Architect Archive

Hi all,

I finally got to Novice Architect. Woo hoo! I'm quite comfortable with crafting and experimentation so I know what resources I need to get, but since I don't have the experience of continual resource extinction/rotation a question lurks around in my head.

Where should I put my harvesters?!? Getting high BER harvesters is not an issue. I'll stick with BER 4 personals or buy and temporarily use high BER medium minerals, but I don't really like finding the highest concentration of a resource, mining till it's gone then paying the redeed fees and moving to a different high concentration.

I'm wondering how everyone else places their harvesters. Am I being a baby; should I grin and bear it and fork out the redeed fees? Should I place the harvesters all over the planet, each one near a different city? Perhaps I should just put them all next to my house, and when there's nothing good to mine just bite down and buy the resources from a miner?

Thanks,
Joradon

I'll survey for a resource type I need and take samples. I'll choose the best resource and drop 4 BER-10 mediums as close to the highest % I can. When that resource runs dry, I see if I can mine anything useful in the same spot. If not, the cycle repeats.

The answer depends on how much time you want to spend find resources and maintaining your harvesters. Placing them outside your house is the least time consuming, since you only have to step outside your front door. However, you won't always get high concentrations of resources there.

Surveying for a high concentration takes time and involves travelling further out, but you will usually get more resources per harvester. A BER10 medium on a 70% concentration will mine about 10k units of resource a day. On a 60% spot, you will get about 8.5k units a day and on a 80% spot you will get about 11.5k units a day. It doesn't seem like much, but if you're running several harvesters over say 6 days it can add up to a significant difference.

In the end, you could change your strategy depending on the resources available. For example, you could keep the harvesters outside your house, but move some when a particularly high quality resource is available.

If you want to place them and leave them id recomend putting them on a beach. In my experience the highest resource deposits always spawn about 100m out from shore.

On a more serious note. If you do architect right the redeading fees arnt that bad to bare. If your building houses primarly. Just drop them and leave them cause quality dosnt matter. Same is true for furniture or civic structures. But if you paln to break into the harv business then your going to want to move them around to find the highest quality stuff you can. Quality only matters in harvesters at this point. So if you want to drop them and never move them stay away from the harv business. If not like i said the redead fee isnt that bad if your doing things right.

If you are doing static mining (not redeeding) then there is a couple strategies.

1) Just put them beside your house and settle for whatever shows up. This is the least work but it caries the risk that you'll have a bad shift and end up with nothing over 30% on your spot.

2) Split up your harvesters so that they are in 2 or 3 groups spread apart by 1000m or so. THis will give you 2 or 3 shots at catching some good density concentrations. You'll have to do a little traveling to manage them but you'll reduce your risk of getting stuck with low %'s.

If you choose a "static" placement because of *convenience* or *game time* issues, then you've gotten some good responses.

If you choose not to move because of the redeed *cost*, then you might benifit from doing some math. It turns out that if you put down a harvester on a spot (e.g. 70%) of a new spawn (so you know the stuff will last about 6-7 days) and then you find another spot with even 3% higher concentration, you will breakeven on the redeed cost by moving. If it is more than 3%, then you will make more money. So from strictly an *economic* perspective, you should pick them up and move them to the higher concentration.

If you hate tending harvestors, and are willing to just mine whatever pops up, every planet has a sweet spot. SW of kadaara, on Naboo, you will always find something over 70%. I ahve some static harvestors there, and I've never had to move them. I have recently discovered the sweet spot of corellia, through trial and error, and haven't moved those harvies in 4 weeks.