Architect Archive
Thread: LONG Major Game Revamp to help Architects 09-15-03 (updated weekly)
Once a week I will post a list of my suggestions and ideas. If you have additional ideas post them. If i like them I will add them to my list. I have given serious thought to each of the ideas listed here so unless you come up with a very valid reason why something has no possibility of working (other than its too hard the devs wont do it and such) It will stay in the list. You may not like the idea or you may not think that it is feasable but unless the idea simply cannot possible work I will keep it.
Keep in mind these are not all my ideas. Just ideas I have come up with or picked up from other peoples posts. I credit the whole board with helping me create this idea list.
THIS IS NOT A BUG LIST I KEEP THOSE SEPARATE
Also all these ideas are interrelated please refrain from dismissing an idea until you have read the whole post as while there maybe an idea that sounds bad or wont work on its own, the following ideas will make it more agreeable.
DISCLAIMER:
First I am aware of how difficult these changes will be to make.
Second I am aware of how unlikely the devs are to make such sweeping changes.
Third I am aware of the importance of fixing the bugs. (I already have a large post about them.)
Fourth I am aware that this post is freakin long. Sorry I don't cater to the MTV generation with 8 second attention spans. My posts are IN-DEPTH and I intend to keep them that way. If that thins the herd a bit, fine by me.
So please no the devs wont, or thats to hard or you should focus on bugs, or this is too long etc... replies.
I will only address comments that can prove that any or all of these suggestions will not work in any realm of possibility. (It does not mean I won't respond to negative replies but I won't address them.)
END DISCLAIMER:
I. Lots (NEW MAJOR CHANGES)
A. Limit Starting lots to 0 for all players. There are several types of lots a player can earn. Residential, 3 types of Commercial, 3 types of Industrial, Military and City Lots. Each Catagory allows you to earn 0-10 lots.
1. Residential - Lots earned based on overall used skill points.
2. Commercial(Retail) - Lots earned based on Merchant used skill points.
3. Commercial(Medical) - Lots earned based on Doctor used skill points.
4. Commercial(Entertainer) - Lots earned based on either Dancer or Musician used skill points.
(You donot gain extra lots for learning both.)
5. Industrial(Extraction) - Lots earned based on Mining Engineer used skill points.
6. Industrial(Factories) - Lots earned based on one of any Advanced CraftingClasses used skillpoints.
(You do not gain extra lots for learning multiple proffessions.)
7. Industrial(Agricultural) - Lots earned based on Agricultural Engineer used skill points.
8. Military - Lots earned based on one of any Advanced CombatClasses used skill points.
(You do not gain extra lots for learning multiple proffessions.)
9. City Lots. Lots earned based on 1 per person that has declared in said city.
(These lots can be used by the mayor to place advanced structures such as cloning facilities)
B. All Structures with inventory capacity allow 50 items per Lot. All structures with hopper capacity allow 10k per lot.
C. All Industrial Structures may only be placed 2k meters from any Standard City or 100 meters from any Player City. All residential or commercial structures must be 1k from any Standard City. All military structures must be 1k from any Standard City or from any Player City that you have not declared in.
D. Each structure may contain 1 functional droid per lot.(Displays do not count towards this limit.)
E. Residential structures may contain 1 machine style vendor. Commercial structures may contain 1 vendor per lot.
F. Only the mayor or his designate may place City based Structures or Military structures within his/her city. Only Squad leaders may place Military Structures within a battlefield.
II.Structure Design.
A. Allow house interiors to be designed by the architect instead of the cookie cutter design. Require an entry hall to allow the game time to render the interior before the player can see it.
C. More variety on the exterior. (I'm sure this is already in the works.)
D. Allow use of named deeds on similar planets. IE Corellia on Talus, Naboo on Rori etc...
III. Automation.
A. Allow Automatic Debit from bank acct OPTION. This would place 1 days worth maintenance into Structures each day. It is up to the player to keep his bank acct full. Allow the ability to split maintenance costs when owned by multiple people so the automatic payment would take the appropriate amount out of each person acct.. I can do a bank to bank transfer from my datapad to another player who atm may not even exist yet i cant have money automatically withdrawn from my bank acct to put into structures?
B. Automatic Power distribution from power generator structures to other structures that require power. (Can setup this up so it only works on structures within a certain radius of the power source.) Havn't the devs ever heard of extension cords?
C. Automatic Email on Structure status changes. IE Resource Depletion, Maintenance Depletion etc...
D. Ability to remote operate structures such as harvestors through the data pad.
E. Allow specific line of droids to manage all structures including removing resources from full structures and placing them in your bank. (I know about the whole "if you place a harvestor in the woods and nobody is there to see it does it actually exist" thing)(these droids could be made to work with the same system ... they are not really there unless somebody is there to see them.)
F. Allow scheduled or automated shutdown at set times or on certain conditions. IE to save maintenance/decay I might run my harvestors only 16 hours a day as opposed to always on. (some think this is not necessary. Hey I might be short on cash one day and due to RL obligations will be unable to make enough credits to pay the maintenance. with this system I would be able to slow/stop the fees while I attend to the RL and then return without being penalized for having RL problems.)
IV. Administration. (UPDATED)
A. Allow various levels of administration within a structure from general access to drop/pickup to redeed access.
B. Ability to set access levels to various levels/rooms. (IE: being able to lock the lift so only certain people can use it to get to the basement however the general public can freely access the main area.)
C. Automatically refund credits to persons who for whatever reason are banned from your structure who have made a purchase but not yet retrieved it. Provide a warning message to the person doing the banning that the target has an outstanding purchase. Or if you ban them the item(s) gets sent to the nearest bazaar with an email notifying them of this.
D. Allow the banning of people by faction Type or by PA.
V. Maintenance.
A. Allow the removal of power/credits from structures. currently it keeps them stored during redeed which is an improvement but I'd still like the ability to remove them.
B. Do not charge maintenance during server downtime, lockup or extended loading periods. (power is not charged so why is maintenance?)(I know technically why, I just think its stupid and lazy.)
C. Do not charge maintenance on extractors that are not running. (However place a time limit that extractors may be left not operating before they are removed from game. IE 3 days.) (I understand the need to prevent people abandoning extractors but with the current lot limit size how prevelant is this problem?)
D. Reduce the maintenance fees on general decay for extractors. However add fee multipliers to extractors that suffer critical failures as explained under section F.
E. Re-add the ability for extractors to function under 100% maintenance. (However not only reduce efficiency, but also allow for a chance of critical failures that increases in severity the more decayed the extractors become. Some examples of critical failures include. Permanent Breakdown, Minor breakdown requiring repairs, Destruction of the extractor with loss of all material contained within. Security failures resulting in loss to theft of material within. etc...)
VI. Payment Plan
A. Create a new trade system that allows payment systems to be setup and agreed to. The options include setting the amount of the payments, the number of payments and timetable for payment. Failure to make the proper payments at the proper time opens up an option for the seller to reclaim(foreclose) the deed from the buyer. Making this optional instead of automatic allows the players to try and work things out without uprooting a player for what may have been an honest mistake. Keep in mind the seller keeps what money was already collected. that would be too hard to try and return especially if they have none to remove. Payments can be setup for direct debit from the buyers bank acct. then all they have to do is make sur ethe payment is in there.
VII. Structure Decay/Fees/Functionality
A. Residential Structures.(Huts1 Small2 Medium4 Large6 Mansion8 PA10 Bank4 Clone4 Shuttle6 Starport10)
1.Do not decay.(This is how it currently is.)
2. Maintenance fees changed to Property Tax. (Could also add system to where location determined the amount of tax the owner(s) must pay. This would give the devs a greater degree of control as it would allow them to determine what areas are considered good and what areas are considered bad. This can even be extended to mayors of player cities to allow them to influence where structures are built.)
3.Redeed cost as normal.(maybe balanced a bit better for the various sizes.)
B. Commercial Structures(Tents1 Small2 Medium4 Large6 Stripmall8 Hospital8 Cantina8 Multifunction10)
1. Do not decayhowever they only function for a set period of time dependant on the quality of materials used. After the set time has elapsed the structure ceases to function and the player has 1 week to buy a new deed and feed the deed into the structure management terminal. Once this is done the player can choose to use the new structure setup or maintain the old setup. Warning to be given for changing setup as all items will be moved into a pile in the central area of thestructure and excess items over the item limit will return to the owners inv .... items over the inv limit will vanish. Vendors will remain though they will be moved to the center of the structure.
2. Maintenance fees changed toLease Payments. (Control can be given to mayors to set the rates so they can influence where business's will setup.)
3. Vending limited by skill.
4. Redeed costs as normal.
C. Industrial Structures(Mines)
1. Onlydecay when redeeded. The amount can be affected by the presence of a maintenance droid or your particular repair skill or even the presence of a Maintenance Technicion. The amount can also be reduced by paying larger and larger amounts during the redeed process. Decay can never be eliminated but by using the techniques above you can severely reduce its impact and extend the life of your structure.
2. Functionality will decay each time it is redeeded until the owner has no choice but to replace the structure.
D. Industrial Structures(Factories)
1. Only decay when used. 1% for every 100 items made.
2. Redeed as normal(Does not reset the decay.)
D. Military structures
1. Do not decay nor do they cost maintenance.
2. They canbe damaged and possibly destroyed by opposing factions requiring repair or replacement to become functional again.
3. Repaired items are gradually reduced in efficiency each time they are repaired.
4. These items cannot be redeeded. (however I advocate a system that allow a person to setup an item walk around to view its placement and then select place and activate. as long as they dont click place and activate they can pick the item up and move it around but the item will not function until it is placed and activated.)
E. Graphics for exteriors change to match the decay of the structure. (a la sims 4)
VIII. Trading/selling.
A. Show the bloody floorplans in the details window.
C. Include decay details to prevent people from selling structures that are decayed without the buyer knowing.
D. Allow advertisements of items that sell for greater than the cap on the bazaar but not able to actually purchase the Item on the bazaar. instead clicking on details gives you location of vendor selling said item. the best bet is to make this its own catagory. This allows merchants to advertise thier wares so I don't have to run out to thier place just to find out they don't have what I'm looking for. Advertising costs 500 credits per item advertised and they are limited to 40 items total.
IX. Experimentation.
A. Overall Quality determines time before functionality ceases.(UPDATED)
B. Unit Toughness determines maintenance costs to reduce decay or to repair.
C. Decay Resistance determinesamount of decayon redeed.
X. Critical Failures. (UPDATED)
A. During resource allocation = loss of resources for failed component only.
B. During Experimentation = minimum stats on finished item.
C. DuringFinal Combine= Loss of resources only and ability to re-add the lost resources. components should never be lost.
XI. Landscaping. (UPDATED)
A. Allow buildings to modify slightly terrain to allow more placement of buildings. (I've found several great sites for building placement but because of some tiny ditch with water in it i couldn't place the stupid thing.) (Currenlty POI's can alter terrain as can our camps why not these larger structures?) The main maps should be able to be updated during downtime to reflect the changes so the changes can be permanent while the structure is there and not have to be rendered everytime.
XII. Furniture
A. Fix the many many many bugs in this line. (See my bug list post.)
B. Balance the hide requirements.
C. Allow more controlled item placement. IE Desk Lamps On Desks and such. Add move up and down commands.
D. Create more Business oriented furniture equipment. IE Cantina Furnishing. Restaraunt furnishings etc...
E. Add functionality to exisiting items. IE Droid detectors detect droids., Containers store items. etc...
XIII. Identical Components.
A. Keep the factory xp nerfed. The fact that you removed critical failure chances is good enough reason alone to use these factories. (yea yea i know it was like this in beta but i only count from day of release on ... otherwise just about every aspect of the game is considered nerfed.)
B. Remove the need to use identical components. I can see requiring similar components. copper for copper steel for steel etc...but not steel for aluminum or copper for steel etc...
C. Speed up factory production rates. There should be no reason why an automated factory is slower than hand crafting an item. However manufactured items should be of a set quality dependant on materials used in the schematic. where as hand crafted items can be greatly improved. Schematics should be more limited the higher quality they are. (IE: Amazing success combines/experimentations should limit the item to a very small run where as plain success could have very large runs.)
XIV. Harvesting (UPDATED)
A. Lengthen the time between resource shifts to15 days.(could even stagger the shift by resource type.)
B. Remove unnatural Alloys/composites (Steel, Aluminum etc...)from the ground and increase the base resources such as Iron, Copper, Ore etc..
C. Create a process for creating Steel, Aluminum etc... and make it part ofMining Engineer.
D.Allowmining engineersto experiment on resources during the refining/processing of said resource to improve purity(grade)(Refining = improving quality)(processing = making alloys/composites)Standardize the improvements to prevent 50 million stat alterations or allow different stat resources to mix and average out the stats for the stack.
E. Ability for well maintained structures to act as a ward for creature spawning allowing me if i keep my structures maintained at a certain level to be able to actually get to them without needing an army. Can be setup so that the amount of maintenance over the required amount improves the radius up to a maximum point. 50% over minimum = 64m 100% = 128m ... or something close to this. most dangerous creatures tend to avoide areas of humanoid activity. keep harvestors well maintained is a form of humanoid activity. wheras lettign structures fall into disrepair shows a lack of humanoid activity prompting animals not be as cautious.The only exception to this would be in cases of extreme hunger or threat.
XV. Droids. (NEW)
A. Create a line of droids to assist with running extraction devices, assist with building(lessoning failures or improving results), assist with performing repairs on itemssuch asstructuresand to alsoassist in reducing maintenance costs or durability reductions during redeeding and such.
XVI. Cloning. (NEW)
A. Storing Clone Data works for a set number of deaths that you can purchase. 1k =5 deaths. 2k =15 deaths etc...
B. You can store Clone Data in as many locations as you'd like as long as your willing to pay the advertised price.
C. Structural Engineer built Cloning facilities can be experimented on during creation to reduce the costs of cloning per death.(or increase the amount of cloning per package.)
XVII. Pay Services. (NEW)
A. City Service buildings such as Starports, Cloning Facilities, Shuttleports and Banks should not cost maintenance fees to the PA/City. They already remove credits from the game via service usage costs.
XVIII. Artisan Missions. (NEW)
A. Artisan Mission payout should be based on your Crafting Skill or your Surveying Skill respectively.
B. Distancerequirements should increase as payout increases. The idea is not to make them easier but to keep them from becoming 2 easy.
C. Ensure that persons cannot take 2 of the same mission. (IE 2 reactive gas missions.)
XIX. Skills/Professions.
I. Profession: Structural Engineer - Players pursuing this profession make various structures from houses to shops to factories and harvestors to large city/military buildings.
A. Requires: Engineering I-IV + 35k General Crafting XP.
B. Novice: Structural Engineer - Personal Extractor Deeds. Personal Factories Deeds. Huts/Cottages. Small vendor huts. Basic military support structures: Title - Novice Structural Engineer
C. Line 1: Residential Structures: Title - Architectual Engineer
D. Line 2: Commercial Structures: Title - Development Engineer
E. Line 3: Industrial Structures: Title - Industrial Engineer
F. Line 4: Military: Title - Combat Engineer
G. Master: Structural Engineer - Pa Halls, Starports and City based structures: Title - Master Structural Engineer
II. Profession: Artisan - Same as before with a few minor changes.
A. Change 1 - Surveying changed to Sampling and is reduced in efficiency.
B. Change 2 - All currently available structures in this line are removed from this profession and replaced with lesser structures such as disposable extractors or portable extractors. They are not as efficient as personal extractors but they are cheaper and available to those outside the mining class. Disposables cost no maintenance however only work for a set amount of time before they must be discarded. Portables work with lesser efficiency each time they are redeeded however do not cost anything to redeed.
C. Change 3 - Reduce information provided when sampling to general densities. like low medium high.
D. Change 4 - Return action/mind costs and time delays to thier previous state(or reduce them) for sampling but also reduce the yield and the time it takes to actually perform the sampling.
E. Schematics requiring advanced resources such as steel, aluminum and other processed materials should be moved to more advanced professions or setup as supplemental to the line. Ensure there is a way to advance through the artisan trade using basic resources such as iron and ore being that the processing ability to make complex resources is being restricted to the mining profession.
III. Profession: Mining Engineer - Person pursuing this profession gains the ability to locate, extract and refine raw materials into usuable resources.(Major Changes)
A. Requirements: Engineering I-IV, Sampling I-IV and Exploration I-IV + 10k General Crafting XP, 8k Sampling XP and 5k Scouting XP
B. Novice: Mining Engineer - Ability to use all extraction related structures: Title - Novice Mining Engineer
C. Line 1: Surveying - Ability to locate resource concentrations(improved from artisan related skill): Title - Surveyor
D. Line 2: Extraction - Ability to use more and more complex extractors to remove resources from the ground: Title - Prosepector
E. Line 3: Refining - Ability to improve the grade of the materials removed fromt he ground to produce better resources: Title - Refiner
F. Line 4: Process - Gives you the ability to create new composites such as steel and aluminum: Title - Mineral Processor
G: Master: Ability to create super advanced composites that give huge benefits to the crafters that make items from them.Title - Master Mining Engineer
IV. Profession: Design Engineer - Makes items for interior/exterior structural decoration. Also provides planning and items for cities and military bases.
A. Requirements: Engineering I-IV + 30k General Crafting XP
B. Novice: Design Engineer - Ability to incorporate PA structures into a City or Military Base. (Requires PA's to have several required structures to determine whether they become a city or a military base.): Title - Novice Design Engineer
C. Line 1: Interior Design -furnishings and equipment: Title - Interior Decorator
D. Line 2: Terrain Design - Ability to smooth rough terrain into buildable locations: Title - Terraformer
E. Line 3: City Planning - Ability to create exterior objects relating to cities such as streets, parks ponds fountains etc..: Title - Urban Planner
F. Line 4: Military Planning - Ability to create support objects for military bases such as fences, barricades, spotlighting etc... (fences and barricades would be limited to the base ZOC and can be destroyed or removed by PA leaders.): Title - Military Planner
G. Master: Design Engineer - Ability to move PA structures around creating a city/base layout and re-placing said structures. This does require a redeeding cost per structure but allows the design engineer to redesign a city/base from the ground up. Structures that are not placed after a certain period of time return to the owner:Title - Master Design Engineer
V. Profession: Maintenance Technician - Repairs Structures, Vehicles, Weapons, Armor and Ships to extend thier durability.
A. Requirements: Engineering I-IV + 30K Repair XP.(new xp type gained when using Personal Repair Kits to repair items.)
B. Novice: Maintenance Technician - Ability to used Standard Repair Kits to fix items: Title - Novice Maintenance Technician
C. Line 1: Armor/Droids/Equipment/Weapons: Title - Equipment Repair Technician
D. Line 2: Structures: Title - ArchitectualContractor
E. Line 3: Vehicles/Ships: Title - Mechanic
F. Line 4: Juryrigging(This is what slicing currently is minus the terminals.): Title - Juryrigger
G. Master: Maintenance Technician - Gains the ability to reduce maintenance costs/decay ratesfor a set period of time on all items that require them: Title - Master Maintenance Technician.
I. Other Changes: Complete changeof Slicing and move unneeded abilities to Juryrigging.
VI. Profession: Smuggler - Same with these exceptions.(Major Changes)
A. Change 1: Slicing - Ability to slice Mission Terminals(for improved payout), Maintenance Terminals(for lessened maintenance.) PvP Structures(such as turrets to disable) and Bank Terminals(To steal money.) Slicing Mission Terminals, or Bank Terminals nets you a TEF to all Law Enforementand Bounty Hunters. PvP slicing will net you a TEF with members of opposing factions unless you are overt opposed to them already: Title - Slicer
B. Change 2: Spices are moved to a different profession probably dealing with medicines and replaced with Illegal modifications. these types of smugglers gain the ability to change ships identity, add secret compartments to hide illegal merchandise, add illegal weapons to ships and bribe customs officials.(would require addition of customs officials and a radial menu option to bribe them for smugglers. Success would allow the ship reduced docking fees and no chance of TEF for illegal cargo, while failure would result in automatic TEF: Title - Spacer
C. Change 3. The underworld title: Title - Shady Dealer.
D. Requirements: Pistol Specialist, Transport Pilot(new) + 50k Pistol Xp + 25k Piloting XP.
VII. Profession: Agricultural Engineer - allows the ability to farm and harvest mass amounts of plant and animal resources. Gains the ability to use Flora Farms, Breeder Ranches and Moisture Vaporators.
A. Requires: Engineering I-IV + Hunting I-IV + 20k Scouting XP
B. Novice: Agricultural Engineer - Personal Farm, Ranch and Logging Machinery Deeds: Title - Novice Agricultural Engineer
C. Line 1: Farming - Ability to grow and harvest vast quantities ofcrop resources such as corn, wheat, oats, etc... Also includes moisture farming: Title - Farmer
D. Line 2: Ranching - Ability to use ranches to harvest large amounts of organic animal resources from creatures such as bones, hide, meat, eggs and milk: Title - Rancher
E. Line 3: Logging - Ability to grow and harvest large areas of trees: Title - Logger
F. Line 4: Horticulture - Ability to grow and harvest large quantity of plant resources for use in medicines and spices: Title - Horticulturalist.
G. Master: Agricultural Engineer - Greatly improved methods of harvesting and such: Title - Master Agricultural Engineer
VIII. Profession: Piloting - Ability to fly various forms of spacecraft.(NEW)
A. Requirements: None - Starter Skill.
B. Novice: Ability to pilot basic noncombat shuttles: Title - Novice Pilot.
C. Line 1: Transports: Title - Transport Pilot.
D. Line 2: Combat Craft: Title - Fighter Pilot.
E. Line 3: Capital Ships: Title - Fleet Navigator.
F. Line 4: Archaic/Unusual Ships: Title - Eccentric Pilot.
G. Master - Able to pilot any ship around.
VIII. Profession: Mechanical Engineer - Ability to craft various equipment, structural additions, vehicles and ships. (NEW)
A. Requirements: Engineering I-IV + 30k General Crafting Experience.
B. Novice - Ability to make advanced components used to make complex objects function or to improve functionality.
C. Line 1: Equipment: Title - Electronics Engineer
D. Line 2: Components: Title - Component Creation Expert
E. Line 3: Vehicles: Title - Vehiclular Engineer
F. Line 4: Starships: Title - Starship Engineer
G. Master - Able to make the most complex mechanical items.
I am aware that this post would have been better suited to beta but I didn't get into beta till beta 3 and by the time i had tested enough to make these suggestions the game was already released.
FYI: I will add replys to my post from time to time as I think of new things I want to keep track of.
Also i wanted to say..this looks like stuf based on the beta of the game...as the idea for cloning gives the builder of the device the controll of the fees based on hwo well they do, as upposed to say a proffession like a bio-engineer controlling it.
Also the extra proffessions are diffrent but they are specialists in collecting resources and duplicate things in existence???
Ok so you want to sit around all day and run a harvestor and thats it? But thats not all you can only harvest water or lumber, unless you have gotten more skills.
Now thats great...but at the current amount of skills costs, namely 59 for an elite proffession to master and 68 for a novice proffession, and since these are a novice proffesions I doubt most people would want to have to spend 68 points for some worthless skills...that they already have in the current system.
Yeah to become an Architect you would basically end up spending what is that....136 points for the pre-requisits and then 59 for architect meaning you have 195 points for the architect...about as much as a bounty hunter..which means if you want more skills...too bad...you will be lucky to have what you have....
Now if the novice skills where decreased to 5 points this would not be a very big issue...becasue teh nyou woul dhave more points left over.
ease up on the coffee it felt like I was reading a post from a valley girl 
The whole point is that architect is not what people expected to play ... We already ARE Miners who every once in a while gets to throw adeed together and sell it for almost no profit. Thats not what websters defines an architect as. We do not design squat. We barely sell anything and all we do is mine.
Another reason for this post is there needs to be a seperation of the classes that obtains the materials and the classes that make stuff with those materials and the classes who buy and use those items.
These Ideas were gathered from around the board with my ideas thrown in for good measure. If even a fraction of these ideas get implemented the game will be much better and more versitile.
People keep saying that people won't want to sit around all day and mine/process/refine resources.
Have you taken a look at musicians and dancers? heck most of them use macros and are not even there. Dont tell me people wouldnt be interested ina profession where they dig in the ground and make money.
The reason for all the professions is because they really are seperate ... you want design the looks ofhouses and cities? be a design engineer..... you want to build structures? be a structural engineer.
I did not choose architect to become a miner or afurniture maker.......
Some interesting ideas, but if SOE is forcing us to group, why would you make PA Halls even more lots?
Never mind that, I have a counter proposal. How about any structure or vendor that is declared a civil structure is reduced to 0 lots, and is "owned" by the city, maintained by the city fund and only movable by the "appointed" civil engineer. So that the PA Hall could become a local mall, or city hall or something similar.