Oh it has an effect: you cannot craft for 30 minutes. I'm glad you're mentioning this, because the bigger problem in my opinion, is the Science skill requirement for optimizing the generators after you repair them. This is a beginner quest, the kind of thing new people might like to do, so the Science requirement should be low, like let's say 50, but try it even with Science 100 and you fail over and over and over maybe 30 times per generator. What player will stand there and use Science 100 times for only a few XP? I believe what happened is...the requirement was set too high a long time ago, but back when Science skill maxed at 300 (the old old days), and then later many skill maximums were decreased which is good but...a few quest requirements were never decreased to scale down with the changes to maximums, leaving the Science requirement for this quest far too high - close to the max. The fix? Simply lower the Science requirement to maybe 50. Done.
Many NPCs walk away from dialogue and it is annoying. Thomas is not the only one. The dad & children in Hippocratic Oath are the worst, but Thrane in Necropolis does it too.
Another easy change i hope for is Water the Farmers in Hub. It takes time to run around the fields, find one of the right NPCs, offer him water, run back to the water pipe to get more water and find 9 more farmers the same way, only to get a grand whopping total of 150 XP. This is not a funny joke - it is simply an old, old quest from the first days, that never paid well even then, and got overlooked as new content has been added with XP more appropriate for the time investment. The fix? Simply bump the XP up to 500 from 150. Done. I'll be glad to add this one to the new players step-by-step route in my Startup Guide, once it pays decently.
While i'm going on this, something happened with joining Vault City so that one of the options is no longer available. I suspect it is another case of a Science or Repair skill requirement that is no longer possible since skill maximums were decreased. We could get the Hydroelectric Magnetosphere Regulator item before, while joining VC, but not any more. As far as i know, this items has disappeared from game, likely due to a now-unattainable skill requirement.