Architect Archive

Having become a novice architect recently, I have watched debate over item decay and ongoing viability of this profession with great interest. For crafting professions like weapon and armour smiths, it seems self-evident that simply making items decay will provide them with a steady income as players upgrade or replace their gear as it wears out. The difficulty in applying that same theory to houses, factories and resource harvestors is that, quite simply, it doesn't work. So the dilemma is, how does an architect to make money in the long term.

I think the solution may be in the maintenance fees. As it stands now, weapons, armour, and other crafted items do not have a mantenance fee associated with them. Buildings and harvestors do on the other hand. The theory is (I suspect) that there needs to be a money sink to draw cash back out of the economy. So why not siphon off a percentage of that maintenance fee back to the architect that built the structure in the first place? It does not have to be a massive chunk to make it a decent income for the architect. Rising profits do to skill improvments would reflect the architects ability to be more cost effective. If the base charge was 2% with an additional 2% at Construction I, II, III & IV and 5% at Master Architect (for a total of 15% for the MA) what would the daily income look like?

structure/approx maintenance cost per day/income for novice arch/inc for master

small house / 384 / 7.68 / 42.6
medium house/ 816 / 16.32 / 122.4
large house / 1200 / 24 / 180
PA hall / 2400 / 48 / 360

personal harvester / 720 / 14.4 / 108
mining installation / 1440 / 28.8 / 216
heavy installation / 2160 / 43.2 / 324

any power generator / 1440 / 28.8 / 216

any factory / 1200 / 24 / 180

Although this is not bank breaking income, there is some decent potential here for this sort of thing. If a novice architect were to have 40 personal harvestors out there, 10 small houses and his first equipment factory, he would be bringing in close to 700 credits a day. He would also be saving money on maintenance of his own harvestors (since he would be making the income from them).

I think this same scheme could be used for droid engineers as I see a similar problem for them, looking briefly at that profession.

Does this seem reasonable or am I totally out to lunch on this? Are there other proposals for long term architect survival out there? It would be great to see architects getting past the "we are so screwed" stage and work on producing suggested solutions like this and others I have seen in this forum.

Alerius
Novice Architect

Interesting idea, I like it, but I hate to be the spoiler. over the long run if this system was to be used you would end up with a architect income would that would be so big he wouldnt have to work any more then be able to drop that skill and become something else. Aint gonna happen.

Sorry, I really do like it and it would be so nice.

Roach - Roach Mining inc.

this is an idea that has been suggested by a few others I've seen. One thing they added was that the architect would only receive the income as long as they held the skill that enabled them to build it to begin with.

To be honest, I don't ever see this happening. The devs put the maintenance fees in to be a money sink and get credits out of the economy. by shifting those credits back into the architects pockets they remove part of the sink. If you raise the maintenance costs higher to adjust for it, you just find fewer people purchasing the items to begin with.

Not to mention I don't know if this is code that could be easily written and tracked. I'm certainly not against receiving free income, but I don't think this idea will happen.

Out of curiousity does anyone know of a link where someone has compiled a list of professions and an honest income average per hour played for each of the professions. Not being a Dancer or a Musician and not knowing any better I amreallycurious how some of the other professions manage to make any credits outside of missions.