Artisan Archive
Thread: Question of the day 7-28-03 Harvester Maintance Too much too little?
Noterac wrote:
I don't know about remote payment or such but i do think we DEFINATELY need a remote monitoring system for every building you have administration access too. I don't really wanna run 10 minutes outta my way risking death to find out i don't need to service my harvester for another day.
Hmm, ok, then can we agree that you should be able to monitor your harvesters from afar, and as a part of that monitoring you should be able to manage the money on them as well?
Someone suggested that wind harvesters be made cheaper to maintain. Let me explain why this doesn't need to be.
Even though it costs twice as much as a mineral harvester to maintain, the wind harvester produces more resources per day. At my current wind location, my windmill produces 3.12 kg/h, which is almost 4.5k per day. Divide that by maintenance and you get a measly .32 credit cost per energy unit.
I think that the energy and credit costs for harvesters are fine, and I wouldn't even mind it if they became more expensive. However, I think that the TIME requirements are too much, and I would like to spend less time managing my harvesters.
I think one problem is that the miner niche is being filled by regular artisans. A true miner class should be able to obtain resources at greatly reduced costs, which would make it easier for them to supply the artisan classes without inflating the economy or driving the artisans broke.
kasuta wrote:
I have no problem with the amount of harvester maintenance right now. I think the much more important issue regarding wind harvesters is the bug that allows credits to disappear overnight! Yesterday I had to destroy another wind harvester because I left it at night with over 24 hours maintenance and woke up, seven hours later to find it was 2500 credits in the hole. Fix that bug first, then you can futz with the amounts.
I agree with the disappearing maintainence funds I have documented on each harvestor i have set up what i put in and check it frequently to make sure everything is running fine but it really sucks is you put in enough for 24 hours at say 12am go to bed wake up around 8am go to get on and cant get on because servers are down for maintainence (which i can handle that) get on around 10 (only 10 hours have passed RL time) and you check harvestors and you only have like 3 hours of maintainence left... that really irks me and cuts into profits. sometimes this is worse yet when you come back like kasuta said and you have a bill to repair a harvestor/generator/farm that you should still have plenty of maintainence funds left on it. This really needs to be addressed and repaired before asking about the maintainence funds. As for those atm I dont have much of an issue with how they are now other than the disappearing maintainence bug.
So far the actual costs of maintenance or power haven't really bothered me all that much. What I do have a problem with is not knowing how much to put in to actually run one for 24 or 48 hours. On a fairly regular basis I put in enough maintenance to run for longer than I'm going to be away from the game only to come back and find my harvestors not running and requiring repair costs. Huh? If I put in enough maintenance for 26 hours and come back 23 hours later it should still be running, not broken requiring repair costs. With the resource shifts and the fact that you can't get back maintenance or power put into harvestors it's pointless to try tooverpay maintenance and power by too much. I find myself putting in enough maintenance and power to run for 2-3 hours longer than I plan to be away from the game(now nearing 5-6 hours longer) and hoping that they are still running when I come back.
I do think that the repair costs are way to high once they break(2000 credits to fix a wind harvestor and then 1400 credits to run it for a day). I just destroy them and make new ones.
It might be a little too much. Maybe. But what really bothers me is that cost doesn’t seem to be consistent from harvester to harvester. I have two mediums in the same spot, when I put the same amount of upkeep cash and power in both of them one of seems to burn upkeep at a much higher rate.. and it still only gives the same amount of resources. They need to fix the internal clock that is calculating the upkeep costs.
Cleene:
Your problem is the same as the one I posted about, and TheRogue agreed with me: overnight, possibly during server reset, large numbers of credits are disappearing from wind harvesters. I also have another post on the subject on this board. I am surprised more people don't realize it's happening, I suspect most are like you and just are a bit confused as to what is exactly going on. I check my harvesters before bed, and then when I wake up and this is what's happening.
I just started doing the wind power/harvester/etc line. So far I have 2 wind power units, 2 mineral extractors, 2 chem units, and a flora unit. All of the units are the smallest of the line since I can't make or find the mid range stuff. From my last week I've come to these conclusions
The missing resource bug is very troublesome. Like others I put just enough into my machines to run only a day.
The actual cost is at a reasonable level if we could stop loosing credits/time due to server crash, etc. This is really a pain as I play on Lowca and that server seems to reset every day.
I spend roughly an hour each day to maintain my units. I could accept that but sometimes I'm just wasting time as my machines don't need any more upkeep.
I would suggest that
1) They fix the maintance/harvester bug during downtime first.
2) Implement a way to remote check your machines, that would save alot of time and headache.
3) Give the droid toons the ability to make a harvester/maintance droid - this idea is cool
Just my 2 cents worth.
T
Ok...pressed esc once by accident and everything I typed just disappeard.
Grr...
Maintenance cost is fine.
Here are some of my other concerns regarding harvesters:
1. It is completely unacceptable that we are not notified prior to a resource shift. How many times have you plopped one down, paid 3 days ahead only to find out that 1 day later the resource is gone. The "quickfix" of paying only one day ahead is not a solution I am willing to live with. Even if all that happened when the resource shifted was that the harvester shut itself down, it would be better than the current system if:
2. Harvesters should not consume maintenance OR power if the darn thing is shut off. Does your car take gas when it is parked and shut off?
3. I do support the idea of remote monitoring. Why not? I can remotely monitor my house, in real time right now.
4. I do NOT support paying of maintenance or power remotely. I understand the reasoning, but you cannot send power units through a cable or beamed transmission. Not only that but it is part of the profession. 9 harvesters is a large scale operation even if they are all personal harvesters. This SHOULD require some legwork. Join a PA, hire someone, or meet people who are willing to share the workload and the profit.
5. A droid to handle the legwork makes perfect sense from an RP perspective and would give the DE at least one droid that serves a unique purpose.
6. Disappearing maintenance and power pools must be fixed.
7. Power and maintenance pools should be rated in the same manner. A set CR/Power to TIME listing would also help noobs and vets alikewho only want to pay for a few hours or days at a time.
Had some more, but alas my memory is clouded. Hope my suggestions/opinions help.
Rembered one more:
1. During server downtime harvesters need to either cease functioning altogether or be fixed to where my 68 hours of maintenance does not mysteriously turn into 3.