Architect Archive
Thread: My Suggestions List 08-05-03
Once a week I will post a list of my suggestions and ideas. If you have additional ideas post them. If i like them I will add them to my list. I have given serious thought to each of the ideas listed here so unless you come up with a very valid reason why something has no possibility of working (other than its too hard the devs wont do it and such) It will stay in the list. You may not like the idea or you may not think that it is feasable but unless the idea simply cannot possible work I will keep it.
Keep in mind these are not all my ideas. Just ideas I have come up with or picked up from other peoples posts. I credit the whole board with helping me create this idea list.
THIS IS NOT A BUG LIST I KEEP THOSE SEPARATE
Also all these ideas are interrelated please refrain from dismissing an idea until you have read the whole post as while there maybe an idea that sounds bad or wont work on its own, the following ideas will make it more agreeable.
I. Lots
A. Ability to Buy sell lots.
B. Limit Starting lots to 2. To discourage the delete/create syndrome to sell lots.
C. Ignore lot requirements for house. Limit each player to 1 house of any size.
D. Improve max number of lots as charactor improves through advanced skills.
E. Restrict lot types to those in the proper profession. (IE only Merchants can ownBusinesses and only Miners can own Extractors.)
F. Tie Available Lots to Acct/Server to prevent create delete syndrome to obtain extra lots. (There is almost no need to delete a charactor and create a new one unless you are changing species/sex.) This idea is important if you allow lots to be sold off.
G. Player who sells his lots, then deletes the charactor will have no lots when he/she makes a new charactor. However charactor can buy back lots.
(Explanation: This will allow devs to maintain the maximum allowable lots because they already allow only so many people per server before cutting off charactor creation.
II. House Design.
A. Allow house interiors to be designed by the architect instead of the cookie cutter design. Require an entry hall to allow the game time to render the interior before the player can see it.
B. Create a seperate building type for businesses. Building range from small like a pub to large like a night club or department store.
C. More variety on the exterior. (I'm sure this is already in the works.)
D. Allow use of named deeds on similar planets. IE Corellia on Talus, Naboo on Rori etc...
III. Automation.
A. Allow Automatic Debit from bank acct optionthis would place 1 days worth maintenance into Structures each day. It is up to the player to keep his bank acct full. Allow the ability to split maintenance costs when owned by multiple people so the automatic payment would take the appropriate amount out of each person acct..
B. Automatic Power distribution from power generator structures to other structures that require power. (Can setup this up so it only works on structures within a certain radius of the power source.)
C. Automatic Email on Structure status changes. IE Resource Depletion, Maintenance Depletion etc...
D. Ability to remote operate structures such as harvestors through the data pad.
E. Allow specific line of droids to manage all structures including removing resources from full structures.
F. Allow scheduled or automated shutdown at set times or on certain conditions. IE to save maintenance/decay I might run my harvestors only 16 hours a day as opposed to always on.
IV. Administration.
A. Allow various levels of administration within a structure from general access to drop/pickup to redeed access.
B. Ability to set access levels to various levels/rooms. (IE: being able to lock the lift so only certain peopel can use it to get to the basement however the general public can freely access the main area.)
C. Automatically refund credits to person who for whatever reason are banned from your structure who have made a purchase but not yet retrieved it. Provide a warning message to the person doing the banning that the target has an outstanding purchase.
V. Maintenance.
A. Allow the removal of power/credits from structures.
B. Allow droid engineers to create a module or line of maintenance droids that can be used to reduce maintenance costs of structures they are assigned to maintain.
C. Do not charge maintenance during server downtime, lockup or extended loading periods. (power is not charged so why is maintenance?)
D. Do not charge maintenance on extractors that are not running. (However place a time limit that extractors may be left not operating before they are removed from game. IE 3 days.) (I understand the need to prevent peopel abandoning extractors but with the current lot limit size how prevelant is this problem?)
E. Do not charge maintenance to redeed. (However everytime a structure is redeeded, reduce the maximum efficiency of the structure. Eventually they will have to replace this structure due to wear and tear.)
F. Re-add the ability for extractors to function under 100% maintenance. (However not only reduce efficiency, but also allow for a chance of critical failures that increases in severity the more decayed the extractors become. Some examples of critical failures include. Permanent Breakdown, Minor breakdown requiring repairs, Destruction of the extractor with loss of all material contained within. Security failures resulting in loss to theft of material within. etc...)
VI. Payment Plan
A. Allow part of the maintenance fees paid by the owner(s) into a structure to be paid back to the creator. (This would be daily payments for a set period of time.) UCP
B. Lower the maintenance costs of creators using thier own stuctures. (However they do not recieve payments from the maintenance pool.)
C. Payment plans are automaticly determined by the type/quality of the item (See experimentation) for a set period of time after which UCP will stop. This give experimentation some importance as its benificial for both the architect and the buyer to build/buy quality items.
VII. Decay
A. Structures (excluding extractors) do not decay for a set period of time. (Same length as UCP to encourage architects to make high quality structures.) once this time has elapsed the structure begins decaying at a rate determined by the quality numbers of its materials. (See experimentation.)
B. Graphics for exteriors change to match the decay of the structure.
C. Maintenance costs for decaying structures increase steadily until the house becomes to expensive to maintain. (Say start at like 5 cr/day and slowly increase it until its not worth maintaining.)
D. Structures that have begun to decay cannot be redeeded. Only destroyed.
VIII. Trading/selling.
A. Show the bloody floorplans in the details window.
B. Include time left till Post UCP decay.
C. Include details on items that are already decaying to prevent people from selling structures that are decaying without the buyer knowing.
D. Allow advertisements of items that sell for greater than the cap on the bazaar but not able to actually purchase the Item. instead clicking on details gives you location of vendor selling said item. the best bet is to make this its own catagory. This allows merchants to advertise thier wares so I don't have to run out to thier place jsut to find out they don't have what I'm looking for. Advertising still costs 20 credits per item advertised.
IX. Experimentation.
A. Overall Quality determines UCP amount.
B. Unit Toughness determines UCP time frame.
C. Decay Resistance determines Post UCP decay rate.
X. Critical Failures.
A. During resource allocation = loss of resources for failed component only.
B. During Experimentation = minimum stats on finished item.
C. During Creation = Loss of One component and ability to go back and recreate lost component without having to start a new crafting session.
XI. Landscaping.
A. Either create a profession or allow advanced architects to modify slightly terrain to allow more placement of buildings. (I've found several great sites for building placement but because of soem tiny ditch with water in it i couldn't place the stupid thing.)
B. Either add to this new profession or create an Architect skill line that allows creation of outdoor structures such as streets, parks, ponds, lightposts, fountains etc...
XII. Skills/Professions.
A. Remove Construction 1-4 and replace with Business Buildings 1-4. Also actually create the buildings to go with this line.
This will create a Residential, Commercial and Industrial line each with its own set of buildings. Residential will be able to title themselves architects, Commerical will be able to title themselves Developers etc..
B.Move Furniture intoa new profession.(Design Engineer)Replace line in Architect with heavy structures. (Military structures, City structres etc.. will be produced from this line.) However these structures can only be utilized by incorporated cities or military bases.
C.Move Surveying toa newprofession.(Mining Engineer)and replace the line in artisan with sampling. ( A toned down version of surveying.) Restrict the use of Harvestors (Other than Personal) to this profession.
D. Create Personal Factories. Restrict use of all other factories to a new profession. (Industrial Engineer.)
E. Rename Architect to Structural Engineer.
(I will create another post stating my ideas for the revamped professions.)
XIII. Furniture
A. Fix the many many many bugs in this line. (See my bug list post.)
B. Balance the hide requirements.
C. Allow more controlled item placement. IE Desk Lamps On Desks and such.
D. Create more Business oriented furniture equipment. IE Cantina Furnishing. Restaraunt furnishings etc...
E. Add functionality to exisiting items. IE Droid detectors detect droids., Containers store items. etc...
XIV. Identical Components.
A. Keep the factory xp nerfed. The fact that you remove critical failure chances is good enough reason alone to use these factories.
B. Remove the need to use identical components.
C. Speed up factory production rates. There should be no reason why an automated factory is slower than hand crafting an item. However manufactured items should be of a set quality dependant on materials wheras hand crafted items can be greatly improved.
XV. Harvesting
A. Lengthen the time between resource shifts to 1 month.
B. Remove unatural Alloys/composites (Steel, Aluminum etc...)from the ground and increase the base resources such as Iron, Copper, Ore etc..
C. Create a process for creating Steel, Aluminum etc... and make it part of a profession (I suggest mining.) (See my save architect from itself post for how this would work.)
D. Generalize the stats on mined resources. Allow *miners* to experiment on resources during the refining/processing of saidresource to improve purity(stats)(Refining = improving quality)(processing = making alloys/composites)
E. Ensure schematics are adjusted to allow artisans to continue thier climb towards the advance professionswhile following the resource rules set above.
F. Ability for well maintained structures to act as a ward for creature spawning allowing me if i keep my structures maintained at a certain level to be able to actually get to them without needing an army. Can be setup so that the amount of maintenance over the required amount improves the radius up to a maximum point.
FYI: I will add replys to my post from time to time as I think of new things I want to keep track of.
A very good read. Well thoughout, and I agree with a lot of it. However some is quite grand in nature, and there's a lot of little things that need modification first.
Add to that list fixing the add power bar to remove that trailing zero when one types in the box.
Modify the rates of harvesters to be consistent. maintence is per half hour, power is per hour. Show the hourly rate.. What is (1:21) in power? yes thats 81 hours. Fix that math.
On the lot bit, I think Architects should be able to gain lots through a skill line. Architects burn through more materials, and our factories take 2 lots, and a house is required to hold a stockpile. That leaves architects with 6 lots to harvest on, and we use more matierals than the other professions, in the manner of bulk. we need the same materials 200+ at a time.
Allow lots to be claimed by an architect in a radius around their houses. Nothing beats having rebels build in your imperial city, just to grief PA expansion.
Some comments here. Anything not specifically listed is under the category "good idea". Items listed have commentary following.
Cyberthugg wrote (in part):
A. Ability to Buy sell lots.
C. Ignore lot requirements for house. Limit each player to 1 house of any size.
E. Restrict lot types to those in the proper profession. (IE only Merchants can ownBusinesses and only Miners can own Extractors.)
A)I understand your idea here, but I don't see it being necessary. What exactly is wrong with everyone having 10 lots like we do now? Is there some problem? 10 lots is plenty in my experience as an architect, and I haven't seen a valid reason yet for limiting other people to less lots.
C) What about people who have a shop and a residence? Since there are no "shop" structures, we are limited to houses.
II. House Design.
Great ideas here, but I suspect a lot of wishful thinking. Maybe after the space expansion comes out. <crosses fingers>
III. Automation.
F. Allow scheduled or automated shutdown at set times or on certain conditions. IE to save maintenance/decay I might run my harvestors only 16 hours a day as opposed to always on.
Again, good suggestions in this section that are likely not going to happen any time in the forseeable future. But they do have email notification from factories that run out of power, so hopefully they'll add that to harvesters too.
F) I'm not sure why you would want to do this. Is there a reason you don't want to get as many resources as possible up front? They're going to shift, so having them run less than 24 hours a day seems silly. However, since factories cost maintenance whether they are being used or not, the devs obviously think this is fine. You'd save on power, but not maintenance.
IV. Administration.
Excellent stuff here.
V. Maintenance.
A. Allow the removal of power/credits from structures.
B. Allow droid engineers to create a module or line of maintenance droids that can be used to reduce maintenance costs of structures they are assigned to maintain.
C. Do not charge maintenance during server downtime, lockup or extended loading periods. (power is not charged so why is maintenance?)
A) I know redeeding can be expensive, but it's part of the money sink.People who manage their harvesters more efficiently have an advantage over those who don't. However this does penalize the casual gamer, so being able to pullfunds back out would be helpful. Withdrawing power could be a matter of sayingyou can't take the energy back from a device once you've charged it. They could allow it, but there'd need to be a penalty for efficiency issues. Perhaps you could get backhalf the unused power?
B) This would likely not be possible due to the fact that nothing exists unless someone is near it. You can't have autonomous actors like droids running all over the place managing extractors in this world I suspect.
C) I'm convinced this problem is due to ease of programming. Since the things don't exist until you see them, they play catch up on maintenance and power bycalculating the time since they last checked. Since something is either running or not when no one is around, it's easy to say whether to deduct power. But to have it know when the server was down or up would require a lot more record-keeping in the program. The advantage is that harvesters should continu to collect resources while the server is down also, so you're getting the benefit too.
VI. Payment Plan
I'm not sure about this because it seems wholy unneccessary. I've never had a problem selling everything I make as an architect, so obviously there are plenty of people with the cash to spend. And if someone decides to let the item decay and stop paying maintenance before the payments are done, wouldn't the seller be S.O.L.? This is a level of complexity beyond what is needed or desirable.
VII. Decay
B. Graphics for exteriors change to match the decay of the structure.
D. Structures that have begun to decay cannot be redeeded. Only destroyed.
Good idea in general.
B) Good luck on getting Bimplemented. We can't even get various colors for new structures. And withhowslow the client runs now, I don't think I want even more various textures I have to load. I feel sorry for those who don't have 128M video cards
D) This is unnecessarily harsh. You need to be able to repair harvesrters and factories that have degraded because you forgot, and not being able to redeed them would betoo much.
VIII. Trading/selling.
D. Allow advertisements of items that sell for greater than the cap on the bazaar but not able to actually purchase the Item. instead clicking on details gives you location of vendor selling said item. the best bet is to make this its own catagory. This allows merchants to advertise thier wares so I don't have to run out to thier place jsut to find out they don't have what I'm looking for. Advertising still costs 20 credits per item advertised.
D) Isn't thisalready in? I thought a high enough level merchant could link their ads into the bazaar system. I only have advertising 3, so I can't do it, but I remember them talking abou **edit** in beta. The rest of them are good points.
XI. Landscaping.
A. Either create a profession or allow advanced architects to modify slightly terrain to allow more placement of buildings. (I've found several great sites for building placement but because of soem tiny ditch with water in it i couldn't place the stupid thing.)
A) I'm making an educated guess that the engine wouldn't support this. The only way the landscape is currently modified is by POIs spawning. And when thety go away, the landscape goes back to the way it was before. This indicates the landscape record-keeping system probably isn't designed to be permanently modified. They could just make it so buildings can be placed on a slightly more varying terrain, but to avoid graphical problems they'd have to temporarily modify the terrain like a POI does, and I think with the vast harvester farms we see, this would be too much of a strain on the engine.
XII. Skills/Professions.
Interesting ideas, but it seems extremely unlikely there will be any revamping of the profession. It's close enough to working fine right now that it would piss off too many people and take too much work to justify it.
XIII. Furniture
Excellent points all. I'm surprised not to find coloration here.
XIV. Identical Components.
A. Keep the factory xp nerfed. The fact that you remove critical failure chances is good enough reason alone to use these factories.
B. Remove the need to use identical components.
C. Speed up factory production rates. There should be no reason why an automated factory is slower than hand crafting an item. However manufactured items should be of a set quality dependant on materials wheras hand crafted items can be greatly improved.
A) Factory XP is not nerfed, it was fixed. If we stop propogating the idea that it was a nerf and maybe other people will stop complaining so much abou **edit** in a knee-jerk fashion.
B) I don't see why this is needed. High-level items need something to differentiate them besides just requiring more components. It also gives you more reason to use a factory if you can sell the crates to people who need them.
C) I can see a reason for factories to take about as much time as hand-crafting, but not more. Less would be good, but we don't want it too fast. I'd say maybe 25% faster than the theoretical hand-crafted speed of "assembly time" + 30 seconds (clicking time). Your second suggestion sounds like you don't want experimentation to affect schematics, which I think is a very bad idea. Experimenting up your schematics is part of the point, isn't it?
XV. Harvesting
A. Lengthen the time between resource shifts to 1 month.
E. Ensure schematics are adjusted to allow artisans to continue thier climb towards the advance professionswhile following the resource rules set above.
F. Ability for well maintained structures to act as a ward for creature spawning allowing me if i keep my structures maintained at a certain level to be able to actually get to them without needing an army. Can be setup so that the amount of maintenance over the required amount improves the radius up to a maximum point.
A) Increasing the time might be a good idea, but 1 month is too long. I'd prefer to see it double what we have now. That's long enough to get a real good reserve supply, yet not so long as to heavily penalize the person who didn't get their harvester on the one good spot soon enough and ends up with nowhere to put a harvester over 40%.
Besides, what about when everything shifts to junk? I would have quit architecture if I'd had to wait a month during that one week where there was no decent siliclastic ore available.
E) Not sure what this means. Are you suggesting that I be able to change the resourecs required for my schematic? That doesn't make sense. You can't just substitute rice flour for wheat flour in a bread recipe and expect it to turn out exactly the same. You can't even put in cracked wheat instead of refined white wheat flour without adjusting the recipe some. Resource changes, you need a new schematic to calculate the new percentages that come from your experimentation.
F) As much as I like this idea, it also doesn't make much sense. Why would a wild animal care how shiny and well oiled my machine is when picking a place to burrow? Now if we were allowed to add on things like noise-makers and chemical repellant systems to a harvester, that would be sweet. But then in a large field of harvesters, a lot of people would get the benefit from only one machine's repellent systems, so it may not be a workable system.
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Thanks for the post. Keep it up.
I'm going to comment on some of these and refute others. Bear with me.
I. Lots
A. Good idea, when coupled with limited lot start. Make max amount of lots one char can have to 15-20. (if houses take lots), or 10-15 (if houses don't)
B / F. Agreed, but instead limit to 3. Tie lots to their 'original owner', regardless of current owner. If that character is deleted, send an email warning to their current owner, and start a 24 hour timer. At 24 hours, the lots are removed (and any building occupying them).
C. Don't agree with this much, with the current system. If they were to fix the admin privilages, maybe. I know a bunch of people who own two houses : one is their business, one is their personal home. PA halls are the biggest, and their lot requirement reflects that. As do Large houses.
G. Not agreed, when B/F I suggested is in effect.
II. House Design
A. Good idea. Would give more personality to constructed buildings.
B. Thought. There are 5 levels of merchant (using one of their lines, as an example) small, medium, large, federation(ala trade federation. Im at a loss for a name here). There would be about 2 different houses per level. Each one would be the equivilant size of houses in that level.
1. Pub (small bar), Small Shop
2. Bar, Large Shop
3. Small cantina, Small Store
4. Large cantina, Large Store
5. Shopping Venue(aka mall or department store)
III. Automation
A. No. Allow us to remotely pay for harvesters, but not put power or draw resources from them. What I have in the bank I'd rather keep in the bank, I don't like carrying cash with me everywhere I go.
B. Good idea, with radius option. It would have to be set up so that if you have admin to a harvester, and admin to a power generator nearby, it works. I've seen areas littered with different peoples generator/harvesters, due to high concentration of resources.
C. Very good idea
D. Remote payment and destruction would be best.
IV. Administration
A. basically there, except for the redeed access. Once they fix the admin pickup/drop thing I mean. need a level for paying maintenance but not access to items/furniture. People on vendor lists can pick up and put down vendors.
B. Great idea. Nothing like having your own room in a large house that's doubling as a store, and having someone run into your personal room.
C. Correctable a different way. Allow player vendor bought items to be collected in bazaar terminal in city. Just another way of doing it.
D. I'd rather keep the maintenance/time currently in place. I consider that maintenance like "payment to build and own this bit of land", regardless if the building is being used or not.
E. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if resource shifts where switched to once or twice a month.
VI. Payment Plan
A. Not sure on this one. doesn't seem right.
B. Doesn't seem like a good idea. Just because you can build it doesn't mean you can work it better than everyone else.
C. This would give real use to that construciton line in architecture.
VII. Decay
A. Decay on structures would more hinder than help, depending on how long it took to decay fully.
B. Would be nice.
D. Not agreeable with suggested system. Require redeed cost to relate to decay amount. Low decay = low redeed cost. High decay = better find an architect for a new one.
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SUGGESTION : Allow architects to repair buildings. They can go to the structure management terminal, and can check "Structure Decay Status". A screen will appear with the percentage of integrity.
A button marked "Repair" will be there. Clicking on it will bring up crafting interface, and the resource slots shown are dependant on how much the house has decayed. What is needed is a factor of the materials used to build the house.
Lets use a small house as an example. 12 structure modules, 1 small storage module, 1 light core module, 100 metal, 400 ore. Say at 75%, you'd need 2 structure modules, a light core module, and 10 metal. At 50%, 7 structure modules, a storage module, and 300 ore. Etc etc.
Success (critical failures won't wreck building) brings up integrity again, depending on success rate + materials used.
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VIII. Trading/Selling
A. Agreed! All houses just show as a deed. An image of floor layout would be nice.
D. Put this into merchant line, along the Advertising branch. Each oen adds 2 advertising slots.
X. Critical Failures
C. When hitting assemble, on a critical failure, it should eat a certain amount of items, based on a check against construction skill.
XII. Skills/Professions
A. Idea. Move construction into all four lines. Harvesters become Industrial, Businesses become Commercial, and Buildings become Residential.
B. Unless they tripled furniture, not a good idea.
C. an idea, but causes a lot of change.
E. Architect covers it. Structural Engineer doesn't ahve that ring to it.
XIII. Furniture
B. Yes, especially wooly hide.
C. Easily done by adding a /height command.
XV. Harvesting
A. Or twice a month would be good too.
B-E. would be good, but require a lot of changes.
Sorry for an equally long post.
You have some good ideas here, though I don't agree on everything. Here's my 2-credits worth:
1) I like the idea of being able to buy and sell lots. This would in effect create a simple real estate market. However, as you point out, you would have to be careful about people exploiting it to get 200 lots for free. I think starting with only two lots is too low though. Maybe start with 4 lots, then get +1 everytime you reach master level in a profession. Artisan professions would give 2 lots for each master level achieved. This means that non-artisan classes would probably have about 7 lots total and artisans would have 10 potential lots total (not counting what they bought or sold). There should also be a 24 hour transfer delay rate when selling/buying a lot, where neither the seller nor the buyer can use the lot. This is to further discourage players getting multiple accounts and then using one account to create and delete 'lot seller' characters for the other account. They could still do it I guess, but they'd have to at least wait 24 hours for every two additional lots.
2) Architects seem to think that structure decay will somehow save their profession and that they will be rolling in credits when everyone has to come back to them to replace their large houses and heavy mineral harvestors. The reality, I assure you, would be quite different. If you have forced structure decay it will kill the architect profession. No one will buy a large house if they know it will burn down in a month or two. Likewise, everyone will simply use personal harvestors, which are already considered disposable.
3) The best solution for architects is experimentation, so that architects can create structures with varying attributes so that people have a reason to upgrade their structures to get something better.
Well, just my suggestions.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis, Mos Eisley
just a few comments philo
on the lots situation
right no only players in PA's or with large connections can get extra lots and at this point in time its not even really thiers they are jsut borrowing them .. my marksman charactor gets bugged all the time for his lots.. I wish i could jsut sell them.
also on restricting types .... my suggestions list actually includes a suggestion to create a business line of buildings. houses are one type business is another ... you would be restricted to 1 house period .... however if you trained merchant you could earn the ability to use business types increasing in lots as you improve.
As forautomation ...
What If im poor and cant afford to pay maintenance on a harvestor, I dont have time torun the missions to get money or wait for a sale to get money, plus I only need a certain amount of a particular mineral being able to setup run times as well as switch resources remotely is a very good idea.
As for maintenance ..
the droid issue is valid though the droid couple be done the same way as the harvestors ... he doesnt actually exist there unless there is soemone there to see him and the game simulates the effect.
not ease of programming .... lazyness im opinion. and until they issue a statement adressing why this will be my thought on the matter.
As for a payment plan...
How often do you buy everything in cash upfront IRL? you may be lucky enough to have made architect early when ther was enough demand to accomodate the cutthroat prices. or before the factory nerf or harvestor nerf/fix or maybe you had assistance, but alot of us don't have those luxuries and theres alot of casual players who would like to own a house but can't afford the time to run the missions because of the needs of thier own profession. This plan also allows us to continue to cheaply sell homes and start earning a more steady income rather than the current of everythign up front then nothing while you labor to make the next home.
as for decay...
Harsh as opposed to never decaying and never having to replace a house once you bought it? and since this is a closed market once everybody has one the server can basically run off one architect for newcomer needs (of which there will be very few)?
Houses should decay after a set amount of time (i never specified how long) but it should be tied into the quality of the materials and the ability of the architect.
Houses should decay at a rate central to the materials used to make the house.
Structures do not need repair until they start decaying however once they start to decay reparing only slows the decay .. it never stops it. (just like IRL)
you cannot allow the redeeding of houses that have started to decay simply to prevent people from redeeding and selling houses that have already begun decaying.
remember i stated structures not just factories or not just harvestors. as it stands now if a harvestor starts to decay people just dump them and make new ones anyway.
as for trading/selling...
as far as I know the only benefits a merchant gets is reduce cost to sell items on the bazaar not the ability to sell items on thier vendor while advertising them on the bazaar. Im not a merchant so I can't be 100% they still have the 3k price cap and limit of 20 items. and does anybody even use the ability to have premium sales.. ive never seen one.
as identical components...
it was reduced from its orginal amount from time of release... I do not count what they did in beta with the changes they make post release. in that case every single thing in the game has been nerfed. this is why I refer to it as a a nerf.
one of the reasons i support removing the need for identical components is because they are all buggy with factories getting stuck and items being eaten. plus theres the fact that if i use a component made out of one type of steel and another made out of another type of steel those to me are similar enough to be used.
I recommend losing the need for IDENTICAL components and going with the need for SIMILAR components.
as for harvesting...
maybe 1 month is too long but as long as your input/output ratio is the same you should be ok. alot of people are advocating 2 weeks or bi-monthly which is a fair compromise to me.
ok I don't mean adjust schematics in the fashion you are thinking . I mean making sure artisans will have a way to advance after the resource idea is implemented. meaning he wont get stuck with nothign to build at the new level because his only available schematics require a material he can't obtain or is more difficult to obtain than should be at his level... basically i mean balancing the profession to ensure eveybody can advance. not talking about changing how schematics work.
if others can benefit from my being able to reach my harvestors without needing an army then so be it.. you must play on a very over populated planet though because where I harvest is barren .... if i see 3 other harvestor groups that is crowded. besides in my idea harvestor use would be restricted to mining and with only one class doing the mining there would be alot less period.
Animals tend to avoid areas that see alot of traffic. well maintained equipment and structures give of a vibe that keeps most animals away. I wouldnt be adverse to NPC's spawning wthin range but creature spawns would not probably build a lair so close to human activity. as for spawn that are already there before you build its your task to remove them.
now im hungry im off to eat then ill write more responses to others later hehe
I . C. is really bad.......i am also a shop owner and need more than 1 house....i also need a second house for storage sometimes
Nauf please read the entire post next time
BUSINESS BUILDINGS WILL BE A SEPERATE STRUCTURE TYPE.
YOU WILL OWN 1 HOUSE BUT IF YOU LEARN MERCHANT YOU WILL GAIN ACCESS TO THE BUSINESS BUILDING SET AS WELL AS EARN MORE LOTS AS YOU INCREASE IN THAT PROFESSION.
sigh.
Ed .... The architect profession is already on life support. I don't propose houses going poof in a month or two Id prefer a more long term.... say the house doesn't decay for 1 game year then starts to decay slowly growing in cost till the maintenance becomes more than its worth. During that game year the creator would recieve a UCP (USage Credit Payment) from the maintenance pool the owner(s) pay into it each day.
The owner(s)'s cost does not increase (though i feel maintenance costs could use a little more balancing.) and the architect can better handle the cuttthroat prices we have to deal with due tot he fact that the PA grinders set the prices and nobody is willing to pay more now.
There is no one solution to the problems we face.. with that in mind most of these ideas rely on other ideas in order to work which is why the list is so large. but here are several key changes
1. More functionality. buildings need to be split into catagories and restricted to those catagories IE shops to merchants, Extractors to Miners etc .... but of course each player no matter what will be able to own 1 house of any size. .... house need to provide more benefit than they do now, they need to be better designed which is whythese ideas includes the ability for architects to actually design interiors of houses/buildings.the design engineer items such as furniture and equipment such as storage should be more functional and have more variety.
2. steady income .... currently architect is a dead end profession and there are more architects than the server needs as it is. i already see it happening. every day i get less requests of any kind for any item in the architect class because other than harvestors nothing decays and choice is limited. these ideas are meant to provide the architect with a more steady income as well as more variety. (Besides i have been an architect for a while now and have yet to actually be an architect. I am really a miner and a manufacturer.)
3. To be an architect ... alot of the ideas post here would make the architect closer to what he really should be... instead of a miner/manufacturer, architects need to stick with structures... they need more structures .... and hasnt anybody ever heard of zoning laws.
these ideas are also rough draft first pass and each week i will post a revised list based on my own thinking during the week and feedback from you guys.... I like most of what I hear so far and understand some concern though i think soem of its based on lack of good explanation on my part. please keep these concerns coming and if you have an idea to add post it!
Okay, let's say we change houses into two styles.
Basic and Luxurious
A Basic house would be like the houses we have now. Not too fancy, only has one permission door and has no decay. A basic house for a casual gamer, or someone who doesn't really care what it looks like.
Then the Luxurious house. Superfancy, has lots of bells and whistles to it, all doors have permissions, however the building has a condition/decay timer, which requires the use of repair kits.
Zar:
hmm sounds interesting. but I wouldn't goonly as faras to just make a new category of houses. Make 4 catagories of structures as i have currently set up. Residential Line, Commercial Line, Industrial Line,Military Line. Novice can make disposables and Master can make city structures. This is for the revamped architect class I have designed. These ideas are also a modification of the original posts. First each player starts the game with no lots. Master Artisan gains 4 lots and the ability to use personal extractors and personal factories. All other lots are tied to professions. In this system there is no need to sell/trade lots so i am scraping that system.
Novice - Would be able to build disposable items thatare limited use before they become useless such as huts,disposable extraction devices and the like. Title - Novice Structural Engineer
Residential - (current building set) Standard maintenance costs. Immune to decay permanently but the devs must periodically add new exterior styles .... still allow the structural engineers to design the interior floorplans. Each player is limited to 1 house. Lot sizes do not count/matter. 1 type of experimentation available that affects maintenance costs. Can run a home business but this does not provide a second house or more lots. Can be redeeded at anytime for specified fee which gets paid to the creator. ( would have to implement restrictions to prevent exploiting this for cash like only counts once a month or so.) Title - Architect (note in floorplan design: you can start us out simple and allow us basic design abilities based on the number and type of wall modules, doors etc we make.)
Commerical - (Stores, Restraunts, Cantinas etc..) Standard Rent/Lease Fee. Part of this fee goes to the creator, the rest is money sink. No maintenancefee foran unspecified amount of time. Then structures begin to decay at an unspecified rate at which point the rent/lease fee ends. Create structure repair options such as Structure repair kits for aMaintenance TechnicianProfession as well as a line of droids that can reduce the need for repairs by assigning them to a structure. Repairing a structure reduces its max quality. These structures are limited to Merchants only. Merchants gain commercial lots as they improve skill ranks in merchant allowing them to eventually operate multiple businesses or very large business structures. These stuctures lose functionality as the decay progresses until they are basically useless. Once decay has started cannot be redeeded. Time till decay will be posted in the details section of any deed to insure nobody can rip off anybody else by redeeding soon before the decay cycle begins then trying to sell it. 3 types of experimentation available. Length of no maintenance time period, Speed of decay and how many resources are needed for repairs each cycle. A high quaility structure will not only last longer without decay but will also decay slower and cost less materials to repair. Title - Developer
Industrial - (Extractors and Factories) Standard maintenance fee. Do not charge maintenance fees when not operating however limit non operating time to 3 days after which if it still hasnt been used it gets deleted. Change factory xp to provide creators with 20% UXP and factory owners 20% whenever the structure is operating. Do not charge redeeding fees for harvestors. Do reduce maximum operating capacity each time the harvestor is redeeded eventually rendering the harvestors usless. Restrict all butpersonal extractorsto the Industrialist/Mining Profession(s) requireMaster Artisanfor personals. Industrialist/Mining Profession(s) gain industrial lots as they improve. Possible experimentation. reduced maintenance, increased speed, reduced power needs, reduced redeed loss. Title - Industrialist (thinking of losing the Industrialist Profession i had originally advocated.)
Military - (Military support structures) No maintenance fees. No decay. Structures do have health and can be destroyed by members of an opposing faction. First placement of structures provides creator with a set amount of uxp. Structures are restricted to those who have joined a faction. Only declared can actually place the structures on battlefields however coverts may place structures within thier PA's military installation. **edit**;e - Combat Engineer.
Add the ability to rent market space such as tents in player city areas that have a more limited vendor capacity than say a house but cheaper than the maintenance cost of a residential structure. This allows non city folk to hawk a few wares at a decent rental rate which goes to help the player city pay for needed maintenance.
Simplify the resource system. Have resource fields static however still have the change.... one period it may be copper ... the next period it may be gas etc... This will allow you to control where harvestors are placed keeping them away from player cities and regular cities and reducing urban/suburbanblight ... there are alot fo out of the way areas on each planet that can be setup in this fashion and since the resource types still change they will still need to pick up and place harvestors. (This only works if harvestors are limited to specific professions. I suggest organic harvestors be restricted to an appropriate profession with the same rules as mining.) (also toying with creating a meat style harvesting structure say for a profession that can breed mass animals and process them for meat bone and hide.) seeing as resources and plants can be massed harvested its only fair to allow meat bone and hide to be done the same way.)
Thanx zar you got my mind thinking in a new direction that still allowed me to keep the basics of my ideas intact.