Architect Archive
Thread: Renewable Revenue
Adune wrote:
>Let's say you set heavies to decay after 2 months. In that 2 month period, the heavy pulls in 7k resources a day (70%) for 50 days out of 60. That's 350k resources produced. Maintenance costs for that 2 month period are 120k, and redeeding costs at 1 time per week are about 40k. Harvester cost is say 160k. That's a rough cost close to 1 credit per resource harvested.
Compared to a personal that's harvesting at 1.5, cost of 750 cred, over 1 week, at 70% you bring in about 10.5k resources. Total maint cost is 5k. Total expenses: 5750 for 10.5k of resources. That's .55 cred/res on a personal vs .88 on heavies.
These numbers are accurate, but pointless. A miner cares about the actual number of resources mined per month. Or, more accurately, the total value of those resources.
So, let's assume your numbers are correct. The heavy produces 350k resources in a month. At a price of 3cr/unit, that's approximately 1050k credits (just over 1 megacredit). The expenses add up to 320k. So, the profit for one month is 730k credits. Using personal harvesters, we're looking at a total resource pull of 75k for a gross of 225k credits minus expenses of about 70k, which leaves a profit of 155k credits. So, in other words, running a heavy harvester will be almost five times more profitable than running a personal if the heavy decays every two months. Hell, we could probably have it decay every one month and the miners would still make more money with heavies than personals (although two months is much more fair). The heavy produces resources less efficiently, but it produces more of them and the extra cost can be made up in volume.
Nice try, though. It's good to see people actually producing factual data.
Adune wrote:
Replacing all the heavies on server every 4 months does not even come CLOSE to the amount of business we've seen in the past month. The total number of archs per server would be cut to maybe 10% of what it is right now.
I don't think anyone's proposals are going to bring back the same level of activity we've seen in the last month. We're still early in the game, and structures are one of the things that need to be built up most heavily. At best, I think we'll lose about 50% of the current architects. It's just that I'd prefer it not be 97%, which is what we'll be looking at without decay.
1. Architect is by far the easiest craft to skill up in if you have the resources available.
2. There are already more architects per server than any other craft class. One of the reasons is because of PA halls. What was the first thing every PA did when this game went live? Started an architect or two, just so they could have a PA hall asap.
So what do you think would happen if harvester decay was implemented? Do you think the miners would come running to us, hat in hand, asking us to make more harvesters? Remember, there is NO mining skill taking up skill points. I know what I would do if I was a miner and harvesters decayed...I'd go up theinstallationstree so fast it would make your head swim, just to supply myself.
Deoka wrote:So what do you think would happen if harvester decay was implemented? Do you think the miners would come running to us, hat in hand, asking us to make more harvesters? Remember, there is NO mining skill taking up skill points. I know what I would do if I was a miner and harvesters decayed...I'd go up the installations tree so fast it would make your head swim, just to supply myself.
The same way that, say, Carbineers climb Weaponsmith so they can build their own guns? Or even Artisan, so they can make their own repair tools? Plus, new ultra-elite professions will appear, sucking up skill points.
Although, in fact, you may be right in the short term. This would be a very good reason not to restrict decay to harvesters, since certainly not everybody that wants a house will pick up architect skills.
Dzmiyin wrote:
The same way that, say, Carbineers climb Weaponsmith so they can build their own guns? Or even Artisan, so they can make their own repair tools? Plus, new ultra-elite professions will appear, sucking up skill points.
Although, in fact, you may be right in the short term. This would be a very good reason not to restrict decay to harvesters, since certainly not everybody that wants a house will pick up architect skills.
Weaponsmithing is a lot of grinding even given plentiful resources. Architect is not. The best carbine in the game doesn't cost 80-180k. (Although composite armor does, but a lot of people mix and match their armor or only wear it when absolutely necessary). To make the best weapon or armor in the game requires investing skill points to master. To make the best harvester in the game requires 20 points (34 if you have NO engineering - all miners have at least novice artisan for survey and most can already make their own personal harvesters),less than a third of the full points to master.
My solution to the renewable income issues would be to implement a restricted amount of deed reclaims for every structure and installation deed. Rather than implement a decay this would be similar however it would allow the current upkeep requirements to stay intact while creating a steady demand for new deeds in the future.
The way it could work is applying a set number of allowable deed reclaimed to any one deed, the amount of reclaims could be determined by the deeds quality and its complexity type. For instance a Personal Mineral Harvester (Small Harvester) could have say 2-6 reclaims, a Mineral Mining Installation (Medium Harvester) could have 6-12, and a Heavy Mineral Mining Installation (Large Harvester) could have 10-20 reclaims. This would allow for a good amount of use from the harvesters spanning over a couple of weeks to months depending on how often a person needed to reclaim the deed and what Size and Quality it was. This would also increase the desire for higher quality deeds which will diversify the Architect profession.
Houses of course would carry significantly fewer allowable reclaims due to the fact that one may not need to relocate their house very often if at all but if they did this would create the circumstance that they would need to purchase a new one after so many moves which will increase smarter more planned out placing.
I feel this would be accepted by most Artisans including those such as Architect who use high amounts of Harvesters. I know as a Master Architect who uses upwards close to 100 Mediums that this would be a bearable cost considering the long term benefits. For instance is every medium harvester I owned had an allowable reclaim amount of say 10 and the resources changed on average once every 4 days assuming I had to even move the harvesters that could give me a good 40 days of extracting which would considerable more then pay for a new deed to obtain an addition 10 reclaims. Its not a huge cost to pay for such a large return.
Please submit your feedback because I am extremely interested in "constructive criticism" or praise so that I can improve upon my idea if needed. Either reply to this in the thread or send me an in game message.
Synd (YV)
Master Architect - Eclipse
Home Area - North of Theed
Deoka wrote:Weaponsmithing is a lot of grinding even given plentiful resources. Architect is not. The best carbine in the game doesn't cost 80-180k. (Although composite armor does, but a lot of people mix and match their armor or only wear it when absolutely necessary). To make the best weapon or armor in the game requires investing skill points to master. To make the best harvester in the game requires 20 points (34 if you have NO engineering - all miners have at least novice artisan for survey and most can already make their own personal harvesters), less than a third of the full points to master.
1. The best carbine in the game costs less, but needs to be replaced more often. (Unless it's used quite rarely, which would be odd.)
2. As you point out, armor prices are actually similar to prices for structures, and armor decays even if it is only used occasionally. (In fact, the armor is generally used for the most difficult fights, which is when it will decay the fastest.)
3. Let's assume that you're right, and that only a small percentage of people decide they need those 20/34 skill points for something else. There is no possible way that this percentage will be 0, which is the percentage that will need new harvesters from architects if there is no decay.
4. As has been mentioned, this would be the perfect time to add benefits for experimentation - experimented items would decay slower. This, of course, would mean that master architects would make harvesters that were functionally better than the ones that people could pump out for themselves.
As I read all these arguments about how people think houses should break down I wonder how much they would appreciate things like resources or skills breaking down. I mean if people think the cycle is good for us then we might as well apply it to everything. Should our stack of iron sit indefinately without rusting, hides sit without decaying, reactive gas sit without seeping an amout out into the air. Maybe any stack of resources should decay 5 percent every day also. Skills get old and rusty too. If you don't make a piece of furniture, build a harvestor or house for a week maybe the skill should drop down a rank showing that you are out of practice. Heck maybe our characters stats should decay over time because we are getting older and it would make sense that as we get older our health, mind and action pools would degrade along with our well being, afterall how many times can you get stomped on by a dune lizard without getting a bit of physical break down.
Yes houses break down in the real world. I also have to hit the toliet occasionally in the real world too and I don't want to do that in my game world.
If you want constant income make furniture because people redecorate all the time. I personally turn a better profit per resource on furniture then I do on houses. You take the casual gamer aspect away from the game when you start to make houses decay and that's what the game is about, this game is not just for the people that run 100 harvestors and bank a few million credits.
Adune,
How about something like this (just putting out an idea):
Personals 1 base and could be experimented up to 1.5 (unable to be moved)
Mediums at 4 and could be expermented up to 5 (each move decays by 20% and 10% a week)
Heavies at 7 and could be experimented up to 8 (each move decays by 15% and 5% a week)
Decay could also be tied to lower efficiency if they wanted it to. Also again I do agree decay should not be used for furniture or houses since there is little value in those other than role playing.
X-EQholic wrote:
They should change maintanence to property tax of some sort. This would solve the idea that your paying maintanence to keep the harvesters in top shop.
If they put decay on harvesters and lower the efficiency of personal harvesters there would be demand forever in making harvesters. This would be very similar to weapons, which seems to be working now.
There will always be demand for harvesters even if there is decay.
This was my idea too, charge by the lots it takes, like property tax.
Then add repair kits to fix harvesters and houses, just like guns. In real life drills need sharpening and house need roofs fixed walls need painted. Make the maintenance lower slowly (very slow on houses) and you need a kit to bring it back to 100%.
If you lost 3-5% a day you could go for over a week before it slows (experimenting could change this) the better made harvester the slower it degrades
60% begins to work slower and need more power than normal
40% down to a half speed
20% 4th speed
10% will stop
0% it could blow up at this point
Then repair kits could add 5-10 % (experimenting could change this also)
House maintenance wouldn’t it really do any thing, would be neat if the house got crappy looking (rusty, paint chipping, doors creaking, cracks in the walls). Or I guess if your house is an eye sore the property tax could go up. Or you can go for 0% it falls down but if you’re gone for a few weeks that would really suck.
What would be really cool is to have a smart house and harvesters, add an optional component to the schematic (A droid brain or what ever it’s called that droids use) if you add this the house could generate a quest to have a player come repair it, and email its owner when it needs something or finished mining.
just a few thoughts
I would agree decay to houses would bea terrible thing to impose on those who spent vast amount of credits to own and maintain a home. And one look at the time frame, how long has this game been out for retail? Under two months I think, and a bunch of us think it's time for the people to bought houses from us to be forced to come back and buy another! I don't know about anyone else but I expect my house to last much longer than two months.
One idea that keeps recurring to me is the possibility that many in our profession are either just plain greedy, or bored with the profession. I'm still very interested in hearing how well other professions are doing financially. I'm sure many of them consider us lucky to haveso many sources available to us. If someone is bored with the profession I doubt there is any real cure.
In the long term I would like to see the items we craft change in appearance, or technology.... something tangible to encourage players to modernize their home / furnishing / factories etc. It certainly isn't time for something like that to occur.... every 3 months, six months or even a year is fine by me. imo, they will be better things in the future then what we have at the moment; and I think what we have now has been good so far.
X-EQholic wrote:Adune,
How about something like this (just putting out an idea):
Personals 1 base and could be experimented up to 1.5 (unable to be moved)
Mediums at 4 and could be expermented up to 5 (each move decays by 20% and 10% a week)
Heavies at 7 and could be experimented up to 8 (each move decays by 15% and 5% a week)
Decay could also be tied to lower efficiency if they wanted it to. Also again I do agree decay should not be used for furniture or houses since there is little value in those other than role playing.
So lower the efficiency of Personals & remove the ability to re-deed. The redeed doesn't change much, that wasn't happening anyways.
Personal Eff: 1.5 / $750 * 7 days * 1,000 = Efficiency/cost factor of 17
Medium: Loses 30% a week (10% from 7 days, 20% from the move: Assumed you re-deed after every shift) So it's good for say 21 days.
Medium Eff: 5 / $15,000 * 21 days * 1,000 = Eff/Cost factor of 7 over 3 weeks
Heavy: Loses 20% a week, so it's good for 5 weeks, or 35 days.
Heavy Eff: 8 / $150,000 * 35 days * 1,000 = Eff/Cost factor of 1.866.
(Note, the final * 1,000 is simply to give us a rough factor that's easy to read, rather than .017, etc.)
As you can see, small harvesters are now BY FAR the most efficient harvester to use. Mediums aren't too bad, but still pale in comparison to the small costs EVEN after you lower the personal harv efficiency.
Under this system, your cost of harvesters would not be a 1 time cost, but a constant reoccuring cost. Because personals are so cheap, their reoccurring cost is negligible. For mediums, and heavies, that cost would be extreme, making them not worth using.
For heavies to be viable, there would need to be next to no decay rate. The end result of that would be what you see now. Everyone eventually moving to heavies, with no repeat business.
Well, I admit I'm not an architect, but I do read the architect forums frequently so I have a bit of feel of the issues that are important to architects.
My 2-credits on what will make architects a more viable profession (I know, not exactly the topic of this thread, but basically this is what everyone here is talking about):
1) Fewer architects. Sorry to say it, but there are simply too many architects. Supply is far outstripping demand, so prices on structures are dropping as architects try to compete with one another. The only solution for this is for some players to get frustrated with the profession and switch to another. I hear there's plenty of demand for weapons and armor... 
2) Do not implement structure decay in any way, shape or form. This will only hurt your profession more. No one is going to come running to you to buy another 150K large house after their last one burnt down. More likely, they will simply give up on owning houses, harvestors, factories, etc altogether.
3) Demand that the devs implement structure experimentation ASAP. This is the only viable way for architects to get repeat business. That is, by experimenting and making better houses, harvestors, etc. so that players will have a good reason to upgrade their structures, just like they upgrade their weapons and armor when they find better ones.
Note that I have purchased many weapons in this game, but never because I wore one of them out. I buy new weapons when I find ones that are better than my current weapon, thus upgrading.
Slim Vargo, Cobantis, Mos Eisley
Hi,
the Maintenance Fee for houses can be explained by renting the lot, not protecting it from decaying, like harvesters. That way it might be an idea for player-cities to have variable maintenace costs for houses, defined by the major.
I dont like the idea of decay also, but there may be a way it could be usefull for the game, when it removes unused items out of the game.
My suggestion:
Have houses decay 1% per RL-Day, after 100 Days, you HAVE to re-deed the house, which means you have to clear it from stuff you dont need to be able to re-deed it. The Lot the house was is sort of "reserved" for 24h to grant you the spot. The Deed needs to be worked on by an atchitect, who can get the deed up to 100% by investing 30 to 50% of the initial ressources needed. If the house is part of a player-city, this can be done without re-deeding by giving the architect access to the terminal, he then can simply restore decay rate.
Of course it should always be possible to repair a deed, eating up the ressources depending on the condition of the deed. However, a Power Generator should be the least whats needed, to set a limit where it makes sense to repair.
Does this sound like nonsense? Yes, sorta, but its a way that covers a lot of interests, like removing items from the game by cleaning up and having the people build their stuff in player cities, cause they then dont need to re-deed the house.
Read ya,
Moepple