Architect Archive

I don't see why you should have to be standing next to your harvester to pay maintenance either. I can pay maintenance from the bank, which means some aspect of the process is automated anyway (in the fiction I mean). Who am I paying? I don't think i'm actually pushing dollar bills into a feeder unit on the harvester that it then somehow tranposes into repairs.

I always assumed the maintenance credits went to some invisible, global maintenance company that activates nanites that maintain my machine. As long as I transfer money to their account, the nanites stay turned on. Why in the world does this require my standing next to the machine? It's an insurance policy. I don't actually have to be in my real world house in order to pay my maintenance insurance bill, I can do it from work just as easily.

Anyway, I'm all for a remote status option. As it is now, I have to manually track it all in a little spreadsheet, which requires switching to windowed mode, which I hate.

I'm going to post this idea here in the Architect forum, even though the concept applies to all players using harvesters since threads seem to drop off the SWG discussion page before you can hit refresh. Hopefully the idea will float around and perhaps get put to the devs through our future correspondent.

Harvester Status Problem Background

I think we would all like the ability to manage our harvesters remotely, especially those of us mining several resources spread across an entire planet or multiple planets. My understanding of the problem of remote management stems from the way that the game engine manages things like harvesters, mob spawns, etc.

From what I gather from dev posts and discussions, after you create a harvester and fill the maintenance and power, set the resource and turn it on, the harvester remains in the game world only as long as you are near it. As soon as you get a certain distance from the harvester (and indeed any thing in the world,) the item 'disappears.' That is, all information related to the harvester is saved and then no longer monitored by the system (much the same way your character is when you log out of the game.) When you later approach the harvester, the information is retrieved, the structure 'regenerated,' and the server uses the stored information vs. the time passed to run the calculations for what the current status should be (maintenance and power remaining, resources in hopper, etc.)

In this way, the harvester does not actively 'exist' in the game world unless a PC is near it. Therefore prohibiting interaction with it to see current levels or input/remove anything from it. This seems to me to be the technical problem with remote harvester maintenance.

A Workaround?

Now for the idea, and let me stress that I am not a DBA or programmer, just a simple network admin.

If the harvester information is being written to a database when you leave its area, could it be possible to replicate or relate that information to your character's information in the database? By this you should be able to monitor the status of the harvester. You would end up with the same base information saved to the original entry in the database, and the system could apply the same formulas it uses when 'recreating' the harvester to determine it's current status.

This would not permit interaction with the harvester, nor should it IMHO. You should need to go to the harvester to pull out resources and input maintenance and power as these are physical interactions for the sake of some reality. I know this is definitely a job that would require some recoding, but it should allow a workaround for the 'not existing' problem often sited.

Implementation

There are far more creative people than I for this end, but here are a couple of suggestions I have picked up on the boards to get people thinking:

1. A tab on the character sheet - They have already managed to add a tab for factions, it should be possible to add another tab for a Harvester Status page.

2. A function of the current or an improved Data Terminal - A nice idea for a functional piece of furniture, perhaps requiring subcomponents from other professions.

Conclusion

Hopefully this would be a great addition to the game at some point, though it is, admittedly, a 'wish list' item as harvesters work just fine without remote status/administration. I'm sure many people will just tell me to keep track of it in a notebook with a pen and paper, and I certainly do. But wouldn't it be a great addition?

Nala Ember - Novice Architect
Chilastra - Corellia - Doaba Guerfel