Architect Archive
Thread: Is it worth becoming a 12pt Architect?
Basically, the only thing you can do with the extra experimentation points is to craft maximum BER harvesters with larger hopper sizes.
Quality of resources only matters for crafting stations (and the "optional" parts used in them) and harvesters. There are many guides to efficient building of maximum BER harvesters, I'll paste the one I e-mail to new architects in-game:
Making Harvesters with Maximum BER
In Star Wars Galaxies, the best base extraction rate (BER) for a given resource harvester is 4 for personal (small) ones, 10 for mediums and 13 for heavies. Actually getting these rates requires a certain amount of work. Most of this article concerns medium and heavy harvesters.
Requirements
At least ten experimentation points. This means a Structure Experimentation skill modifier of 100 or more for medium and heavy harvesters or a similar Artisan Experimentation skill modifier for the personal ones. Usually this is only attainable without other augmentation by Master Architects and Artisans.
Lots of good steel. HR, SR and especially UT should exceed 900, but a sum of HR + SR + UT + UT above 3600 should do. (For personal harvesters, these scores only have to reach about 760.) Other metal with high HR, SR and UT can substitute for some but not all of the steel. Duralloy Steel almost always meets these requirements, and the more common Kammris Iron makes an excellent filler to stretch out your supply of Duralloy Steel.
A fair amount of good ore with high HR, SR and UT as with the steel. Not all extractors need ore, and you don't need as much.
Chemicals without HR, SR or UT attributes, such as lubrication oil and liquid petrochem fuel. A resource without an attribute that controls a crafted item's quality is ignored and won't count against you. You can use any lousy chemical as long as it lacks HR, SR and UT. That means no fiberplast or polymer.
Preparation
Build lots of Structural Modules, Wall Modules, Small Structure Storage Modules and Generator Turbines in your Structure Factory. You need plenty of the latter two as part of a single production run, since their serial numbers must be the same for any manufacturing schematic of heavy harvesters you factory produce. You can use junk resources since their quality doesn't count in the final run. In fact, if you use recycled resources, you can make the schematics for these parts last for the full run of 1000. (Recyclers are loot schematics and a whole different subject not covered here.) Note that water harvesters do not use Wall Modules.
Each medium and heavy harvester has one important part where quality counts. For mediums, this is a Light Ore Mining Unit, a Harvesting Mechanism or a Fluidic Drilling Pump Unit. Heavies use use either two Ore Mining Units, two Heavy Harvesting Mechanisms or two Turbo Fluidic Drilling Pump Units, each with the same serial number, so you'll have to factory produce them. You may want to factory produce them anyway, since once you make one good one, you can crank many more. Experiment with these to raise their effectiveness as high as possible for the next step. Any of these medium parts that don't reach BER4 should be discarded, as should any heavy harvester parts that fall short of BER6. You may want to discard any part that doesn't reach maximum effectiveness if you'll be using it for a factory schematic.
Final Assembly
The resources used in the final assembly should be high quality steel and other metal as mentioned above. Medium harvesters need high quality ore, most heavies don't use ore in the final assembly. As usual, you can use junk chemicals as long as they are not polymers or fiberplast.
When building single units, reduce the chance and effects of failure if by running experiments with just a few points at a time. Run your first experiment with just one point in Experimental Effectiveness so even a critical failure might be recoverable in the later experiments, especially if you are fortunate enough to have 11 or 12 Structure Experimentation Points. Each experiment, however, increases complexity, which in turn increases factory run time, so take this into account when building a manufacturing schematic rather than a prototype.
MTVGeneration wrote:
First of all I'm a new archi. I was wondering how much quality of resources mattered when building things like housing and harvesters etc.
Welcome to the profession. Hope you like ore.
By and large resources don't matter except in a couple of key componnets. Mostly, we just need bulk. And ore.
Which specific components need what, is covered nicely in the FAQ stickied at the top of the forum.
Also is it worth becoming a 12pt Archi now with the CU and all. I've seen a suit for sale and was tempted to buy it but I don't want to waste 12-15m on it!!
This is a matter of opinion, but in my not so humble opinion, not really.
It can only be used to increase the size of harvester bins, which while useful, it will be a bit before you recover the 12-15 mil based on bin size alone. Of course, some people have managed to pimp out their sales by promoting that fact, but generally, the player base has no idea of what the differences are. You CAN make some money with it, but not the scads and scads you'd get for being a 12 point WS or AS.
Well... People Need Max Ber Harvs to get the resourses. Armorsmiths and Weaponsmiths will take more resourses. So you can sell some nice harvs if you can get well known on your server. Keep your vendors stocked with harvs and you can make some cash 
First off welcome to Architect
Well it's a matter of choice at the end of the day I doubt your make your outlay back from chimaera harvester sales imho but then if money isn't a huge issue (lets face it none of us are Architects for the money lol)
I use 25 skill points on both assembally and experimentation along with Crafting Mastery with Master Architect (of course) and stock BER13 minerals with 131k hoppers
Message Edited by faarsider on 05-11-2005 04:02 AM
Once or twice.
After many lower quality ones.
With drinking some nice port and living in a reasearch center.
Oh well. I carry a few, but don't really specialize in them. The resources stats is a bit of a hassle
As for slow sales.... Either I'm doing something right, or y'all are doing something wrong. But this novice merchant has had a delightfull spike in sales since the CU with high end buildings...
faarsider wrote:
First off welcome to Architect
Well it's a matter of choice at the end of the day I doubt your make your outlay back from chimaera harvester sales imho but then if money isn't a huge issue (lets face it none of us are Architects for the money lol)
I use 25 skill points on both assembally and experimentation along with Crafting Mastery with Master Architect (of course) and stock BER13 minerals with 131k hoppers
I am sure this is overkill on crafting bonuses but for me that doesn't really matter I do so more for the fact of my pride in a profession I love so muchp.s. any problems you have with Archi just send me a tellIGN Afra / WrixianMessage Edited by faarsider on 05-11-2005 04:02 AM
How did you get master FS Crafter with the ridiculous conversion rate for Architect?!?
Maasedge wrote:
How did you get master FS Crafter with the ridiculous conversion rate for Architect?!?
I did it.
Probably cost me about 50mil in resources.
With double XP week, I finished my last 10 crafting boxes with two days of solid grinding.
BTW, Force Experimentation is the best skill ever!!
I haven't had anything less than a "great" experimentation success in 6 months.
Elyssa wrote:
Maasedge wrote:
How did you get master FS Crafter with the ridiculous conversion rate for Architect?!?
I did it.
Probably cost me about 50mil in resources.
With double XP week, I finished my last 10 crafting boxes with two days of solid grinding.
BTW, Force Experimentation is the best skill ever!!
I haven't had anything less than a "great" experimentation success in 6 months.
What did you craft though and was it worth the cost in lost resources?