Architect Archive
Thread: Current Experimentation Post rant/rave here
I like that experimintation has been fixed and we should keep itbut tweak some of the problems. For starters cap the mediums at 6 or make the medium minearls have to take 3 walls. This would close the gap of selling mediums for less because it would require more resources, and come on, other heavys require 3 walls, why not a mineral? But in overall, this will add depth to architects and we will have to actuely hunt for good materials.Maybe now they can just give us our experimintation points?
Bug: Structure Factory is not pulling from structural crates when making walls. Theory: The schematic for walls is not registerying the serial id on the structural modules, so the wall schematic does not know what crate to pull from.
You need to hit at least 75% experimentation result on the Ore Mining Unit, Light Ore Mining Unit, Harvesting Mechanism, or Fluidic Drilling Pump to hit 11kg/hr heavy, 8kg/hr medium, or 17kg/hr fusions. From my own tests anything in the 75-92% range gives those results I've found. I may do some more tests just to confirm where the break point is, but I suspect a 74% result would give a 10kg/hr heavy or 7kg/hr medium while 75%+ gives the top result.
i personally am not against experimentation as a whole, but i AM AGAINST experimentation without doing all the following things with it.
1. Experimentation AND assembly points need to go to full 100. this 55 bs sucks and is just stupid.
2. The quantity of resources per schematic should be halved. As it stands now, we by far use the most resources, with weapon/droids/armor people fighting over the high quality resources already, the architect was the perfect person to suck up the bulk quantity resources that didnt have the uber stats. with experimentation in, we ALL will be paying stupid prices for high quality resources and everyone will be fighting over them all and anything not in the 900 range might as well just go to the dogs. and also not to mention if u fail on your experimentation during any part of your schematic, u might as well throw hundreds of resources away.... which means i end up having to increase my harvesters just to make sure i have enough resources to absorb the NUMBEROUS amounts of times u will not get a great success etc.
3. our products should be damaged or decayed in some sort of way, as it stands now within a few months, we will be lucky to sell anything cuz everyone that has the cash will have whatever he needs and will never have to replace them, contrary to having to buy that new weapon droid or armor.
1. There aren't enough increments in experimentation. A Novice Architect with only Installations 2 can make an extraction rate 6 medium mineal harvester (yes - I've done it myself with a second char who picked up architect on the way to armorsmith to save a bundle on mediums). Having rates in 0.5 increments would be betterm allowing for more variability in products. Also...
2. The steps start too low. I saw an earlier post saying we should be able to make worse harvesters than previously. I like this idea.. it means our existing stocks and harvesters we replace are still worth something. With the ranges someone suggested of 3-7 on medium, and 6-10 (or was it 6-11) on heavies, it allows for more variation in products between architects. Right now, with only moderate materials, its trivially easy to improve on the original (old-style) harvesters.
3. Experimentation points.. *please* give us +100 structure experimentation and structure assembly skills. This would support the stuff below, and rid us of the "uber" item problem. Skill-enhancing clothing attachments would still have value at all levels, but would allow all masters to at least have an equal shot at making great harvesters.
4. Hopper sizes. As someone pointed out, this is nice to have as a variable, but makes little difference ultimately. Lets leave it alone for now, on the principle that changing only one thing at a time makes it both easier to implement the change, and also to see the effects of it.
5. My proposal:
Ranges:
Medium: 3-7 kg/h rate
Heavy: 6-10 kg/h rate
Experimentation results:
0%-15%: nil
16%-25%: +0.5 kg/h
26%-35%: +1.0 kg/h
36%-45%: +1.5 kg/h
46%-55%: +2.0 kg/h
56%-65%: +2.5 kg/h
66%-75%: +3.0 kg/h
76%-85%: +3.5 kg/h
86%-100%: +4.0 kg/h
So, making a medium with a 68% experimentation result would give a harvester with an extraction rate of (base: 3 + experimentation: 3) 6 kg/h. You'd need to hit 86% and higher to get the very best, which would mean you needed good materials.
The caveat: we'd need 10 experimentation points at master. Please fix that too.
Thanks for reading - hope the HTML codes worked, I'd like some feedback on this idea and don't want to see it buried
Geno
______________
The Mercantile
Theed, Naboo, Tempest
Geno.
Again, anyone seen a dev say that these changes came across to live as intended? I mean, no mention in the patch notes, posts everywhere on the test center from devs saying that the changes wouldn't go live, and masters don't get the remaining +45 to experimentation...
It's all good and well, but until a dev confirmation comes about...I wouldn't get too smug in making higher extraction rate harvs...
Of course, it's possible I missed a dev post somewhere, and if I did, I'd love a link.
Thanks!
I am all for experimentation of extraction rates on harvesters. Even though bringing it to live was a mistake as it was not finished, what they did should have been in place since day one. However, it does need to be tweaked a little.
1) In order to offset the influx of materials, the base extraction rate ofharvesters needs to be brought down a notch. The developers seem to think that there are too many materials in game already. I don't think that is necessarily true, but we may as well appease them. It could make the game more interesting. Perhaps 1-2 extraction rate on personal harvesters, 2-5 on mediums, and 5-9 on heavy harvesters.
2) Make the experimentation dependent upon multiple resource statistics. Using only UT, it is too easy to find great materials that can hit the max. DR/HR/SR/UT/OQ could be used for different parts of the structure.
3) Make more parts of the structure have an impact on experimentation. Make each relevent part (including the final combine) have a possible 1 point extraction rate. Therefore, personal harvesters could only vary by a possible one point. Mediums could vary by three (generator turbine, extraction unit, and final combine). Heavies could vary by four.. with an optional micro sensor suite package.
4) Allow Experimentation points in decimals. This would make ita little more fun... "selling 7.4 heavy mineral!".. etc.
5)Give architects 100 experimentation skill at master. It is not scaled well at the moment.
6) Reduce the amount of materials needed for walls by half. Novice architects will have a vastly more difficult time trying to enter the field, seeing as not many people will buy their goods. By reducing the amount of materials, it will allow for the entire class to make a little better profit margin.
-Xevo (Crafting Station Architect) / Ainin (Master Architect)
***** 300k for a medium?? Not a chance in hell you would ever sell at that rate. Expecially since a unexperimented heavy can be gotten for 90k, you spends obscene months before you broke even in maitenance savings. And 600k for a heavy, sorry but the people who can afford that are already retired *****
You do realize that the cost per unit to mine something ranges from .35 to .75 credits per unit, right? the lower end is on a high concentration spot and providing your own power (and taking into account the maint costs of the fusion gen) and the higher number is on a lower concentration and paying roughly 1cr/u for power...do the math sometime...A normal heavy harvester will mine roughly 5.4k of resources on a 50% concentration. You spend 2160cr/day in maintenance, and 1800 power/day for it. If you buy power at 1cr/u, you spend, out of pocket, 3960cr per heavy. 3960/5400 = .73cr/u cost out of pocket. It doesn't pay to run your own fusion until you have more heavies to power up, but once you add that second heavy harv, it pays to run your own fusion to power all that you have...and any excess power left over you can store/sell.
Architects that sell heavies now for 90k are idiots and hurt the profession. That's barely 3cr/u value. Even at 200k a heavy, a miner mining a 75% spot of anything in demand and able to sell at going rates for materials will be able to make their money back on the heavy in roughly 9-10 days...and then have the harvester to mine NOTHING BUT PROFIT afterwards...A heavy that mines at 10kh/h instead of one that mines at 7kg/h gains 42% more per day that the 7kg/h harvester....do the math...architects could double the price of that heavy to 400k and they would still have it paid off in 10-11 days and STILL be making <b>MORE</b> money after that....at least until they add some form of decay. What don't you get!? A medium priced at 200k with an extraction rate of 7 pays for itself in 9-10 days, then it's all profit...but of course folks won't charge that...plenty will still sell them for the going rate of 15-20k....and not realize they are just shooting themselves in the foot.
Yeah, it's the people who are dumb, especially novices who just go up installations 4 who do it a lot, and sell dirt cheap because they see themselves making money by harvesting their own materials. What they don't realize, is over the long term, taking into account failures, etc, is that they end up LOSING money over just selling the resources...show me a crafting, non-medic, profession in this game other than architects (and maybe droid engineers/chefs) who lose money...certainly not armorsmiths...or weaponsmiths...or bio-engineers....or tailors....
Another easy way - when, and if, they intend for this to happen, and we get our remaining experimentation - masters...DO NOT SELL THE MINING COMPONENTS...that will differentiate us from the novices who take installations 4 looking ot make fast and easy money...
Lastly, we still have yet to see a dev confirm this was an intended change.
I am not an Architect, I am a miner. I do more mining then anything else, including all day long sampling. I finally struggled to get the best, a full arsenal of heavy minerals, only to get screwed in the end because now people could buy, for less, a medium that pulls as much as my heavies at half the price, and you can now get a heavy that pulls more then the ones I poored over a million credits to getting (for all of them). If this change stay's in place, my prices will raise in mining, which means all the architect that purchase from me will lose money in the long run while I make up my loss from being screwed since I can't even sell my heavies for 50k when purchased for twice that amount because everyone wants only the new ones. As I see it, if this is in, the architects will hurt just as much as the miner's that support you, because asa miner, I always gave discounts to architects, that will end along with all the other miner's I know of.
IF, this is a big 'IF', because I don't know what you all want, but IF you really are looking for a way to make money, this isn't the way, because doing this is screwing over everyone that isn't an architect. Also, harvester's purchased for 100k+ and decaying on you really sucks, and is not a solution to your problem either.But, if you ask me, the solution is in front of you and I haven't heard a single architect ask for it (or at least from what I have read no one has asked for it). Why should someone who is NOT an architect be able to maintain a harvester? We put credits into the harvester to maintain it in top shape, where do those credits go? what maintains those harvester's for us? If you ask me a percentage of that maintanence money should go to the creator of the harvester, say 5%? or 10% max, of the cash goes into his bank account once we add the money in. The other 90% will go to the server of course as a cash sink, think of it as the architect's cost of materials for maintanence. This way, although your not making something for someone, you are still making a daily flow of money for your item in maintenance (form of decay without the loss).
If this harvester change stay's in the game, then I think we should fight to have all of the prepatch ones take the correct effect, because I know the person that made mine experimented on it cause he likes to do that. I'm sure that information is in the system which runs with that serial number, otherwise it will be highly unfair to the majority of the population of SWG players.
I also believe that you guys should look into that maintanence idea, you never know 
I am not worried about the short term effect of current harvestors rates, I am conserned aobut the long term effect of pushing more resources into a game that already has too many resources.
They should have nerfed ALL previous harvestors and made it so you had to experiment like crazy to get a Heavy to 7.
Harvestors that pull more is not a good thing for Architects, not in the long run it isnt. We will simply saturate the market faster with our products that last forever.
The % to the arch doesn't work. People will just be giving harvs away or very close to it. It will take a while to get your money back, but it will happen eventually.
Only reason I'm against higher rates is because IMO resources are already too abundant. Basically double to output and you would find resources at 1-2cpu on average. Personally I don't think this is a good thing. You get the same profit "IF" you sell it all. But how many weapon/armor smiths can use twice the materials. I personally think it was balanceing out very nice on many servers. Now there is a possibility of a 50% increase in production.
To the people that said they need more of a difference in Heavy and Mediums, it won't matter. Even if a Heavy pulled at 8 anda medium pulled at 7, everyone would buy the heavy at 5 times the price. Maybe not instantly, but sooner or later it would happen. 8 and 7 isn't the case. 10 and 7 is. That is a very large difference.
I'm also against the higher rate's just as much as I'm against getting screwed out of my 1mil+ investment that's worth crap now. If Architects really want to experiment with extraction rate then make something different. leave the harvester's where there at and do something like weaponsmiths and powerups. At master level you can create and experiment on an item, call it a powerharvest unit which you can add to a harvester, last's one day and will give +1 to +4 to on the kg/h. But like weapon powerups, you can also make either +30% to maintenance or power usage. This way the prepatch people aren't screwed and you still have something to experiment on and something that people will always buy since it only last's one day. I know lots of miner's, such as myself, will buy crates of this stuff. Have experimental values on harvester's for storage capacity, start with heavies at 75k units and worked up to 150k units, or maybe 50k and worked up to 100k. I just can't see how you guys can be happy with screwing over your customer's instead of finding a solution that will benefit all.