Architect Archive

God, yes, Rath. Experimentation so desperately needs to do something. Personally, I'd like to see it effect storage capacity, maintenance costs and decay rate.

Decay should slowly lower efficiency, costs and storage of structures to the point that it becomes cheaper for the owner of the structure to buy a new structure rather than maintaining the old one. (Perhaps they could also consider hiringan architect to go do more extensiverepairs.)

Ultimately, no matter what the devs might do for architects, if they do not add decayto structures thenthe profession is doomed.Then end result will be the same glutted market that we see now with structures made the day of release being just as good as they were on the day of release... even if they've switched hands 15 times. And end products being worth less than 3 credits per raw resource used in producing them despite the fact that raw resources are often worth considerably more than 3cpu.

This is how I see it: Architecture is my hobby. I support that hobby via resource sales on the bazaar. If I actually sell a structure off of my vendor, so much the better.

Once I adopted that philosophy, my stress level decreased significantly.

-Z40K

in-game: Andrei Zorn, Intrepid Architecht, Mos Eisley.

Zephyr you said it baby 8).

Once you come to the point where you just make stuff for yourself and friends, and sell occasionally to keep your maintenance pool safe, architecture becomes cool. Dealing with 20 tells an hour, that's not my idea of fun. If I need money, I advertise and get 10 tells within the next 5 minutes. Then I decide what I want to build, most likely extractors because noone wants to pay 4cr/unit for a house, but a nuke is well worth over 100k seeing as it brings in 25k a day and then some...

Ekat - Master Architect Coronet (-243, -5572) - Tempest
Talos Rascaparac Master CM/CH Bloodfin
Acak Acad WS Scylla *Retired

Architects economic woes are a function of the player-based economy of this game. Everyone needs a good gun, most people need good armor, no one really needs a house (unless you're a merchant). It's simply a matter of value: guns and armor (and other combat related gear)have a higher value in this game relative to structures.

It also doesn't help that there are so many architects. With so many architects, the supply is far greater than demand, so architects have to charge less and less to make a sale.

Implementing structure decay will not help the architect profession. If anything, it will discourage people from buying houses, harvestors, factories, etc. Who wants to pay 150K for a large house that will disappear in a month? Not to mention the hassle of having to move everythingfrom the old house into the new house (also not to mention the hassle of having to shop around to find a new large house every month).

What will help architects is (as many here have mentioned) fixing structure experimentation. If architects are able to make better homes, more efficient harvestors, etc. then people will have an incentive to spend the money for a good structure, as well as the incentive to upgrade to better structures (not just upgrade from Medium Mineral Extractors to Heavies, but upgrading from MME 'A' to MME 'B' which can extract more minerals).

As for letting architects get a percentage of the maintenance money for the structures they sell, it sounds interesting but there are some problems with it. 1) The devs want a money sink, and maintenance is probably the largest money sink in the game, so giving archs a percentage of maintenance money would be self-defeating (from their viewpoint), 2) As someone else mentioned, architects would be encouraged to sell houses very cheaply, or even give them away, in anticipation of the long term income from their share of the maintenance and 3) it would attract architect dabblersinto the professionlooking to sell cheap houses or harvestors in order to get some of that easy maintenance money, thus increasing the supply even more.

Slim Vargo, Corbantis

A couple of points, (none that should diminish your arguments):

1) With regard to the weapons: I have to practice with one several times to get the best quality I can make. So double, (on average), the amount of resources needed to make those guns, (and sometimes it's 4 or 5 times as much). I only sell my best guns.

2) You should consider mining your own resources. They cost about 0.5 - 0.7 credits per unit, to mine. Many architects do this and make good money selling their houses at lower prices.

3) In a free economy, the value of all marketable goods drops to just a few percentage points above cost. Considering that resources can be mined so cheaply, the future only holds cheaper prices for all of us, as more and more people move up the skill trees.

Mkappas,

I think decay is an answer to our problems with the following caveats.

1. I would offset the decay by addingthe ability to be able to create repair/enhancement/attachment modules that repairs the decay and/or decreases the maitenance rate or(if used) power consumption of houses/installations. I would createattachment modules for addons for houses. eg, second stories, an additional room, vehicle garage, critter stable, balconies, windows, or items for cantina, medical, or other use -specific buildings. These can be produced by lower level architects in various levels of effectiveness and or competence for Buildings I, Buildings II, Installations I and Installations II and may be combined with certain levelsof the furniture and construction trees.

2. Move small houses to Buildings level III and Installations III. Move Medium houses and installations to Buildings IV ans Installations IV. Large houses and PA halls can only be built by Master Architects.

This gives the starting architect a market for their products while reducing the number of architects that can make houses/installations to asmall pool of people that are serious about becoming architects and not just doing it for cheaper harvestors/houses. I would leave small harvestors as they are so starting servers will have a market until experienced Architects can make it to a level where houses can be produced.

what say you?

Evgenik

Eclipse Galaxy

If the devs made it to where I could get 25% of the maintenance fee, I think I would consider building structures for free. The impact might hurt me in the begining but it sure sounds like a nice retirement nest egg.

/shrug

I've never been fond of the decay proposal either. I think the bottom line on housing is the same as it is in the real estate world.... make it too expensive and people will do timeshare, sharing, or co-ownerships and decrease the potential market.

I still think the only way to succeedis the least likely to be done. More schematics and more customization. More floorplans, different exteriors, and different colors; more types of furniture and custom colors. For everything we do there is a market saturation point.Decay increases the market by denying the buyer a quality product, variety increases the market by introducing new and different varieties.

Another way to increase the market is to make the other classes so boring and difficult to play that there's continuous player turnover. I hope that's not howSWG turns out.

Just out of curiosity, how do you come up with a cost of 0.5 to 0.7 credits per unit of resource to mine? I can understand those figures if the harvester continually pulled up a set quantity of a resource, didn't require power, and the resource didn't depleat. But on my server (Eclipse), resource tables seem to shiftevery 2 - 5 days. Often times the highest deposit of ore I can find is between 50 and 60%. With a single MMI (mineral mining installation), I bring in roughly 2200 units of ore per day, at a cost of 1500 credits in maintanence. Plus it requires 1200 units of power to keep it running for an entire day. Now, if I buy my power, that's 3600 credits on the average. If I have enough lots remaining to put down some form of power generator, I can usually get 1200 units at an average cost of 1500 credits per day. So to bring in 2200 units of ore from a single mine, it costs me roughly 3000 credits. Now, when the resources shift, it costs me another 3000 credits to pull up my harvester so I can place it somewhere else.

As you can see, the cost per unit of ore rises well beyond your estimated levels. ust with these figures alone, we are looking at 1.5 to 2 credits per resource. Then you figure in the cost of running a structure factory to make some of the components we need, plus the cost of purchasing the components which are outside of our profession. Plus transportation costs of having to go to other planets to get resources that are no longer available on our home planet. At the moment, there is no carbonate ore available on Naboo or Corellia. The nearest planet/moon I have found carbonate or on is either Dathomir, or Dantooine. It costs me 3100 credits just to get to Dathomir, and another 3100 credits to get back to Naboo. So I spend 6200 credits every 2 days just to collect carbonate ore, plus the maintanence costs (I go every 2 days because A. anything more frequent would kill me, and B. anything less frequent and I risk a resource table shift, thereby losing valuable maintanence costs).

When all is said and done, a cost of 3 credits per resource is certainly very understandable, and 4 credits per is within reason. I currently sell all of my structures at a cost of 3 cpu, rounded down to the nearest thousand. And as it is, I barely break even, assuming there are no unforeseen tragedies (bugged resource tables shifting after server resets, bugged harvesters, server crashes, connection issues, massive critical failures). If all does not go well, I take a loss. And when you consider the shear number of resources that go into producing our merchandise, any loss is devistating.

But you know what really hurts? Seeing small house deeds for instant sale on the bazaar for 3k.

I've got no problems with the Architect profession as far as economy is concerned.

I use all my own resources. Taking re-deed and power costs into account, my resources cost me an average of 1.7crds each.

I've sold everything i've ever made on my way to Master Architect, am cheaper than most folks, and have just passed the one million creds mark, with enough orders to take me up to 1.2 million.

And, I'm having fun. Although critting on two PA halls in a row wasn't fun (I don't do them anymore).

Nice work devs !!

Being a master architect, I really don't like the idea of decay on structures either.

Making folks have to continously worry about they're structure is a problem.

Also what would happen to a PA hall if it decayed and disappeared? Can you imagine the problems that would arise from this? Even if it didn't decay, placing another one will require you to have reinvite all your guild members again.

I think it should be a mix of 2 options. You can pay the credits like we do now (100%) or for a much cheaper option have a architect repair your structure. It would cost the architect 40% of the normal upkeep rate to repair the structure, said architect could charge 25% markup and total cost to structure owner would be 65% of the cost of what he/she would have had to pay if a architect didn't repair. A 35% savings is pretty substantial.

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I've got no problems with the Architect profession as far as economy is concerned.

I use all my own resources. Taking re-deed and power costs into account, my resources cost me an average of 1.7crds each.

I've sold everything i've ever made on my way to Master Architect, am cheaper than most folks, and have just passed the one million creds mark, with enough orders to take me up to 1.2 million.

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Thats all well and good, however you are being far too nearsighted.

At the current rate,6 months from now, every single person on your server will own 10 Heavy Harvesters of some sort, a Large home or PA hall, every piece of furniture they could ever want, deeds to factories etc, and you will have absolutely nothing to build whatsoever.

Sure, the economy is great for us now. People just got done exploiting the hell out of missions, duped and sold a billion resources, payout just got done being 200% more than it is now, and smiths are making more than they know what to do with, so they are coming to us to buy new, indestructable toys.

6 months from now, at the current rate without decay, we are doomed.

My thoughts

Decay

While I see why architects would want decay, the general populace's outcry would drown us out if they were told that their houses and PA Halls would regularly have to be replaced. Instead of decay causing the building to disappear, make it increase the maintainence cost. Decay could be fixed with Structure Repair Kits (put the schematic in the Construction Branch).

Experimentation

Give our Structure Experimentation skill as use... let us affect maintainence, productivity and energy use. Also give and increase our ability to hue furniture as our Structure Experimentation skill increases.

Customization

Decorative add-on kits, functional add-on kits and structure hueing kits. The latter should give a limited pallete of stone-like hues (I wouldn't want myneighbor to have a hot pink house either). Add the schematics for these to the Construction Branch.

>>>>"Just out of curiosity, how do you come up with a cost of 0.5 to 0.7 credits per unit of resource to mine? I can understand those figures if the harvester continually pulled up a set quantity of a resource, didn't require power, and the resource didn't depleat. But on my server (Eclipse), resource tables seem to shiftevery 2 - 5 days. Often times the highest deposit of ore I can find is between 50 and 60%. With a single MMI (mineral mining installation), I bring in roughly 2200 units of ore per day, at a cost of 1500 credits in maintanence. Plus it requires 1200 units of power to keep it running for an entire day. Now, if I buy my power, that's 3600 credits on the average. If I have enough lots remaining to put down some form of power generator, I can usually get 1200 units at an average cost of 1500 credits per day. So to bring in 2200 units of ore from a single mine, it costs me roughly 3000 credits. Now, when the resources shift, it costs me another 3000 credits to pull up my harvester so I can place it somewhere else. "

I haven't seen costs like you describe. On Corellia, the typical personal harvester costs 720 credits per day, and the power used is about 600 units, which equates to about 300 credits per day, when a windmill is used to mine the power. So, the total spent on a personal harvester each day < 1100 credits. From that, I can mine about 2200 units a day, as can you. When the resources shift, the damage can be minimized by switching resources until the power and the maintenance run out. It's always best to keep the same amount of maintenance in a harvester as power, so that they'll run out of each at the same time. This way, the harvester can completely use its power and maintenance.