Architect Archive

So a Personal Harvester uses approximately 250 units of material to construct. They sell cheap, they're cheap to maintain and easy to replace when resource deposits shift. It uses 1 building allocation out of your 10.

A Medium Harvester uses 4,107 units of material to construct. On my server they sell for at least 6x the cost of a Personal Harvester, but they pull up resources at 2x the rate. They use 2 of your building allocation points. I don't have the exact figures on its maintenance costs, but following the design logic so far, I imagine it's double the cost of a Personal Harvester.

Net effect: Upgrading from Personal to Medium is a zero-sum advantage in terms of how much material you can rake in.

Why exactly would anyone in their right mind EVER want Medium Harvesters the way they're designed? There is no advantage except they look cooler. There are however, a pile of disadvantages to using Medium Harvesters over Personal. They cost prohibitively more, and could potentially need to be replaced every single week. At the same time 5 Medium Harvesters don't net you any more raw resources to build with or sell than 10 Personal Harvesters do.

This needs to be looked at, and Medium/Heavy Harvesters need to have some kind of advantage. Either make them use 1 building allocation each, or make them pull in 3-6x the normal rate that a Personal Harvester does. It's just silly that an advanced model Harvester that uses 16.5x the resources to build over a Harvester that someone with Engineering3 can make, with absolutely no practical advantage or reason to do so.

As an architect looking to sell these things to my customers, I can't even justify trying to convince someone to buy one. They're a giant waste of money. Players are much better served using lots of Personal Harvesters than the late advanced models. Please fix this.

Haji

Novice Installations Architect, Eclipse

Cause they look cool. And if you have a factory and house, you appreciate the fact that Medium Harvesters only use ONE lot...not two.

Omni.

That is right... medium harvesters = 1 lot

My PA switched over to Medium Harvesters for several reasons:

1. Twice the output of resources using only 1 lot. Saves us time when getting our PA Members to donate lots and placing them.

2. Fewer harvesters mean less time maintaining them each day.

3. Building Medium Harvesters gives us more XP than building personals.

Medium and large harvesters are about lot efficiancy. They still take 1 lot and they produce an ammount comparable to multiple small ones. It is also a LOT less micromanagement doing 2 medium than 4 small ones.

When doing things like architect solo you would need to maximize the ammount of resources you could collect with limited lots so you will probably go with the biggest harvesters you can support.


Kaid

If they only take one lot, then I'd say they are definitely better. Is the cost to re-deed them the same as personal harvestors or more? I would think it wouldn't matter for architects, anyway. My current strategy is to just create new ones when resources shift. I can make my own, and while it does take resources, it also gives XP. You have to get XP somewhere, why not take advantage of needing to shift a harvestor location to get some that way?

It does cost more to re-deed. $3000 for the medium, I don't know about the large. I use to just destroy when resources shifted, but now that I am constructing PA halls, I can't get enough resources. I want to upgrade to the larges but I will need to wait until I get some extra resources or dare say it I may actually have to buy from another Architect.

re-deeding is double like everything else..

Even without the 1 lot cost, which is obviously the reason to have one, it saves huge time having to run around and maintain vs personal harvesters.. On the other hand, they take more space and are way more restricted for building.. I can place personals in spots where I cant place mediums.. I mean on an open field with no obstructions I can put personals, but the whole field will be yellowed out for the medium..