Architect Archive

There's no reward for making master. This partially stems from the uselessness of experimentation. I don't see a difference in crit failures, I can't diferentiate myself from low level archs, other than by my ability to produce any structure (The majority of my business is still mass producing medium harvs/solar power, so I'm still competing
with fairly low level archs) Experimentation needs to do something viable. I think it's logical that exp effectiveness should increase the harvest rate, and exp durability should decrease maint rate. The problem however is that the devs (And rightfully so) probably think it's already WAYYY too easy to make credits & harvest resources in SWG.

Here's the fix there, but I don't think it's a pretty one, and probably won't be very popular.
1: Seriously nerf sampling. From the very start, macro mining needs to stop, or this fix doesn't work.
-Massively reduce the sampling rate, or
-Implement diminishing returns for sampling from the same location. Something where if someone stays in the same spot sampling for more than 20 mins, they only collect a maximum of 1 resource per sample. By forcing people to move around, it still allows legitimate newbies to get the resources they
need, while forcing the use of harvesters.

2: Set skill requirements for harvester use. Significant skill requirements. The primary issue is that anyone with more than 30 lots available can easily generate a huge amount of resources. This is causing the econ problems, and is why Arch is NOT viable for anyone who isn't a huge powergamer.
-Require Surveying L4 to place Small Harvesters
-Require Master Artisan to place Medium Harvesters
-Require Novice in an advanced crafting profession to place Large Harvesters (Or higher, place it in a L3, L4 of one of the trees in each advanced crafting profession)

3: Increase the base effectiveness of Medium & Large Harvesters.
-Medium to 4.5 kg/h
-Heavy to 11 kg/h

4: Have experimentation make massive differences in the abilities of harvesters, and houses.
-100% durability will halve the maintenance costs, and on subcomponents, high dura will reduce the crit failure rate on final combines.
-100% effectiveness will double the production rate
-100% storage will triple the hopper size

The End Result:
We have a greatly reduced flow of resources coming into the game. The massive 25 harvesters from 1 person in 1 location ends. There is a real, and significant reason for using the heavies, but they will only be used by people that really use resources. Top notch harvesters will earn top dollar. A master using improved heavies that were made with top notch resources will be able to harvest the resources to make PA halls without having to use a bunch of lots.

Fewer harvesters running, but the potential for them to be more effective, with an investment.

Macro mining gets me about 2.5k of a resource overnight. Running a medium harvester gets me about 3k in the same time. I dont see a problem.

3k overnight, 3k while at work, and bam, an AFK bot with no maint costs is 2x as effective as a medium harvester.

In order for harvesters to be viable, macro mining can't. A PA of 20 people all macro mining means a guild architect that NEVER has any resource costs.