Architect Archive

Hey folks, alright so they "fixed" experimentation. We voted 2:1 that we wanted it, and here it is. Personally I'm glad to see a new angle for our profession (as well as the opportunity to sell new harvesters to everyone), as well as the possibility of pulling up more ressources (Doubled my low grade ore output). But there are some tweaks to be made.

Mainly:

• Harvester interface seems "off"
  


• Heavy Harvesters aren't "worth it" anymore. When I can makemediums at an extraction rate of 7 vs. heavies at 10 (before it was 4 vs. 7... That's 43% difference vs. 30% difference)
  


• Some pre-patch stock keeps previous stats making it almost worthless.

So post your comments on good/bad/bugs

Please: For bugs, keep it as short as possible (one line) and highlight it in red so I can spot them easier when searching through the probable huge list of opinions.

I was against exp. I can deal with it, i think, if it stays. Uncertainty atm moment sucks.

One of my friends is one of those with 5 med gas harvs with screwed up hoppers. Would like to know if it is fixable before I make him 5 new ones.

My only other problem is that I cannot access one of my med mineral. It doesnt recognize me . All i can do is examine it.

I went around looking for good qual materials, and a friend gave me some very rare stuff, so I can experiment (the little i can do at 0-3-4-2). I am scared to use them now. Hate to waste them if it all goes away.

And if experimentation is going to stay, then give us full exp points. Tho from following the DE plights (as I was trully interested in that profession), I wouldnt hold my breath.

I'd wait for the max reported experimented heavy before ranting. One reported 19 on my server but I have yet to confirm it with my own eyes.

As far as my rave. I laugh at all the threads prior to the patch saying there was no architect love. HAHA!

I think it is a good thing. Finally we have something to shoot for. Before building was just a grind, give me any old resource and I will make something out of it. Now we actually care about resources and can play with things to see what we can do. Makes the game more interesting in many ways if you ask me.

My biggest problem is the overlap between medium "good" harvesters and heavy "average" harvesters. There should not, in my opinion, be such an easy to reach overlap between them. Heavy harvesters cost twice as much as mediums to run, and should be our "bread and butter" as far as what we sell as MA's go. It used to be that way because heavy harvesters produced MORE than just twice what a medium could do.

Quite simply, if the "best" medium you can make is going to have a 7 rate, heavies need to START at 10 or 11and go up to 16 or so fully experimented. Its crap that I can use the same exact materials and get a heavy harvester thatends up costing MORE per unit of resource to run than a medium made with the same materials.

Some of the devs need to go back and take some basic math classes and THEN implement a system of experimentation. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for experimentation, I love that we have it. I just think they missed the boat... by a lot.

Oh, and contrary to what everyone keeps saying, MY heavy harvesters are taking twice the power they used to. Again, do the math. Heavy harvesters used to take 1800 power a day. That's 75 (SEVENTY FIVE for the numerically impaired devs) per hour, not 150. I understand totally what they were trying to do, and its all well and good... but for whatever reason (again, I blame lack of math skills), when they made the change, they messed up.

The change is good ( although there needs to be a smaller cap on med extraction rates ) only if they implement decay. Without decay this is going to speed the demise of the architect.

We can now pull resources faster and cheaper. Cheaper resources mean cheaper finished products. It also means we can more quickly saturate the market with our products that last forever.

Without decay this change ( as it stands ) will only doom the Architect profession faster.

I'm pretty sure I am in the minority here but here goes:

I don't see extraction rates with experimentation as being that great of a thing. There are 2 main reasons:

1) I have always seen architect being very different from weapon/armor smith in that they need fewer high quality resources while architects need more of ANY resource. With my PA this relationship worked out well between me and the weapon/armor smiths. See, as my PA gathered the low quality/high amount of resources went to me while the high quality hard to find resources went to them. This relationship in a group worked well in that there was no fighting over the quality resources between me and them. Not only that but it helped us develop strategies in resource gathering for our group. It was also easy to tell people in our PA who were gathering who the resource should go to; high quality resource? give it to a smith. Low quality reasource, give it to the arch. I actually liked the relationship.

2) I am in agreement with others who have posted the opinion that experimentation to enhance extraction rates isn't really going to help our profession very much. It is very simple: right now you are seeing a spike in sales but as soon as that demand is filled (the demand for higher extracting harvesters) then we are back to the original problem we had: once demand for our products is filled our market base drops dramatically. See, this latest "boom" in business is only a short temporary boom that has no lasting basis.

I do like the fact that this does make Masters distinct from normal Archs. That definately needs to be part of the game.

So, my opinion is that the higher extraction rates should be removed and that we still need solutions for

1) making master archs distinct from normal archs

2) maintaining the demand for our products (or our skills at least)

I hate to list these issues without suggestions for solutions but they are hard to solve. Not only that but there has been a lot of discussion as to what possible solutions could be.

I have yet to try a heavy with quality materials, but I heard on Radiant of people making heavies with 14 extraction rate. Also, many miners will be willing to pay the extra maintenance and power to pull up resources faster, even if its more expensive per unit of resource.

I think they are on the right track, and this is definitly an improvement. It will take another week or so for me to make a final decision if they need any more changes or not.

Xader you are dead right

A quick sales spike up, and then it will drop even faster than it did before. I disagree only on one poinit, making experimentation is good, but only in conjunction with decay of some sort.

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Dayln wrote:

Xader you are dead right

A quick sales spike up, and then it will drop even faster than it did before. I disagree only on one poinit, making experimentation is good, but only in conjunction with decay of some sort.

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I agree with you completely, Dayln and stand corrected. Some sort of decay would work great. But how do you work that in with what is already a "decay" system of maintenance. From what I can tell that is why there isn't decay on structures is because Holo said that decay already existed in the form of maintenance and requiring decay that we need would be a "double-tax".

First, I want the current experimentation to stay, largely because it makes building a good harvester at least a little bit of a challenge.

The current numbers are probably a mistake - they go too high, and mediums are too close to heavies. I can live with them, but they're a mistake none the less.

The main thing is to clear up the uncertainty.

Now, if we get into the realm of tweaking the system a bit:

First, the reported +25 skill tape is really annoying me. This is EQ-all over again, when an 'uber item' is the difference between being a gimp and being uber. Masters getting +55 skill, masters with a skill tape getting +80 is far, far, far to wide a gap. The devs are asking for trouble - when you get items this valuable, the dupers will have a field day duping the things and selling them on E-Bay for $200+ a pop.

Right now, the breakpoints on experimentation success seem to be 25/50/75. Its too easy to break 50 - you can do it with 850-quality materials. Its too hard to break 75 - you can't do it without a skill tape. I don't know how to fix this.

A master architect, working with 950+ materials, should be able to barely reach the highest tier. The skill tape can make it easier, but the game shouldn't reduce to who has a skill tape and who doesn't.

Here are some numbers:

Mediums: Rate 3-6. Legacy mediums should be pegged at 4.
Heavies: Rate 6-9. Legacy heavies should be pegged at 7.

This rolls rates down a little. Legacy heavies remain better than uber-mediums. Energy/maintenance cost per resource are equal for the best mediums and heavies.

Alternatively, if they want to nerf production a little, they should go with this:

Mediums: Rate 2-5. Legacy mediums go down to 3.
Heavies: Rate 5-8. Legacy heavies go down to 6.

There will be screaming about this one so it probably won't happen.

so extraction rate is linked to ore mining unit in the case of mineral harvesters yes?

what materials are we looking at (swgcraft is down for template) ideally?

The main problem with experimentation as I see it is the fact that a Master Architect only gets +55 experimentation, while we should get +100 as a Master Weaponsmith or Master Armorsmith does. Five more boxes on each stage would make a heckuva difference.

The second problem is that you can't experiment on extraction rate on final assembly so the only important thing to experiment on is maybe 2-3 subcomponents. That's just silly.

Padre Book
Intrepid Architect