Architect Archive

I am a master weaponsmith on Ahazi, and I'm sure as any other crafter will gripe about is two things. Not enough of a resource, and the poor quality of the needed resource. My idea for the solution: 2 new buildings.

The first building: The refinery/smelter. You put the resource into the refinery, turn the refinery on, and the inserted materials needed to be refined are then slowly turned into a better quality material. At the refinery terminal you can pick which stat you want enhanced (overall quality for example) and to what #. The poorer the quality of the beginning material will result in a lower returned product. For example, you have a 400 overall quality metal you want raised to 800. You insert 20,000 units of the metal, and the end result is 800 overall quality metal with 17,000 units at this quality (since the refinery is "burning off" the impurities less metal is then available to make the more pure form). This would obviously cost a good ammount of power to run, and it would be a new item for architects to sell to crafters to help them make better items. This could also be used for gas, foods, chemicals ect.

The second building: The synthetic materials factory. I cannot tell you how many times I've waited and waited for a specific gas or metal to shift so I could FINALLY get it. I know on every server there are shortages of materials needed for specific items. Certian items have spawned once or twice, to return months later (or in some cases never (rainbow gems for T21's)). This factory would produce the requested materials at a high rate of energy and cash to synthasise (sp) the materials requested. These materials would be more expensive then harvesting your own, but it would help end or shorten shortages of needed materials for the masses. The synthetic material would come out with base stats of 500 across the board, and could be used in conjunction with the refinery to make the items better. To use these two buildings together would be a high cost to the individual, but no worse then individuals charging 100+ cpu for the material that you need.

In conclusion, I believe both of these buildings should be given great thought. They would benefit everyone, and help relieve the "i'm tired of these freakin shortages" emails. It can be a new item that architects could sell, and individuals could make their own "rare" materials to make the items they need.

Thanks for your time.

Hast Dubrekken Ahazi-Mon Cal weaponsmith

I like the smelter. Needs some limitations obviously, otherwise everything will be 1000's. As for resource rarity, I kinda like that, makes things more realistic since some things are going to be rare at times.

So smelter, big yes.

Synthisizer, not sure atm.

I think both of these would be GREAT additions. Obviously, the smelter WOULD need to be limited more, but overal I like both of these ideas. As for the synthetic's building, I like this idea even more. Yes, resources shouold be limited, but some of the needed resources are impossible to find unless you want to spend millions of credits to get the amount you need. This is not realistic in my opinion; these resources are worth more than gold is in real life lol. 2 great ideas and I hope the DEVs will read this post ASAP

---

ZeusX wrote:
I think both of these would be GREAT additions. Obviously, the smelter WOULD need to be limited more, but overal I like both of these ideas. As for the synthetic's building, I like this idea even more. Yes, resources shouold be limited, but some of the needed resources are impossible to find unless you want to spend millions of credits to get the amount you need. This is not realistic in my opinion; these resources are worth more than gold is in real life lol. 2 great ideas and I hope the DEVs will read this post ASAP

---

Ok, that argument swayed me, I support both now too =)

Great ideas, both! I was really pleased to see this.... Now for the bad news:

Neither of these will ever happen, & I'll tell you why in 2 words:

Database limitations.

Consider the following if you will... The devs are always screaming about the db's being overburdened by the number of items in game, & all pertinent stat data. Now, your smelter idea, while an excellent idea that would really aid in immersion, cannot happen, because in order to 'refine' a given stat, you have to alter its db identifier. What this means, simply put, is that for any given resource there is a specific, unique identifier... which of course is tied directly to said resource's specific stat data. Alter the data, you alter the identifier, in essence creating a totally new resource. This is something that adds yet more info for the db to handle, effectively adding yet more identifiers to the db, and ending in... you guessed it folks.. overburdened db limitations. Essentially the same issues with the synthetic materials factory

Why, oh why, could they not have spend the startup money on hardware & software that would truly have supported everything they wanted to do with this game?

That, folks, is a question for the ages.

Zawash' iriBetsua

Master Architect / once hopeful player of a game that promised us a universe

DB limitations is something I expect SOE to handle and supply the software and hardware to handle. I expect this as a consumer. If they can't handle the base coding and hardware requirements on their end, I will probably find an inability to handle my fiscal requirements in their interest. These are good ideas that I think the devs should really consider making work because they really help in a lot of ways, including removing very large amounts of resources from the game before they become additional items in the DB.

You can talk about it being SOE's responsibility to fix the database all you want, but the fact is that any serious fix for it is likely to be way down the road and if you want improvements to the game sooner rather than later, then you need to come up with ideas that aren't going to impact the database.

---

FulminataXII wrote:
You can talk about it being SOE's responsibility to fix the database all you want, but the fact is that any serious fix for it is likely to be way down the road and if you want improvements to the game sooner rather than later, then you need to come up with ideas that aren't going to impact the database.

---

Sooner or later is irrelevant. Fixed and improved is my goal. Time is just that, time. Besides, the number of items in each server is growing by leaps and bounds, they have to fix the DB problems as a matter of keeping the game running now, not later.

Sooner vs. later is very relevant. Out of the five people I know who started at launch, I'm the only one still playing, mostly because things haven't been fixed sooner. As for the DB, they have been improving it, constantly, which is the only reason we are still playing without the whole thing crashing multiple times per day. Unfortunately, those fixes don't seem to be doing much more than just keeping pace with the growth of the DB. A complete fix that manages to actually get to the root of some of the problems is likely to require some fundamental changes to the code and is at best a long term project. Now, this is all just guesswork, but based on what little information has come out of SOE on the details of the problem, I don't think I'm far off.

Great idea!

We now only need the devs to listen and do something about it now!

Hmm actually I have a feeling that the stats on a resource are a property of the stack itself. If the proliferation of resource TYPES was a problem you'd think they wouldn't rotate resources out so often.

While we're talking about resources it sure would be nice if their names in inventory and in vendors were more descriptive. If I need Thallium Copper for example I have to go through and double click a dozen types of Copper on the bazaar looking for one that is "a type of Thallium Copper." The fact that it's "Copper (Fizbat)" is only helpful on the occasion that you're looking for one specific resource that you already have some of or built a schematic from. Now if it said "Thallium Copper (Fizbat)" that would be just dandy.

I like this idea.... but for both it should be way expensive to do.... for example if you takes 20,000 resources with 400 OQ and you want to double it.... you should only get 10,000 back or less.....

These buildings should only be the chosen when there is no resources shifting right now... otherwise it will ruin the miners market.... it should be cheaper and smarter to buy from miners, but when there is no one selling it then yes, you should be able to use a building like this

I also have had thoughts of having facilities such as these. But they should come as abilities under a new/old class: Miner. I can picture this as a viable class if you add certs to the current harvesters, add new bigger harvesters exclusive to miner(not going to happen) or make a new kind of harvester.

I picture a sort of omni-harvester that has attachable drill heads (like a weapons attachment) that can be configured between different resource types. Chem/mineral/gas as one kind and moisture/flora as another.

Of course I also see this never happening too. but I can dream, can't I?

~CaBhaal Lourn