Hi @Killigan,

Sure. Let me first start by saying that stats in ARK aren't as simple as "Set Durability to 500," or "Set Hypothermic Insulation to 30." Instead, you pass big fat round numbers to the item and ARKs internal mechanics convert the value to the appropriate calculated value using their algorithms.

Needless to say this makes it difficult to balance and expose to server admins but we're doing our best in that regard.

For the Upgrade Station, UpgradeStatIncreaseMin and UpgradeStatIncreaseMax were originally hard-coded to be 2,000 and 10,000, respectively. Each time an item is upgraded a random number between these two values is generated and that's what all the stats are increased by (except hypothermic and hypothermic; these values are increased by 1/4 that value to avoid overheating/freezing). Setting BOTH values to 2,000/2,000 means that there is no randomness to it and upgrades will consistently result in much lower stats per upgrade. Setting BOTH values to 10,000/10,000 means that upgrades will result in consistently much higher stats per upgrade. The default values provide a good randomness but are now exposed for server admins to fine-tune player upgrade progression.

For the Augment Station, RangeMinPerAugment and RangeMaxPerAugment function the same way but with lower values per augment (1,000/5,000).

And lastly, Max[Insert-Stat-Here]PerIndex values are what the maximum value can be per-stat per-quality index when augmenting. So for Primitive, the max value a stat could have is 10,000, for Ramshackle it could be increased to 20,000, for Journeyman 30,000, etc.

Long story short:

• If you want consistently lower stats on upgraded/augmented items, keep the min/max values low. (1,000/1,000)
  
• If you want consistently higher stats on upgraded/augmented items, keep the min/max values high. (5,000/5,000)
  
• If you want stat increases to be more random, keep the range between the min/max values high. (1,000/5,000)
  
• If you want stat increases to be more consistent, decrease the range. (2,000/3,000)
  
• If you want super OP augments, increase the per-index values. (20,000, 30,000, etc)

I hope this helps!

That definitely helps a lot man thank you so much for your time to explain this further. I should be able to set the settings I want on my server now with this information. Keep up the fantastic work!!

so how would I put the low powered stuff in the augment ini? Does it follow similar to the other upgrade station lines?

@Drothar If you want lower stats on augmented items you'll want to:

1. Lower the Max[Insert-Stat-Here]PerIndex values to something lower than the default. 5,000 is good.
2. Lower the RangeMinPerAugment and RangeMaxPerAugment values lower to match. Something around 1,000 and 2,000 is good.

With max per-index stat values at 5,000, it should take 3-5 augments per stat to max out per quality level.

I did have another qusestion. So I adjusted the RangeMinPerAugment and RangeMaxPerAugment to 50/500 respectively. Shouldn't this mean that the augments themselves are very small increases to the stats? I tested by augmenting 3 different primitive tools weapon damage and 2 of the 3 got an immeidate 20% melee damage increase from the one augment. This may be where the "math" behind the scenes is confusing to me but I would have expected the settings I have enabled to have caused a much smaller augment upgrade percentage. Am I misunderstanding how this works?

@Killigan The values are clamped between 1,000 and 5,000 meaning a minimum of 1,000 and a maximum of 5,000. So a setting of 50/500 won't work because they're lower than the minimum.

We just chose 1,000 because it felt like a comfortable number. If 1,000 proves to be too low for some admins we can consider changing the minimum amount.

Gotcha! I am trying to keep the upgrade station and the augment station "in check" with what the values are of things you can find in the wild so was hoping to get the augments to relatively small upgrades but makes sense that you would just set a min and max in the code. Thanks again for your quick responses.

i havent done augment station yet, not able to play ark for a bit, but my server has a harvest rate of 17x, which is pretty high. i want to put my settings low that it will take some work to get great to op gears.
for now, my settings are
[AugmentStation]
RangeMinPerAugment=1000
RangeMaxPerAugment=4000
MaxArmorPerIndex=6000
MaxDamagePerIndex=6000
MaxArmorDurabilityPerIndex=6000
MaxWeaponDurabilityPerIndex=6000
MaxHyperthermicInsulationPerIndex=6000
MaxHypothermicInsulationPerIndex=6000
MaxWaterRetentionPerIndex=6000

So, my server is 10x harvest. If I don't want everyone to get insane OP weapons fairly quickly, should I put everything at the minimum? ( I want them to be able to EVENTUALLY get it, but it want it to take pretty much for forever.)

a question, i can increase the limit where the upgrade can go ? example : i want a bow with 2.100% damage.... this is possible? remove the limit and go more far? or extend te upgrad ? change the maximu of 5 and put unlimited or 10-15 upgrades?

i want high increase the MaxArmorDurabilityPerIndex=( how much i put? whats the limit? )

@Ghazlawl What min/max values for the upgrades results in stats that are closest to the stats an item can get in vanilla? I only want to use the mod to get saddles that are not found in beacons and I dont want to end up with way overpowered items.

@Luis Leimig The max damage we're finding items can go is 750%. This is a limit imposed by the ARK devs and will be clamped in the next update due to stats getting reset if you augment past that value.

@Sturmhart Eisenkeil There isn't an exact science to the items that are found in the wild. We've seen items ranging from really terrible to incredibly awesome. We recommend playing with the INI settings to find what you're comfortable with. You could try lowering the min/max values and seeing how that feels. We're pretty happy with the default settings (though we'll be making a couple tweaks in the next update).

quick question... if you have any items that are over 750 do they get reset in the next update? Or will they just roll down to 750?

Hello. Since the Armore Durablity is so extreme low in this game, I wanted to increase it in the Augment Station. But I do have a problem here. I wanted to increase it by 10x like it's set as default but I could upgrade my durability just 1 time only. Which value should I change and where ?

Here are my settings. Everything is on default except MaxArmorDurability

[UpgradeStation]
UpgradeMultiplier=1.5
UpgradeExponentialMultiplier=1.25
MaxUpgradeQualityIndex=5
UpgradeDisallowedItems=
UpgradeStatIncreaseMin=2000
UpgradeStatIncreaseMax=10000
FortuneQualitySkipChance=10
FortuneReducedResourcesChance=10
FortuneReducedResourcesMultiplier=0.25
FortuneIncreasedSalvageChance=10
FortuneIncreasedSalvageMultiplier=2
FortuneUpgradeFailedChance=5
FortuneUpgradeFailedResourcesMultiplier=0.10
DisableSalvage=False
SalvageMultiplier=.25

[BlueprintStation]
ResourcesReturnedMultiplier=1.0

[AugmentStation]
RangeMinPerAugment=1000
RangeMaxPerAugment=5000
MaxArmorPerIndex=10000
MaxDamagePerIndex=10000
MaxArmorDurabilityPerIndex=100000 I've set it to 100k = 10x
MaxWeaponDurabilityPerIndex=10000
MaxHyperthermicInsulationPerIndex=10000
MaxHypothermicInsulationPerIndex=10000
MaxWaterRetentionPerIndex=10000

How do I lower the max damage to 300 for example or 250?