In this post, I want to explore the crafting system in triangle, especially how mods, tiers, and machine interactions could create depth without overwhelming complexity.

Crafting in triangle should be a mix of random number generation (rng) and deterministic. Crafted items will have a random set of mods. However, like in Last Epoch, you can extract the mods of the items. These can then be placed into another item.

It feels like mod crafting would be an interesting way to approach crafting in general. Unlike in the Last Epoch, the extracted mods aren’t just combined back together.

What if each mod retains its values? What if you could combine two mods together to upgrade or reroll them?

When you insert a mod into an item, what if it destroyed the mod that you were replacing?

Tiers

All materials, items, and mods have tiers. Factories will only process items of their tier or lower. A Tier 1 smelter cannot process a Tier 2 material and a Tier 1 constructor cannot craft a Tier 2 item.

I am currently mulling over the idea of having nine tiers.

Items (a.k.a Buildings? Machines?)

I’m toying with the idea of the tier determining how many mod slots it could have. A Tier 2 item would have two mod slots and a Tier 5 item would have 5 slots.

This provides a natural power curve, even if the mods themselves do not have tiers.

All items will also have up to one implicit mod. This mod will be item type specific. e.g., for smelters, it will be smelting rate

From a concept perspective, there are probably buildings, or some kind of structure that can be slotted on to the ship.

Perhaps buildings are a better name for them than items.

Slots / Hardpoints

I see two kinds of slots on the ship

  • Interior slot: Machines like the smelters will go in here
  • Exterior Slot: Weapons, Armour, Hull Extensions etc. could go on to these.

Mods

Currently mods also support tiers, but I am wondering whether the power creep could become exponential, combined with the additional mod slots. There may be good ways to mitigate it though, which will only become apparent once some of these mechanics have been implemented.

Another reason to skip tiers on mods is if that means that the player ends up with far too many mods in their inventory.

There are a couple of key areas in which I am thinking about deviating from other games (like the Diablo series, PoE 1/2, Last Epoch etc.)

Local only

Each mod applies only to the item it is on. A firing rate increase on your smelters won’t do anything - since they don’t fire. A smelting speed increase on your weapon will likewise have no effect. It would make sense to extract or replace the ineffective mods.

If you have two weapons attached, and one of them has a mod that increases firing rate, that will impact only that weapon.

No Prefix / Suffix mods

There is no classification of mods as prefix/suffix or limits of each type. You can have full attack mods on if you like. Considering the previous restriction, it makes more sense to stack attack on weapons and defense on armour.

Machines

There are a few factory based machines I have in mind so far.

All these machines will have a rate at which they will complete their work. I have been pondering whether higher tier machines will complete lower tier work faster.

Smelters

The standard refinery. It will convert ore and scrap (obtained when enemy ships are destroyed, and from scrapping items) into refined materials.

Constructor

Converts refined materials into items of Tier 1. For Tier 2 onwards, I am considering taking items from the previous tier plus a refined material of the new tier. E.g. to craft a Tier 2 factory, it could take 2 x Factory Mk. I + 30 Tier 2 materials (whatever that turns out to be)

This could keep the recipes easy to understand and reason about. It also provides one use for poorly rolled items.

Disassemblers

These function similar to the Foundry in Last Epoch, at least with regards to extracting all the mods from the item.

I haven’t decided how deterministic it will be. Will it extract all items or could some be damaged in the process and maybe turned to scrap?

Scrappers

These are a bit like the trash bin. If crafting requires lower tier items, these might not be necessary. TBD!

Foundry

This would be the machine that could do mod crafting. I am still a little foggy about how or if this machine could work.

Should mod crafting involve risk? Like combining two mods to maybe create a higher tier one - or failing and getting scrap?

What about rerolling a mod by sacrificing another mod?

All ideas accepted :)

Augmentor

The Augmentor could be the final step in the pipeline - letting you insert or fine-tune mods once you’ve refined or crafted them.

This machine will work instantly so that it doesn’t tie up the items currently in use. It would allow you to modify items up to its own tier.

triangle

With machines slotted directly onto the ship, triangle becomes a living, drifting factory - salvaging, upgrading, refining, evolving, fighting, and surviving!

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