Architect Archive
Thread: *LONG* There is only one way to make Archs interesting/desireable again
I have been an architect since day 2 of the release of SWG. And, like many of you, I had high hopes for the profession. And while, I still believe that playing an architect can be fun, it currently suffers from 2 glaring flaws that (I think) no other artisan profession has to deal with.
1. There is no differentiation between our products - a med chem harvester made by any architect will be the exact same as any other. (DE's may suffer from this too, I'm unsure)
2. Our products last forever - Yes, tailors also suffer from this for now, however there is at least a plan to add decay to their products.
I'm going to skip over the decay issue, because it has been discussed ad nauseum here. But without decay, once market saturation of our products has been achieved, the only demand for our products will be through new players/accounts, and the occasional accidental destruction of one of our existing structures. This is not enough to base an entire profession on. All this said, our products should last a very long time. Not because of the cost of the items, but because of the amount of resources that go into them (especially the larger ones). If you use up your pistol, it can be replaced with several hundred resources (albiet, maybe hard to find ones). If you use up your Heavy Mineral Harvester, its gonna take 10's of thousands to replace. I'll leave it to the designers to hopefully figure out an appropriate way to decay structures that is reasonable to all.
What I think is WAY more interesting is product differentiation. It seems to be that the designers of SWG, realizing that experimentation is pointless to an Arch (as it has no bearing on the final quality of the product), deliberatly left our Experimentation and Assembly numbers lower than other Masters. The justification being that A. Experiementation doesn't really matter except POSSIBLY for quality of product affecting final assembly chance percentage, and then B. Assembly percentage numbers (ie. Critical Failures) will be what determines who is the cream of the Architect crop. (i admit this is an argueable point, but if its not true.. I can't fathom a good reason for it)
This is completely different from any other profession, and in my opinion, a very bad cop out.
I would rather be a great architect based on the quality of my structures rather than on my ability to avoid critical failures. And I'd have to assume most of you would also.
To that end, I think the thing we absolutly should be pushing the dev's for is customization of our products. This will solve 2 problems at once.
1. It will solve the pricing problem - If I can deliver a quantitativly better/different product than someone else, then I can more easily justify a different price to the customer. Again, I'd rather justify my pricing scheme based on quality of the product rather than ONLY accessibility of the product. (ie. Yes, you might be able to get that house for 3k, but med house only takes up 1 lot and can hold 200 items... )
2. It will create a larger market for our wares - If we can not only differentiate our products, but specialize them to suit different needs, our products will have greater appeal as customers will want different versions of our products to suit their different needs.
Yes, this will make our profession more challenging. It means that we will have to actually find quality resources instead of just anything if you want to make a quality product. But this WILL in the end be better for our profession as a whole. And will give you 'real' architects something that will be an added value over someone who took the profession to take the installations list to make their harvesters and then surrendered the skills once they had them.
To that end, I propose the following ways that our products and components should be made distinguishable and experimentable. This proposal would create a gigantic variety of products for our profession within the existing framework, and keep architects happy for some time to come.
I've provided a few examples of the kind of things I'd like to see below, but at a high level, I'd like to see the following variable added to structures:
Homes and PA halls: Lot space consumption, Maintence Rate, Decay Rate, Storage Room (number of items it can hold)
Harvesters of all types: Maintence Rate, Decay Rate, Mining Efficiency, (and ideally, optional subcomponents that can effect the rate for targeted resources. As an example, it would be cool to have a Gas Harvester that was AWESOME at mining Inert Gas at the cost of not being so good at Reactive Gas)
There are some examples below of how it could be built.. obviously, this would be a gigantic change. But I think something of this magnitude is what would be needed to make Architects interesting and viable. Anyway, I hope the developers find it interesting enough to consider doing something similiar.
Thanks,
-Jubey, Core Tech Master Architect
Corbantis
Components:
Fluidic Drilling Pump Stations: Currently these are used for both Gas Harvesters and Liquid Harvesters. The idea here would be to make it so that you would want to use different versions of these for those two different jobs.
Experimental Properties:
Decay Resistance: Final combine would create a Decay Resistance number of the structural module that would lend itself towards any 'Decay Resistance' properties of the final product.
50% Unit Toughness
50% Decay Resistance
Gas Harvesting Ability: Would create a 'Gas Harvesting' number that would affect any Gas Harvesting abilities in the final product it is a part of.
50% Heat Resistance
50% Overall Quality
Liquid Harvesting Ability: Would create a 'Liquid Harvesting' number that would affect any Liquid Harvesting abilities in the final product it is a part of
50% Cold Resistance
50% Overall Quality
Harvesting Mechanism: These are used on Flora Farms only. To that end, they just need some factor in determining how 'good' a harvesting mechanism they are and lend themselves towards the new Decay Rate of structures they go into.
Experimental Properties:
Decay Resistance: Final combine would create a Decay Resistance number of the structural module that would lend itself towards any 'Decay Resistance' properties of the final product.
50% Unit Toughness
50% Decay Resistance
Floral Harvesting Ability: Would create a 'Floral Harvesting' number that would affect any Floral Harvesting abilities in the final product it is a part of.
50% Shock Resistance
50% Overall Quality
Power Core Unit: These are used in homes, PA halls, and for some Droid Engineering. The better the PCU could possibly weigh in to make the structure take up fewer lot spaces for the owner who places it (just an idea). You could add some other property that is relevant for Droid Engineers as well, but I'm focusing on Architects in my post 
It could pull Experimental Quality properties from its subcomponents of Power Conditioners, Generator Turbines, and Energy Distributors to help determine how good its Efficiency is.
Experimental Properties:
Decay Resistance: Final combine would create a Decay Resistance number of the structural module that would lend itself towards any 'Decay Resistance' properties of the final product.
50% Unit Toughness
50% Decay Resistance
Efficiency: The determining factor in the final combine in which it is a part of for how many lot spaces the building takes up.
50% Shock Resistance
50% Overall Quality
Structural Modules: These just need to affect the new Decay Rate of the structures they go into.
Experimental Properties:
Decay Resistance: Final combine would create a Decay Resistance number of the structural module that would lend itself towards any 'Decay Resistance' properties of the final product.
50% Unit Toughness
50% Decay Resistance
Structures:
Large Corellia House: There should be 4 meaningful qualities to any home: Lot space consumption, Maintenance Rate, Decay Rate, Storage Room (number of items it can hold). To that end, there should be properties on the item that lend themselves towards affecting these stats. I'm not saying it should be possible to create a PA hall that only takes up 1 lot space. But it would interesting if you could create one that only took up 8, or even 7. (yes, I know tatooine PA halls take up only 7, that's hardly my point though) Ideally, there could be optional subcomponents added that would make a structure more ideal for either a Home, a Merchant place, or pure Storage. Say.. home would just be the default, but if you were going to use the place for a Business there could be some component you could add that would affect the Maintenance rates of any vendors in the building, or for Storage something you could do (in addition to the storage structure modules) that would affect how many items could go into it.
Experimental Properties:
Efficiency: Pulls numbers from any Power Core Units in the assembly as well as the OQ of the materials in the final assembly to get some kind of modifier to the base LOT space that is consumed.
100% Overall Quality
Maintenance Rate (and Decay Rate if it is added): For Maintenance rate, better the quality the lower the maintenance. Factors would be Decay Resistance properties of any Structural Modules or Wall Modules as well as the Unit Toughness and Decay resistance of the materials used in the final combine.
50% Unit Toughness
50% Decay Rate
Storage Room: This property would be entirely determined by the "Storage Room" stats of the Structural Storage Modules, or Small Structural Storage Modules that were consumed in the final assembly. They would contribute to the number of items that could be stored in that building.
Medium Mineral Harvester: There are 3 meaningful qualities to harvesters: Maintence Rate, Decay Rate, Mining Efficiency, (and ideally, optional subcomponents that can effect the rate for targeted resources. As an example, it would be cool to have a Gas Harvester that was AWESOME at mining Inert Gas at the cost of not being so good at Reactive Gas)
Experimental Properties:
Maintenance Rate (and Decay Rate if it is added): For Maintenance rate, better the quality the lower the maintenance. Factors would be Decay Resistance properties of any Structural Modules or Wall Modules as well as the Unit Toughness and Decay resistance of the materials used in the final combine.
50% Unit Toughness
50% Decay Rate
Mining Efficiency: Pulls numbers from the Generator Turbines and the Ore Harvesters (in this case) to determine a modifier for the base efficiency with which it can mine materials.
While I may not agree with everything you've posted here, I must compliment you on the amount of thought and work you put into posting. Thanks for sharing this with the rest of us, including those who are contemplating the Architect profession.
Here's a thought that was inspired by your suggestion of making a appropriate for it's use; Home, Merchant, Storage, PA Hall.
Make the Guild Management Terminal an Architect crafted Item that must be placed INSIDE a structure and requires ONE extra FREE lot to place. The size of the Building would determine the number of members the terminal would accept, perhaps 10 x Lot size of house with PA being unlimited.
Pros:
- Guild Leaders would then be able to still have Lots available for use elsewhere
- Guilds could buy the house they needed at the time and then purchase larger structures as they grow
- Extra Large Houses, i.e. PA Hall, could then be placed without guild management term for those who just want the house.
I'm sure there are Cons to this idea, program code not withstanding. I'll let the more experienced Architects point those out to me.
Just thought I'd share my idea.
the idea of decay rate while appealing from a selling point of view would IMHO achive very little,all that will happen is resouce harvesting costs will be pushed up to compensate which in turn will push up harvester costs creating a false economy,Maybe adding Harvesting decay could be a solution so the harvester runs slower the longer it is run without professional repair or even and IMO a better soloution get rid of redeed costs all together and make it a requirement for harvester to be reconditioned by an Architect before it is possible to plant it again or run at full efficency,eg with some kind of repair kit
Actually, that is not a false economy. That is an economy.
Your idea would also bring architect income, but not in the form of new harvesters and buildings. Just in their repair. The repair business is not, I imagine, what most architects signed up for. We signed up for creating and selling structures.
A false economy is where we currently are where (ignoring the relativly small cycle of new accounts and accidental destruction) we will eventually get to a point where we aren't making structures.
You are correct in that harvester costs would probably have to go up to compensate eventually, but the system is cyclical, and in such, it would reach a balance. Meaning that Architects rely on those that user the harvesters (even if they themselves are the harvesters) and as such they cannot raise prices to the point that it would put the harvester users out of business. And the harvester users cannot raises prices to the point thatthose that consume their products cannot buy them.That is an economy.
Its just different than it is now.
-Jubey, Core Tech Architect
Corbantis
I agree - only way to make Architecture interesting, desirable and VIABLE again.
BTW I made Master Architect after Master Weaponsmith, largely to build harvesters and the odd house for myself and friends. Worked very well I could use up all my crap materials from weaponcraftin and just had to get some ore here and there. 2-3 boxes in Architecture and anybody can build all medium harvesters and some houses just as good as a master architect, sorry. I would never have taken up architecture if there had been Master Architect crafted Harvesters on the Market which were much BETTER quality than anything I could achieve as a novice architect with a few boxes. I would have been happy to pay a good price for these uber harvesters.
One thing I never could figure out is why anyone would mess with the storage capacity?
I never let my harvesters run unattended for more than three days. Do others let them run for a wekk at a time? With the resource shift that just gets nasty. 
Sorry I got sidetracked....great post! I liekd it alot. Some great ideas and I like details to tinker with. 
Shylok, Lowca, UPSWG