Architect Archive

What I think is horrible it that even though your post stands out like a sore-thumb in the forum - a 5/5 rating - a developer has yet to even respond to it. If they are all too busy to even talk to us then they might want to think about hiring a few more people!

Gravik - "I hear that if you make crafting stations with the optional components, you reduce your critical rate. Perhaps this will help you"

Sorry to tell you bud but I made my crafting station with every single component over 50% through experimentation and good resources. Plus the station itself in the final combine I got to the 70's % mark

In the past 3 days I have failed a Heavy Chemical Harvester, a Medium Mineral Harvester, a Heavy Mineral Harvester, a Wearables Factory, a Small Generic Type 2 house, and 2 master architect furniture pieces.

/bump

Agree...

It is because of the failure rate that I decided to charge 5 credits per resource for a medium house. This made the cost 103,000. LOL... I was made to feel like an idiot after sending out an email to my rather large friends list letting them know I had just built my first medium house and would like to sell it.

Apparently every one else was selling for 60-80k. For a solo player it takes a long time to gather the resources, then of course you get to fail along the way several times to make the house. With the Failure Rate I don't know how people could sell for so little. But I guess they can.

I really don't care if I am undercut price wise. But it is Clear that you cannot Soloand be successful in business with these failure rates. It requires a great deal of help from other players. One of the big reasons I chose to play SWG was because people were supposed to be able to be independant players if they chose to.

Any way.. I moved into my new medium house, I still have a way to go before I hit Master, but the failure rate has hit me hard... I imagine it will be a while.

Folks:

I'm going to share this again with people because my old post became lost in the shuffle. Three and a half weeks ago, I found the best ingredients I could find personally and created (2) custom structure and furniture crafting tools at 99% efficiency. I built a custom personal structure crafting station at 99% efficiency. Since this time, I have NEVER failed on a major piece (wall module, generator, etc.) and certainly not on a major structure (large harvester, factory, medium house, large house). I receive 1 critical failure per 175 to 200 attempts when crafting (architect oriented items) and I craft approximately 75% of my entire game time.

I created the special tools and station when I kept getting major criticals on houses, etc. In beta, a developer confirmed that the experimental tools DO help with critical failures. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the beta boards since they are gone and can't bring back the post so it would reiterate what I'm telling you now. Perhaps our architect correspondent can confirm/deny what I'm talking about but after more than 3 weeks of testing and receiving the kind of results that I'm getting, I can say for certain that they work.

There are a few failure glitches imbedded in the system for non-result database hiccups but you can get past these problems by doing a few simple things:

• Never craft a major item during extremely heavy lag.


• Never craft a major item and place in the wrong size ingredients and then back out of the tool and reopen it and craft again.


• Always craft your major item in the following way:


• Open up a generic crafting device and craft a small non-furniture or structure item.


• Open up your specialized crafting tool and then craft your major item on a fresh display.

Doing these steps will get you past the hiccups of the database non-result findings that automatically prompt a critical failure when they cannot find/display a result=true statement. Even without the work-arounds, I craft about 80% of my large items without doing them the way I described because I normally build em on a first time use of my tools when entering the game. However, if you test everything I just stated you will not be disappointed.

My failure rate is very low to the point that I don't even worry about it, well maybe just a little cause it has been a long time. 3 fusion gens, 1 PA hall, 5 Larges, 5 mediums, over 20 smalls, 10 factories, countless medium harvestors and I have had a failure on one factory and one small house. The rate is so low it is not worth complaining about. It is part of the game, get over it. I would rather see bugslike the harvestor fixed or the lights working or player cities before I see this address. If you are not Mon Cal and doing architech then having increased crit failures in the price you pay for choosing another race. That is part of the game. And should I ever crit on a PA hall, I would still rather have a medium farm over that risk eliminated.

This is definitely a problem.

It seems the Devs are very busy with stability and server performance issues, so any fixes lack any real finesse. If they can hack a 'fix', we may see it. If not, it will be a while.

So, this is what I would like to suggest we lobby for:

First Step (Bandaid fix): Fix the profession so at Master, we also have 100 Experimentation Points. Simple, easy and it should help and can't hurt.

Second Step: Revamp the whole critical failure system. This would effect all the professions and would take a little more programming effort, but it really should be done. I personally think just losing the resources and not the components may be going a bit too far the otherway, but that's just my opinion. What I would like to see is that when there is a Critical Failure, the message flashes, you return to the shematic resource page and each 'slot' for the schematic is checked to see if it has survived failure, with the chances of each loss modified by your experimentation skill. I guess you could still get very unlucky from time to time and lose everything, but most often you would only lose one or two of the component slots items/resources.

The second step details are just my suggestion, there are other ways to go about enhancing the critical failure system. However, the overall point is that we should lobby vigorously for an increase in experimentation poijnts now, with the understanding that the crit system really needs to be revamped in the future.

Padashar -

I'm glad this system works for you, really I am. But for you to insist that it works for everyone .... well it's wrong.

Why?

Well I read you post I think last week was when you posted it, possibly 2 weeks ago. (Time flies)

I've done everything but get a 99% item.

However, as for your points :

*Never craft a major item during extremely heavy lag. -

My ping is normally in the 80s. Only time I hit bad lag is when the mass of leaves fall. In cities, it's just graphical lag, not network.

*Never craft a major item and place in the wrong size ingredients and then back out of the tool and reopen it and craft again. -

I can testify that this works. I have failed 9 out of 10 items (during testing since your last post) when either prematurely hitting the next stage when all the components weren't in or dragging wrong materials to wrong slots.

Always craft your major item in the following way:

Open up a generic crafting device and craft a small non-furniture or structure item.

Open up your specialized crafting tool and then craft your major item on a fresh display

This has failed me(out of my total critical failures)4 out of 10 times (roughly). I have tried a host of variations to this. None are effective enough to warrant a "bypass" of the Critical Failure Rates. My tests consisted of making furniture, deeds, and for the non-structural items, inbetween structural crafting sessions, I went down the list in the Generic Page.

I am probably between meploriam and perpetual_dark on failures. However I have comment.

I am not meaning to sound harse Perpetual_Dark but I do not believe you are a very efficient architect, nor do you plan ahead very well. That and you have an almost Pious attitude with regards to you not using factories. Loose it. They are a legitimate game tool put there by design and are very effective, even necessary for some schematics. Oh and I do not mean you should use them for the XP, I was a master before I even set my first one up.

There are many posts on these forums that are filled with tips on being a better architect. I suggest going through them. I did, and I have become much more successful, and much more relaxed as a result.

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Padashar wrote:

Folks:

I'm going to share this again with people because my old post became lost in the shuffle. Three and a half weeks ago, I found the best ingredients I could find personally and created (2) custom structure and furniture crafting tools at 99% efficiency. I built a custom personal structure crafting station at 99% efficiency. Since this time, I have NEVER failed on a major piece (wall module, generator, etc.) and certainly not on a major structure (large harvester, factory, medium house, large house). I receive 1 critical failure per 175 to 200 attempts when crafting (architect oriented items) and I craft approximately 75% of my entire game time.

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I concur with your findings Padashar. My critical failure rates were reduced dramatically when I replaced my crafting tools with 97% efficiency. Prior to that, my critical failures were often, even 2, 3, 4 times in a row. My critical fails now are in line with your findings, 1 out of every 175-200 attempts. I have replaced all the personal crafting stations that my PA elite crafters use, and they report a reduction in critical failures as well.

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I created the special tools and station when I kept getting major criticals on houses, etc. In beta, a developer confirmed that the experimental tools DO help with critical failures. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the beta boards since they are gone and can't bring back the post so it would reiterate what I'm telling you now. Perhaps our architect correspondent can confirm/deny what I'm talking about but after more than 3 weeks of testing and receiving the kind of results that I'm getting, I can say for certain that they work.

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I specifically recall the post you are referring to. While I did not play an architect in beta, I knew that I was going to playone on retail. I followed the architect threads religiously. As part of my testing on release, I have found that experimenting DOES reduce your critical failure rate. When I build, I experiment on everything. If I don't produce the best possible item for a schematic, I throw it out.

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There are a few failure glitches imbedded in the system for non-result database hiccups but you can get past these problems by doing a few simple things:

• Never craft a major item during extremely heavy lag.

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This is especially important. As a test I once crafted lower level items that I never failed on during heavy lag. I critically failed 1 out of 3 attempts. I compared this and crafted the same item again when the servers were not lagged, using the same tool. I did not produce one critical failure after 20 attempts.

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• Never craft a major item and place in the wrong size ingredients and then back out of the tool and reopen it and craft again.

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I have no experience with this as I make it a habit to always have the minimum amount needed in my inventory before starting a crafting session on an item. But I would have to agree thisgoodadvice.

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• Always craft your major item in the following way:


• Open up a generic crafting device and craft a small non-furniture or structure item.


• Open up your specialized crafting tool and then craft your major item on a fresh display.

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I would like you to elaborate on this one as I don't see the connection.

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Doing these steps will get you past the hiccups of the database non-result findings that automatically prompt a critical failure when they cannot find/display a result=true statement. Even without the work-arounds, I craft about 80% of my large items without doing them the way I described because I normally build em on a first time use of my tools when entering the game. However, if you test everything I just stated you will not be disappointed.

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I would like to add that before I do a major build, I relog. This essentially is doing what you describe above.

I am also convinced that your resources must contain high levels of specific traits that your schematic calls for. Using inferior resources on ANY component, including walls is just asking for a critical fail.

Great post and thanks for sharing.

Devs... if you are reading:

Please bring us in line with other crafters for our assembly skill.

Please have a critical fail only cost resources and not components.

Vasser and Sacred:

Thanks both of you for reading my post and giving some responses and feedback. This is what we need to make things work out for us in the future. If anyone has a test they want to run, everyone should try and run it to see if it indeed does work.

To clarify on the last reponse of my post because it may have been hard to follow:

When you are going to craft an item in your S&F crafting tool it opens up by (default) at the furniture section. This is what I call a (first-time) bootup of the tool device. At the (first-time) bootup of the device I have literally never failed anything. Now the tricky part is getting the tool to open up as a reboot after you have been crafting for a long time. What I try and do is craft something else in a different tool and then even place a tool in a backpack and back out again (if need be) to get the first bootup response again. When I get this response, I craft my major item. For some reason or another, critical failures don't seem to occur on the very first crafting use. I've never seen it happen in beta and never during live (for me). This isn't saying that it couldn't happen to another person. I thought at first that it may have just been dumb luck but since I've been crafting since conception and have good perception, I made mental notes about this occurence.

If you understand what I'm talking about or can test it please go ahead. Also, Vasser, I didn't run any tests with Furniture at all. I think furniture has a very high critical fail rate compared to houses. Why this is, is beyond me. It seems to varie on different pieces but the ones I have the most trouble are the ones that require hides. Maybe hides don't have a calculatable equivallency to resources in formulas. I don't really know.

From an architect that failed on the second large house she made, I definately feel your pain. I am stick of cringing every time I hit assemble. I almost expected it to happen the other night when I went through days of hell making a fusion power plant.

Silencia Menis, Naboo(Radiant)

Have any of you uprgaded your tools and your stations to a high conductivity metal and highly experimental on the experimental efficiency side of things ? I seem to rarely fail in assembly. When I do it is with lesser items/components not the final products.

I think it is fair to say that we as a profession utilize THE most resources in the galaxy. I also think it is fair that we should get some sort of salvage value in a critical failure in assembly. I mean a single item that costs over 24k in resources poofing on you is a bit hard to swallow as compared to say 1k resources at the outside for some of the other professions.

I also find the recent cutbacks in xp for production of prototype items from stations harsh. I built a heavy harvester today to upgrade one of mine and realized I got 4k from the final assembly since I am forced to run most of the items through the factory with that particular schematic I also suffer the xp hit from the components. 120 some k for the last blocks I need to master with the market saturating a bit and getting 4k xp from a final assembly of a 24k + resources item is a bit low is it not ?