Architect Archive
Thread: Saving the Profession Decay Solution
pizzachef, that won't happen as its one of the biggest moneysinks in the game and the devs continue to do things to lower the amount of credits available.
its the biggest reason much of this talk is irrelevant. a lot of people won't pay twice to do one thing and the devs won't remove maintenance and redeed costs. period. makes a lot of the conversation relatively moot.
Ropock, Why do you post if you think these discussions is ridiculous? If you think it has no use, don't read or post on it. That would probably save you and us a little frustration.
My opinion on the redeeding and decay. I like the use limit/charges idea because it would keep the market alive for new structures. Whether it took the form of decay or not redeeding or a redeed limit, I would be happy, as long as something happened. I am not a programmer so I do not know which would be easier to set up. Also, would be happy to see experimentation pts go to something real, but that is another issue.
Ospi,
Master Artisan, Novice Architect/Tailor
No one is going to want to have to keep buying new structures from us. Structures decaying will just destroy what business we have. My suggestion is that either Architects produce modules to pay Structure maintance, or it be a combination of money and a module that pays structure maintance.
I suggest that there be differnt types of maintence modules based on the types of structures being maintained. (so heavy mineral harvesters need to have heavy mineral harvester maintance modules) etc. so that architects can still specialize in the differnt fields and still be effective in those fields.. or maybe make that unused experimentation line into a mainance line or something.. but as an architect myself. I don't want to see people's structures disappearing, cause they're not gonna be buying them again. won't be worth it to them.
I think you will end up with a lot of problems with decay issues. Some architects are complaining that buying materials from the bazaar is already too expensive. Increase the cost by mandating replacement through decay and folks will either stop mining and go to missions only, or raise the price of all they sell through the bazaars. You end up raising the price of nearly every produced good in the game, in the long run you're no better off.
Experimentation that would add storage space to homes may be a good way to bring about a turn over of existing houses. How about add ons, basements forsmall houses or a second story. More planet specific housing would do this as well, Corellia has never had anything but generic homes for its planet, how about a Rori, Lok, ect style.
The ability to track who made an item and give exp for use of it is already in game, how tough would it be to use that system to give the architect a small percentage of the maintance fee on all he produced? Folks are already used to paying maintance, and either a daily percentage from houses or a percent of what is required to be in the harvester to redeed it should go to the architect.
Nyca
Former architect, now hunter, and loving every minute of it.
I have to strongly disagree with Dalyn, EdOWar et al. The problems with the profession do not stem from too many architects, we have the same potential number of clients as any other crafting profession and we don't see them clammering about too much competition and prices rediculously low compared to resources etc. and while I don't have statistics, I am sure the numbers of other crafting professions will not be grossly smaller than Architects.
The problem is turnover. Everything else, weapons, armour, food, medical supplies even droids and pets have a high turnover of products due to these things being removed from the game either by consumption, decay or being blown to smithereens. None of our structures suffer from this (except for careless maintenance handling).
Decay (and/or paying maintenance) will simply create too much grief as mention previously due to the hard time keeping track and things going *poff* overnight taking all contents with them.
Meplorium, I love the modification, limited re-deeding, great idea. (Devs just make sure you don't make this a random event like crit failure ! lol ).
At the moment resource suppliers are cooking at approx 0.5cr/unit or better. If there costs were to increase to 1.0cr/unit due to limited re-deeding, would they care ? I think not, 150%+ return for a bit of resource selling so they can buy their weapons etc is still WELL worth the effort. What happens then is Architects effectively get that additional 0.5cr/unit commission from the suppliers through the re-sale of another harvester down the road.
Suddenly the architect profession becomes one that is sustainable.
People who say the profession has too many of us, give it 6 months and it will have sorted itself out with the numbers reduced to a proper sustainable level, are missing something fundamental. The servers have a population capacity. New player numbers will fall off as the server ages, to the point of being irrelevant. Existing players even changing careers won't need 'new structures' they will have their house and whatever harvesters they need (ok maybe they need 1 crafting station and/or 1 factory but that's it). So the profession if left alone won't find an equilibrium... hmmm actually no your right it will.. the equilibrium will be ZERO architects. No one will need them anymore.
I have to disagree with Zam, one thing i think gets over looked is the amount of player cash that gets directed towards an architect vs other professions.
Artisan: probably has a shop and or a house, 10k - 150k, factory or two 25k-40k, several harvesters, 30k - 150k, funiture for the house or shop 20k:
Hunter/killer type: at minimum a house and furniture 30k-200k
Now it will take a fairly long time before most artisans spend that kind of credits on weapons, armor, food, medicenes or tipping enterainers. Even pure hunter types will not spend that kind of money every couple months which is what youre asking via redeeding ect.
Nyca
I really am opposed to most forms of decay.
The no redeed on houses is ok. Same with factorys - unless we were to get hit with that nasty factory bug again 
We will at some point be making some type of factional equipment for the GCW. Whether this will be enough to sustain even a smaller number of architects than there are now remains to be seen.
I have had some harvester customers tell me they would not mind harvester decay as long as they lasted a reasonable length of time - 3 months or so. But ultimately I think we would be hurting ourselves more than helping with any of the solutions presented here.
The sheer quantity of materials we need makes us the one profession that HAS to use heavy harvesters AND we have to move towhere the ore is. We don't have the luxury of saying "oh copper shifted in, I'lluse these7 harvesters on itto replacethe ore that just shifted out". Limited harvester redeed would kill us.
Harvesters decaying over time would hurt independent architects far more than PA supported ones. I know it would take me a week of gathering materials to replace my harvesters. Meanwhile Iwould beout of business totally.
I also don't think that experimentation on our end products would work very well. If any of you have done much experimentation on craft stations or other craft's products you know that it's all too easy to crit fail the experimentation. What exactly would you do with that largeharvester you crit failed experimenting on for efficiency? You certainly couldn't sell it. The crafts that experimentation works for all make schematics of the good experiments. We don't have the resources available to make a large run of heavy harvesters in a factory.
Experimentation on sub components if they affected the final assembly would work for us. We could afford a few trys to get an uber generator turbine schematic. But then our novices would be left out in the cold like the other craft professions. Unfortunately this is probably the lesser of the evils when trying to resolve the problem of renewable income.
No one is going to want to have to keep buying new structures from us. Structures decaying will just destroy what business we have.
yes they will. People by 1-2 guns a week due to decaying, armor probably a set a month, architects need a similar system.
I think factories should get 1000 item limit then needs to be replaced. I think harvestors should not be redeedable. I am sick of paying 3k for each harvestor to move and then another 3k in it to keep it going a few days. That is 60k in one shot. As an architect this makes no sense to me, since we have to have so many more resources then anyone else in order to make our structures. We get hurt more by the present system. Other crafters sell their items alot easier and for a lot more profit then we do, redeeding my harvestors is killing me LOL. We would have the same revolving income as the other two crafters if this were done. I would gladly sell for 3 credits per resource for a heavy harvestor if I knew that next shift I would be able to sell 10 more to the same guy. Right now you sell 10 to someone and they will never need you ever again.
As far as houses go, I could care less what they do with them. decay, non redeedable , doesnt matter to me. But we make the factories and the harvestors for everyone else in this game and we make no profits. I came into this profession later than most, after everyone had already shot themselves in the foot for lowballing the prices on things. I am not in this profession to make a gazillion credits, I just want to profit a little bit. As it stands right now, we pretty much give away our structures to let others make a killing. Knowing this we still charge those "rich" professions low prices on the factories and the harvestors they need to make thier products. Just seems to me we need an idiot proof system in the architect field to protect ourselves from those that just don't grasp the concept of what is happening. Every structure sold is something those people will never need to buy again ever, and gives them something they can sell in return if they choose to. Can a marksman sell his weapon that is almost decayed for the same price he bought it for? NO he can not, but someone who bought a factory from us can sell it for the same price they paid for it or any item they buy from us.
The architect structure system the way it is now is just stupid. There is no reason for our products to be treated diffently then other crafters products.
I'm just an up and coming Arch, but I've seen a ton of different posts, from how to keep the Arch line up and running, to how much people are charging for their items.
There is alot to be said for this profession, and we are needed, no matter how many or how few of us there are in the galaxy.
The idea of NOT being able to re-deed your house, is one that needs to be looked at. Look at the real world here, not just the fantasy world of SWG. You have 3 options in the real world.
1: Sell your house as is and either build a new one or buy an exsisting one in a location that suits your needs (We need to have a Real Estate line for that in the Merchant group).
2: Move your house to a new location, this is already done by re-deeding, however, to offset the ability, perhaps it should take an Architect, with the skill to build the same level of structure, to re-deed it, AT A FIXED COST.( Example:If you are wanting a PA hall re-deeded, then a Master Architect is the minimum that can do it).
3: Demolition: Last resort here, but hey, forces the issue of buying a new house. HOWEVER, and I really should make this point clear. You must, once again, contact an Architect of same skill level per structure size. IF, and ONLY if, it could be coded, the Arch would be able to salvage some of the items from that structure to rebuild a new structure for that person, of course, at a defered cost, due to items being salvaged. ( Now, this is a long shot here, cause the coding for this would be UNBELIEVABLE, but it CAN be done. It's just a matter of, Does SOE want to do it?).
Now, as far as pricing is concerned. Hmm.. that's a tough issue here, and no easy solution, but, it can be implemented with correct coding, but a Minimum/Maximum amount can be added into the game, a regulatory service, that is TOTALLY NPC, can set the Minimum/Maximum amount any structure can be sold for. That way we don't have new Arch's out there choking themselves by trying to sell to high, and we don't have Master Arch's choking out the Novice Arch's by selling way to low. It makes sense, and it can be done.
If that is implemented, and you would like to, or are able to make a profit from selling lower than what is set by the regulatory service, you can appeal to them, yes, they are NPC's, but, with a high degree in the AI, it can be done to set the minimum sale price through an Appeal system, it's kind of like our current government where you have lobbyists that do all of that for you or big business. You can lobby to the NPC, which in turn would send an e-mail to SOE to look into the prices and see if they can be adjusted down. This is not something that would actually happen overnight, but they can see if only Shadowfire is doing this, or if other servers are as well, if there is a majority of the servers asking for this to happen, and yes, AI check here, checking to see if it's from the same account, just on different servers.. hehe.. They can adjust up or down as needed. Sometimes a temporary, other times permanent.
Just some things to think about.. I doubt this is the best idea to come up, and I could use the honest critque from you other Arch's out there.
It's just an idea.. you can ALSO do the same with Harvesters that you are with houses and it would save the coding issue, as they would code all structures the same, not just one, but all of them.
The best solution for making the Architect more viable is getting them involved in the GCW. I've seen that state this before. In general, crafting professions should be much more capable of being involved in the GCW.
For instance, defensive structures such as walls and laser cannon towers that can be damaged or destoryed. These would need to be repaired by Architects directly---make us go out to combat areas and work on them.
When space comes out, Architects should make the structures that are part of building ships. Living compartments and the like.
This is off topic here, I guess, but I think that DE's should be involved in a similar manner. Why are AT-ST's coming directly from the Empire? Shouldn't DE's be making these? Perhaps have construction permits come from the Empire, giving a DE the ability/right to make one.
Heck, why not a similar thing for Architects? Factions could award permits for PvP related structures which Architects would then construct.
Nice post Laslo, now we are getting some nice 'outside the box' but feasible ideas 
And this time I do agree with Dayln ! This is a game all about player economy, stated from day 1, no place here for some crazy random price fixing npc.
No offense meant Huntercrom but I think you have been spending too much time dreaming in your expert system / A.I. lecture sessions 