Artisan Archive

Please take a look at the questions that were posed to us in the Dev responses and list your comments.

• concerning harvester tracking: We’re very interested in doing this. We’re going to look into a better way to track maintenance. How would you like to be able to track this? A special tool? In the data pad?

• Too many clicks crafting: We’d like to redo the crafting UI at some point. What types of keyboard shortcuts would you like to see? What would they be connected to?

• More useful items that players need and decay on items: We’d be open to suggestions on this topic. What kinds of things would you like to see?

Please also include what you would like to see as far as future content.

"concerning harvester tracking: We’re very interested in doing this. We’re going to look into a better way to track maintenance. How would you like to be able to track this? A special tool? In the data pad?"

how about a droid for people that don't have houses or can't afford a "harvestor terminal" the droid would be cheap and you would be able to build one at novice. You would still need to run after the droid though right? not sure if i get this. I'd rather chase something that is not moving the a droid that moves.

Have a structure panel in the house to control the harvestors from your house, or have the option to store it in your datapad or back out and put it in your house again. Make the terminal take up 10 slots of your datapad. Just because it has lots of stuff going on with the datapad and the electrical use from your datapad should reduce your overall datapad. This would give a reason to get a house and put the terminal in your house.

Then later add the option for mission terminals, banks, and bazzar terminals to be added in the house as well. This would be neat for player cities. After your done with that, add a news terminal. So people know what is going on the galactic universe. Only available in populated planets like naboo and corriella. Just ideas that keep hitting me ...


"Too many clicks crafting: We’d like to redo the crafting UI at some point. What types of keyboard shortcuts would you like to see? What would they be connected to?"

I wanna see everything available to me on one screen. Have the resources on the left, show what is required on the top, experimentation on the right, image and info in the middle. 1 click assembly and your done. Above the required resources add 9 macro slots of most common resources used. shift 1 - 9 to insert. Improve speed of the UI as well. Right now it is too slow for hotkeys.

"More useful items that players need and decay on items: We’d be open to suggestions on this topic. What kinds of things would you like to see?"

Those robots you see in episode 1 that Anikan fixes. if you watch they load stuff and do stuff. Add that to the droids novice cert and the droids would carry stuff for you (up to 60) and walk around like a pet. Have the bots sample for you if you just need a quick 100 resources and don't wanna build a harvestor there. The bots would store it in there inventory. You gain no xp for that so no exploit. Just something usefull for masters and novices alike just looking for a quick resources to gather. You can only have one out like the current droids.

Let the droids be able to slice mission terminals and any other terminal. At a very low percetnage of 25% however.

Let droids carry a light sabre. not useful now but will be when jedis are around. So you can hide your light saber. I'm assuming the light sabre is clearly visable when you are equiped with it or not, it should be. if it isnt you need to watch starwars movies again. When unequiped it should be at the waist when equiped it should be out and about. This would be a nice way for jedi's to cloak in a sense.

thats all i got for now!

1) Tracking Maint/Power/Hopper levels via datapad would be good. A droid for automated refilling of power/maint.

2) /loadschematic Iohe (would effectively double click on the Iohe resource stack.)

3) I'd like to see a general decay applied across the board to all items and it should get additional decay during use of them item. Structures need to have decay badly and so do survey/toolkits. Before any real decay can be made however, there needs to be methods for repairing it. There needs to be a reduction in repairability of an item each time it is repaired also and the skill should be added going up the artisan line perhaps under business (since that line is lacking seriously badly).

1) tracking through the datapad would be nice

2) maybe some kind of button that would start at the top of you resource list and instantly fill in all applicable fields. i dunno how feasiable this is but its what i want

3) i'm not sure about decay. things like clothes should wear out faster for sure. and useful items for low lvl artisans. stuff people would want to buy. or that higher level artisans would want. losing schems after reaching a certain level would be possible i think but i'm not sure if would cause more or less complaining.

How about something in the datapad or elsewhere that tracks the resources that you have sampled or harvested? telling you what qualitties andwhich planet they were found on..

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Jasarina wrote:
. What types of keyboard shortcuts would you like to see? What would they be connected to?

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Ideally, a "/repeat crafting" command. Same sequence which just ran, including which slots in which ingredients, how experimentation points were allocated, and so on.

I would like to be able to specify boilerplate text to be added to any item I sell in the bazaar -- a sort of 'sig file' if you will.

I would like a 'folder' system for my invetory -- I don't care if it lets me carry more, I want to organize things.

I want resource names to be more descriptive -- having to click a dozen contained of 'Polymer' to see which is the one I want is annoying.

pragmatous wrote:
"no! structures do not need decay ... bad idea ... you pay with maintenance for there not to be decay. if there is decay what is the point of paying maintenance?"

Yeah, I agree with you there...


"as far as surveys and toolkits you can just make them again. that would just be an annoyance for everyone. There is not one non artisan that would use these tools anyway. Only the artisan would. you can make them so whats the point of having to keep making your own tools?

i compeltely disagree with shadus idea #3 and this would actually make artisan worst not better i think."


But I don't know where you got that idea...
Medics, Entertainers, scouts, and those elite profs that are further up those trees all use crafting tools (generic or otherwise).

In fact I wouldn't mind seeing some more effect on a critical fail...like destruction of that crafting tool or damage to the artisan. Considering we're wooking with metalworking, explosives, munitions, and other hazardous materials...an artisan would get hurt sometimes (at least lose the crafting tool).

BTW, I'm not sure why Scouts hafta have a crafting tool. These are the people that when stranded on Hoth for 2 weeks with nothing, would wind up building a ski lodge and working lift with a survival knife. (At least in theory)

More useful items that players need and decay on items: We’d be open to suggestions on this topic. What kinds of things would you like to see?

WORKING electrobinoculars - allow perspective change to 100m forward of character position.

Night vision goggles-shades everything green but higher contrast than normal vision at night.

Cybernetics made by droid engineers, but attached by master surgeons
(maybe affect one stat positively and another negatively)

Working bookcases/storage by architects-allowing storage of items beyond current house limit

Droid/commlink for harvester management - Dataterm in houses

lower artisan TKA powerup - non vibro knucklers, spike toe boots

SOME form of wookiee armor...

Listening devices to hear other's tells - and counter measures for that

MAKE food a necessity (yeah, right) - no starving to death, but if ya haven't eaten, you wouldn't be in prime shape (Ham-wise).

Sheaths and holsters

more customization options on weapons, droids, food, and structures...

Forges by architects for refining/forging better stats on metals

Auxilliary tools (like hydro spanner, fusion welder, Zabrak stitch'nKnit) that act as artisan skill buffs - high decay rate, but useful

and, again, do anything to make crafting more fun and less of something people want to grind thru!

oop, one more.


Allow people to rent spaces INSIDE cities for shops, apts., PA's-
The cities feel sterile more like an airport, and not like someplace where people actually live.

Add this one: Being able to remove credits and power from harvestors before moving them

Thanks

I already replied to most of this in the other thread with the Dev's responses, but I'll paraphrase here as well.

concerning harvester tracking: We’re very interested in doing this. We’re going to look into a better way to track maintenance. How would you like to be able to track this? A special tool? In the data pad?

1) E-mail when a harvestor runs out of something: maintenance, power or resource.

2) Optional feature when crafting harvestor to work with an optional item to allow real time remote monitoring. (And perhaps remote payment of maintenance with a surcharge like /tip bank.)

3) Optional feature when crafting harvestor to allow harvestors to interact with droids. Special modules would then be needed on the droids to do credit transfers, power transfers (including picking up from power harvestors), and resource retrieval (and drop-off at factories, vendors, etc.)

Too many clicks crafting: We’d like to redo the crafting UI at some point. What types of keyboard shortcuts would you like to see? What would they be connected to?

1) Allow crafting tools to pull items from packs carried in inventory.

2) Allow crafted items to be put directly into packs carried in inventory.

3) An option for the crafting tool to automatically pick the "best" resources to fill all of it's slots.

4) Better information, in advance, about what a given power-up does, and what the effects of including optional components will be.

More useful items that players need and decay on items: We’d be open to suggestions on this topic. What kinds of things would you like to see?

In addition to the various optional modules I mentioned above to help automate harvestors, 2 additional types of survey tools. The first would combine multiple different existing survey tools, for example, Power would allow one to select Radioactives, Wind, or Solar, while an Inorganic would combine most of the rest of the survey tools. This would use existing survey tools as a component and would pass on any benefits an especially well crafted survey tool already had.

The second survey tool would be similar to the resource screen on harvestors listing the relative concentration of all resources of a particular type at a particular location. (This tool would presumably NOT be able to highlight the nearest higher concentration like a regular survey tool does. But it might be a subcomponent for harvestors after it's introduction.)

And when vehicles arrive, better vehicle mounted survey/sampling tools as modules. Or for that matter, survey/sampling droids. You could then give a specific resource to a droid which would then scan the area & follow the vein to the highest concentration. With the addition of a storage module, it could even sample that resource and bring it back to a preset location.

Ooo ooo ooo! The "droids" thing just clicked with me in this bit:

3) Optional feature when crafting harvestor to allow harvestors to interact with droids. Special modules would then be needed on the droids to do credit transfers, power transfers (including picking up from power harvestors), and resource retrieval (and drop-off at factories, vendors, etc.)

What if a droid could be "attached" to an installation--any building, essentially. This would probably have to be a one-time thing that gets associated with the deed (since, well, people are upset enough about having maintenance and power go away when you dig up your installation for a resource shift.) Although, if the replacement cost is reasonable enough (1k-2k credits per such a droid), I'd certainly be willing to pay it for my medium harvesters.

Adding such a droid would hook the harvesters into your "network", which could be monitored from the datapad. For extra bonus points, you can monitor any installation that you have admin rights on that has a maintenance droid installed.

It might be worthwhile to say that while you can monitor the network remotely, you can only manage it when in proximity to an installation with a droid installed. Management would allow you to request credit and power transfer to remote locations, at a fee (and possibly with a time delay.) Perhaps the standard 5% bank transfer fee for paying maintenance, and perhaps a 5% power use for transferring energy. For bonus points here, allow the manager to mark specific locations as "automatic power when empty" and "automatic bank deduction when empty". The power wouldn't be too hard computationally (load all the installations in the network when you use the manual transfer function or when you visit any installation in the network to check power.) Automatic bank withdrawals would be less likely to get implemented, IMO, since it would have to be reflected in your bank balance on the fly.

My suggestion would be: manual transfers only, from anything in the network. This would allow a person who manages harvesters to install a droid in their home (or perhaps a droid in the PA hall) for easy access, or a person who has no such building available would be able to go to one harvester to manage the rest. This would really cut down on the running around to manage things.

Retrieving resources *might* be possible from anywhere in the network, but if so, there should be a fee charged--especially for world-to-world transfers. (I like to retrieve my resources regularly.)

Good things about this scenario: makes it easier to go longer periods between checking harvesters. Much easier to ask a friend to manage them all from a central place than to run to all of them frequently (if you leave for a vacation, for example). Gives another place for droid engineers to sell their goods (especially if the droids are "used up" when the deed is reclaimed, though a lot of people would groan.) And the big bonus for me (since I'm considering this step soon): makes it *much much* easier to manage harvesters on multiple worlds, even if resources must be claimed manually. I visit my on-planet harvesters daily--with off-planet harvesters, I'd rather visit less often, and being able to monitor power and maintenance status, as well as "resources ran out" status would be a huge huge benefit.

I also really like the idea of a droid or droid module that can follow a mineral vein (although I'd say that unless the droid is totally disposable, it should require you to follow the droid to find the spot.) Would only work once you'd actually found a mineral vein to follow. In the disposable case, the droid finds the nearest local maximum and you receive email after a "search time" period completes telling you what the location is, with an attached waypoint noting the resource type and concentration found. In the non-disposable case, you do that yourself, and also have to defend the droid and yourself if it travels through hostile areas. (The advantage here would be for people with low survey skill if they can use it, and for people with high survey skill, the advantage would be time and HAM savings.)

Another disposable droid possibility is being able to send a droid to go out and report back with a sample of a given resource, with no need to be anywhere near a vein (again, with a delay for travel time.) This provides the ability to get a very small resource sample without having to go hunt for the resource, which is handy especially after resource shifts (when hand sampling doesn't work.)

Vehicle mounted survey equipment will be a must for any serious miner, even if it's pretty expensive, unless it's possible to survey using a normal tool while in the vehicle. Maybe to add flavor, the tool surveys for a larger distance away, but in a straight line ahead of the vehicle rather than giving an all-around view.

Lots of possibilities. I'd love to have an actual use for droids. (Note: I am not a droid engineer, but I like droids. I have a mouse droid. I have him follow people when I'm feeling silly. That's about it. Since I don't have any medic skills, and my droid can't fight, well, there's not much use there for me. Having installable maintenance droids and resource tracking droids would be very very neat.) Any of these options might require a certain amount of survey skill, or whatever. Fun fun!

no! structures do not need decay ... bad idea ... you pay with maintenance for there not to be decay. if there is decay what is the point of paying maintenance?

as far as surveys and toolkits you can just make them again. that would just be an annoyance for everyone. There is not one non artisan that would use these tools anyway. Only the artisan would. you can make them so whats the point of having to keep making your own tools?

i compeltely disagree with shadus idea #3 and this would actually make artisan worst not better i think.