Architect Archive

In regards to your military line of installations. Isn't that what the Squad Leader currently is able to do? So are you suggesting architects should be able to do so also or that architects have the ability and remove it from the squad leader?

First of all if you want to spend 40 bucks a month to gain extra lots go for it. second in a later reply I decided to scrap the lot selling system and just going with a lot gain system where lot types are restricted to specific professions and you earn lots as you improve in that profession ... it allows a more controllable ahrd cap which is whyt he devs went witht he lot system int he first place ... If some fool wants to buy 10 copies of the game to give himself extra lots thats his money and his stupidity id rather just buy them from other players and save the real life cash.

Waste:

the architect would just create the structures ... the placing part can still belong to the squad leader if that is the case... the way my system would work is the combat engineer could build and sell military structures but only squad leaders (or some other military related profession) would be able to place them .... this is on top of the fact that these are factional buildings so youd have to be part of a faction to be able to use the deeds. and coverts would be more limited on placement than overts.

Hrmm... there are a few things I agree with... but for the most part... I'd have to say no. Here's why:

1. Lots.

I frankly don't agree with any of this. I'd much rather either see a lot skill in Architect or Merchant (especially Merchant) that increases lots by 1 per skill level, or a Lot Experimentation stat for houses, PA Halls, and whatever future multi-lot structures are added. Not only would these be easier to implement, but they'd make more sense from a gamer's point of view (i.e. I don't want to have to buy extra lots just to place my large house or more than two harvesters).

Balance-wise, if this were to go into place, there would likely not be enough lots to go around to meet resource demand (even if miners bought everyone's lots, since they would now be supplying almost everyone, they wouldn't be able to buy enough lots to supply enough resources for everyone).

2. House Design

Although this is a great idea... I doubt it will be allowable due to lag issues. Sure, they did it in UO... but UO is 2-D, no matter how "3-D" they say it is. If UO was actually 3-D, you'd see that the custom houses have a serious amount of problems with them.

Due to the 3-D nature of this game, it's technically unfeasible to allow for people to design custom buildings. Not only would the design for those buildings have to be stored on the server, slowing it down for everyone, but it would also have to be loaded into memory. After walking through a single player city, your computer would slow to a crawl, forcing you to reboot, even if you had 1 gig of memory. Even Autodesk's Inventor doesn't deal with that many 3-D objects at once, and it's a professional CAD program. So... this idea is a cool idea, but we'll have to file that away under "if SWG is still around 10 years from now".

3. Automation

I agree with a lot of your points here, specifically those that make Droid Engineers more involved. Whatever happened to Binary Load Droids being able to unload your harvesters for you, or power droids being able to power your harvesters for you? Those things should be implemented. But, I believe, before those can be implemented... some support for your pets to exist while you're offline needs to be added first.

On the remote operation of harvesters... I think this should be limited to destroy and permissions settings only. Players should still have to physically deposit power/maintenance if they do not have a droid powering or repairing their structure for them. Players should also have to physically unload their hoppers if they do not have a droid unloading it for them. However, allowing a player to destroy their harvesters remotely will allow them to free up lots from harvesters that are too far out of the way, or too dangerous to get to (like the ones I placed on rori a couple of days ago... after realising it was a 45 minute trip to the nearest town, I decided to let them decay rather than maintain them... I wish I could just delete them now).

4. Administration

I agree with all of those points.. especially interior door access levels.

5. Maintenance (and 7. Decay)

I think the entire maintenance system needs to be revamped. I like your ideas... but I'm going to mix and match a little.

a.Damage is semi-irreversable. Just like forgetting to change the oil in your car... if you let it run too low, it permenantly damages your engine, no matter how many times you change the oil after that. Letting a harvester or building run low on maintenance causes a permenant decrease in the maintenance level of the building.

b. Since damage is irreversable, rather than charging a repair rate, the maintenancerate on the structure increases as a structure becomes damaged.

c. Small amounts of damage are done to a structure if it is re-deeded (5% or so).

d. Arrows should point out from the entrance side or usage side (for structure factories) of structures. This would prevent people from having to re-deed a house several times just to get it placed right.

e.Astromech droids can repair structures, but doing so reduces the structure's maximum durability by 5%. Eventually, even with droid repair, a structure will decay in a matter of hours rather than days. It would also take quite a bit of time... 2 minutes per 1%

f. The remaining durability of a structure should be expressed as a number and a percentage. The number is the time remaining to complete decay compared to the total time a structure can last unrepaired (in hours). Thus, a structure might be 96/96 when fully repaired, but drop down to 91/96 when re-deeded, etc. If a droid repaired a structure that was 30/96, it would take almost 2 hours, and would only return the structure to 91/91.

6. Payment Plan

I don't think we need this, with the decay system listed above.

7. Decay (already addressed)

8. Trading and Selling.

I agree with A and C. B is unneccessary (as listed in part 8 above).

D should be a perk in Advertising 4, perhaps allow all items to be automatically registered on the bazaar under the Planet and Galaxy views for an advertising 4 merchant who has registered their vendor on the world map... since Advertising 4 currently does not have any worthwhile bonus. Also, add the UI support for Premium Sales, so an Advertising 4merchant can mark their vendor's stock for premium sales (making their wares highlighted on the bazaar) at the same per-item rate as would normally be the case on the bazaar.

9. Experimentation

Unit toughness determines the decay pool

Shock Resistance determines the Maintenance rate

Overall Quality determines Efficiency

Conductivity determines Power Consumption

Malleability determines lot size and harvester size

I'll get to the rest later but... I've got a PA hall to build.

Azm

1. Taken care of in an above reply.

2. interiors only not exterior so unless you actually went inside there would be nothing extra to render and as for the entry to help render time there would be a required entry hall that youd have to pass through like tha ton certain larger houses alreayd in game to allow render time.

3. irl we cant even protect a shuttle from foam but we have direct debit.... why do i need to make a trip out to manually put in credits to a machine ... and why are harvestors like arcade games anyways?.... please insert 2 coins to continue. how do credits magically repair a machine yet I have to make the trip out there myself to do it. you already have to make the trip out once a week to empty them and move them why do i need to go out every day to put power/maintenance into them ... its stupid .... gimmie direct debit and gimmie direct power from generators..... havnt they ever heard of extension cords?

6. A payment plan would allow architects to continue to sell houses for the currently shallow markup and makeup the rest at no extra cost to the player .... houses are really undervalued and since grinders set the prices there is no way to effectively increase the profit margin .. most ideas floated will increase prices but they also increase cost so the profit margin stays razor slim. The payment plan will also permite more casual players who cannot affoord the time to build up a decent amount of cash to still be able to afford a house.