Some words about the crafter trait and the artisan and Blacksmith skills.
With a plain start (no businessman class, no crafter trait) you start with +10+10 in artisan/blacksmith. After reading the books, assuming that you get the brainy trait, you get 30 blacksmith and artisan 28-29. Let´s round up to 30-30.
30-30 it´s good for nothing of value, or almost nothing.
In the armour department, you can craft padded armour, and it´s going to cost you more in raw materials that going to the shop and buy a new one.
In the weapons side, you can craft melee weapons up to sword, ranged weapons up to crossbow and pistols, so nothing of interest on this side, you can craft them with your workshop more efficiently.
In the medical field, you can craft Tendisim, injectors and Doctor´s Kit. That can be of marginal utility, but you are going to need a high Medical/Science skill and nanites, so nothing that you can get in the early part of the game.
The only thing useful it´s the ability to craft ammo. You need a 20/20 skill, and it´s by far more efficient to build ammo by yourself that make it via workshops. That used to be a big deal in early versions, when the combat was range centric, but now, with a melee centric combat the expense in ammo it´s a small one.
All in all, in this start, would be more efficient for you just forget about all the crafting stuff, the crafting books and all this mess. It´s not your thing, and if you need something, you just go to the shop and buy it. As a friend of mine used to say "I have a credit card and I´m not afraid of use it". You get nothing, but you have expend nothing, so everything its fine and fair
The second steep it´s to buy a steep in the business class, but not the crafter trait. You will start with Artisan 25 and Blacksmith 20, and after reading the books you get Blacksmith 40 and Artisan 43-44. Let´s round to 40-45
That means an investment of 20 character points. Not big, but not small. What you get on return?
In the armour side, after reading the books, you can craft Heavy Leather Armor. That´s something useful if you want to equip your "B" or "C" combat team, but not good enough to make a minimum serious profit making and selling. So, small potatoes here.
In the weapons side, you add rifles and shotguns to your building capabilities. Again, nothing to write home and you will be better building this things via workshops.
In the medical side, you don´t get anything new
And yes, you can build your ammo from day one. That´s may be the biggest advantage.
All in all, my opinion it´s that this it´s not worth the expense.
Next in the ladder it´s a steep in the business class and the Crafter trait. You will start with an artisan skill of 35 and Blacksmith of 30 and a nice bunch of raw materials. The value of the raw materials it´s nothing to sneeze at. 100 textiles, 200 steel, 200 wood and 150 merchandise are worth 7000$ at least. That will cost 30 character points, and that means that, after reading the books you will have a 50 Blacksmith and 53-54 artisan. We will, again, round it up to 50-55
.
Let´s see what you get in return.
On the armour side you will be able to build Heavy Leather Armour from day one, as soon as you build the anvil. The anvil it´s somewhat expensive (3500$) but you can sell part of your raw materials to finance it. That can be done with ease at end of day one (selling part of your raw materials) or at the end of day two (without selling them). In the prior build I was dismissive about building Heavy leather Armor. Well, it´s not the same to be able to build H Leather at day 15 that being able to do it at day two. In one case it´s upgrading the armour of your "C" team and in the other it´s upgrading the armour of your MC and your "A" (and only) combat team. Far superior. And also, and more important, late in the game you can build HULC armour from parts. You can get 11 free and quest related Hulk parts, and instead of "buying a Hulk Armor" you can just buy 4 parts and build your own. 4 Hulk parts are 90.000$ and 6.000 influence. A full suit, 1.100.000 and 12.000. The difference it´s huge
In the weapons and Medical field there are no difference at all. The +10 in crafting and blacksmith don´t give you anything in return.
In my opinion, if you invest in taking a steep in Businessman the Crafter Trait it´s mandatory (or almost). It´s worth the expense. Further investment´s in businessman are, in my opinion, more suited to roleplaying considerations ( I love my full businessman build) that to eficiency considerations, so I will let them aside
And now, some thoughts about "you can always raise blacksmith and artisan making knives and bolts", instead of taking Crafter. Yes, you can indeed. But it´s something that it´s very time and fatigue points consuming. Not sure about how it´s exactly managed, but assuming that it´s a 5% chance in increase for each item build, and supposing that you start building the quite useless bolts, you are going to need 10 hours and 40 fp to increase one point your Blacksmith or Artisan skill. That compares really bad with the time and fatigue expense in raising FP, Melee, Ranged, DX or ST, in a 5:1 ballpark.
