Architect Archive

You don't have to have only 10 uses out of a harvester, but you can have an effective decay rate on items so that people feel they got good use from it. If I had a harvester that lasted 3 months or so before I had to buy a new one, I'd figure I"d have gotten my money worth.

The reason there are some people whining about no income and some people with more orders than they can fill is part ramdom (luck), and their effort. I made 5 houses (small) when I was novice. And sold them for 12k each, some for 10k. I asked 150 people over /tells until I finally sold them all. I was rich! Had like 80k after that! Seems miniscule to you Masters but oh well, I had more money than I needed. As soon as I get ore I will take orders from epople and fill them. If I could remember the names of my first customers back then I would thank them a ton! They made be the happiest architect in the Galaxy (Ahazi). Oh yes, "Rosalynd" was one, and "Lotar"... THANKS A MILLION GUYS! I love being an architect! I make so many novices happy!

If you want to talk about people and their millions I have a droid engineer buddy who is close to two million and he has been playing for less time than I am. At least his products decay SLOWLY over time.

The reason people think a million is alot/not much is because the economy is still in flux. The devs are tweaking missions payouts way too late to repair any damage done by the "land of milk and honey" times at launch. I could support my harvesterswith a couple missions a day but now the new players come in and see prices are skewed.

When a new player sees a price for an old architect's house of 12K and a new architect's house 4K what is he going to see? He will see a price gouger and a guy with a reasonable price. But there are a lot of reasons why this is happening:

1. Flood of new players to the Architect profession which has created an imbalance.

2. Consequently all these new players are tryign to grind up the skill tree so they are selling their products for whatever they can in order to upkeep their harvesters and and buy new resources.

3. A sense of pricing inequality when Architects see how much other classes get per resource used.

4. Upkeep on minimum 6 to 8 harvesters just to make a simple building a day due to large resource requirements thereby increasing overhead.

5. Old school (ones there from launch) architects are generally unwilling to lower prices past a certain point in the name of principles, profit or playability.

6. Critical failures cost Architects a lot more than any other profession out there.

7. When we sell our product it is there to stay unless human or server error intervenes. I do not sell small houses to a player more than once.

Just some thoughts that have probably been said before but I have the time to retype them.

Shylok, Lowca, UPSWG

I don't care how many architecture items you sell. The items don't decay and there is limited and not infinite demand for the items. In addition, the items sell for a about 5 cpu if lucky or 6. Miners can sell their stuff for that much and make a lot more money cause they don't have to craft what they sell. They don't have to waste skill points either. Unfortunately, although the economy is supposed to be player run it isn't because it takes so many materials to make an item and the item is only so useful. Its usefulness and return on equity is what determines the price, not supply and demand. If a heavy mines a little less than twice what a medium can but cost three times the price or more then you will not get a good markup on that item no matter what.

It has nothing to do with luck, it has to do with business savvy and avaliability.

10 use harvestors is just a silly idea... I would support decay over time, so that over the span of 6 months a heavy may need ot be replaced or repaired, but not just 10 moves/uses...

The changes being tested on Test Center will probably result in major changes to the economy by itself, and the addition of 10 use harvestors would just blow the economy up and result in higher resource costs...

Hi. I'm not an architect. I'm a Bioengineer.

I currently make a living selling items out of a vending machine just south of the busiest city on the Kettemoor server. I usually sell about7-10 pet stim As,7-10 Pet Vitality Packs, 1 or 2 Blurrgs, and maybe a few 'discounted' pets. This usually makes me a little more than 10,000 credits each week.

I do a lot of combat missions as well. I make more money on missions than at my vendor.

I do realize that none of my items require 7000 of any type of resource, but I do use advanced components in my meds, requiring travel to other planets to harvest or purchase them.

Currently, I am at an all time high, having 20,000 credits on my person, and 10,000 in the bank. This is good, because I've been saving up for a food/chem factory, and I talked to an architect who would make one for me for 10,000 if I provided the resources. A few more days, and my personal mineral harvester will have enough ore, and we'll be set!!

Architecture is a slow business. That's just how it is, even in RL. There will always be a need for our products. I've sold a lot of large harvesters to the same folk, over and over because they forget to pay up the maintenance, or they destroy without the redeed fee. Its not everyone, and it's not everyday, but it does happen enough to keep me busy. We don't really make volume sales, we just make a few big ones. That being said, decay doesn't have to be fast. It only needs to be fast enough to keep the market walking (not running).

I really don't like the idea of decay, because it's just too complicated. I don't want to have to think about this game too much. I don't want to worry about constantly rebuildling my fleet of harvesters. I don't want to have to worry about counting out uses, and planning *that* far ahead for my operation. It's a game, and I want it to be a game.

Decay is one solution to a problem that newer architects have. They dont' have the stability or the customer base of some incumbent masters, and that makes life kinda tough.

One solution I see is to put decay on a gradient. The lower "level" an item (like personal harvesters), the faster it decays. This will keep the market decent for lower-level architects, and make the big item decay rate tollerable. And it won't hurt the customer very much at all. For someone selling resources on the bazaar, a personal harvester pays for itself in about 2 days. Mediums take maybe a week. Larges are another story, but they are also in another decay category under my idea.

-Renzer

---

SonVegeta wrote:

I hear alot of crying from architechs that they dont make any money.

---

I don't hear that myself. Mainly I hear that there will be no reason to remain an Architect if our product lasts forever, because eventually the core players on a server will have everything they need.

If we make ten-use harvesters, there will be an initial increase in demand, however humans aren't static. They will modify their behavior to minimize the relocation of harvesters.

I would imagine that eventually the landscape would be littered with harvesters that nobody moves, but rather just switches to whatever resource happens to be mineable at that location on any given day.

Humans are used to the idea of things wearing out, as it's a natural part of the human experience. Therefore, human behavior in that scenario is much more predictable.

So I continue to support actual decay, the rate of which is determined by the quality of the product.