Artisan Archive

Ihave two options because of the resource shifting system:

option 1: Pump five days of money and power into a harvester. Risk losing the money, the power, and resources being harvested should the resource change.

option 2: Pay one or two days at a time, and spendseveral hours every day running around doing harvester maintenance.

Neither of these options is acceptable. I have two suggestions:

1. Picking up a harvester should require a minimum amount of money and possibly power. Money and power beyond that amount should return to your inventory.

2. Additionally, It would be nice if harvesters, or perhaps more advanced 'smart' harvesters could either email you when a resource change occurred or automatically shift to the next best or similar resource.

The first of these is, I think, absolutely necessary, and I would like to hear WHY if it can't or won't be done. The second would be a major help, but I would not call it 'absolutely necessary'.

--

Grennitsch

novice architect

Yeah, extra power and money should definitely return to the user. And how about a harv upgrade kit that makes em smart some how? Give it to the architects at some point, that'd be pretty cool.
You go Greenwidg!
DeathInPlaid

Extra Power and money SHOULD be returnable to the user. I would like to see a withdraw power/credits option as a sub-option to deposit power/credits.

However, I don't see what is unacceptable with those2 options: Harvestors make you money and/or experience, depending on what you use them for. They should NOT be a free ride, they SHOULD be maintained and upkept every day.

Free ride? Huh? I'm not asking for free. I asking for the ability to pay three, four, five days at a time. It costs me the same amount of money. It may save me time, but alsoallows me to play the game without having to log on every day. One of the features SWG bragged was the ability for power gamers and casual players to play equally, and in my opinion, daily play is 'power gamer' behavior.

There are many solutions to this problem, but I don't think 'suck it up and play every day' is one of them.

I have to agree with the original post. I don't mind paying the maintenance and power up front for a few days at a time, but I might as well just give it away or destroy it if the resources shift between my runs to the harvester.

I am not always able to play each day, and even if I am, I would rather not have to run fromharvester to harvester for an hour every single day.I would like to see 'smarter' harvesters that could be administered from my datapad as far as maintenance, or at least be monitoredremotely. Go ahead and make me go out there to get materials and do upkeep, but why can't interstellar technology make an automated extractor that can connect to my datapad and tell me if it needs some attention? My harvester shuts down if it runs out of power (as it should), and it doesn't use power if it's turned off (also as it should), but why does it need so much maintenance? Is there someway I could'mothball' it if I won't be able to play for a while? I could re-collect the deed, but given the market, it's cheaper just to destroy it or abandon it and make myself a new one.

I would also like to see an option to remove power or maintenance if I makea mistake or if the resources shift. Igot caught with that extra zero that pops into the input box for power, andI mistakenly dropped 5000 instead of 500 into the machine. I only had 3800, butit took all I had, with no way to undo. If the resources had shifted soon after that, I would have been out of luck. As it is, I still then had to go find more power for theother harvesters, as I had just dropped all I had in one by mistake.

One more question--if the server goes down (I play on Radiant), does my maintenance and power still go away? Is it used in real-time by the server while it's running, or is the amount calculated as an 'expiration date', which would arrive at a fixed time, possibly while the server is down?

It seems to me when the server is down/crashed, timelines get messed up and harvester rates go out of whack. I sure hope harvestors get some attention next week from the Devs.

In order to fix the issue of not being able to play everyday, when you turn the machine off it should not consume any resources, simply put. This would allow people who cannot play everyday to just turn them off and leave them. I for one am going on a 4 day vacation next week, and I would love to just turn my harvestors off or pay 4 days before I leave, but I'm afraid that the resource shift would mess them up! So I'd probably just turn them off.

One question though, point me to where the devs have said that Casual Gamers and Hardcore gamers would be able to play on equal levels. Everyone quotes it because they heard it elsewhere, but WHERE did it start originally?

Most likely, the quote said "All classes are able to be played and enjoyed by casual gamers." This is true, I am a casual player and I am loving my weaponsmith. However, to expect to be able to compete equally with somebody putting 3-4 times more work into their character is absurd.

If were talking about technology to make harvesters less player dependant, tell me this...

why can't a harvester built right next to a wind generator (or solar generator or whatever) use the power from the adjacent structure?

Have these people never heard of cables?

A device that could predict resource changes would fix all of this.

Aside from harvesters that are off still consuming maintenance which is just stupid.

Oh...and a power indicator that makes sense would help too.

Here's how the power system works:

When it says power reserves 663.43 (:16) that means you have 16 hours. Whatever is after the : is the amount of hours it's good for. If there is a number before the :, I think it goes by days, but I never power up that far in advance just in case.

For everyone who keeps wanting to make harvestors easier, the reason that there shouldn't be nifty maintenence droids or machines that feed eachother power is that would make harvestors TOO easy. Anybody could buy a couple, set them up and go do destroy missions for a week, come back and sell the profits. The last thing this economy needs is even EASIER money.

I agree with yor comment about easy money.

The harvester power gauge is even more bizaar than that I'm afraid. It looks like it way mean't to be in Hours and Mins, but they then changed their mind but not the functionaility.

The number after the : is in hours, but the number before the : is in multiples of 60 hours so;

0:59 is 59 hours

1:00 is 60 hours

3:20 is 200 hours

etc

I guess at least it works at all.

At least it's not game breaking, but indeed is annoying. Maybe it's some weird futuristic Star Wars way to tell time.

I'll be there in 1:00!

For one thing, I'm really suprised that I haven't heard more on the issue of getting resources BACK from harvesters. This is something that we deserve, and there is NO reason it should not be implemented, at least not that I've heard. If everyone agrees that it's obviously necessary, why haven't we heard anything from the devs on this (at least..I havent. Let me know if I missed it...)?

On the running around debate - Why does a harvester have a hopper of 25000 units, which is equal to TEN DAYS, if resource shifts occur every 5-8 days? On top of that, why do I have ten days worth of hopper space if everyone is saying I should be expected to travel to my harvester every day? This does not make sense.

I wouldn't mind paying extra to fuel a harvester for five days if I had reasonable assurance that resources would not vanish one or two days into the cycle. I wouldn't mind if the harvester shut down and stopped wasting resources, IF I could get the power and maintenance back.

I DO mind that paying five days of maintenace carries the risk of burning five 3600 credits and 3k power. I do NOT want to run around several hours every day. Chewbacca is a wookie. Ewoks live on Endor. Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, this does not make sense.I rest my case.

What do you call a stabilized price? I am in Keren, Lowca. Resources are selling fromthree credits tosix credits. I don't know what kind of markup is reasonable, but it costs me one half credit to harvest a single unit of ore. Three ison thehigh end of reasonable. Six is ridiculous.

Thanks for the heads up to the 7-25 question post, it's a valuable post. However, reading your post about how well your mining business does, it appears to me that you specialize in mining. I do not. I need resources to gain experience in my field (architect). I could purchase my resources on the bazaar, if I could find them. If I was lucky, Imight find someone like yourself, 'courteously' selling resources for a mere 3cr/unit. Then I could give them 21k credits for the 7k ore I need. I feel thats a little unreasonable, so I try to harvest as much as possible myself, and fill in from the bazaar in emergencies.

It sounds like you are happy with the system because as it stands, your niche allows you to makebig money. Currently, I am concerned with the system becausewhenall goes well, I will progress, and if things go badly, I can lose a weeks worth of work.

I understand that the key to taking advantage of the resource system is knowing when resources spawn. I am sure it is even easy if it is what you focus on, as you do. But I personally don't want to log in once a day to check the status of resource spawns, and I don't think it should be necessary for me to do so.

I too keep track of all my resource information in my datapad, but I don't think that doing as you do will be an acceptable solution until there is an in game mechanism to determine the approximate lifespan of a resource.