subsystem" than having any particular ties to criminal activity. That said, you make a decent point that for some of the harder-to-get ones, it's going to be easier for criminals to make their own than to buy it off the black market...but with a good K (Bureaucracy) and limited attention from the law, even getting a license for an Illegal version is going to be +50% - although getting that license will probably take a good deal of time.

2) It still feels really weird to me that the system presents these two things as alternative options (off-the-shelf or self-made), and one of them is just objectively better on every measurable metric. About all I can imagine is that maybe the advantage of scratch-built is supposed to be like...access restriction? Like, keeping players away from civilization means no buying stuff, but as long as there's material around, they can build stuff (in exchange for using up more money's worth of material), but that it's not called out is weird, and that it doesn't at all seem like a big enough advantage to make up for the disadvantages is also weird.

...I dunno, I guess I'll keep looking for some hidden upside, or maybe ask the DM their opinion on things...

[Torpin]

generally you cant get a license for military or illegal especially illegal

[Mando Knight]

2) It still feels really weird to me that the system presents these two things as alternative options (off-the-shelf or self-made), and one of them is just objectively better on every measurable metric. About all I can imagine is that maybe the advantage of scratch-built is supposed to be like...access restriction? Like, keeping players away from civilization means no buying stuff, but as long as there's material around, they can build stuff (in exchange for using up more money's worth of material), but that it's not called out is weird, and that it doesn't at all seem like a big enough advantage to make up for the disadvantages is also weird.

Building from scratch is more expensive and more difficult because it's not putting together parts from a DIY kit or baking your own loaf of bread, you're trying to match the work done by a mass production line. The extra cost and harder check is an abstraction for the various individual tools and components needed for the item's construction beyond the final product itself.

[Beleriphon]

Best way to think of it is like this:

You can in theory modify a car yourself. You don't need to buy an off the shelf hood or fender well mod, you can go do the metal fab and make them yourself. But what's easier for you to do? What is going to cost less? What's going to take less time?

[AvatarVecna]

Best way to think of it is like this:

You can in theory modify a car yourself. You don't need to buy an off the shelf hood or fender well mod, you can go do the metal fab and make them yourself. But what's easier for you to do? What is going to cost less? What's going to take less time?

Taking more time and being more difficult seems fine, but that it also costs more means there's no reason to custom-make stuff. Like, if you're building your own computer from scratch, yeah it'll take longer and be harder than buying a computer (or paying somebody else to build the computer for you), but doing the work yourself saves you the money of paying somebody else for their labor/expertise in building it. It seems really weird to me that there isn't really a tradeoff, one of these options is just objectively better and there's never a reason not to use that option instead of the other one. To use your own example, this is like if it was more expensive to change your own oil than to have a professional mechanic do it for you, even though you yourself are a professional mechanic.

[Torpin]

because most of the time you just cannot get military restricted or black market items, you cited the post about licensing, but didn't acknowledge availability is subject to dm approval
the trade-off is when you build you can ALWAYS get it

[AvatarVecna]

because most of the time you just cannot get military restricted or black market items, you cited the post about licensing, but didn't acknowledge availability is subject to dm approval
the trade-off is when you build you can ALWAYS get it

1) Somebody else brought up licensing to point out how expensive getting some upgrades might be if you purchased them illegally, and I responded pointing out that you could acquire store-bought upgrades legally. Additionally, the barrier to acquisition for restricted/military/illegal goods is laid out in the licensing section, your base ability to acquire them is determined by that. Circumstances in-game per DM judgement can declare that they aren't accessible because the market isn't accessible, but that goes for anything regardless of how restricted it is by law - you can't buy illegal thermal detonators in the middle of the desert not because they're illegal, but because you're in the middle of the ****ing desert. If you weren't in the middle of the desert, it would be difficult but possible to get legal permission to purchase items normally-illegal to own, and that is literally what the licensing rules are for.

2) The fact that DMs can introduce additional obstacles to purchasing that do not exist by default in the rules as written doesn't mean that those obstacles must be assumed when analyzing the RAW for consistency or verisimilitude. If the only way to make sense of one section of nonsensical RAW is to make assumptions that (if made about other similar portions of the RAW) would cause all of those bits to not make sense, your assumptions are probably flawed. In this specific instance, assuming that "purchase materials, make it yourself" is RAW more expensive than "purchase materials and the effort to turn them into product" because of DM intervention, then that same DM intervention would cause every other RAW regarding item creation to be wrong now, because all of them realize that paying for just materials should be cheaper than paying for both materials and effort. Case in point...

3) The idea that guaranteed access could be the missing unstated benefit that balances out these drawbacks isn't inherently wrong in a vacuum, but it falls apart when it's considered as part of a comprehensive item creation ruleset; no other part of the crafting sub-system works like this (partially because it doesn't make sense, but that's the next point). "Guaranteed access" is a benefit to self-building these particular items, but it's also a benefit to self-building any item, so the original issue (that this section of the item-crafting ruleset seems out of line with the rest) is still true because the Access benefit is one they all have without having to be more expensive in exchange.

4) Whenever you try to acquire something in this system, you have three resources that can be spent on acquisition: money, time, and effort. Most methods of acquiring gear within the system boil down to a simple sensible tradeoff: you can not have to make difficult checks or spend too much time in exchange for paying full market price (where part of what you're paying for is the convenience of not having to work hard/long for what you want), or you can make it yourself (purchasing/finding the materials, and then turning materials into gear, is a bunch of steps that take a lot of time and effort, but not much if any money). This is the one part of the crafting system that doesn't follow that tradeoff, and I made this thread in an attempt to see if somebody else could find out why this is less mechanically viable than every other method of crafting gear, or if it's just stupid. And it turns out it's stupid and yet there are many people convinced that it makes sense that "oh, I could make this myself, but it'll be cheaper to have somebody else make it" when literally nothing works like that in the system or IRL, and the reason it doesn't work that is because if it did work that way, nobody would make anything themselves because that's not profitable, because it'd be cheaper to get somebody else to make it...but nobody else it making it for the same reason you aren't. The reason this tradeoff exists everywhere else in the system and IRL is because while it is more expensive to have somebody else make the effort, it is more convenient.

Making any product requires materials and effort; the more effort that is put into turning those materials into product, the further along in that process the effort gets, the more the result is worth. The base materials and effort of creation cannot be worth less than the final product, or else it literally makes no sense to ever make anything.

[Torpin]

1) Somebody else brought up licensing to point out how expensive getting some upgrades might be if you purchased them illegally, and I responded pointing out that you could acquire store-bought upgrades legally. Additionally, the barrier to acquisition for restricted/military/illegal goods is laid out in the licensing section, your base ability to acquire them is determined by that. Circumstances in-game per DM judgement can declare that they aren't accessible because the market isn't accessible, but that goes for anything regardless of how restricted it is by law - you can't buy illegal thermal detonators in the middle of the desert not because they're illegal, but because you're in the middle of the ****ing desert. If you weren't in the middle of the desert, it would be difficult but possible to get legal permission to purchase items normally-illegal to own, and that is literally what the licensing rules are for.

2) The fact that DMs can introduce additional obstacles to purchasing that do not exist by default in the rules as written doesn't mean that those obstacles must be assumed when analyzing the RAW for consistency or verisimilitude. If the only way to make sense of one section of nonsensical RAW is to make assumptions that (if made about other similar portions of the RAW) would cause all of those bits to not make sense, your assumptions are probably flawed. In this specific instance, assuming that "purchase materials, make it yourself" is RAW more expensive than "purchase materials and the effort to turn them into product" because of DM intervention, then that same DM intervention would cause every other RAW regarding item creation to be wrong now, because all of them realize that paying for just materials should be cheaper than paying for both materials and effort. Case in point...

3) The idea that guaranteed access could be the missing unstated benefit that balances out these drawbacks isn't inherently wrong in a vacuum, but it falls apart when it's considered as part of a comprehensive item creation ruleset; no other part of the crafting sub-system works like this (partially because it doesn't make sense, but that's the next point). "Guaranteed access" is a benefit to self-building these particular items, but it's also a benefit to self-building any item, so the original issue (that this section of the item-crafting ruleset seems out of line with the rest) is still true because the Access benefit is one they all have without having to be more expensive in exchange.

4) Whenever you try to acquire something in this system, you have three resources that can be spent on acquisition: money, time, and effort. Most methods of acquiring gear within the system boil down to a simple sensible tradeoff: you can not have to make difficult checks or spend too much time in exchange for paying full market price (where part of what you're paying for is the convenience of not having to work hard/long for what you want), or you can make it yourself (purchasing/finding the materials, and then turning materials into gear, is a bunch of steps that take a lot of time and effort, but not much if any money). This is the one part of the crafting system that doesn't follow that tradeoff, and I made this thread in an attempt to see if somebody else could find out why this is less mechanically viable than every other method of crafting gear, or if it's just stupid. And it turns out it's stupid and yet there are many people convinced that it makes sense that "oh, I could make this myself, but it'll be cheaper to have somebody else make it" when literally nothing works like that in the system or IRL, and the reason it doesn't work that is because if it did work that way, nobody would make anything themselves because that's not profitable, because it'd be cheaper to get somebody else to make it...but nobody else it making it for the same reason you aren't. The reason this tradeoff exists everywhere else in the system and IRL is because while it is more expensive to have somebody else make the effort, it is more convenient.

Making any product requires materials and effort; the more effort that is put into turning those materials into product, the further along in that process the effort gets, the more the result is worth. The base materials and effort of creation cannot be worth less than the final product, or else it literally makes no sense to ever make anything.

wow you put a lot of effort into this, and still managed to miss the point. here is where you use it. lets say your star ship crashed in a toxic enviorment, this allows you to strip down the x-wing per scavenger feat and assemble a breater/air filter, would this breather/filter be as good as one you get in store, as easy to install. hell no. would it be harder to build it with parts not designed for it, very much so. thats what these rules are talking about

[AvatarVecna]

wow you put a lot of effort into this, and still managed to miss the point. here is where you use it. lets say your star ship crashed in a toxic enviorment, this allows you to strip down the x-wing per scavenger feat and assemble a breater/air filter, would this breather/filter be as good as one you get in store, as easy to install. hell no. would it be harder to build it with parts not designed for it, very much so. thats what these rules are talking about

I'm not disagreeing that the situation you're talking about is theoretically sensible. I'm saying that literally every other kind of crafting you can do in this game doesn't punish you for being a crafter in this manner and I'm trying to see if there's an explanation for why. I have yet to see anybody give an explanation for why upgrade crafting is all downsides while every other kind of crafting in this system is a tradeoff between effort and cost.

EDIT: Your "explanation" and every other "explanation" offered thus far all fail to take the next logical step of "but wait why doesn't the rest of the system work that way too?", which is the part I'm pointing at and saying "but your thing doesn't make sense or this would work that way too".

[Torpin]

look at your computer or phone that you are using right now, if you wanted to connect it to a blue tooth speaker, which would be easier, going out an buying a blue tooth speaker then connecting it, or building a blue tooth speaker including the component parts and then installing it

[AvatarVecna]

look at your computer or phone that you are using right now, if you wanted to connect it to a blue tooth speaker, which would be easier, going out an buying a blue tooth speaker then connecting it, or building a blue tooth speaker including the component parts and then installing it

See though, you're playing the tricky question game, and I'm not convinced you're doing it accidentally. Of course it's easier to just buy the thing, but it's also more expensive. That's because the effort of creation has value, which apparently your thick ****ing skull has trouble processing. Common truism for a long while has been that building your own PC from scratch will be cheaper and run better than if you just go to the store and buy one - certainly it's harder to properly build a computer than it is to pay somebody to give you one you don't have to make, but it's cheaper to make it yourself.

I have two big problems that you seem to be utterly incapable of understanding with how this particular in-game upgrade system works:

1) If I have to choose between paying for materials+labor, or just paying for materials and providing the labor myself, the option where I only pay for materials should be cheaper. There is no other logical way for things to work, because if the world didn't work that way, it would never be economically viable to make anything yourself. Since things have been made, it logically follows that there is economic advantage to being able to make things yourself, which means your feeble attempts at logic are false.

2) Even if we ignore how economics should logically work and assume that this particular upgrade system is the one that is realistic, that means that every other aspect of the in-game item creation system is now unrealistic because it doesn't work the same way. In the SWSE system, it is cheaper to make your own computer than it is to buy a computer off the shelf, but it is cheaper to buy a computer upgrade off the shelf than it is to make one yourself. Any argument you have that the latter is right just means that now the former is wrong instead. You haven't fixed anything with your change, you've just made the whole system make even less economic sense than it already did.

You have continually addressed neither of these points.

But hey, let's use an example that even an idiot like you can follow: sandwiches. Where I am, a loaf of bread is 20 pieces (18 middle, 2 end) for $1.25, but let's round that up to $2.00 after tax to make the math easier. Where I am, 16 slices of cheese goes for $1.59, but let's call that $2.40 after tax to make the math easy. Finally, it's $3.00 for 7 slices of roast beef, but let's call that $3.50 after tax to make the math easier. Two pieces of bread, two slices of cheese, and two slices of roast beef later, a sandwich has been created, and only spend $1.50 on the materials necessary to create that sandwich. It's a nice thick sandwich, but let's see how it compares to those made by pseudo-professionals of Subway! Our sandwich is about the right thickness for that sub, and it's a bit wider, but it's shorter, so we can probably call it even with a 6 inch sub, with the sub maybe having a bit more material overall. But when I try to order a sandwich like that, it inexplicably costs more! The 6 inch sub on the site seems to be 5 dollars by default. And even if we assume that "5 dollar footlong" deal is still going and applies proportionally to a 6 inch sub, that's still $2.50 which is a whole dollar more than the materials to make the sandwich!

What money magic is this, that it costs more to pay somebody else to make a sandwich than it cost me for the materials to make it myself? Could it be that the person I'm buying from also had to purchase those materials, and the only way for them to make a profit is to sell it to me for more than the materials and claiming that the extra money paid was for the labor and convenience they provided in that I didn't have to go buy sandwich fixin's myself? No, it's probably that you're right about everything, and the entire concept of paying people for their labor is economic hogwash that will never work.

EDIT: To make a long story short, your attempt to shift the burden of proof to me is an absurd way to prove your point, especially when you're the one essentially arguing that labor should have a negative economic value.

[Mando Knight]

2) Even if we ignore how economics should logically work and assume that this particular upgrade system is the one that is realistic, that means that every other aspect of the in-game item creation system is now unrealistic because it doesn't work the same way. In the SWSE system, it is cheaper to make your own computer than it is to buy a computer off the shelf, but it is cheaper to buy a computer upgrade off the shelf than it is to make one yourself. Any argument you have that the latter is right just means that now the former is wrong instead. You haven't fixed anything with your change, you've just made the whole system make even less economic sense than it already did.

In the "Real Life" system, the same actually holds true--it's way easier and cheaper for me to buy a RTX 2080Ti off the shelf than it is for me to try to produce my own graphics card of the same quality, and I can build a midrange PC for less money than a distributor will charge for a prebuilt one.

In the end, SW Saga Edition is a game filled with abstractions, not simulations, and the various crafting systems were apparently developed at least somewhat independently and were not even completely finished when they were published (the equipment upgrade system specifically has some items in the KotOR book with costs obviously not in line with the "final" version of the system as presented in Scum & Villainy, and the rules for armor upgrade slots were changed in the errata). Every such system in the game (starships, gear, gear upgrades, and droids) is idiosyncratic and not even necessarily consistent within itself, let alone between each other.

[Torpin]

take a minute to whipe the drool off your chin before you read this

In the SWSE system, it is cheaper to make your own computer than it is to buy a computer off the shelf, but it is cheaper to buy a computer upgrade off the shelf than it is to make one yourself.

have you ever tried to make a ram stick.
lets for a moment take a look at a 3-d printer. if i use my 3-d printer to make a replacement chess piece its going to cost me around $75 in materials, however i can just buy that same thing on ebay/amazon for $.50

What money magic is this, that it costs more to pay somebody else to make a sandwich than it cost me for the materials to make it myself? .

if you want a sandwhich from scratch you gotta grow the wheat, you gotta grow the vegetables, you gotta mill the flower you gotta bake the bread. You know why big companies can do it for less money, its called MASS PRODUCTION.You bring down the cost for parts by buying thousands if not millions of units, so much so that you also are able to afford to have people running equipment that increases output by dozens if not hundreds of times over. because they've spent millions of dollars on capital to increase their productivity. when you are talking about buying parts and materials you are talking about buying modular prebuilt components designed to go together, thats not building thats assembling.

Also the biggest thing you are just too stupid to remember you crude mouth breather. ITS A GAME THAT YOU CAN ASK YOUR GM TO ADJUST THE RULES IF YOU THINK THEY ARE DUMB. If you dont like any rule you can be like hey phil, probably not your GMs name, but it might be, i dont like these rules they seem pretty inconsistent can we do x y and z instead of a b and c, and phil will either say "wow my friend you have made quite the observation, absolutely and i shall give you a goat for your troubles" or be "no and for asking such a dumb question take a -10 to wisdom"

[TheTeaMustFlow]

which apparently your thick ****ing skull has trouble processing

But hey, let's use an example that even an idiot like you can follow

take a minute to whipe the drool off your chin before you read this

Also the biggest thing you are just too stupid to remember you crude mouth breather.

There is no need to be this rude, either of you.

[Blackhawk748]

To actually try and answer this question, its probably because certain upgrades are really hard to make on the personal level. Take the RAM stick. Making one yourself would totally be mroe expensive than just buying one as you don't have the specialty tools to do it.

However, this isn't true for everything and a fair amount of the weapon upgrades shouldnt be more expensive. For example, if you had the proper machining expirence you could very easily make an extended magazine for less than the cost of buying one. In the same vein many of the weapon upgrades should probably be cheaper.

Frankly, it's as Mando said, the crafting parts of Saga are a mess.

[druid91]

See though, you're playing the tricky question game, and I'm not convinced you're doing it accidentally. Of course it's easier to just buy the thing, but it's also more expensive. That's because the effort of creation has value, which apparently your thick ****ing skull has trouble processing. Common truism for a long while has been that building your own PC from scratch will be cheaper and run better than if you just go to the store and buy one - certainly it's harder to properly build a computer than it is to pay somebody to give you one you don't have to make, but it's cheaper to make it yourself.

I have two big problems that you seem to be utterly incapable of understanding with how this particular in-game upgrade system works:

1) If I have to choose between paying for materials+labor, or just paying for materials and providing the labor myself, the option where I only pay for materials should be cheaper. There is no other logical way for things to work, because if the world didn't work that way, it would never be economically viable to make anything yourself. Since things have been made, it logically follows that there is economic advantage to being able to make things yourself, which means your feeble attempts at logic are false.

2) Even if we ignore how economics should logically work and assume that this particular upgrade system is the one that is realistic, that means that every other aspect of the in-game item creation system is now unrealistic because it doesn't work the same way. In the SWSE system, it is cheaper to make your own computer than it is to buy a computer off the shelf, but it is cheaper to buy a computer upgrade off the shelf than it is to make one yourself. Any argument you have that the latter is right just means that now the former is wrong instead. You haven't fixed anything with your change, you've just made the whole system make even less economic sense than it already did.

You have continually addressed neither of these points.

But hey, let's use an example that even an idiot like you can follow: sandwiches. Where I am, a loaf of bread is 20 pieces (18 middle, 2 end) for $1.25, but let's round that up to $2.00 after tax to make the math easier. Where I am, 16 slices of cheese goes for $1.59, but let's call that $2.40 after tax to make the math easy. Finally, it's $3.00 for 7 slices of roast beef, but let's call that $3.50 after tax to make the math easier. Two pieces of bread, two slices of cheese, and two slices of roast beef later, a sandwich has been created, and only spend $1.50 on the materials necessary to create that sandwich. It's a nice thick sandwich, but let's see how it compares to those made by pseudo-professionals of Subway! Our sandwich is about the right thickness for that sub, and it's a bit wider, but it's shorter, so we can probably call it even with a 6 inch sub, with the sub maybe having a bit more material overall. But when I try to order a sandwich like that, it inexplicably costs more! The 6 inch sub on the site seems to be 5 dollars by default. And even if we assume that "5 dollar footlong" deal is still going and applies proportionally to a 6 inch sub, that's still $2.50 which is a whole dollar more than the materials to make the sandwich!

What money magic is this, that it costs more to pay somebody else to make a sandwich than it cost me for the materials to make it myself? Could it be that the person I'm buying from also had to purchase those materials, and the only way for them to make a profit is to sell it to me for more than the materials and claiming that the extra money paid was for the labor and convenience they provided in that I didn't have to go buy sandwich fixin's myself? No, it's probably that you're right about everything, and the entire concept of paying people for their labor is economic hogwash that will never work.

EDIT: To make a long story short, your attempt to shift the burden of proof to me is an absurd way to prove your point, especially when you're the one essentially arguing that labor should have a negative economic value.

Except Star Wars is a world in which Labor has almost no economic value. Almost anyone can buy a droid, and have them do labor for them for free forever. Honestly I'm not at all certain how on earth the starwars economy WORKS given the setting.