Architect Archive
Thread: December update Some quick information
Hey folks, just a quick heads up on what's going on. I've had a "State of Profession" post ready since beginning of December, but it's tied in with the Top 5 responses that we are supposed to receive from Thunderheat. Because we haven't received answers to our Top 5, I can't make the SOP the big post it deserves to be, so I've just been holding it back, and it doesnt seem to be coming anytimesoon, so Ill post this information really quick.
More about that Top 5. On Nov 10th, Thunderheart put a Top 5 program together in which each profession had the opportunity to report their Top 5 issues. The idea was that we would do this on a regular basis to eventually sort out all of the problems . We have yet to recieve finalized answer to our original Top 5 (which was pre-City patch). So essentially I'm still waiting on that so I can finally deliver information as correspondants were intended to, but of course, still optimistic.
Just for heads up, Ill list what placed as Top 5 issues. I selected them randomly from the "Big Bug" document's various Top 5s (gameplay - wishlist - bugs), in no particular order.
- Factories cannot unload certain items from crates for use as components in schematics. You must load them all by hand. "Structural module crates can't be used in walls when producing them [the walls]in a factory" is a good example of this.
- Architect products are significantly devalued, selling at 4-5cpu vs. the weaponsmith or amorsmiths overall higher cpu income. Renewable incoming for architects is non-existant (obviously devs might not be able to resolve income problems, as players set the price at which they want to buy, but there must be something that can be done to close the gap between the professions)
- Critical failures can cause severe economic damage to an architect, especially when suffering several in a row, or when just hitting the next tier in the construction tree and failing on the first object. A working suggestion is that only ressources, and not subcomponents are lost. (Our dev has reported that he was looking into it, but I haven't heard anything about it since then)
- Lot issues. PA Halls do not use equal lot sizes. Lot sizes for PA Halls are too high in relation to actual item storage availability. PA leader can't store his equipment, and have a nicely furnished PA Hall at the same time. Being PA leader also limits gameplay possibilities because no lots are available to do anything else (especially true for architects, whose factories take 2 lots). Having 3 small houses is better than having 1 large house, and is as good as having 3 mediums.
- You cannot place items on tables or at various levels in a home without great difficulty. Fine tuning items is very difficult and time consuming. The interface is very cumbersome.
I expect that everyone can find at least one thing in this list that they'd like to see fixed, so I feel it is appropriate. I hope to have information regarding these items soon.
So that's pretty much it for this quick update. I hope to have my State of the Profession set to go before the end of the month, depending on how quickly these replies come through.
Thanks for your patience and understanding 
Arch,
Looks like some of the issues may have been corrected. I've had no problems with factories uncrating structure modules or walls recently. But a somewhat related issue. Ore mining units do NOT crate when made in a factory. Everything else does as far as I know.
Don't feel to bad about TH not responding. It looks like his profession posts were canceled. I don't think he actually responded to any. 
Factories have been pulling structural modules out of crates since the November patch. I've not had any trouble with factories sine then.
Architect products are significantly devalued, selling at 4-5cpu vs. the weaponsmith or amorsmiths overall higher cpu income. Renewable incoming for architects is non-existant (obviously devs might not be able to resolve income problems, as players set the price at which they want to buy, but there must be something that can be done to close the gap between the professions)
I'm getting 7-10 cpu for top-quality harvesters these days. Prices for houses and for civic structures are still on the low side (about 5 cpu). Renewable income remains the big issue. We've been saved by the fact that the entire existing stock of harvesters has been obsoleted twice in the last 3 months... but eventually everyone will have all the harvesters they need.
While I'm at it, here's one easy solution that hasn't been proposed: make harvester deeds work like vehicles; using the deed puts it on your datapad, after which you can deploy/store it. If harvesters are non-transferrable in this way we'll have recurring revenue as people cycle in/out of crafting professions; there won't be a market for used harvesters. Add in a little decay and we're in great shape.
Critical failures can cause severe economic damage to an architect, especially when suffering several in a row, or when just hitting the next tier in the construction tree and failing on the first object. A working suggestion is that only ressources, and not subcomponents are lost. (Our dev has reported that he was looking into it, but I haven't heard anything about it since then)
The patch notes made it sound like they had fixed this.
Lot issues. PA Halls do not use equal lot sizes. Lot sizes for PA Halls are too high in relation to actual item storage availability. PA leader can't store his equipment, and have a nicely furnished PA Hall at the same time. Being PA leader also limits gameplay possibilities because no lots are available to do anything else (especially true for architects, whose factories take 2 lots). Having 3 small houses is better than having 1 large house, and is as good as having 3 mediums.
Still a problem, but this isn't specifically an architect problem; its a PA problem.
You cannot place items on tables or at various levels in a home without great difficulty. Fine tuning items is very difficult and time consuming. The interface is very cumbersome.
Still a problem, but again this isn't specifically an architect problem.
Anyway, thanks for doing your best, Archangel.
The only problem is with the major delay from TH is that by the time he gets around to listing the issues that he said were suppose to be out a month ago. Is that they may no longer be problems. It would probably be better if he asked each correspondent if there have been any changes to the list so it's more up to date.
_-ArchAngel-_ wrote:
Well that's part of the problem with this system... Some of the things got fixed or stopped being problems even before we got replies.
As far as the Top 5 being scrapped, well TH is still working on it - He really wants to complete it, but it's pretty obvious that there's wont be another one like it anytime soon.
Problem: Harvesters appear to be eating power at double the rate. This is a display issue, but it also will cause you to loose half your power if you are not careful.
The work around is to either turn it off and back on again, or change the resource, and then refresh the status panel.
This display issue by itself is not a big deal.
But when you redeed it uses what ever power is on the status and carries that over instead of the real value. What that means is unsuspecting players might redeed without getting it to read correctly beforehand and loose power. If you put in 8 days power and come back in 4 days and it's showing 2 days power and you redeed, it will only carry over those 2 days instead of the 4.
At the very least make a stickied announcement or put it in the Architect issues - FAQ warning players to get the power to display properly before redeeding.
IMHO the price levels of arch items are appropriate, the only real problem is lack of long term income once the world is full of structres (do not repeat the vehicle system, though, make building decay very very slow, like 6 months or more to die).
You have to remember, architects soak up all the crap resources that otherwise have very little value. By allowing us to use ore and metals in walls and other components that do not impact the final outcome, we give low quality resources an actual value.
As for our cpu rates, this misses the point. Other people get 10-20 or more cpu, but then their items use far fewer resources. I make a heavy harv, and I use 25k resources, so even if I only make 2cpu profit, then I just made 50k.
The only proper comparison between professions which use vastly different quantities of resources is not cpu, but credits per hour. If it takes mean hour to make items using up 20k resources as a weaponsmith, then making 10cpu profit gets me 200k profit per hour. If an architect spends an hour and uses up 100k resources, he only needs to make 2cpu profit to have the same hourly income.
Do not focus on cpu, focus on real income of the profession. I plow through millionsand millionsof resources every month. There is no need to boost my income from 2 cpu to 10 cpu or even 5 cpu just because WSs make 10cpu profit.
Worry about long term profitability, that is where architects face real danger. Do not worry about how much we charge per unit of resources compared to other professions.
As for real bugs (or small helpful changes):
Ore mining units do not come out in crates. Very annoying and seems like an easy fix.
Small Structure Storage Modules get used 6 at a time in Heavy Mineral Harvesters, and 4 a pop in others, and yet they come in crates of ten. This is a minor matter, but making these into 25 per crate would be very nice, and not unbalancing or otherwise too powerful.
Please fix the power display bug on harvesters.
The reason other professions have a better CPU is because they deal with far more specific resources than we do, and some of them don't spawn for months at a time. This specialization and rarity is what drives their prices. Their supply is far lower than ours is when it comes to resources and they have to worry about more stats than we do.
Repeat business should take priority over CPU. CPU should be a non-issue for us. The supply and demand of the market drives the CPU and it's usualy correct.
I don't want to push for better CPU for Architect's because they'll give it to us by making the schematics more demanding. It's already frustraiting finding a good concentration of ore (BTW, I found a 80% spot of ore this weekend. Woohoo!).
I'm happy to live with that instead of waiting months for some rare resource to spawn and when it does, it has poor stats. If you ask for better CPU that's what they'll do to make that happen.
Unfortunately this is an FYI and not really up for debate. I cant change it because TH has been spending over a month on gatheringreplies and details from the devs (remember - Originally submitted on Nov 10th). It's kind of a closed issue. Sadly, it's more of a submit and wait for answers and be happy I get answers.
Once we're done with this he'll probably do a whole new Questions and Answers round, so we'll save the new questions for then. Hopefully we'll be able to work out a bit of a quicker process so we can get answers toquestions BEFORE they're obsolete. Regardless, we'll at least get some answers to the more complex issues, like lot sizes vs. storageand renewable income
Waste93 wrote:
Arch,
Looks like some of the issues may have been corrected. I've had no problems with factories uncrating structure modules or walls recently. But a somewhat related issue. Ore mining units do NOT crate when made in a factory. Everything else does as far as I know.
Neilla wrote:
Factories have been pulling structural modules out of crates since the November patch. I've not had any trouble with factories sine then.
Well that's part of the problem with this system... Some of the things got fixed or stopped being problems even before we got replies.
As far as the Top 5 being scrapped, well TH is still working on it - He really wants to complete it, but it's pretty obvious that there's wont be another one like it anytime soon.
I think that the experimentation on Solars and Fusion Generators should be in the list of the Top 5 issues.
Surefoot-SOK wrote:
I hope that doesn't mean you're going to ignore the power issue and not let unsuspecting players know about it.
No, it doesnt mean that. I will put that in the FAQ section, but FYI I've already asked about that... no reply
Please read the original post. This is a Top 5 list from Nov 10th, before the Fusion/Solar problem existed.
HarleyDan wrote:
I think that the experimentation on Solars and Fusion Generators should be in the list of the Top 5 issues.