Architect Archive

There have been literally hundreds of posts all asking the same thing in different ways, so I felt it worth puting down what I believe are the commonly agreed pre-requisites for making top notch harvesters, and the guidelines I have followed successfully, here goes:

1. When making the main component (Ore Mining Unit/Fluidic Drill Pump/Harvesting Mechanism etc.) use only resources with high HR/SR/UT. Preferably these stats should all show above 900. The formula for calculating on this is HR+SR+UT+UT and the final result of this sum should be as close to 4000 as possible, but above 3600 for each resource used to be safe. It is possible to have one of your resources slightly below this as long as the other resources used compensates with higher stats, however, this carries a risk and only trial and error will tell you whether this will work or not, at least until somebody is prepared to try out different combinations to see how the varying quantities of different resources used calculate into the final result. The exception to the HR/SR/UT rule is for chemicals. When using chemicals it should be noted that they do not carry any HR (not suprisingly), other chemicals (e.g. Fiberplast) usually have a low SR rating, DO NOT USE THESE ! The low SR rating will pull down the final quality. So either find a chem with UT and SR over 900, or use something like Lube Oil or Liquid Petrochemicals whic do not list SR at all. Why ? Because if the stat is not listed it will not be calculated in, therefore the formula becomes SR+UT+UT (should be 2700-3000 total) or UT+UT (1800-2000 total). When assembling you should be looking for an efficiency % (extraction rate) result of 26 or above preferably. Experiment this unit all the way up to 92%+. If you get the required result (a BER 4 for components used in Mediums/BER 6 in heavies) WITH a 92%+ then think about making a schematic for a factory run if you have enough resources, it will save you risking criticals failures in future, make as many in the factory as you can.

2. ALL other components can be made out of the cheapest rubbish you can lay your hands on. None of the stats matter for things such as walls, generator turbines etc.

3. For the final assembly use your nice high quality main component, all your other low quality components you have made and once again the BEST resources you can get. The rules here are the same as for the main component, HR+SR+UT+UT = 3600-4000. Again the same applies to the Chemical as stated above. Now experiment until you reach the desired BER. If you have done this right you should find that when you start to experiment you will be able to experiment to the max on efficiency (extraction rate). You will be able to tell instantly if this is possible by looking at the experimentation bar, if the last slot is elongated slightly you will be able to make it, it is possible to reach the top BER even if you do not see the last bar, but it will be risky. Pray you do not get any critical failures during experimentation as this will bring down the final BER. So, if you reach 10/13 BER (depending on whether you are making medium or heavies) and still have an experimentation point left STOP EXPERIMENTING, otherwise you risk dropping the BER with a crit. DO NOT use the last experimentation point on the storage capacity unless you like to gamble, a crit here will not only affect the storage but it will also bring down the BER. (nobody knows why, but it does).

4. Now you should have a deed for a top rated harvester, you can either make this, or you can make a schematic for a factory run, but bear in mind that in a factory, ALL the components and resources must be IDENTICAL to make multiple harvesters. The exception here (there always seems to be an exception, doesn't there) is walls, which can be any walls you have available.

I hope this helps anybody who is struggling with BER, I also hope it can reduce the number of questions we keep getting over and over.

Please feel free to add any corrections or additions to the above.

Excellent post. Bump.

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So, if you reach 10/13 BER (depending on whether you are making medium or heavies) and still have an experimentation point left STOP EXPERIMENTING, otherwise you risk dropping the BER with a crit. DO NOT use the last experimentation point on the storage capacity unless you like to gamble, a crit here will not only affect the storage but it will also bring down the BER. (nobody knows why, but it does).

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I just made a BER 10 Medium (experimented upto 84%, the minimum I needed with my materials) and used the last experiment point in storage capacity and CRIT FAILED. It DID NOT lower the efficiency or BER Very good thing.

Regarding Chems for the final and the main components. You say either use high UT/SR Polymers or no UT/SR Lube Oil....but which is better.

Lube Oil is the best, it counts as 1000 UT 1000 SR, don't bother with anything but Lube Oil (luckily it isn't a rare resource)

One other point to new Architects (like me), the Structure Assembly you get from the Furniture line does make a difference. If you get an 'OK' /Moderate/Good Assembly your beginning Experimentation Efficiency will be lower than if you had gotten a Great or Amazing Assembly. If you get a 'Crit Fail' during Assembly, cancel the crafting session and just redo it (since you don't lose any of the material).

Correction: Lube oil is NOT treated like UT 1000 SR 1000 at all. If it were, then it would make the mix BETTER. It doesn't - it just doesn't make it worse.

I did this in another post but can't find it now - this time I'll keep it for the future.

Imagine that you have a schematic that needs 1 unit of metal and 1 unit of chemical. Imagine that UT is the only thing that matters. Your metal has a UT of 750. You have three chemicals (chemA, chemB, and chemC), with UT of 1000, 500, and *none*, respectively.

When you put things together in a schematic, the weighted average of the attributes of all the stuff is calculated. So look what happens with chemA (simplified):

(750 + 1000) / (1 + 1) = 1750 / 2 = 875 - in this case the chemical, because it had a HIGHER UT, was able to improve the mixture's final score.

Here is chemB:

(750 + 500) / (1 + 1) = 1250 / 2 = 625 - in this case the chemical, because it had a LOWER UT, was responsible for *lowering* the mixture's final score.

Here is chemC:

(750 + null) / (1 + null) = 750 / 1 = 750 - in this case the chemical had *no impact* on the final score, one way or another.

So, when we say "either use a chemical with *very* high HR, SR, UT *OR* use lube oil", we a using this understanding to say "either improve your mix or do nothing to the mix". Since architects focus almost exclusively on minerals and gather high HR, SR, UT steel, metal, and ore, it typically is the case that you have good scores from those. At that point you can search all over for a chemical that *beats* that score (which is likely rare and expensive) OR you can just use Lube Oil and not worry about it at all - let your minerals carry the load.

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ievb4fun wrote:

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So, if you reach 10/13 BER (depending on whether you are making medium or heavies) and still have an experimentation point left STOP EXPERIMENTING, otherwise you risk dropping the BER with a crit. DO NOT use the last experimentation point on the storage capacity unless you like to gamble, a crit here will not only affect the storage but it will also bring down the BER. (nobody knows why, but it does).

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I just made a BER 10 Medium (experimented upto 84%, the minimum I needed with my materials) and used the last experiment point in storage capacity and CRIT FAILED. It DID NOT lower the efficiency or BER Very good thing.

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you were lucky... sometimes failing on storage experimentation will lower the BER. simply put, until soe anounce that this is a bug and have fixed it (yeah, right) then it is not worth the risk unless you are very rich and have millions of units of resourses you can afford to lose to get that perfect extractor schimatic.

There is one more point I would like to make, which IS included in my original post, and which has been mentioned occasionally, but for some reason seems to get lost because of all the posts extolling the virtues of Lube Oil. Although I mostly use Lube Oil for the reasons stated, I am not in the least bit reliant upon it as my 'High Quality'chemical. There are alternatives that are just as good, there are the already mentioned Fiberplasts etc with 900+ stats, or what I use if I cannot get hold of lube oil, or if it is in higher concentrations for my chem harvesters to pull. Known Liquid Petrochems. These work and they also lack the stats so are a 'perfect' substitute for lube oil. I always pull whichever comes in higher concentration.

btw,I appreciate all comments to this post, if anybody has anything to add, or if there are any questions still left unanswered then please reply, I will be keeping an eye on the thread and will be using all comments to build up what will hopefully be the 'definitive guide' to assembling max BER harvesters, which I will put up as a new post once this thread has run it's course. (at which point of course Sony will change experimentation or something to make this useless again!)

I have primarily used liquid petro, because I find that easier to buy on the open market. I don't like wasting a harv on chem, for the relatively small amount of chem I use. I'd rather have that harv on ore.

Also, regarding which is better a high quality fiberplast or liquid petro/lube oil, I would answer: It depends. What's the malliability of the fiberplast? High malliablity will help reduce crit fails, especially considering steel usually has a low malliability. Also SR/HR/UT (not sure which of those fiberplast has), which is even higher than your steel would be a good thing. Every bit helps.

Still, that fiberplast (especially Tat) could be more valuable to another crafter than yourself, so why waste it on a final build.

One of the things I've noticed on the 'crit fail on hopper reduced ber' problem. This only seems to happen if your harvestor is right on the cutoff for the higher ber rate. If you are 2 or 3% over the cutoff point then you should be fine. I'm suspecting that the problem is that internally the game keeps track of ratings to either 1/10th or 1/100th of a percent, and when you crit fail, every rating gets dropped to an round number. If it is those fractions of a percent on the OMU/Drill and final combine that are pushing into the higher rate, then you lose.

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ZenDragonMLS wrote:
Correction: Lube oil is NOT treated like UT 1000 SR 1000 at all. If it were, then it would make the mix BETTER. It doesn't - it just doesn't make it worse.

I did this in another post but can't find it now - this time I'll keep it for the future.

Imagine that you have a schematic that needs 1 unit of metal and 1 unit of chemical. Imagine that UT is the only thing that matters. Your metal has a UT of 750. You have three chemicals (chemA, chemB, and chemC), with UT of 1000, 500, and *none*, respectively.

When you put things together in a schematic, the weighted average of the attributes of all the stuff is calculated. So look what happens with chemA (simplified):

(750 + 1000) / (1 + 1) = 1750 / 2 = 875 - in this case the chemical, because it had a HIGHER UT, was able to improve the mixture's final score.

Here is chemB:

(750 + 500) / (1 + 1) = 1250 / 2 = 625 - in this case the chemical, because it had a LOWER UT, was responsible for *lowering* the mixture's final score.

Here is chemC:

(750 + null) / (1 + null) = 750 / 1 = 750 - in this case the chemical had *no impact* on the final score, one way or another.

So, when we say "either use a chemical with *very* high HR, SR, UT *OR* use lube oil", we a using this understanding to say "either improve your mix or do nothing to the mix". Since architects focus almost exclusively on minerals and gather high HR, SR, UT steel, metal, and ore, it typically is the case that you have good scores from those. At that point you can search all over for a chemical that *beats* that score (which is likely rare and expensive) OR you can just use Lube Oil and not worry about it at all - let your minerals carry the load.

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exactly... there is a thread on the weaponsmith boards about this... we have gotten it down to the point where it appears (and is solidly backed up with number crunching) that EACH unit of metal is figured into the final calculations not just the different slots... but EVERY last unit... say you have a 100% UT schematic that calls for 100 copper, 200 alum, and 300 units of steel... that is {(100 x UT) +(200 x UT) + (300 x UT)}/ total number of units... say this number is 792... the final experimentation result will be 79% max... an increase of 5% UT on the 300 steelwould be more effcient than a 10% UT better copper... would need BOTH a better copper and a better alum to see the same results as the 5% better steel...

Right - it is a weighted average based on the proportion of each resource to the mix. So if you try to "cheap out" by using some sub-standard metal for that "6500 metal" in a heavy gas harvester, it will kill your results.