Architect Archive
Thread: Ideas to make our profession better
These are some ideas I was considering today and wanted to submit them to the group for consideration...
First, some experimentation stuff:
Installationdeeds should contain the following stats:
1) Power reserves - always 0 for new deeds, not experimentable, explained later
2) Maintanance Rate - (also on house/PA hall deeds) affected by the Durability experimentation value, max change is base-10 at 100% experimentation (number not set in stone of course)
3) Power Consumption - affected by the Efficiency experimentation value, max change is base-15 at 100% experimentation (once again, modifiable for balance)
4) Harvest Spec Rate - (harvesters only) affected by the Effectiveness experimentation value, max change is base+(base/4) at 100% experimentation (another one not set in stone)
5)Manufacture Rate - (factories only) affected by the Effectiveness experimentation value, could be time/complexity which would mean smaller values are better, or complexity/time which would mean bigger values are better. What the value would be at 100% experimentation depends on the units you want to use. Currently factories work at 8secs/complexity (which is 7.5complexity/minute).
These stats should be clearly visible on the deed details window. Note that house and PA hall deeds will only have the maintanance rate stat.
I also think some changes to the redeeding process are in order. First of all, there should be seperate "Destroy" and "Redeed" commands in the radial menu. The destroy command will still have the required re-issue of the command within 30 seconds, and always destroys the deed. All money in the maintanance pool should be refunded to the owner, but all power will be lost. If the user issues the redeed command, the structure is checked for any damage. If it is damaged, the user will be told that the structure must have no damage to be reclaimed. If the maintanance pool does not have enough money for redeeding, the owner should be told this. If both conditions are met, it tells the owner to issue the redeed command again to reclaim the deed. When this is done, the required redeeding cost is removed from the maintanance pool and the remaining money is refunded to the owner. As far as power, this is where the power reserves stat on the deeds I mentioned above comes into play. The deed stores the amount of power that was left on the structure. So if your harvester had 352.3324 units of power on it, the deed, when reclaimed, would have a power reserves stat of 352.3324, and when you placed this deed, the harvester would have that much power. This solves the problem of losing power when redeeding a structure while avoiding the complicated problem of what kind of power was placed in the harvester/factory (since these structures only remember amounts, not types).
Another idea I had has to do with renewable revenue for buildings. I think all structures should have their maintanance rates increase slowly while they are in use (no increase while in deed form or not running). It wouldn't be anything drastic. Say something like 1cr every4 days or so for installations and maybe like 1cr every week for houses. So after about a month, a harvester's maintanance rate will have increased 7 or 8 credits and a house's only about 4. To combat this, there should be refurbishing kits that are constructed by architects. These kits will come in various shapes and sizes... There will be installation kits and house kits. (House kits will work on PA halls).
This is how I envision it working: Each building will have a "refurbishing factor" which could be something like the number of resources that go into the building divided by 100. So the factor for a personal harvester would be about 2.5, but for a large mineral harvester it would be closer to 275. Refurbishing kits would have refurbish values. A large installation refurbishing kit could require something like 7000 total resources to make and have a refurbishing value of 1400. When used on an installation deed, you divide the refurbish value by the deed's refurbishing factor, and subtract that number from the maintanance rate (but never go below the original value when the deed was made). So if you have a large harvester deed (with the refurbish factor of 275) who's original maintanance rate was 45 and has gone up to 52 from use. You use the large harvester refurbishing kit on the deed, and it reduces the maintanance rate by 1400/275 - 5.09 down to 46.91 (the value would always be rounded down so in this case it would be 46, but would be 47 pretty soon from maintanance increases). If the deed's maintanance were, say only 48 and the kit was used, then only enough of its "refurbishing value" would be used to bring the maintanance rate down to 45, and the rest would remain on the kit and it could be used on another deed. Requiring that it be used on a deed (as opposed to the deployed structure) willdiscourage people from just using the kit every few days to elminate the maintanance increase altogether.
Of course, this kind of thing would suck for houses, so instead of being used on the deed, the refurbishing kit could be likea piece of furniture you set in the house then activate, at which point no one (not even the owner) can enter it for perhaps an hour or whatever (thereby discouraging constant use of the kit), and when that is over, it will have it's reduced maint rate and if the refurbish kit is used up, it will be gone, otherwise it will still be sitting there.
If you run the numbers for harvesters, this would mean that people would have to buy the equivalent of 1/4th of a new harvester from an architectevery few weeks if they want to keep their harvesters from becoming too expensive to maintain. This number may seem too high or low or what not, but like everything else in this list of ideas, the numbers can be tweaked to a more balanced setup.
I think this system is nice because it doesn't force people to do anything like decay would (Got to get that repair kit before my harvester decays to nothing!). It also gives architects renewable revenue without removing any economic money sinks like maintanance. In fact, this system would increase this money sink due to the slowly increasing maintanance rates.
When you look at this system though, it does increase the amount of money needed to be spent to maintain harvesters. Many players complain that it's too hard, but the devs have stated they expect it to be difficult. Obviously these ideas would need a great deal of refinement if they are to be implemented.
Arkalius wrote:
it reduces the maintanance rate by 1400/275 - 5.09 down to 46.91
That should read it reduces the maintanance rate by 1400/275= 5.09 down to 46.91
Sorry bout that 
Arkalius,
We can't even get the Devs to fix the Harvesting Mechanism schematic, or acknowledge that it's been a problem since beta. What use is there trying to add new stuff?
Kristi Morningstar, Master Architect, Chilastra, Tatooine, near Mos Eisley, House Arcanum
MMM, interesting....
please peruse the following:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=architect&message.id=13681
Is there some kind of problem with discussing new possibilities? Seems like everyone wants to talk about renewable revenue in Zarcath's thread...