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Fabrication & Tinkering

Making parts, containers and tools from processed stock at Rusk Recovery's Fabrication Station, the Manual Override control, and taking finished pieces apart again.

Fabrication is making the piece you need out of processed stock — a bracket, a container, a tool. It is its own skill with its own level, and it happens at the Fabrication Station in Wade Rusk's yard at Rusk Recovery, right beside his welding workshop. Tansy Rusk teaches it: after 10,000 Hours she comes out to the yard, and taking on her job opens the station.

Once the station is open, the yard shows two work areas to choose between — the Welding Workshop, with the practice bench and the Work Orders terminal, and the Fabrication Station. Only the one you pick is laid out on screen; Wade and Tansy stay where they are either way.

What you can make

Every current recipe needs only Fabrication level 1. The station lists every recipe, and under each one what you are still missing. Two filters can hide recipes above your level and recipes you do not have the materials for — either on its own, or both together.

  • Mounting Bracket — 2 Refined Ferrite. 7.2 seconds, 25 Fabrication XP. Installation hardware; it stacks five to a slot.
  • Scrap Metal — 2 Refined Ferrite into 1 Scrap Metal. 6 seconds, 10 Fabrication XP. A way to make practice scrap yourself; it is not meant as training.
  • Scrap Box — 1 Mounting Bracket, 2 Scrap Metal and 3 Refined Ferrite. 21.6 seconds, 81 Fabrication XP. A crude, heavy container that adds three Inventory slots when you equip it as a container.
  • Salvage Cutter — 5 Refined Ferrite and 1 Power Cell. 12 seconds, 65 Fabrication XP. Another ordinary Salvage Cutter. The Power Cell goes into building it, so it comes off the machine uncharged like any Cutter.

Choosing a run

Pick how many batches to make before you start, the same way Refining and the practice bench work: it starts at one, and the minus and plus buttons change it up to as many as your materials pay for. The station shows what the whole run will take and give you — materials, pieces, time and Fabrication XP. Or press Max to keep going until the next piece cannot be started; Max shows what each batch takes, because how many it makes depends on what you have left as it goes.

Once a piece is on the machine

Starting a piece commits you to it. Its materials stay in your Inventory until it is finished — still counting toward your weight and slots — but they are set aside for it: you cannot drop them, sell them or use them for anything else, and you cannot walk away from the station until the piece is done. Only the piece on the machine sets anything aside; the materials for later batches are still yours until each one starts.

When a piece finishes, its materials are used up and the finished piece lands in your Inventory at the same moment. Room for it is judged after its own materials are gone, so a full Inventory can still finish a piece whose materials free the slot it needs.

There is no cancel. Stop After This Workpiece lets the piece on the machine finish and ends the run there. Closing the game or losing your connection changes nothing: the piece keeps going, and when you come back it is exactly where it would have been.

Manual Override

Fabrication never fails on its own. Manual Override is a control on the station for when you want to push your luck: switch it on and the piece on the machine gets a Load between 2 and 9, a Trend of Higher or Lower, and a multiplier on the Fabrication XP it will pay, starting at 1.00×.

To push, pick a Feed from 1 to 10. The Load then moves in the direction the Trend showed — Higher lands anywhere above it up to 10, Lower anywhere below it down to 1 — and you do not know how far until it moves. A Feed within two of the new Load multiplies the XP by 1.20; a Feed exactly on it, by 1.30. Anything else wrecks the piece: its materials are gone, nothing is made, and it pays no XP.

You can push up to five times on one piece, and the fifth locks it in on its own. Lock In whenever you are happy with the multiplier. If the timer is still running, the piece finishes normally at that multiplier; if it has already run out, it finishes straight away. There is no rush: a piece whose timer runs out while Manual Override is still working just holds on the machine until you decide. Switching Manual Override off locks in whatever you have earned so far, and the next piece starts at 1.00× again.

Tinkering

Tinkering is the other half of the station: taking a finished piece apart for Fabrication XP. Tansy shows it to you, and it is available from then on.

Taking a piece apart pays its full Fabrication XP, takes twice as long as making it, and gives back Scrap Metal — one piece for every two things that went into making it, rounded up. It never gives back the original materials.

  • Salvage Cutter — 65 Fabrication XP, 24 seconds, 3 Scrap Metal.
  • Scrap Box — 81 Fabrication XP, 43.2 seconds, 3 Scrap Metal.
  • Mounting Bracket — 25 Fabrication XP, 14.4 seconds, 1 Scrap Metal.

How Tinkering runs

Tinkering uses the same run control: a number of pieces, or Max until there is nothing left to take apart. Only pieces you are carrying and not wearing can be taken apart — unequip something first if you want to Tinker it.

The piece is gone the moment its Tinkering starts. Stop keeps that piece exactly where it was, and Resume carries on with it without taking another; walking away from the yard does the same. Finish Current Item finishes it — full XP and Scrap — and then stops.

By default Tinkering keeps its Scrap, and a piece will not start if there is no room for the Scrap it gives back. Turn on Auto-discard Scrap to keep going regardless: the piece is still taken apart and still pays its XP, but the Scrap is thrown away. The setting stays until you change it.

Tinkering will not take apart your last Mining Cutter. Cutters you are wearing or have stored in the Cargo Hold count, so you can take one apart as long as you have another somewhere — otherwise make or get another Cutter first.