Architect Archive

A couple of fresh ideas... these may or may have not been brought up before, I have not read EVERY post, but some thoughts I have not seen...

1) Decay on houses: implement decay, and instead of having a house be destroyed outright, put them in a condemned state such that they cannot be entered into until a certain amount (say 25%) condition has been repaired. That way people would not be able to get to their items and would have to pay maint or use some repair kit.

2) Renewable income: I have been an architect since the first week or so.... and if it were not for 2 things, Architecture would have been dead a long time ago.... A) experimental BERs and B) HOLOCRONS. Holos?!?!?!?!. Yes, holos have saved architecture. Sooooo much business has been generated by folks buying harvesters becausethe holo told them to go be something different. However, this may go away and architecture will be in a world of hurt. This should be brought up in the Jedi forumsso it can be considered in the path to Jedi revamp.

3)Faction/Defensive structures: turrets for city defense.... How about the most basic of defensive structures.... WALLS! I have seen a number of towns that pile up houses to form fortifications. This would certainly make architects something desireable beyond 'harvester makers'. but PLEASE make the required resources in line with what people will pay.... expected price for deeds is pretty much the market cost of resources as it is. It would be nice to see a profit in something. These military structures would, like any military, be expensive and therefore offer another way for removing credits from the economy. (I am still burning about having to pay 6k for Doctor buffs, when small houses go for near that and take around 3000 resources... the economy needs someattention)

3b) Faction/Defensive structure buffs. Batten Down the Hatches! It would be nice to have architects/engineers scrambling to brace up structures and make reinforcements to the city fortifications. OMG! Am I suggesting a way that architects could actually participate in a battle involving a siege? Yep. I am tired of just making harvesters with the 90+ skills points.... there is soooo much potential in this class. City raiding is silly.... one faction hits another city and destroy's it's outlying base in the off hours while the city's population is at their day jobs. City sieges need to be a little more monumental a task. This might also give AT-STs a place... make them have really good structural damage output with a decent range so entrenched rebs would have to make the decision to wait till their defensive walls are purged or rush out to engage the enemies, leaving their protected position behind. (Anyone seen Empire Strikes Back?). I am neutral.. neither Reb or Imp. SoI also looked at the flip side.... Rebel assaults... Ther are commandos and other heavy weapon experts... and Rebs not having heavy siege mechanization follows the storyline pretty well. The Empire is chasing down the Rebels, not the other way around... So to balance things... Rebel fortifications should be cheaper than Imps. Maybe not as heavily fortified, but easy to put up lots of them... maybe even be able to pick them up and move them where the imps cannot.

Anyway, just a few passing ideas..

Joska Tuzzel'Vassal
Radiant Server

My suggestions are different from most. I do not believe in structural decay, I think that it is a bad idea.

1) Painting of interior and exterior of houses, city structures - this would include carpeting and flooring options. The paint can decay over time - say 30-60 days. Can you see it now, player cities housing associations enforcing painting standards? Ok maybe it's not the same money as a large house, but it would be consistant. A lot of people would be changing their houses with this option.

Failure of components would be a great idea. Lets have decay on items such as OMUs', Turbine Generators, Storage Hoppers, etc - and allow Architects the ability to be able to repair these items.

For example, a miner lets his/her harvestor run down so that its in neagtive maintenance. Instead of having the whole unit being affected by it, have a random roll to see whether a particular component failed instead.

I'd also like to see rare resource elements introduced into the schematics for heavy deed components to cut down on the fact that "if its not BER13, it wont sell" that has crept into the game. All classes need specific resources to craft top-end items (dolovite iron, etc) that then filters through to the fact that not all armour (for example) is the same. We have that with furniture but to the buyer, one piece of Master Architect furniture is no different from the next - so who cares!!. But if you add in the requirement for say "Talusian Duralloy Steel" or "Stumanonium Inert Gas" into the schematic - then the number of maximum rate heavies will only be attained by Master Architects with specific resources.

Add to this the ability to "upgrade" components in harvestors and customers will return whenever a rare required resource spawns - thus allowing better more efficient components - so that they can upgrade their fleets.

Renewable sources of income suggestions:

• Let architects build faction structures which are subject to destruction. If an architect built turrets (transfer of fp should also be required), then BAM!, you've got a renewable source of income.


• Let architects craft furniture coloring tools. Don't like the standard colors anymore? Then the furniture owner can change them with this coloring tool. Possibly limit coloration to furniture with hides.


• Let architects craft a harvester repair tool. Harvesters that are in need of repair should decay such that their max BER is lower by the % of the decay. If a person wants to repair this now damaged harv, they must buy the repair tool from an architect. Just paying more maintenance should not be enough.

I do not support any means in which houses or factories decay, other than the current means involving non-payment of maintenance.

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Style_Guru wrote:

Weapons and armor decay, and *nobody* much minds, because 1) it's always been the case, and 2) they can't change it anyway. Entropy, however, is not limited to mere disposables.

I'm not saying houses, harvesters and furniture should decay as rapidly as weapons do, but that they do not decay at all makes no sense.

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and I think that is maybe the point that is not stressed at all, decay doen not need to mean that you would need to replace/repair your harvester/factory/building every week, but that for example a harvester that is in permanent use should reach a point where it becomes economically prudent to replace it after say 2-3 months, a factory after say 50-100 'runs', a residence after maybe 6 months, but all these dependant upon the durability (increasable by experimentation) of the initial product. The fact that durability is even there tells me that perhaps this is what SOE intended to put in one day.

This 'long term decay' would give a renewable income source, whilst being a sufficiently long time period so as not to be overly unacceptable to players, let's face it, so far a 3 month decay would have meant only 2 house replacements for the long term players so far, I'm sure they could not object if it means keeping architects in the game. (actually I'm sure they could, but still)

Its tempting to look towards the installation tree for our renewable income since for many of us that is our most profitable line or in most cases our only profitable line. However, I would argue that we would be tinkering with our cash cow and that is very dangerous. The other consideration is the inflationary economy which is driven largely by resource harvesting. I just don't see the dev's adding anything that would increase the amount of resources that can be harvested.

Instead I think the consumable idea should be applied to the GCW. This is only natural as the devs are totally revamamping the GCW this year that WE as ARCHITECTS should be included in that revamp. Items that FIGHT and are destroyable will sell much faster than anything we have ever made. I'll add some ideas and suggestions but regardless of the specifics I think the general tack we should take is to hook ourselves into the GCW publish changes coming in the next months or we will not make the update schedule this year.

I suggest in the first pass we are given schematics to make turrets and other defensive weapons. I would also argue that the devs should add walls (destroyable or not). The trick to the walls is to have EVERY segment have a doorway so there is no worry about fully trapping people. You would be able to buy very long segments with a dooron one sideor very short segements with a door in the middle. Either way you could construct a wall around a city or faction structure such that it doesn't prevent access but does provide bottlenecks and RPing value. The other trick is that if possible these walls should be destroyable!

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RotorofCorRng wrote:
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The perfect example of saturation is player city structures. AND with the immenent nerf to crossserver swaps, you will sell a house, well you may sell one once a year.

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