Architect Archive
Thread: Harvesters. Would you clear up some issues.
I thought I would come to the professionals with my questions. I am a Master Droid Engineer and Master Artisan and I would like to know what is the most effecient way to mine/harvest resources?
I realize there is a substantial output for the heavy harvesters, but in the long run, what is most cost effective way to get the most resources in the same anount of time (assuming all things are equal)? Right now I havehave 8 personal mineral harvesters going with two wind generators. I know there has to be a better method then this. To play catch up, I sometimes have to shut down two harvesters and open two more wind generators to balance things out.
Is it cost effective to transplant the heavy harvesters when the sources dry up for a week, or just wait till SOE resupplies the area?
Thanks in advance for your help and advice.
Goss
MDE, MA, Novice Pistoleer, Rifleman 4, Yada, Yada, Yada, Chilistra Server
First thing I would recommend is upgrading your harvesters. I would replace your winds with fusion. This may be a bit expensive but in the long run will be more cost effective. Radioactives usually have a better PE than wind which means you get more energy for harvesting the same amount. Anything over 500PE is a bonus. For example on Wanderhome a couple weeks ago we had some 996PE Radioactives. That means one unit counts as 1.996 energy units. Almost 2:1 energy. So putting just two harvesters on a mid 70's spot I was able to get over 200k units of this stuff. It's going to last me awhile.
Next I'd upgrade your harvesters. Mediums right now seem to be the most cost efficient. They use less power than a heavy and are cheaper to redeed. Also are generally far cheaper to purchase than heavies. The main advantage of the heavy is that it can mine 30% more material over the same time period (BER13 heavy vs BER 10 medium). The main factor you will need to consider in this is how much material will you be going thru? If you are going thru a large amount of materials you're better off getting the heavies.
As for whether to move the heavies or leave them sit during a resource shift. That completely depends on what's available to mine when the shift occurs. Also on what materials you need. If it's less than 50% it generally isn't worth mining. If there is a rare resource that spawns or something that you really need, then it is a wise business decision to move the harvesters so you can mine it.
One thing you may want to consider. Get a couple heavies and all the rest as mediums. You can use the heavies on the materials you need most or for those rare spawns. Then use the mediums for everything else.
Sir, you need of heck of an upgrade. No 1. Take those personals to the back shed and shoot them, those and the wind generators inside. Personals have a BER (Base Extraction Rate: rate in which resources are harvested) of only 2. I would highly suggest you approach an master architect and have him upgrade your fleet to Medium BER 10 Mineral harvestors. I suggest medium's BER's over heavy BER 13 harvestors due to cost, you'll be saving alot. If you find a descent arch, the price you pay for 2 BER 10's would either equal or be slightly less than what you'd pay for a heavy BER 13 heavy mineral harvestor. As for your power, i'm hopeing the body of those winds are laying next to those personals. Upgrade to fusion ion generators. They harvest radtioacrtive power and is an excellent power source.Max fusion BER is 14. If your looking to save some cash go with a solor generator that's experimented to it's max BER. I don't know what those were, maybe 10 as well, since i have not crafted solars in some time.
Now lets examine your sots. I'm guessing you have a house/shop, that's takes of 2 of your 10 lots. I'd reconstruct your fleet as such. 6 lots harvestors, 2 lots power. Now, if you had fusion gens, you can drop 2 on a very excellent spot, harvest power on both for a week and you will have a very good haul of power, allowing you the flexibility to pull them up and work with that power till it's spent, with the 2 freed lots you can place more harvestors down, and boost your resources by 10 fold. Now, please keep in him, when you approach and arch for an upgrade, make sure you tell him "I'd like an BER 10 medium harvestor and a BER 14 fusion". If you do not specificy the BER you may get machines with thier standards rates. Standard rate on a medium harvestor is4 and on a fusion 8 or 10 believe. Archs have the ability to experiment on the BER, so asking for a BER 10 harvestor and a BER 14 fusion tell him that he needs to experiment on them and get you more rate. I promise you, with these upgraded machines, you will be in a VERY better position than you are now. Twowind gens can no way harvest enough power to support 8 personals. You'd be chaseing your tale to get more power in them at the day's end. If you do upgrade power harvestor wise, though i suggest a fusion, cost wise a BER 10 solar generatorwould be a great buy. Ask the arch what's the max BER he can get a solar to. I am guessing 10 since all medium max is a 10, so i think it's safe to say a solar generator can get to a BER of 10. Standard base on a solar is medium is 4, so with one 10, you'll be harvesting more than double energy with just one. Times that by 2 machines and you are in a very good place.
Now i'll suggest you use the harvesting formula so you can do your own calculations based on what machines your going to buy. The way to calculate how much a harvestor will harvest in the day goes by this formula: (% of concentration x BER) x 60.(Sum of % of concentration x BER x 60) x 24hrs. Ok ok, hehe let me not give you horrible flash backs of high school math. You multiply the % concentration of the resources your harvesting by the BER rate of the machine. Answer you get is how much the harvestor will harvest in a minute. Times that by 60 (60 is minutes) and you'll get how much resource are harvesting per hour. Now multiply that number by 24hrs and you get the number of resource harvested in a day. This forumla will aid you in seeing if purchasing a BER 10 medium compared to a BER 13 heavy harvestor is worth the cash. By using this formula, you analyze what you can be happy with in terms of resource harvesting. Hope this helps you. If you are on the kettemoore server i will be glad to help you with your much needed upgrade. Just send me an in-game e-mail or /tell. Good luck
Dronayus -Brig-
Master Architect/Master Artisan/Master Merchent
Kettemoor Server
To clear up one thing. Reason i suggest medium BER 10's over heavy BER 13's is both the cost and construction. Medium mineral harvestors take less resources than their heavy counter parts, thus allowing an arch to make these much easier. On my server, arch are charging $65 to $70K for Medium BER 10's, As for a BER 13, those are going for a good $130K, $150K to (to my shock) $200K. Now doing the math, you can see by purchasing 2 medium BER 10's would be equal or slightly less than the cost of just one heavy BER 13. Let's analyze this mathematically. Let's say we are on a 80% steel. We're going to assest a situation where you can afford to spend only $150K on harvestor uprade for the time being:
BER 13 Heavy harvestor:
.80 x 13 = 10.4 harvested per minute
10.4 x 60 seconds = 624 per hour
624 x 24hrs = 14976 of steel harvested per day.
Cost of Harvestor: $130 to $150K ($200k for these is too much)
BER 10 Medium Harvestor:
.80 x 10 = 8 harvested per minute
8 x 60 seconds = 480 per hour
480 x 24hrs = 11520 of steel harvested per day.
11520 x 2 harvestors = 23040 harvested per day.
Cost of Harvestor: $65 to $70K each.
Results: Differnce of 8064 resources.
Now, like i said, this is if your looking to save money. If you can afford a fleet of heavy harvestors to replace those personals, go for it, but to save cash wise and get a great rate, a BER 10 medium harvestor is a great buy. But Waste93's suggestion are good as well. But for a cost effective method, this way will aid you operate in a much better way than you are doing now.
Dronayus -Brig-
Master Architect/Master Artisan/Master Merchent
Kettemoor Server
I've done all of the math and charts and colored pictures with circles and arrows and all that stuff.
Heavies win - period.
Yes, in terms of "cost per unit mined", heavies are slightly more expensive than mediums. So what?
Let's take some very real numbers:
Cost of power = 0.25 per unit of *energy* (This can vary from under 0.10 (fusion on high conc, high PE spot) to over 1.00 (you are buying in bulk) - it doesn't really change the shape of the results.
Selling cost of the resource mined = 2.5 credits per unit (you pick your own number here)
Resource concentration = 60% (low for most minerals, high for ore 
)
Redeed cost spread out over 7 days.
======================
BER4 personal harvester pumps up 3,456 units a day for a cost of 1,084. That's a cost of 0.31 credits per unit and a profit (after paying maintainance and power) of 7,556 a day.
BER10 medium harvester pumps up 8,640 units a day for a cost of 2,169. That's a cost of 0.25 credits per unit and a profit (after paying maintainance and power) of 19,431 a day.
BER13heavy harvester pumps up 11,232 units a day for a cost of 3,253. That's a cost of 0.29 credits per unit and a profit (after paying maintainance and power) of 24,827 a day.
======================
Oh my! Will you look at that! A medium beats a heavy on operating costs! 0.25 is less than 0.29!
I'll take my extra 2500 a day in resources or extra 5400 a day in profit and walk whistling away from the people talking about "cost per unit mined".
If you are currently using BER4 personals (and if you are using non-BER4 personals then get some *right now*), and making use of that 7,500 credits of day in profit, I could give you a BER13 and you could pay me back160K list price in less than 10 days.
Harvesters are money-making machines - period. They are the only aspect of the game that makes money while you sleep.
Sorry, forgot to address a few things.
Dronayusis right in that if you have a fixed amount of money right now you can use mediums as a stepping stone. This is assuming you don't set up any "creative terms" with your architect. Get 1-2 mediums now and allocate all of the profits from them to getting a fleet of heavies.
On redeeding. I used to go out to my harvesters when a resource had shifted, look at what was available under it, and if it was something I wanted at a concentration that was "ok", I'd just start it pumping that new stuff. I saved the redeed cost, the fuss and bother of surveying for the new stuff, and the fuss and bother of tearing down and setting up.
Then I did the math. It turns out that redeeding for as little as a 3% increase in concentration will break even in a week! So by all means, switch the harvester to the new stuff while you go and do a little surveying, but if you find 5-10% higher a few hundreds of meters away - *move the harvester*.
Great information here. Thanks to all the responders! My suggestions are to the novices (like myself) that can NOT afford the cost of med. harvesters, yet.
I have been using personals because my archtect skills are not YET up to snuff when experimenting on Med. Harvesters. But I found some on a local vendor before I knew what I was buying. They only had a BER of 4. In retrospect, they were not all that expensive, compared to other things in the game, but at the time, it was a significant investment for me.
Imagine my surprise when I found I could make my personals have a BER of 4! Not only that, med and large have a huge drawback, their footprint. Which on Corellia, makes them hard to place on the highest concentration, unless of course you are the first to place after a shift. However, with my personals, I can place them right on top of the highest concentration and still get the same amount as an un-expiermented (is that a word?) med. harvesters at 1/2 the maint. and power! WOOT!
I have been able to get my wind generators up to BER of 8. To get started in Architecture, I stripped mined wind power. 2 lots for my house and the remaining 8 to wind. I was able to accumulate a large quantity in a short period of time.
Then I moved to my mineral harvesters and simply focused on one resource at a time. Yes, it take more time before you can craft all the different items. However,when you sit down to craft, you have A LOT of the same resources, instead of small quantites of many different resources. Not only that, it's easier to manage because you are not running all over the place making harvester runs -you have 1 location for all your harvesters. To me this simplification in my game play was very, very important and therefore worth the cost. What cost you ask? Well the cost of not being able to supply items to the market because I'm too busy gathering resources. I used to run a lot of artisan missions to make the money to keep this going. The choices I made were good ones for me but I realize not everyone will agree with my method.
Now that I'm progressing up the Arch. trees, I look forward to switching to BER10 mediums butIhaven't been able to make them that good yet.However, I'm still keeping my personals because there are times when I simply want to be on the highest concentration.
Great info, thanks all. The info you posted really helped. Now I need 4 med harvesters withBERs of 10. I am on the Chilstra server.
Goss.
meagor's comments about focusing all your harvesters on one spot are right on the money. My experience is that, in general, you are better of just "swarming" a good spot with most of your harvesters then having 7-10 of them spread out over the whole galaxy. Your time running the harvesters is time away from crafting or doing other things. Having a *large* stack of stuff is good - if you get "too much" you can sell it and buy the other stuff you need. I try to have a maximum of 3 harvester locations at all times (and I make exceptions to this if something rare hits): BER16 fusion, 5-8 BER13 on ore, remaining BER13s on some metal I need.
On the issue of "rough ground" and personal harvesters - yes, they are convenient. I always carry some BER4 personals with me. However - don't be fooled.
If there is something *very rare* that you really need, and you find it *only* on a mountaintop, then drop those personals along the ridgeline. (I've done it.)
But if it is something that you want the most of, then look around very carefully. We've all done it - you find a 90% spot of something that you want but it's hilly. In fact, you can't drop a medium or heavy until the concentration gets down to like 70% and it just burns your butt to pump at 70 when you could have 90.
Well, at 90% a BER4 personal will pump up 5,184 a day. In order to pump less, you'd have to put a medium on less than a 36% spot! So you can grump all you want (and I do! 
), but go ahead and drop the medium/heavy on the 70% spot rather than the personal on that 90% spot - you'll get dramatically higher yields.
Additional Question:
Are pre-nerf Med. Harvesters (with a BER=4 and Storage=50k) better than newly crafted personals with a BER=4? The reason I ask is I have both set up and the pre-nerf med pulled down about 3700 +/- in 24hours while the personal only pulled in around 2400 +/- in the same period of time. With them both having the same BER and being on the same concentration (57% I think) it would seem like they would harvest equal amounts but this didn't happen.
Just wondering if the BER on pre-nerf harvesters is actually different than the one stated on the deed?
Mos Arcanum's (Tatooine, Chilastra)Architect is selling Medium Harvs with 10 BER for 11k to city citizens. She is so generous! Too bad I don't really need them... I would gladly help fund her....