Hey all,

Q1. For the in-game database, it says that the strength of your crafted items depends on "Engineering". Is this correct, or a typo?
If this is correct, Engineering seems to govern bombs and tech guns. Why do I have to use bombs and tech guns to be better at crafting?

Q2. It seems like the mats required to upgrade an item increases for every upgrade you do on it. Why upgrade, when I can just craft a new gun from scratch to get the highest possible stats, which is actually cheaper?

Q3. Clearly, there are item levels, but I cannot seem to find that information. How do you unlock that data?

Just look at the dps.

its quite clear when you compare a currently equiped weapon to one in the inventory weather it's better or not.
The only thing you need to check aside from that is if it has special effects or mods already installed.

We also seriously need a "Craft X number of objects", crafting hundreds of components (the component upgrade perk) is really annoying.

engineering part I aggree with, it's kinda weird I actually leveled up engineering but haven't seen a stat difference at all

material increase for upgrades I think is like a soft cap, upgrading weapons or armor can give you higher stats than a new gun I think they tried to avoid players making over powered stuff, there's a weird mechanic with "iconic" weapons where let's say you find a green version you can upgrade it to blue, purple and finally legendary and then upgrade that, but not before because upgrading resets the stats, anyway upgrading can be good if you'd rather stick to one set of weapons

like ast486 said, just look at the big numbers to see if they're red or green and of course more mod slots the better, no weapons or armor have unique abilities

You don't, Engineering also increases every time you scrap or craft something. It's situational. Crafting a new gun relies on you having the blueprints for said gun at the level you want to craft it. It'll also re-roll any bonus traits and since you can't reclaim mods you're going to need to replace any mod(s) you applied to the original if you want to keep using them. One obvious problem if you're not focused on crafting is that you probably don't have the blueprint to craft a rare or epic version of the gun you want.

Though if you're focusing on crafting, scrapping everything you're not using and picking up anything that isn't nailed down then it's quite likely you can just re-craft the gun until the RNG rolls your way (ideally at a store, so you can sell the guns you weren't happy with).