Artisan Archive

I don't have too many problems with harvesters. I do wish the power/main requirements and length they last was perhaps included in an "examine" window of some type. And the area you could place on could be smaller (but then again it usually means someone beat me to the best current spot!). And the "can't build here" message could be explained in game better.

All in all, being a not so sharp tool kinda player, I've have fun. Harving is challenging.

Heres stupid act of the day: I was cleaning out inventory after emptying 2 wind generators, and guess what I accidentally destroyed? Yep, I let the air out of the bag. Doh!

Why dont you add all the ideas into one. You can acces states of your harvester remotely. Droids can pick up your harvest, but with the chance of losing all or a certain percentage of the minerals (also the risk of your droid being destoryed), and if you run low on power on money, you can rent a droid from a DE to bring the power and money to the harvester. That way the DE stops being a worthless proffession and it lets the artisans that want to stay in the city do so.

Ok this is how i thoughts mines would work from the beginning,

A mine whould acutally mine every resorce available to it, Think about it like this, I a mine removes XXXX KGs of dirt every hour and depending on the percentage of the resorces in the dirt it mines that much of the specific reasorce.

This way I can pay 12 days of maintence and power, go do my crafting/playing/blwoing things up and come back when my hopper is full. I hate having to run everyday and check my reasorces. I recently went on vaction for a week and a half and had to teach a roomate how to ferry between mine and wind generator to hame sure it had power, Well unknown to me the day after I left the reasoreces changed, it was fun to comeback after vacaation thinking i am going to have a bunch of steal and Ta-Da.. My harvestor turned off by itself after mining about 700 steel, and i lost about 10,000 credits on maintence.. GRRRRRR,

UTK, sunrunner

I think the only thing that needs to be changed about harvesters is how time is represented for the fuel. Even that is no big deal once you know how it works.

<raises hand>

Okay, I'm the one Jaliss speaks of. Yes, as a miner, I clear 100k a week in sales.I hope the IRS isn't watching. Icharge the cheapest for resources on my server as well 3 credits per unit. Also,I am now officially a casual gamer (after the honeymoon). I play maybe 2 or 3 times a week for about 4 to 5 hours.

It doesn't take a pwer gamer to win at resources. Just takes some planning and oraganization. And some patience.

Here's what I do:

I find a resource that I know for a fact has just recently spawned. Because we know that resources spawn on 5-10 day cylces (used to be 5-8), knowing the spawn date is crucial. I write these spawn dates on a piece of paper.

OnceI find this resource i find the highest possible concentration I can, build my harvester.

I pay 5 days worth of maintenance points (MP) into the harvester

I pay 5 days worth of Power into the harvester.

Viola, now I do not have to check the thing for five days. Five days of worry free mining. I don't need any option to reclaim power or maintenance because I've planned correctly and all these will run out at the appointed time.

I Don't need some email telling me anything. Because I already know all the info I need. I don't need any remote control of the harvester because I know when things will shut down.

I rename the waypoints to include the resource and the date at which the MP and Power expire.

It's that simple. If you want to play the mine out longer than 5 days, well then that's where the fun comes in. This is the realm of expert miners, where you must weigh the market of your resource against the cost of keeping the mine open. This is where the beauty of NOT being able to reclaim power and MP comes in. If I could just reclaim power and MP, then their would be no risk for playing the mine out. No risk whatsoever.

But as the system operates now, playing the mine out past 5 days carries the risk of loosing power and MP that I've put into it. That is the only risk. If this risk did not exist, then the resources might as well remain for the full 10 days.

The only real tough part is catching the spawn date of a resource. This requires 5 minutes of your time each day until you find a resource that just spawned. Sometimes I will log on for 5 minutes just to check if something has spawned. If not, then I log out. But once I spot an interesting resource spawn, I note the date, then go after it. Or, if I don't have time right then, I return later to mine it. But I have the DATE which is the key.

There you have it. I think the resource game is probably one of the systems that actually IS working in SWG. People just need time to figure it out.

The only thing I would change is that you should get back any unused energy and credits when you take the harvester down. (The same should go for any building.)

I also make my living selling resources. I am not sure I am up to 100k a week, but pretty close. I think that will diminish greatly over time. Right now artisans are using more resources then they need to grind up levels. I forsee a time when crafting drops in intensity and the demand is able to be met by the crafters themselves rather then professional miners. I see this as the real long term problem.

To the subject at hand.. the two points:

1) Remote monitoring.

I dont see how this could possibly be bad. As a Starsider I dont experience resource shifts like on other servers (yet) and I can see how people would want to know when their harvester is shut off. For me, the value would be in knowing when I have to visit my harvesters.. I try to keep track on paper but it would be nifty to have that updated.

However, I think this is something that should be added as a part of a future mining discipline. My vision would be a window that pops up listing your harvesters. A green light for "on" and a red light for "off". It would list the time maintenance and time power available. It would also show what is being harvested. This would be a tremendous convenience to more casual gamers who may play only a few times a week as well as players on a shoe string budget who cant afford to pay up for days in advance.

2) Removing maintenance and power.

This is something we need. However, it doesnt need to be 100% effeciency. I would like to see it but with a "loss".. so if you had 2000 in a harvester and want to pull it out maybe you only get 1500. This is another feature that would be of benefit to more casual players and players who spread out their harvesters. If you are on every day and have all your harvesters close by it is not an issue, but if you are only on a few times a week or have harvesters on multiple worlds (I have them on three) it would be great to be able to "fill em up" with maintenance and power to reduce visitation times.

So, I am "pro" notification, and "pro" withdraw.

That being said I DO agree that mining needs to be harder.. just not in these ways. The base problem is that extraction rates are too high. Its not a cost issue.

I see it this way.. if a crafter can mine 75% of what he needs (say) then that only leaves 25% of his needs to be filled by a dedicated miner. If a crafter can only mine 37% of what he needs, then miners would be able to fill 63% of his needs..

So I think mining could be improved by reducing extraction rates so there is more demand, not by making it less convenient. Its not a question of cost.. its a question of increasing demand for non-crafting miners. I am a master artisan, and am working toward architect to get better harvesters, but my core business is resources. I own a shop that sells resources on Corellia, so this is a subject of importance to me.

Regards,

Artuk

I can live with the current system, but I have to check my harvesters every day and only pay daily maintenance and power. Tracking spawn dates is a bit too much work for me, you would have to do it on every planet in order to be prepared when one of your crucial resources stops spawning on the planets you frequent regularly - yet you find it on a planet you haven't been on yet.

In order to make the current system a little more "casual friendly" I agree with several of the ideas in this thread:

1. E-mail notice when a resource runs out, with coordinates of the harvester.

2. No maintenance (or very reduced rate) when the harvester is not pulling materials.

3. No power consumption when the harvester is not pulling materials.

4. Maintenance deposited stays with the deed, perhaps minus the "re-deed fee" we have now.

5. Power deposited stays with the deed.

6. Auto-switch to next highest density material of same type when reset, e-mail notice of the switch.

Bushwa