Architect Archive

There are a number of ideas for helping the Architect profession out there that I think need to be discussed, so I’m going to address them one at a time to get more thoughts on them. Some of these are misguided I think, so I state my reasons for opposing them. But it’s not all negative, so keep reading, and comment on the topics please.

Concern #1:

- Architects should get more lots

Consider This:

Many people seem to support this, and it sounds like a great idea at first, but why should an architect get more lots than any other crafter? Here are the most common reasons I’ve seen:

-- We use more resources than any other profession, so we need more harvesters

More resources are what bigger harvesters are for. Running only 4 medium harvesters and 1 personal one, I get enough almost all the resources I need to make a large house every few days. And that’s with a cruddy 60% ore vein. I could almost double that by going to large ones, and get another 25% if I found a decent ore spot. Any single architect who wants to build more than one large house a day can’t do it by themselves, and that’s the way it should be in my opinion.

-- Our factory takes 2 lots

Not every architect needs to have a factory up at all times so this isn’t necessarily a problem. Again, you can have one up all the time if you like, but you make the trade off. Once we can share admin access to a factory properly, I'm hoping we'll see groups of architects that share factories as well as harvesters. This leads to the next point:

Concern #2:

- Harvesters should not be share-able.

Consider This:

Some have said it’s unbalancing because one person can access a disproportionate number of harvesters, which in turn drives down prices. But that’s silly, because people will collectively gather resources in any case. The owner of the lot still has to be present to place the mine, and to move it. The fact that they aren’t making harvester runs is irrelevant. They could just stock the thing up with a week’s money and power and come back when it’s time to move it. And if we get a remote payment method a lot of us are asking for, sharing them will be trivial anyway.

Leaving aside the ridiculousness of being able to share admin access to a house and factory (something we all want) but not a harvester, this sounds like sour grapes to me. This is a social game, and there are supposed to be advantages to people cooperating, especially in a PA. Soloing is a viable option, but for the crafter, just like in real life, you have higher costs when you try and do everything yourself.

Finally, this change would hurt the “little guy” more than the large PAs. When I first started playing with my aspiring DE friend, we shared harvesters because as artisans neither of us needed a lot of any one resource, but we needed a lot of different ones. We couldn’t afford to each have our own 6 machines, so we had 4 each and shared duties, alternating days we did harvester runs. This sort of arrangement is very helpful to the starting artisan

Concern #3

- People who undercut the market by selling “too cheap” should be treated like garbage and are just ruining the game for us “legitimate” players.

Consider This:

I have sympathies for this argument, but there’s no way to avoid this situation when some people are more concerned about XP than money. We have to face the fact that there is more than one type of “income”, and different people want different rewards from the game. Learn to deal with it, add value to your sales with customer service, and laugh all the way to the bank when the guy who’s dumping small houses stops making them because he’s tired of playing architect *and* running missions for money.

Concern #3

- The Bazaar needs to have the price-cap of 3000 removed

Consider This:

The price cap on the bazaar is in place to encourage people to use vendors. Any artisan can get a few boxes in Business and put a vendor in their house, office, or PA. If you don’t want to spend the skill points, then make friends with a merchant. As a novice merchant I have an NPC vendor already in my house that I can list things for any price I want, and for free.

Removing the bazaar cap would effectively destroy the merchant profession, and this seems like a bad idea to me. If you are looking for a real-estate merchant on Naboo/Gorath, contact me and we’ll work something out

Concern #4

- Critical failures are a real problem, especially when you lose a large house or PA hall to a crit.

Consider This:

This is definitely true! Critical failures should be extremely rare on things like houses and factories. When was the last time you heard of someone building a house, getting the foundation in, the walls up, the roof on, and then when they get to the very last stage, the whole thing falls down? Individual components should be subjected to critical failures that destroy the whole thing (it’s easy to mess up making a structure block that ends up disintegrating). But if you have a bad generator when you build a factory, the entire factory doesn’t usually fall apart. You just replace the generator.

Crit fails on anything using multiple crafted components should only lose the bad component and maybe one other ingredient.

Concern #5

- Undo the Factory XP Nerf (or no one will buy factories)

Consider This:

This wasn’t a nerf, it was a bug fix. Factories shouldn’t give full XP, because you aren’t doing anything. You pile some stuff into a hopper and press the go button. If you have Excel calculate a huge list of numbers for you, do you learn anything about math? At least we still get 10%, and we’ll get it while logged off even.

The main advantage of factories is not having to do it by hand. I ran a crate of 40 structure blocks last night. I really didn’t want to do it manually, and I probably would have lost a few to crits, which you also don’t worry about in a factory.

Finally, in professions where experimentation matters, factories are very useful for churning out many copies of the real high quality item you experimented the heck out of. This is where the value for factories comes from, not in the XP you get for doing nothing.

Other Concerns

-- Make experimentation on structures do some good.

This is definitely on my short list of things that need fixed!

-- Make furniture worth having other than for a place to sit.

This is also very important for the usefulness of the architect. Healing faster while lying down, storing things in cabinets, etc; man I hope this type of stuff happens soon. But I just read the notes for the next big patch, and there was non of this, nor really *any* love for the architect listed. And what’s with a couch only seating one person?

-- Lights don’t light up.

Can we get an answer from the devs on whether this is a bug, an oversight, or working as intended so we can put the topic to rest?

-- Master Architects only get a total of 55 assembly and experimentation points, whereas AS and WS get 100 (or will soon).

Can we get an answer from the devs on whether this is a bug, an oversight, or working as intended?

-- Various concerns about recipe normalization

Furniture taking too many hides, or just weird amounts of resources (futon takes no hides??).

Medium gas harvester takes as much as medium chem, but is much smaller. Where’d those 3 wall units go in that little tank?

Furniture concentrated at level 2? Spread things out a bit please, move some up higher in the tree so there’s a real reason to get Furniture 3 & 4.

The only thing I'm going to say about Concern #5 is that it sucks that certain items require factory made components and you don't get crap for XP from them now. If you want to level efficiently you have to hand make everything lower than amedium house.

I have a simple one they need to fix. Fix "Harvesting Mechanism" I mean the game is out over a month. I have turned away countless potential customers because I can't make medium/heavey Flora Harvesters. It looks like this schematic puts itself in a infinte loop till you click close. Shouldn't be too dificult to fix something that should of been available at launch.

That's a good point Rath. Except you get a heck of a lot more experience building a large house than you do from a storage structure, don't you? You are losing out on a bit of XP, but if XP is all you are worried about, then you'll be hand-grinding blocks anyway I suppose. Personally I find I'm getting a fair amount of XP from building factories and such, but that was before the nerf, er, I mean fix.I'll admit I liked getting all that XP, but I knew that would go away and I agree that it makes sense. Getting XP from a factory unfairly advantages the player who can afford a factory.

Great post man you should check out my "List of concerns" post.

1. I actually think everybody should start the game with less lots. I explain how it would work in the above mentioned post. (would love to hear your take on it.) I actually think manufacturing and extraction should be setup in thier own professions. I touched on re-adding the mining profession. as it stands now architects control the pricing on resources because we make the equipment. however architects have setup the game to screw themselves because most of the people that are already architects got there by not worrying about fair pricing and jsut grinding out cheap houses and flooding the market.

2. Agree and I take it a step further and state that lots should be sellable. (again elaborated on in the above post

3. its too late to avoid it. the consumers have a price in mind and architects wouldnt (and maybe shouldn't) work together to gradually bring those prices up. Alot fo in game architects don't even read these boards.

3b. The bazaar is a mess. It needs alot of things but it doesn't need a price cap increase. in fact I vote to toughen the cap when more people get vendors up or even remove the bazaar all together it lags to crap at peak times anyways.

4. great minds think alike my post refers to critical failures and how i feel they should work.

5. I don't think architects should even be running factories this really should be left to manufacturers. but as it stands now im fine with the way xp is handled now in that regard.

aye the architect schematics are really screwed up ... in the short term if they would jsut fix the schematics and the furniture critical failure bug it would make the profession alot more bearable.

I agree with you Philomorph and I feel the same way about Architecture.

I saw a post on the main board again complaining about lot sharing and admin rights. As far as I am concerned that is sour grapes from people who are unwilling to socialize. Combat players group for mutual benefit and so should crafters. If anything the ability to group in crafting is not developed enough.

How some of these players expect to make a successful business not interacting with other people I have no idea. I think they might be better off in another game profession. Perhaps smuggler.

In any case you are right, people will share resources no matter what, all the restricting lots will do is hurt the little guy and make it that much tougher to take a night off once an a while and let a buddy handle your harvesters without having him having to log in with your account.

Failures on large structures is also very discouraging. I am not aware of any other profession that can loose an entire weeks worth of effort in resources in a single click of the mouse. Loss of the base resources in a factory is fine, but the components, or at least some of them should be returned.

Other things that I would like to see is better use of crates in factories so you do not have to remove all the items. As well I would like clear indications of efficiency and quality results when you examine a deed and clarification as to what "durable" "efficiency" etc do for buildings if anything. The weapons are getting more info provided on ID, deeds should too.

Furniture also needs an overhaul. Data terminals should do something. I hear a rumor they were supposed to give you bank account access (not safe deposit box). Lets see some of that. Also lets fix the lights that do not light, and the lamps that require multi level houses to place on a table.

my $0.02

I'll do a more specific break down too.

1) I have been advocating the same thing. 10 lots is enough, period. We need some sort of interdependency. Look at this way too, most the big weaponsmiths I know don't even mine. They have like 8 factories and a house.

2) I agree also. Not only would this be a waste of time to program especially considering the devs could be doing something more useful, it's a pointless hurdle.

3) Let people sell for what they want. I constantly get new business because I try to be personable to people. If they like you they come back and bring their friends. I've only pissed off one guy and that was because he made an offer for 2 factories that was too low. So I started asking him if he'd sell me a pistol for 1K when he was selling them for 5K-8K. Needless to say he didn't like it.

3B) Once again totally agree. The bazaar is better used for newbies than true professionals. Find someone to sell to in bulk or run your own shop. Merchant XP is your friend.

4) I've lost a few large buildings to critical failures. I don't think the problem is so much that you lose the resources, I think the problem lies with the fact that we don't charge enough to justify such a loss. If you sold a medium house for 150K and failed the final combine, that would just cut into your profit and not put you in the red on the deal.

5) Gate the XP you would get on identical item requirements to the final combine. Everybody is happy.

I want to give my take on experimentation and architecture. If you make a ranged weapon there is3 critical components. The barrel, the power handler, and the scope. So if I want to make the best weapon I need to make the best sub-components with the best materials. I get the materials. So I start working on the barrel. I would argue that it takes about 10 actual items to make one that is good enough to be considered elite. I make a schematic out of it. I do this for the power-handler and the scope. Than I do this for the final combine. By the time I actually make an awesome ranged weapon I've made 30-50 different items. Now imagine doing this with a medium harvester. You have the generator turbine. You have the structural modules. You have the small structure storage module. Finally you have the light ore mining unit. You need to build all these to their best before you can even consider making the actual ultimate medium harvester. By the time you're done you've invested 50 thousand resources to make a schematic that still, no matter how good it is, will not make up the 50 thousand resources. If we could charge 50 creds/unit like weaponsmiths than I would say yeah, but unfortunately that would make a medium harvester cost 180350 credits. I'll continue to sell my sub-par ones for 19K.

Very good point about critical failures on houses, factories, and other big things. They just don't make sense.

---

Philomorph wrote:

Concern #1:

- Architects should get more lots

Consider This:

Many people seem to support this, and it sounds like a great idea at first, but why should an architect get more lots than any other crafter? Here are the most common reasons I’ve seen:

-- We use more resources than any other profession, so we need more harvesters

More resources are what bigger harvesters are for. Running only 4 medium harvesters and 1 personal one, I get enough almost all the resources I need to make a large house every few days. And that’s with a cruddy 60% ore vein. I could almost double that by going to large ones, and get another 25% if I found a decent ore spot. Any single architect who wants to build more than one large house a day can’t do it by themselves, and that’s the way it should be in my opinion.

-- Our factory takes 2 lots

Not every architect needs to have a factory up at all times so this isn’t necessarily a problem. Again, you can have one up all the time if you like, but you make the trade off. Once we can share admin access to a factory properly, I'm hoping we'll see groups of architects that share factories as well as harvesters. This leads to the next point:

---

This is probably the only thing in your list I have any disagreement with at all. Architects are the building specialists and yes we *should* get a bonus to our lots. I think the appropriate place for it would be in the construction tree. Also there is NO reason at all for our structure factory to take 2 lots when everyone elses factorys take 1.

With factorys well... I don't mind the 10% rule ---as long as it produces faster than we can--- If it stays slower then yes I believe full experience is in order. In fact if it produced faster I would not be opposed to no experience at all.

Honeslty top on my priority is not experimenting but customizing.

Im tired of seeing a planet that is one big sub development. Lets see structure DESIGN.

(Maybe with the Player City Patch?)

I'd just like to say that I fully agree with every point you've made. I'd just like to quickly touch on point #4 about Critical Fails (since I just crit failed 2 small and 1 medium house in the past 2 days). The fact that I lost approx. 27360 resources, not counting the numerous critical fails on components, in two days is just pure insanity. A medium house uses 13900 ore. Im running 3 medium and 4 small extractors on a 35% ore spot, best I could find at a reasonable distance from town, and it still takes me a day or two to get that much ore. Im not sure on this, but Im assuming that Architects crit fail just as often as say an Armorsmith or Weaponsmith. Now think about how much resources a gun uses and how many components there are. Im thinking about 300-400 resources for a gun. A medium house isover 65 times as much resources. And Im pretty sure its got a lot more components (A med house having a total of 57 not counting the final combine). On top of the fact that I lose tens of thousands of resources, Im even losing customers. People dont want to wait another day for a house if I crit fail, they want it now and will find someone else to make it.

Now as for a solution to this problem, Im not sure. There are a few ways that would work better. You could totally eliminate critical fails from houses, PAs and the large structures, which is probably the worst idea. A better idea would be to greatly lower the chance of critical fails on large buildings. The final idea I could come up with, was a random# or %of the materials (or even make it so only components are recoverable)is recovered when you crit fail. I think the final idea is probably the best idea. If you want to compare to real (like in the original post), your house may crumble after you've built a lot of it, but you could probably still salvage the foundation, or maybe even a wall or two.

Just my 2 cents.

Concern #1

I'm perfectly OK with the number of lots we get. I do not find it over powering at all. Or underpowered for that matter. With what I have (only using personal harvesters ATM) I am able to keep up with my building demands. When I upgrade I will definately be able to start getting a surplus and making bigger/better quality items.

IF they did decide to add lots, I think that adding one additional lot with Construction II or III and one with Master Architect would not put us at overpowering. It would require at least some time invested into the class to even make any lot gains on it. This would prevent people from taking Novice Arch just to have an extra lot. And 2 extra lots total would not make it completely unreasonable. Either way it would go... I would still be happy.

Concern #5

This makes perfect sense to me. Why should I be gaining XP when I can just set up my harvester, walk 120m away to start sampling, and be guaranteed 100% XP gain while I sample, go AFK (Sampling macros in game are cool for short times), and gain a large surplus ofgood quality items (assuming you experimented before making schematic). That seems like overpowering to me. Maybe 90% reduction was a little much... maybe it wasn't... but it still makes sense to me.. and considering I almost never use a factory... why does it matter much to me?

I do, however, agree that it should be faster to produce. Look at a factory today in RL. Were they created just to automate a process? Not entirely, the idea of the assembly line in a factory was to streamline and speed up construction while at the same time automating some portions of the creation process. If the time to create were not so much longer in a factory than by hand... it might actually be useful to have a factory up for more than just creating your "Exact duplicate" items. As it stands now I plan on making myself a Structure Factoryso that when I am ready to make those items that need to be exact I can just drop it... put in 3100 creds, a little power, schematic, resources, hit go, and redeed when I'm done with this time. Factor in the cost of that to your house sale and it's not much of a problem at all.

Most of the rest of the items mentioned I agree with or support ideas previously posted.

Danvar the Wookiee

Tatooine, Chilstra Galaxy

Objection to our factories takeing 2 lots.

The reason for this is that our factories are 2 times as effective as other factories. This is why we can produce 100 structual modules in say an hour.

Run the same ammount of resources and complexity in a smaller factory, it would take you 3-4 hours +

This is why we use 2 lots. Plus I don't have an issue because I build my own fusion and heavy harvesters that make up for the "lost" lots.

Structual's should count as two lots, or maybe just one lot with twice the cost of a normal factory to maintain. It is very reasonable.