What's the status on ship-based refining? It seems like a critical role with crafting coming.
TL;DRShip-based refining will not be in the first crafting release; refining must be reworked for resource quality, with ship, station and base-building refining updated later, and refining by hand-held crafters is undecided.
That is correct. It is a very critical role for crafting. So it will not be part of the first crafting release. So what we want to do is, for crafting as well as for engineering gameplay, it's a more long-term investment from our side. So we will build up on the basis that we built, and right now what we have in Tech Preview, and some of you might already have played it in Tech Preview, that is the basis that we want to start with. So we start with mainly FPS equipment for now and then expand further on. And one of the bits is actually the refining rework, because we've talked about it several times, but the way that resources work will behave very differently to what we have right now in the live game when crafting comes in. So Elliot also mentioned it, minutes ago, where we have quality suddenly being part of the resources. And quality then also needs to be accounted for in the refining process. And that all results in: the refining that we have right now will not exist the way it exists right now anymore. It will all update. And we take that time that we use for the update to then also update the ship-based refining, the station refinery, and then as a last step, the base building refining step.
No FPS refining, right? Just having to crank a wheel or something.
Well, we have the crafters. Technically, the crafters are capable of doing small refining jobs, but that is undecided at this point.