Architect Archive
Thread: The Construction Tree
What should be done with it?
Should it be re-vamped?
Should it be removed?
Should it stay the same?
It seems the largest concern is that since wedon't getexperiment bonuses the skill bonus the tree provides are useless.
Personally I like Cyberthugg's idea of changing Construction all together andhave itprovide structures that are business oriented. Move Experimentation bonus overto the Furniture tree.
The construction tree should become:
Terraforming.
If they can do it with mob lairs and camps, they can make it manual for architects.
I am not for any major changes to this branch until I get the word form SOE that they "ain't ever going to give architects experementation bonuses,period." I just proposed a way to impliment experementation into architecture in your "Week 2 - preliminary" thread. Here it is:
I propose that with experementation you can improve the maintenance rate and power consumption to a max of 20% (e.g., maint 20 becomes maint 16), or increase production up to 10% (with a 100% resource ceiling of course). A series of great successes from a master fishy architect should be able to max one and make some progress into a second, but no more than that. Quality of materials should be involved in the equasion the way it is in Weaponsmith (i.e., the higher quality metals allow you a higher potential in experentation). These will be small differences, but with harvesters that is more than enough. These things run 24/7, and over that period of time you will save a lot of money with even minor alterations in performance. This proposal benifits architects by:
- Giving us an element of customizing and specializing our harvesters
- Giving us the ability to sell higher quailty items for higher prices, and these will sell well to anyone who knows what they are doing.
- Give everyone a reason to work up the experementation branch; give that branch a reason to exist
The problem is that we don't have experemenation, not that we have a useless branch. Keep the branch the same. Impliment experemenation!!
The problem with experimentation is this. It's a simple developer concept that all games follow.
Risk vs Reward.
If we introduced improved harvesters and lower maint fees through experimentation, there's no system that would pose as arisk.
That is why decay has been such a controversial topic. People want experimentation but don't want decay. There has to be a balance, we can't just have all good things and no bad side effects.
Weapons, Armor, Clothing, they all decay. Structures don't. Until there is a risk involved, improved harvesters through experimentation won't happen.
/bow down
It had never occured to me, but that is a GREAT skil to add in! Let's say at level one, you can do a little "smothing". For example, you can remove any large rocks, or shallow dips or rises in the land which might prevent setting down a harvester. (These skills should have a huge mind and action hit associate with them, so people can't just run about flattenting the entire planet, and the terraforming should go away if "x" amount of time passes without a player structure being placed there.) This would allow more efficient packing of harvesters or small houses.
At level two, you could possibly flatten a slightly larger section of land, with slightly deeper dips or rises, and maybe do "Beginning Swamp Draining" where you could push back the boundries of water a little to make room to fit a structure in.
By level four, you could fill reasonable sized valley type depressions, or flatten a small portion of a fairly steep hillside into buildable land, or raise up a PA hall sized chunk of lake or riverbed to extend the shorline for your structure.
Perhaps at Master Architect, you could get the ability to build an island up out of the middle of a body of water large enough to put a large house on.
(I know, I'm not offering my own possibilities. Sorry, it's early. I just think both of those approaches have a lot of merit.)
I guess what we are really asking SOE to do is take a look at experentation and make a decision. They have put if off too long. Either kill experentation for architecture entirely and readjust the entire architect skill tree to compensate, or impliment a real tangible reason to experement.
A quick fix could be to just put on the item stats the hidden veriables people say already exist. For example, if experementation on a componenent reduces your chance of failure later on, well show us. Put the "Success Mofidier %" on the component stat list.
Something.
ANYTHING, to give us a reason to use that branch.
Shinywalrus wrote:
The construction tree should become:
Terraforming.
If they can do it with mob lairs and camps, they can make it manual for architects.
An interesting idea, but not something for us. We're Architects, not Terraformers, perhaps later an Elite profession will allow people to mold the landscape with an ability, however if something like this were added it would have to be more of an Artisan / Scout thing (Survey and Exploration).
Now if you were to suggest that Architects could make a Terraforming structure that over time would level the area around it to a flat surface, that would be acceptable.
I know terraforming sounds like a great skill but can you imagine what the terrain would look like a year from now? It basically be 90 degree intersects between mountains and plains.
Everytime a resource shifted we'd have our group of 'formers move to the highest concentration and form the area. After a year of gameplay not only would there be large flat plains, but the server terrain would vary too much and possibly interfere with story lines.
Just my 2 cents
~Delana
Delana wrote:
I know terraforming sounds like a great skill but can you imagine what the terrain would look like a year from now? It basically be 90 degree intersects between mountains and plains.
Everytime a resource shifted we'd have our group of 'formers move to the highest concentration and form the area. After a year of gameplay not only would there be large flat plains, but the server terrain would vary too much and possibly interfere with story lines.
Just my 2 cents
~Delana
Excellent point
