This guide will cover what to expect when attempting to use the manufacturing facility. It is pretty straight forward once you get use to the process, but getting to that point can be tricky for some people. This is not a guide on how to craft, instead a guide on how to use the facilities with a screen reader. For a guide on how to craft go into your account tab, new player guides, then choose the guide for crafting.
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Locating A manufacturing Facility
These are located on promenades. They are one of the links at the top of the main promenade table near where you will find links for the secure storage, bank, and collection point. Not every planet/settlement has a manufacturing facility however. That being said, it is not difficult to find a planet or settlement with a manufacturing facility, most of them have one for use.
Once you find one it is important to note you need the resources for the build stored in the local commercial storage.
Again, this guide is not going to cover how to craft, that is fully covered in the new player guides section of the account tab. I would highly suggest you read that guide so you are fully aware of the process, this page will just skim over the basics of how, instead focusing on using a screen reader to craft.
The Main Page, Picking A Schematic Category To View
When you enter into the manufacturing facility directly under the assets tab you will see a table which has a bunch of links which are categories of schematics to view. The choices you have are:
Weapons.
Shields.
Systems.
Reactors.
Cargo Expanders.
Fac / Ref.
Eng / Missiles.
Drones .
Modules.
Specials.
Misc.
Implants.
Malls.
Extractors.
Settlements.
Ship / Starbase.
One thing to note is the category titled "modules" includes all modules that may go into any build. For example if you are building any item, whether it is a PM ship chassis, EBK kit, mining drone, anything, if it has modules they will be in the modules category.
Clicking on one of these categories will load a table which shows you all the schematics you own in that specific category. This is where you view them and choose to view or build specific items.
The Schematic Table Listing
Once you click on a category, just for examples sake I'll use the modules category. You will have a table which shows all of your schematics in that specific category. The table headers are.
Schematic Name: The name of the module.
Prod Skill: Minimum production Skill needed to craft it.
Manuf Skill: Minimum manufacturing skill needed to craft it.
Tech Lvl: Minimum required tech level of the crafting location.
In Store: How many you already have in your ship's hold crafted.
View: Button to view but NOT build the schematic.
Build: A button to continue to the building screen to actually craft the item.
Continuing on to actually build something
Once you find the item you want to craft you click on the build button in its table row. This is the second button after the item name, the first button is to only view the schematic.
The first page you are going to see is simply a confermation page. It will read something like...
Pre Manufacturing Preparations
Captain,
We have contacted Commercial Services and they are preparing to fill your Resource orders from your personal stocks at this location.
Please continue to the manufacturing screen where we can check your final build against its requirements.
Continue button
Of course you simply hit the continue button to move on to the build screen. This next page is where you actually do the crafting and build your item.
The Build Screen ?
You will see a table similar to this on your build screen. The resources and amounts will be different of course, but the layout will stay the same. Also you only get the craft 1, craft 5, and craft 10 buttons when building modules. If you aren't building a mod you will just get one button that says craft item.
After this table I will break it down and explain how to best navigate it. It is a bit confusing at first because the best way to navigate inside the table is not by table commands, that only makes it more confusing. Instead read this table only using your down arrow.
The first thing you should notice at the top is the text telling you what you are crafting, if your Reduction Matrix is on, and how many of the item you already have in stock.
Extractor Pump (Small) (Reduction Matrix Active)
In Stock : 140
After this you get into some resource names. Again make sure you are only using down arrow to navigate this even though it is a table it is much easier to read just using down arrow. Later you might find table commands easier, but to get an idea of the layout right now the arrows work perfect.
In this example for an extractor pump small the resources required according to the table are:
Refined Ore
Plasteel
High Tech Components
Refined Chemicals
N/A
N/A
These are only the resources required, the amounts are shown later in the table. One thing to note is the two "N/A" at the bottom of the resource listing. Allot of things you craft in Core-Exiles require what everyone calls sub-modules. These are other things you have to craft that then go into a larger craft. If your build requires sub-modules they will be in the place of the "N/A" in this example.
I'm ignoring the show last displayed schematic button, that doesn't apply here. It allows you to drill up and down to view parts of a build, but again that isn't required for this example so I'm just skipping over it. There are primers and guides on using it so if you want to know more you can read those in the forums.
The next bit of information is telling you if you have the proper skills to craft the item you are attempting to build.
Production Skill Met: Yes
Manufacturing Skill Met: Yes
Finally after this check you get into another list of the resources you need, but this time it tells you the amounts required and how much you have in stock at your current location. In this example it says the following.
I'm removing the extra spacing out of my text below, but there is allot of blank lines especially bbetween the 3rd and 4th resource. I don't know why, but it's easy enough to just hit down arrow to skip over.
Refined Ore
A:0 R:4
Plasteel
A:0 R:4
High Tech Components
A:0 R:4
Refined Chemicals
A:0 R:4
N/A
A:0 R:0
N/A
A:0 R:0
Craft 1 (button)
Craft 5 (button)
Craft 10 (button)
So again this is telling you the resource, then directly next to or under it, the Actual amount you have in local storage followed by the Required amount to craft the item.
With the first example it says.
Refined Ore
A:0 R:4
>This translates to.
Refined Ore
Actual amount in storage :0
Required amount:4
In order to craft an item you need to have enough of all resources required along with all modules. If crafting 5 or 10 at a time you need to have 5 or 10 times what is listed per button press.
When you complete the craft you will get a confermation screen telling you the build was successful and how much XP you got for the build. Yes that's right you get xp for a build. At first it is small, but there are crafts in the game that give over a million xp. The items are automatically moved into your ship store and you have crafted an item. If you need to craft more just keep doing it. If you need to make something new then return to the crafting screen via the link that says "return to schematics screen" and follow the same process for the next build.
That's really all there is to crafting in CE, the layout can be a bit tricky. This is much worse if you try to use table commands on the build screen. Overall it is best to only use up and down arrows to navigate along with B to jump by buttons.
Navigation tips
If you want to do crafting quick:
Search either ft it, ft 1, ft 5, or ft 10 depending on what button you need to use.
Don't search anything else, keep that as your search so you can use F3 to quickly search the same text.
Starting when you are on the build screen for a specific schematic press F3 then Enter to activate a craft.
The next page is the confermation screen. This page only has one button which is continue. you can just hit B to jump to it and hit enter on it.
This brings you back to the build screen for your schematic. You can hit F3 followed by Enter again to craft again.
You can continue to do this until you have all your items crafted.
When on the screen listing the schematic types if you have been there before you can use V to jump by visited link. This jumps you right to one of your previously viewed categories. If you haven't been there before to jump directly to the list you can search "weap" for weapons which is the first category. You could also search "ass" and then down arrow.
After choosing a schematic you can use table commands to get through the listing of things you can craft until you find what you want. This takes forever depending on how big your table is. The better option is to simply use a virtual find to get to what you want. Just realize allot of schematics use punctuation instead of spaces so it is best to search a whole word to get to what you are looking for.