Architect Archive
Thread: All Terain Harvesters ..
Kyrien wrote:
So here we go again...
I WOULD VOTE FOR # 01, However, I don't see them giving us a BER of 11 for a tortal resource cost of 450 units. I realize that you propose to balance this with the fact that the structure only exists for 07 days after wich they are destroyed. To me, this structure, would just appear to be a novely item.
there is nothing to vote on here.. pretty much it was already decided to work a presentation on some sort of device to allow us to in a sense have a temporary "All terrain " harvester.. so that is the purpose of this discussion is to fine tune this idea.. so it is a solid ... appealing presentation..
Message Edited by Dvnce on 04-29-2004 07:20 PM
Kyrien wrote:
Sorry... Disregard the opening paragraph. I was lazy and just cut and pasted it from the Vote thread...
However... I still stand behind my "Mining Terrain Leveling Rig" ideas.....
Kyrien
BER 10 or 11 would work, I think.
Dvnce wrote:
well.. what do you think would be a good BER>? one that would not overshodow our main product... ?
I was noodling on this some more to and from a meeting tonight. Rather than picking a number out of our nether regions about resource cost and expected selling price, how about doing it from the other direction - customer value?
By that I mean we could come up with a few different scenarios and some "game balance" rules of thumb to pass on to the devs to better illustrate the effect we wanted.
For example we could consider 3 cases of resources (all numbers just here for illustration purposes): grind (2 cpu), great (5 cpu), and godly (10+ cpu). Imagine that you found an 85% spot on the side of a hill (currently unbuildable) and that you had to go down to an "n%" spot (e.g., 70%) before you could put up your BER13 harvester. What is the value difference to the user to be able to go ahead and use a "terrain leveling kit"?
The tension I see on anything like this is you don't what to *force* the user into using this all of the time, just like I'm not forced to use a powerup on my pistol. However, in certain circumstances, and at a certain price point, I'll use a powerup. If all great powerups cost me 50 credits each, I'd always use them. If they cost 10,000 each, I wouldn't use them as much.
So in these examples, I think you'd want to figure things out that for "grind" resources, it would probably have to be a big difference in concentration to make it worthwhile to use a terrain leveling kit, whereas for godly resources you would use a kit even if it just got you a few extra points of concentration.
So that's one part of "balancing" this - to think through a model where the user will choose to use these "naturally" some percent of the time.
The other issue with these is where to place them in the skill tree, and whether to make them experimentable. Since the chief benificiaries of these would be heavies, I think it makes sense at Installations 3 or Installations 4. I think that you want them experimental and to use *some* high-grade resources. The reason I think so is you don't want to encourage someone with *just* Installations 3 to crank these out as grind items and flood the market with cheap ones as good as a master can make. So you need to experiment them. I've seen two attributes that might be interesting: a percentage of the BER and a "terrain roughness" quality.
By percentage of BER, I mean that a terrain leveling kit (TLK) would be able to go from 80-100% of the BER, based on the quality. So an unexperimented (base) TLK would let you set up on an arbitrary slope and get 80% of the pumping that you would have gotten if you'd been on level ground. Obviously this changes the "value" equation and makes the 80% ones less valuable than the 100% ones - in much the same way that a +10% max damage powerup is less valuable than a +33% max damage powerup.
By "terrain roughness" I mean that a fully experimented +9x TLK would let you set up on the side of a cliff, just like a scout camp, whereas a base experimented TLK would allow you to set up on the gentle hills south of Theed.
I think that if we noodled on these aspects and came up with a well thought out proposal we could actually contribute something meaningful to the game.
It seems that we have 2 directions that this is trying to take, and that's why it was suggested to do it this way, the brain matter available here is awesome. So, why not have it both ways? Bring the Personal in at normal structure costs, i.e. resources, and bring the BER to a medium notched level, say, BER 8, doubling it's normal rate, but capable of building in rough terrain. But also bring in the 'terrain rig' as well, something that is a one use item, crated, that you can attach to your CURRENT harvesters. They would come in all 3 sizes, personal, medium and large, adaptable to ALL harvesters, not just mineral or what ever, but each harvester would benefit from it.
This 'terrain rig' would also allow for planting in water as well, HOWEVER, we'd have to overcome one important problem, being able to place a harvester while swimming. I know from the past of me living on Naboo, that trying to go out into the ocean, if you'd call it that, would be considered swimming, and you can not build while swimming, so, to curb that, allow us to place a harvester while mounted, i.e. on a bike, and that takes care of that situation. *note: I've never tried placing while on a bike, so I don't know if you can or can not do it, but you can re-deed on one*.
This gives us 2 items for the price of one, and it also takes us where we want, renewable sources of income. A personal BER 8, ONE WEEK use harvester, designed for bad terrain and crates of 'terrain rigs' would be a viable solution and would appease both sides of the line. Both in the Architect needs as well as giving our customer base a choice, which is what we should be doing anyway.
Just me 2 credits
Dvnce wrote:
(snip)
If there is money in the maitanence it wont poof. in 7 days It would just not be able to be activated to gather more resources..
the goal is that we dont want to make a replacement for our normal harvesters.. but we want to create a market for when the plunbum (sp?) Iron with 900 OQ and 900 conductivity hits a server and the only 40% plus vein is in the mountains there is a harvester available for it.. and when everyone and their grandmother wants to mine some of this priceless resources they will buy these instead of buying our mediums for 40k .. mine for 7 days then resell their used harvesters for 15k ..
It can actually be made easier than this and at the same time even more attractive to potential customers.
1. Why not have NO MAINTENANCE requirement? The harvester will just decay over the allotted 7 days until it reaches zero at which time it stops harvesting. It would not 'poof' until the hopper has been emptied (or after another 7 days maybe), it cannot be redeeded, stopped etc. This saves the customer having to calculate how much maint is needed, it is part of what you pay for when you buy it.
2. No power needed either, maybe it comes with 'batteries included', maybe they are part of the assembly, an additional component. Once again this makes life easier for the customer.
I think this would prove attractive to customers, and it would allow us to demand a slightly higher price as the customer simply needs to place and turn on. Then come back in 7 days. I am sure they would love that 
Message Edited by Bandola on 04-29-2004 11:42 PM
Point taken, but that can easily be got around by the addition of credits as a component at assembly, or a 'commission' on sales going directly as the sink, maybe it would be even easier for them to charge the owner on placement somehow, the opposite of not being able to redeed until you fill with credits, you have to pay say 5k (or whatever) to actually place the harvester, that way there would be no issues with working out exactly how much maintenance you need to put in to run it for the full 7 days. I am really just trying to come up with an idea that makes it more attractive to the customers. Some people are inherently lazy, and anything that takes away the idea of having to 'manage' these would probably help sales.
Pawlin wrote:
Bandola wrote:
1. Why not have NO MAINTENANCE requirement?
Harvester maintenance is probably one of the larger money sinks in the game right now. I think the game lacks enough money sinks as it is. So I don't think SOE will want to remove harvester maintenance simpy cause it would remove that large money sink. It would be too good of a deal for customers so they'd probably use them almost exclusively, the net effect would be a lot.
Huntercrom wrote:
Why not make it so it has a SET fee to it, kind of like the city hall has. One week, your total would be XXXX amount of dollars. That way the player knows exactly the amount to place on the harvester, it takes away the guess work on it. Not an hourly rate, but a weekly rate for this harvester, same would pertain to power as well, although, the batteries included option is kind of nice too.
That works for me as well, probably better as it is simple for everybody. I should have gone back to the drawing board, lol.
BUT I STILL like the idea that the maintenance 'appears' to be free, if credits could be loaded during creation then phsycologically the buyer thinks of it as a free to operate harvester, this would promote sales and command higher prices. We won't get that of course which is a shame, I would love to be able to do this and advertise as a 'one use All Terrain Harvester with FREE maintenance and power - hurry while stocks last !!! - Only 50k'
I want a recount! Sorry, just slipped off my tongue...
Seriously. If I got the discussion right we are thinking about a harvester that is being set up, operating for seven days and shutting down afterwards.
We should also consider resource spawn cycles. Once built, will it still be operable as far as a change of the harvested resource is concerned? Imagine our fine "AT-Throw-Away-Thingamajig-Harvester" being set up on a 95% ore spot (sure, that's scifi, but let me stick to my dreams...)and the resource disappearing 12 hours later. That would make one annoyed customer.
Should the owner be able to change the harvested resource after "initialization"? Could changing the resource after set-up be an optional component during the crafting process?
IMO that should be the risk that the customer takes when placing. Very few resources have a spawn time of less than 7 days, if the player is uncertain how long a resource has been available there are tools available to check this (e.g. SWGCraft). I do not feel it should be possible to re-select a new resource AFTER the radial menu has been closed, or maybe AFTER the Target is moved from the Harvester, this is to allow for genuine selction mistakes to be rectified.
FoPJester wrote:
If I got the discussion right we are thinking about a harvester that is being set up, operating for seven days and shutting down afterwards.
We should also consider resource spawn cycles. Once built, will it still be operable as far as a change of the harvested resource is concerned? Imagine our fine "AT-Throw-Away-Thingamajig-Harvester" being set up on a 95% ore spot (sure, that's scifi, but let me stick to my dreams...)and the resource disappearing 12 hours later. That would make one annoyed customer.
Should the owner be able to change the harvested resource after "initialization"? Could changing the resource after set-up be an optional component during the crafting process?
This is a terrible idea. I'm sorry, I know I should try and be more positive and supportive, but this idea is stupid.
Who is going to rush out and buy a harvestor that only works for 7 days? Who is going to carry them around in a bag for 2-3 months until a resource happens to spawn on a cliff face? This is just dumb. We can put harvs in a good amount of places right now. We don't need these. This = worthless.
We should be directing our efforts toward a player structure of some sort. A non-harv, non-factory structure. The mall idea had merit. Beyond that maybe a store as opposed to a tent? Maybe anice cream stand.. i don't know... something. But not this. This is an augmentation. This is not anything new. Please reconsider this. Hell if you want to augment, tell TH to get off his fat ass and fix the database so we can have correct storage to lots ratio. I'll setlle for that anyday. Or make our furniture decay so we can have repeat business. Or make experimentation on furniture do something. Or color options. Or any of the litany of other things we need done.
Not disposable harvs i can put on a hill.Lets try and come up with a better "first new structure" then this please.
/rant off;