Artisan Archive
Thread: Devs Questsions from their Artisan Response
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?
Here are my thoughts on this:
- Emails get sent on status changes of the harvesters, i.e. resources shift, maintenance runs out, no more energy reserves.
- Maintenance can be performed by a specialized droid: the droid will accept a energy source (wind generator), a deposit location (to deliver the resources from the hopper), i.e. a container at your house or your safe deposit box. Of course the droid would require maintenance and wouldn't be cheap.
- Introduce 'Bill Pay' at the bank terminal, where you can set up your re-occuring bills to be automatically deducted from your account. If there are insufficient funds, a penalty fee will be incurred, and the harvester will not be paid. (Just like in the real life model).
- Have a management console be able to be place in your house. This would be a master artisan crafted item. In addition, once a mgmt console is placed, you could also purchase a mobile management tool, which would enable a mobile interface to manage your harvesters and energy sources (this would be based on the wireless lan concept, where the mgmt console serves as a hub for your mgmt tool). You could hand out multilpe mgmt tools calibrated to your harvesters to other people on your harvester admin list, enabling friends to also remotely admin, in case you are gone for a few days.
These are jsut a few rough ideas, building on so many great ideas I've read from you guys regarding this issue. Thanks for listening, Devs!
In regards to the tracking; i have no problem with that. The multi clicking on crafting can be cut down by deactivating the option for crafting prompts under the options menu, so in effect we the players can solve that. My concern with items is the weapon upgrades could give a higher boost. I've made 2 artisan charactors and found that people rarely buy or wantupgradessuch as;couplers, muzzels,scopes, and so on, because they don't really give a big enough boost for the amount of time they last. This could be solved in my opinion by increasing the boost or making it possible to use two to three upgrades at once rather than increasing the time period the upgrade will last.
By the way guys,I love the armor enhancement option you put on the armor crafting list. Thats the best upgrade i've seen us get as artisans. Keep up the good work.
pragmatous wrote:i just don't think structures should have decay since you PAY maintenance for them! Why pay maintenance if it is decaying? it will compeltely break the game!
If anything add decay and remove maintenance cost for structures and costs for re-deeds but keep the decay. once at 0 time to buy a new house? How many times have you seen someone buy a new house because their house fell to the ground do to decay? not many ... same with tools .. how many wenches have you seen decay to a point where it dissapears?
hate to break it to you but tools just don't decay same with houses. thats the reality of this game. so stop crying nerf and ruining the artisan profession for everyone else. I bet you arn't even an artisan just here to cry nerf.
I think buildings should decay... but ONLY when they are neglected. This means if you pay all your maintenance, never let it fall below 100%, you'll never decay. BUT, fall below 100% and part of that damage will be permanent. After all, a well maintained house will last an extremely long time, but ingore maintenance for a while, and you'll be falling behind.
Harvester Tracking: I would love to be able to track my harvesters remotely. I would like to see this done through a 3rd tab in the Data Pad. Opening a harvester in the data pad should show the status window like we see now, but include the type of resource being mined, the quantity mined so far, and the concentration of that resource. Changing views in the Data Pad will show all of this information for each harvester in the 'grid' so we can easily see which harvesters are running low on power. I do not believe we should be able to add maintenance or power remotely. It's our job as resource gatherers to run all over the galaxy to find and maintain what we need.
Too many clicks: I would like to see the crafting windows condensed into 2-3 windows. In the schematic window, we should be able to choose the schematic and check the Practice box. In the 'add resource' window, we should be able to check a box if we want to experiment or not and also check a box if we want to name the item or not. Checking the experiment and/or name box will bring up the appropriate windows we see now. If we choose to Practice, then we should not be able to experiment or name the item.
The only slash command I would like to see is "/makeLastObject" This would activate the last crafting station and bring up the last schematic we used, while remembering the status of the Practice, Name Item, and Experiment boxes. All this command will do is save the time it takes to write up a macro to do it as we do now. It should not be possible to craft with an unattended macro, so leave adding resources to the item as it is now, but allow us to add resources from a nested container.
Decay on items: I think all crafting tools should have 'X' amount of uses based on the quality of the tool, etc. Doing so will allow lower level artisans to sell a useful product on a regular basis. I wouldn't lower the quality of the items made as the tool degrades. I would just have the tool break beyond repair after a hundred uses or so.
Wearable items and weapons should all decay with use. Armor would degrade as we get hit in battle. Perhaps clothing would degrade slowly after we take them off and put them back on too many times?
Items like houses and harvesters already have maintenance so I'm a bit torn on a solution for these. Perhaps only personal harvesters can be deeded up and moved while medium and large ones are permanent? Houses could be permanent as well. If someone wants to move a permanent structure, they sell or destroy it, then buy a new one, not pack it up into a crate and build it somewhere else. This has a lot of drawbacks too though.
Something new: Maybe a consumable item can be added for harvesters that only Master Artisans can make. Three items could be made that last up to 48 hours. One item will increase the efficiency of mining up the resource. Perhaps this ‘Resource Efficiency Modulator’ would only be used for a single resource per harvester? Changing resources would force me to use another REM. Another item will reduce the power consumption a little. The last item will reduce the maintenance cost a little. I’m not sure what the reductions would be, but it should be enough to make them worth using.
Dalnin
Greats responses!! Thank you everyone. I'll be cataloging all thses suggestions and posting the most popular along with this weeks top 5. Expect it tommorrow evening.
I was gonna say something but that just seems like a good closing point.
...oops.
Jasarina wrote:
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.
My comments:
Harvester Tracking:
- Starting with simple mails you let you know if there is a problem with your harvesters.
- Droids and Artisan Crafted termainls that can be placed in home. They could come in different types and power from just showing all your structures status to more advnaced and costly versions. I do not support this idea if Miners are introduced back in. Any kind of remote maintance/power needs to have an added expense attached to it. Power cells for the terminals etc..
Too Many Clicks
- Steamline the process down to one box with tabs
More useful items
- Power cells for structures that need to be replaced every 1 to 7 days based on the cell type. They would decrease the maintance on the structure. All Artisan made with the best one being Master Artisan made
- Forced food and drink
- Ammo for weapons
- Notebooks/Diaries to keep personal notes in
- Databooks we can write and share with others
- Private communication devices similar to channels but with some kinda of added benifit
- More Terminals types for homes that are Artisan made. A more advanced mail system for isntance that lets you have a sig line or set mails you can send when someone buys something without the need to retype it something like that.
I could go on and on here lol I have a ton of idea but will keep this short 
Future Content:
- Quests and Storylines introduced for Non combat types I know there are some but I want to see a lot more.
- Tradeing type missions. You buy resources from NPC A on Planet 1 and then go find another NPC on another planet to sell your stock to at a profit. NPCs should be set to randomly change what they sell and buy and their costs. There should be NO waypoint pointing to the second NPC the idea is to explore and find where to sell the stuff yourself.
- More crafting systems that give us more options to do things.
- More Architect crafted terminals and structures designed for crafters. More homes sizes and types so accomdate a shop or workshop. More furniture that fits in a shop or workshop setting etc... I'd like to see something smaller then the small house and a size between the current small and medium and a size between the current medium and large. Also more floorplans per size and planet. Corellian houses need a major facelift they resemble Generic too much.
I posted this idea in the DE board, you might give it some consideration.
Power Droid: Ability to access power harvester status/maintenence panel from within the datapad. When called, able to access the hopper panel.
Binary Load Lifter Droid: Ability to access other harvester status/maintenence panel from within the datapad. When called, able to access the hopper panel.
Just an idea to boost 2 classes at the same time.
~Basha
speardancer wrote:
pragmatous wrote:i just don't think structures should have decay since you PAY maintenance for them! Why pay maintenance if it is decaying? it will compeltely break the game!
If anything add decay and remove maintenance cost for structures and costs for re-deeds but keep the decay. once at 0 time to buy a new house? How many times have you seen someone buy a new house because their house fell to the ground do to decay? not many ... same with tools .. how many wenches have you seen decay to a point where it dissapears?
hate to break it to you but tools just don't decay same with houses. thats the reality of this game. so stop crying nerf and ruining the artisan profession for everyone else. I bet you arn't even an artisan just here to cry nerf.
I think buildings should decay... but ONLY when they are neglected. This means if you pay all your maintenance, never let it fall below 100%, you'll never decay. BUT, fall below 100% and part of that damage will be permanent. After all, a well maintained house will last an extremely long time, but ingore maintenance for a while, and you'll be falling behind.
Why not have buildings/harvesters get 'wounds' the way that we do ourselves, that need to be tended to by a specialist rather than pouring money into it? If you can't build it, you can't fix the damage. but someone else can.
This would provide another service for artisans and architects. Of course, that would institute the idea of housecalls...
I'd like to see something like the left side would have three drop downs,
I would like to see a UI something like this (divided into left side, right side and center):
Left side has three option boxes.
- Type of Item (IE, Armor, Clothing, Generic)
- Category of Item (IE Survey Device, Ranged Power Up)
- The Schematic
Obviously, the lists would be driven by the selections
Underneath the Drop downs would be the display that is currently shown in the right side when initially loaded (picture/stats)
Once selected, a "Load Schematics" button would populate the right side of the screen with available materials.
The center would hold the materials needed to build the item.
Umm, that's kinda all I got but wanted to share the idea.
- Make the resource icon in the schematic double-clickable, so it will automagically choose the best matching component from your inventory.
- Add all resources to the holocron!I often try to matcha schematic's resource icons to the holocron database, but just about as often cannot find any matching icons...
- Add the icon of the resource to its description. This way you don't have to doubleclick the resource to see the resulting icon.
- Remove the darn crafting bug where starting any crafting tool kind of locks the shift-key! Try this: /follow a running person, start the crafting tool. You instantly walk as if you're pressing the shift key. Press F-keys and you'll see that you'll activate the shift-F icon. To overcome the locked shift, frantically hit the left and right shift keys alternatively for a second. Presto! Unlocked.
Justthe0.02 credits of a novice Artisan
Right on Waho-
NEED Tux for us entertainer/artisian types - hey we want to look GOOD playing music.
Rasorow