Architect Archive
Thread: Structure Factories Work BACKWARDS
No more sitting for hours grinding out hundreds of structural components and other modules. I’d be free to use my structure factory to eliminate the tedium and I could go exploring, shopping, peddling, all the while without feeling like I was missing out on the opportunity to make valuable construction experience – as a master architect I wouldn’t need it any longer. Another great side effect was that I wouldn’t be frustrated by nearly as many critical failures. I was looking forward to no more double jeopardy. A factory never fails to make an item. So I wouldn’t be risking the loss of resources in making a component and then risking the same resources a second or third time building a higher level component or deed. I thought my experience, as an architect would become twice as fun.
Last night was my first night being a master architect and I discovered something very disappointing – STRUCTURE FACTORIES WORK BACKWARDS.
Before I tried using my structure factory to make the majority of my necessary components, I experienced the “standard” amount of critical failures and lost resources. I don’t know what the actual percentage is. MMORPG designers seem to think it is more fun for the players when the entire math is hidden. I’ve read it’s intended to be around 10%. I believe it’s actually higher than this. Frustrating? Yes. Infuriating? Sometimes.
What I didn’t realize was that making all the components by hand was actually SAVING more deeds than if I used my structural factory to make them all. By creating all the intermediate components used in a deed by hand, my allotted 10% failures almost always occurred on a “lesser” build. Instead of my fusion generator going poof like a fart in the wind, I’d be much more likely to lose structural modules instead. But last night I tried for the first time to make as many components as possible inside of my structure factory and I realized that by doing so, 100% of my critical failures will occur when I try to create a final deed.
Let me explain by example. Let’s assume that I have a customer who wants to buy 1 “widget”. Let’s say that combining 100 “gizmos” makes each widget. Each gizmo requires 100 resources to make either by hand or in a factory.
I begin making my gizmos by hand. I have to make 100 before I can make my widget. The first gizmo I make has a 1 in 10 chance of failure (the 10% failure rate out of the 100 gizmos I have to make). If I fail in making my fist gizmo, the second gizmo I attempt to make has .99 in 10 chances to fail. I’ve already experienced 1 failure on my first gizmo, so the chance of failing the second goes down. Eventually, after making the 100 required gizmos, what is the chance of failing on the final attempt to make my final widget? Much less than 10%. My 10% of critical failures were used up in making the gizmos. I’ve spread the risk out over a hundred and one combines. It’s 1 in 100.1, because the 10% failures have already occurred. So it’s extremely unlikely that I will fail to make my final widget, but 10 times as likely that I’ll fail to make a less complicated gizmo that isn’t even important in the scheme of things.
However, if I create all of my gizmos in my factory, I don’t lose a single one. The factory never fails. But I have a 10% chance of blowing it all in the final combine trying to make my widget.
So there is actually a greater chance that I will lose my final product if I use my factory to build its components. By making everything by hand, I have a 100% chance of losing 1000 resources, and am almost guaranteed to succeed on my final product. By making all my gizmos in the factory, I have a 10% chance of losing everything when I combine all my factory-made gizmos into a single widget. And, in using my factory to make the sub-components, every successful creation of a widget means a greater chance of failure on the next try.
Over time it evens out. Eventually, I’d lose enough resources building by hand to equal the value of 1 widget. But not until I built 10 widgets by hand. This relationship would be okay if the subcomponents had any value, but they don’t. Widgets are the only items in the process that have any value. The subcomponents are valueless. They only exist to make the final products. I’d rather lose subcomponents than my final products, so I am forced to build everything I can by hand in order to save as many of the valuable products as possible.
Is this how it’s supposed to be? I thought factories were supposed to be a boon and not a curse. If my thinking is correct then factories are really the least preferred way to make items - because I am more likely to lose the only items I make that are of any value.
Your argument is based on a major presumption - that your success or failure on a prior assembly affects at all the next assembly. The fact is, it doesn't. To tell you the truth, in my experience, it's been far more likely to experience a critical failure if the prior attempt (or the one before it) was also a critical failure. This is because the chance of critical failure has to do with the quality of the resources you were using.
Basically, what I'm saying is that you should use lower quality resources for the factory work, then save some 700+ OQ or UT material for the final combine. Your chances will improve.
By making all subcomponents in factories and doing the final combine by hand, 100% of my failures will occur in the building of deeds. Therefore, using a factory means you are more likely to lose deeds. If you make your subcomponents by hand you are not guaranteed to lose deeds.
As with most things in this game, you have a percent chance at doing a give task. Be this sampling, hitting a mob or making an item. If you are on a 97% spot of fiberplast, you will get more successes and amount of fiberplast while sampling than if you were on 10%. This also holds true for making items. The higher the quality materials you use, the higher the skill points you have and modifiers, then the higher chance you will succeed at making the item. Also the base experimental properities come into play here. The expermentation even has a percent chance. The quality of the resources affect your crit rate. So if you have a high percentage chance to succeed in your final assembly, you'll do well. The best way to do that is with high quality resources and parts. Only way to get consistantly high quality parts in from a factory. As with all things in this game, your experimentation has a percent succeed or failure. Experiment on parts until you get a really nice part then make a schematic. The use those parts when making your deeds and that 10% failure you are having will drop to 5%.
Even on that 97% spot of fiberplast you are going to fail some times.
You're saying that if I hand-combine for deeds alone, the number of failures on deeds will be equal to the number of failures on deeds if I hand combine all subcomponents also. Plus I'll have additional failures on the subcomponents (doesn't that mean the failure rate would actually go up?).
I'm not convinced, but I'm not a mathmatician either, so I'll just take your word for it.
You will also have the failures on the subcomponents because you've increased your net amount of assemblies...
I'll simplify. Say it takes9 units to make 1 wall. Therefore, to make one wall, you need to do 10 assemblies to complete one wall. ASSUME a 10% critical failure rate. That means 1 of the 10 assemblies will critical fail. 10 items, 1/10 chance that the item you will fail on is the wall.
Say all of the units are made in the factory. Therefore, to make one wall, you need to make one assembly. On that assembly, there is a 10% chance of failure. 1/10.
This shows that you have no increased chance to fail by using a factory. The reason your chances are increased is that this enables you to burn low-quality resources in the factory with a 0% chance of critical failure, and save your higher-quality resources for the final assembly. That reduces your chance of critical failure even further.
The point is... this is what causes other tradeskills to edge even farther ahead of Architects and Droid engineers. A master weaponsmith or armorsmith should *never* fail again except on schematics, because they can run all of their combines, including their final combines, through the factory. Not so with Architects. It's true that we still only have a 10% chance to fail the final combine (even though we ONLY have a chance to fail on a final combine, making 100% of our failures happen on a final combine, our chance to fail on a final combine is not any higher). However, the point is that unlike the other tradeskills, we still have that 10%... and it's actually significantly more due to only having half the assembly skill.
So yes... Architects are facing stacked penalties. Due to lot limits, resource requirements, double lot size on our factory, and lower assembly skill, we face a much much higher risk for amuch much lower reward. When a weaponsmith gets a critical failure on a weapon, they lose 200-300 resources... maybe. They can still make 10-20 more of those weapons, each of which sell for more than many of our items. When we fail our smallest building, we lose 10x that. Losing a small house loses 30% of our income (based on the same resource income as above... I'm basing this on 4 personal harvesters). Let's say the architect and weaponsmith we're talking about are both masters with 4 heavies... we're talking ~20,000 resources a day. With 20,000 resources a day, a master weaponsmith can make around 100 scout blasters, which sell on my server for 100k each. That's a potential 10 million credits a day. If they lose 10% of those, they lose1 million credits. At 20,000 resources a day, it takes a master artisan 3 days to gather enough resources for a generic guild hall (actually... it takes a little more than 3 days). Generic guild halls sell on my server for around 600k. So, right there we can see a difference. 27 million credits in 3 days (with 10% failures) vs 600,000 credits. And if we fail? We get 0... for the same amount of resources. One failure is all it takes, and THAT is the difference. The difference isn't so muchthat our failure rate is higher, even though it is. The difference isn't so much that we don't make far less per resource (and sometimes, far less per item of equivalent skill level) even though that's the case. The difference... is that one failure wipes out our already low income for *DAYS*, where as one failure isn't even noticed by the other profession. It's like gambling... one player's betting $10 a game and playing 1,000 games a day... he wins some, and he loses some, but as long as he wins more than he loses, he makes a ton of cash. We're betting $30,000 every 3 days... all it takes is one loss to send us to the bread lines.
The devs need to realise, and make adjustements for the fact that we take a FAR higher risk, and our combines reperesent a FAR higher investment.
Fyro wrote:
Dirril,
You're saying that if I hand-combine for deeds alone, the number of failures on deeds will be equal to the number of failures on deeds if I hand combine all subcomponents also. Plus I'll have additional failures on the subcomponents (doesn't that mean the failure rate would actually go up?).
I'm not convinced, but I'm not a mathmatician either, so I'll just take your word for it.
You're definately not a mathematician.
If you make 90 subcomponents and 10 deeds at a 10% failure rate you will _probably_ fail on 9 subcomponents and 1 deed.
If you do your 90 subcomponents in a factory and then combine 10 deeds by hand you will _probably_ fail on 1 deed.
Failing on a subcomponent does NOT "use up" a failure. For each combine that you do by hand you have a completely independent 10% chance of failure.
The RATE of failure is the same in both cases, it's only the NUMBER of failures that increases as a result of doing 10 times as many combines.
here is the way you are thinking wrong.
NO matter how you get to it. The final combine for the deed you have a 10% chance to fail (lets continue to say that is the number)
It does not matter if you made all the sub parts, made them in a factory, Had another architect make them for you (good way to trade EXP BTW...)
NO mater how you get all the parts for the final combine... you ahve a 10% chance to fail.
if you do it by hand... you will have used MORE resources on your way to the final combine because of sub-step failures.
But again. It makes absolutely NO DIFFERENCE how you got the parts for that final combine to the deed. On that final combine, you get a 10% chance to fail. Not a SINGLE previous failure or success will change what that particular random number is.
When you flip a coin, you get heads or tails. It does not matter if you just flipped 10 tails... you STILL have a 50% chance of getting another tail.
SO since you no longer need EXP... a factory is the way to go to save yourself trouble clicking.