So what a lot of you probably have noticed is the fact that when you are in port, you can craft your own stuff. Well why is this worth it? You could just buy it isnt it? Well, I will explain.
I will start off with the short version from a website:
Each captain can get a crafting level from 1 to 50 and gain XP for crafting materials and ships. Some blueprints get available if you reach a certain crafting level, others well be rewarded randomly when crafting/breaking up ships.
To start crafting you need to be in any port with an outpost in it.
Building ships/materials will cost labor hours and each day you will get a certain number of labour hours which can be stored to a limit. You can store more labour hours if you have a higher crafting level.
You will also need different materials for building, to get a full list of materials needed to build and a proposed build order for a ship, take a look at Ship Crafting Helper.Now I will clarify everything in my own words.
There is different qualitys and specialitys in ships and upgrades. They will be available for different prices which will depend on supply and demand, but, you have to factor in how rare some items are. So especialy some high quality items will go for crazy prices. How do you get your hands on it cheap? Well you make it... and here is where the crafting comes in.
So what can you craft?
Well lets start with the beginning. The game is pretty advanced so you start with the resources. From the resources you make half products, some times even a seccond and a third halfproduct. then when you have gathered all your resources and halfproducts you can start crafting your desired product.
Objective one is to figure out whatever you want to make. Then this site will help you figure out what recourses you exactly need.
http://www.navalactioncraft.com/craft-infoIf you go into the following links
http://www.navalactioncraft.com/craft-ship/lynx http://www.navalactioncraft.com/craft-module/barricades you will find out for respectively ships and upgrades what it is exactly that you need of resources.
Objective two, obtaining resources.Since this is a sailing and battle simulator with an added cafting part, this game is not exactly a generate resources simulator so it is not possible to generate your resources. You have to buy them... There is however another way. You will see sometimes some trading ships sail around. Well, these can be NPC's or other players that just bought resources for their evil crafting scheme. You can obtain their resources they just bought by capturing them. By sinking them you drasticaly limit your chances of obtaining their cargo oviously... There is one big warning here. Dont attack your own nation... You will become a pirate otherwise. (Some may ask, well but what if I am a pirate? Well the case is up with the administrators at the moment but you are risking sanctions if you are a repeat offender) There is one exemption. If a certain trader sails with contraband its a free for all. Well how do you know that a trader has contraband? It will say so when you select him to check out what kind of ship he is and what kind of fleet he has.
Offcource you dont have to necisarily start with the resources. You can always buy or capture the halfproducts aswel.
Offcource everyone is peacefull so we would not want to harm any traders would we not? So lets go back a bit. Buying. Offcouse we all know different countrys make different recourses... China is kind of good in electronics, south america is famous for its meat, The dutchies are famous for their cheese. Transporting stuff is expensive and having the same prices in every town would make the crafting to easy would it not? So yes, they implemented a system in game. The little bit of immersion we all are waiting for. So in order to get your resources as cheap as possible you will have to move from port to port for the cheapest resources. How will you know them? Well we all will help you by updating the prices in this little website.
http://www.navalactioncraft.com/shop-price This webpage lists all the prices from all the servers and all the ports. How acurate the prices are? Well that will depend on you too.
Now sometimes you dont want to sail for 3 hours in other to obtain a specific halfproduct or resource. In this case you can look at a port on the map ingame and it will state what it produces and what it consumes. If there is supply prices are cheap. If there is demand, you may have a chance finding a resource of a halfproduct but, it will be more expensive up till straight ridiculous.
As there is multiple ways of generating money you could exploit that in order to generate you money by buying in one place and selling in oneother.
Objective 3 getting it to your harbour of choise. In some way you have to transport in between ports. You simply can not find every resource in one port (or you have to be very lucky) so you have to sail between ports. Now a warship is not exactly designed with transporting cargo in mind. It can, but it is not optimal. So this is where the trader comes in. Well why would you not sail with a trader at all times? A trader is designed to transport cargo and is not exactly fit for battle. Mind you that while in the open waters literary everyone can attack you so having a fleet with you can be critical, however, in a safe area of your own nation I often take the risk without. For long range ones outside of my nation area I take my battleship, but you can do it anyway you dare to.
Objective 4 crafting. Now we get to the bussiness. There is a lot you will find not beeing there at the start. You can not craft everything from the start. Instead you have to grind experience there aswell. That makes the game fun. From level 5 you will see crafting notes. This is the special thing you need for making high quality ships.
Every resource and halfproduct will end up in your warehouse. You can view your warehouse in your equipment tab. Keep in mind that your warehouse can get full. In that case a general workaround is loading resources and halfproducts you temporarily do not need into your (trading)ships. Another good habit is keeping mutiple ports with warehouses and extending a warehouse.
At some point during crafting you will notice you run out of time. There is a time limit to how much work you can do at once. Dont worry. Go to a different port where you have a settlement and you have time available for crafting.
Rest us one thing.
Here you see the different experience levels required for the different ships. How do you obtain the ships in the red? Well by making exeptional versions of a ship before it in the line, or braking down ships you captured of the same type. The blue one's will be available as soon as you get there with your crafting level.
I will leave off with a little bit of general information that will help you in the decision making with crafting:
Wood Type Speed Bonus Planking Bonus
Fir 2.5% -5%
Teak 0% 0%
Oak 0% 5%
Live Oak -2.5% 10%
Characteristic Effect
Build Strength More hitpoints
Crew Space More crew
Rigging Quality Better yard, rigging management
Planking Decreases the amount and rate of leaking
Craft Labour Craft Labour Craft Labour Craft Labour Craft Labour
lvl Hours lvl Hours lvl Hours lvl Hours lvl Hours
1 1020 11 1220 21 1420 31 1620 41 1820
2 1040 12 1240 22 1440 32 1640 42 1840
3 1060 13 1260 23 1460 33 1660 43 1860
4 1080 14 1280 24 1480 34 1680 44 1880
5 1100 15 1300 25 1500 35 1700 45 1900
6 1120 16 1320 26 1520 36 1720 46 1920
7 1140 17 1340 27 1540 37 1740 47 1940
8 1160 18 1360 28 1560 38 1760 48 1960
9 1180 19 1380 29 1580 39 1780 49 1980
10 1200 20 1400 30 1600 40 1800 50 2000
The current maximum labour hours available is (Craft Level * 20) + 1000.
Per real life hour you will generate 42 labour hours.
General ship speed data: source
http://www.navalactioncraft.com/ship-data(Seems this doesnt work on this forum)
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