Artisan Archive
Thread: Question of the Day 7-31-03 Miner Profession
I don't really like the idea of the miner, although I would probably play one if they became available.
And yes, I'm a Master Artisan.
There's a few reasons for this.
1. Many artisans currently derive the bulk of their income from harvestors. If miners could produce the resources in huge quantities, or cheaply, this becomes less viable driving artisans to more missions for income.
2. What exactly would they do? One person suggested that they have 3 surveying related trees. I mean, come on. I haven't sampled more that 30 units of resources total in the past week. I use harvestors. Besides, if you do give them all those surveying skills this will just be the official class of the AFK macroers. The planetary survey seems cool, but is too powerful, and makes it too easy. You could devote part of one skill tree to harvestor certification, but then what? I guess there could be decreased maintenance and increased productivity, but it's still not enough to flesh out a whole tree. My understanding is this is why miners were canned to begin with.
3. Do we really need so many resources? They're kind of expensive now, but there's hardly a shortage. If miner became a reality how profitable would they be? Get a bunch of miners on a server and they'll probably be selling things almost at cost.
4. And most importantly because resources are important. Miner is the only profession that works flawlessly now, simply BECAUSE it's not a profession. For all the other crafters you see the market flooded withcrappy novice weaponsmith pistols and chitin. People produce garbage just to level then try to dump it for UXP. I fear the same happening to miners. Sound business being outweighed by the exp grind.
Of course if mining is all about produce more resources faster/cheaper/whatever, it would be a rather dull profession. Here are some of the skill ideas presented in other threads and a few new ones that would add spice to the skill tree:
1) Forge - the ability to take multiple materials and mix them to produce a new, unique material. Perhaps it;s merely an average of the properties initial (in appropriate ratios), allowing a miner to make leftover scraps usable, or perhaps at higher level, the miner can experiment with the forging to produce better overall resources (think bronze having better properties for certainuses than the component copper and tin).
2) Harvester Management - Remotely monitor hopper content, maintenance, and energy levels. At higher levels, remotely change resource being harvested.
3) Harvest Management II - Remotely pay mainentance.
4) Mass sample - A new skill that allows a minor to sample for all minerals or all flora or all chem at a site with one command. This is like taking a core sample. THis would be slower than regular sampling and produce very small samples (sample sizes of 1). It would allow the miner to easily compare properties of various resources without constant survey switching and sampling.The minerwould not get every resource with every mass sample. As skill level progressed, the miner would require fewer mass samples in a spot to get a good read on what is there.
5) Mass survey - A relatively short-range survey that shows results for multiple resources. They could see the concentrations for all minerals, for example, in a small area, with one command. With experience, the range would increase.
6) Resource shift detection - The miner would have the ability to determine the "age" of a resource concentration to determine approximate lifespan of resource before the next shift. Perhaps this becomes more precise with scale.
7) Planetary surveying - Longer range surveying, eventually up to an"infinite" range of survey device at master level
8) Remote survey devices - Barring planetary surveying, perhaps remote survey devices could be setup to provide remote surveying data. Perhaps remote surveying is restricted to existing harvester locations and is a harvester management skill.
9) Interplanetary surveying- Allows the miner to see what resources are available on other planets, though not where they happen to be.
10) Sampling speed - Granted, most miners really shouldn't be sampling much, but houldn't they be really good at it? At least the quantity of each sample should go up with skill, if not the speed.
For what it's worth, I don't particularly like 3, 7, or 8 as I think it's important for a miner to actually get out and about for more than just collecting the resources from the hoppers. They do need something to "do" other than just collect product.
#9 is intriguing, but I wonder if it breaks down too many barriers to finding rare resources. Though with internet discussion boards it's probably largely known anyway when some rare item shows up on another planet in a given galaxy.
I think you have the framework for a forging tree (very interesting and rich concept I think turning mining into a pseudo-crafting profession if you want to play it that way), advanced suveying/sampling tree, a harvester management tree (with the cool new harvester tricks), and a harvester certification tree (with the certificates for harvester usage). Other organizations may make sense as well.
There's certainly enough here to make this class more fleshed out than certain existing professions (i.e. squad leader). The question question in my mind is one of how this affects the economics of the game. I think that can be managed.
ajm317 wrote:
They removed mining because it was boring as it was. The skill tree wasn't very interesting.
Thanks...now I can move forward!
sciguyCO said:
I think in addition to Survey IV, another prerequisite for the mining profession should be one or two branches from scout (I'm thinking Exploration and maybe Hunting).
While Exploration IV in particular seems like a naturally fit (think old-time prospectors), this has huge implications as it raises the barrier for an artisan to dabble in mining (beyond personal harvesters) as it raises the barrier to entry for the professions. Maybe that's not a bad thing, maybe it is, but it certainly reduces the pool of miners.
Cephalo:
When I read the suggestions in this thread, I still can't help but think that the most kickin' miner of all is the architect. Why be a miner when I can be a better miner with one branch of the archtitect tree?
Absolutely. Architects are resource hogs so would tend to dabble in mining and some miners would prefer to build their own harvesters and will dabble in architect. Both of these have trade-offs of not being able to spend skill points elsewhere. There are other natural pairings like Creature Handler/Bio-Engineer and this isn't necessarily a bad thing because it implies a dependancy on another profession.
Hypatian said:
The final thing that would make resource sales more efficient is perhaps a way to use a vendor for "per unit" sales.
This should be done regardless of whether you have a miner class or not. Factory crates and resource containers both should be allowed to be "split" at sales time assuming that the merchant set thesale up to allow this.
ajm317 said:
1. Many artisans currently derive the bulk of their income from harvestors. If miners could produce the resources in huge quantities, or cheaply, this becomes less viable driving artisans to more missions for income.
3. Do we really need so many resources?
4. And most importantly because resources are important. Miner is the only profession that works flawlessly now, simply BECAUSE it's not a profession.
You fix #1 by getting real artisan missions. Mission that allow an artisan to earn credits while still (slowly) advancing their crafting skill. Then instead of 40% harvester maintenance, 40% delivery missions, 20% crafting, you might be able to do 50% crafting missions and 50% crafting for sale (or practice).
As to #3, you try to make this profession net resource neutral by decreasing the resources generated by non-miners. The majority of players harvest fewer resources and a few (the professionals) make up the difference. Supply and demand would tend to work this sort of thing out anyway as miners would only exist if it is profitable and/or fun to play.
#4 is a really interesting thought and youmay be right. You certainly don't hear anyone complain that "miner" is broken. That said, merchant is pretty broken, but I wouldn't want to open up all aspectsof shop-keeping to everyone with Business IV. Their should be professional shop-keepers (Merchant profession) as well as amateur shop-keepers (Business III) and that is what I believe is missing with mining/harvesting.
I wouldn't want them to just throw something together and implement it quickly. The reality is the existing system does work. That said, I think we are missing additional gameplay opportunities by not having this class.
I still worry about the implications of the miner from an economic perspective, particularly my 4th point.
That said if you're going to make it harder for artisans to mine and make up the difference with crafting missions you have to make it easier to buy resources. The bazaar is supposed to be a commodities market, but most end up only putting up 500 units at a time on it.
Resources should be splitable at sale, as said, but if you introduce miner resource MUST BE EXEMPT FROM BAZAAR LIMITATIONS. If artisans in particular ared doingcrafting missions and less mining, and the elite professions are doing little mining you have to make sure resources are easy to get from miner to crafter. I realize the need for the bazaar limitations and the merchant class etc., but resources I feel are an exception because you need them to build anything. This isn't really necessary now, because artisans supplement their own production of resources with purchases. But if you decrease this ability...
But I still worry about the idea of the miner as a whole. Are we going to see piles and piles of crappy steel on the bazaar and nothing else so the miner can get Advanced Surveying II?
It's kind of permanent.
The idea of a limit is definately permanant. I see them raising it as prices inflate though.
The reasons those categories are there are 2 fold.
1. The bazaar code and the vendor code are nearly identical. (Makes you wonder why vendors are broken as hell eh?)
2. There's nothing to stop you from selling a fusion generator for 3k. I don't think the developers want to stop you. If you're that stupid, hey, go for it.
They'll never get rid of a limit because of the implications on the merchant class.
Below is what I would like to see in a Miner Elite Class. It includes new items that can be used by an architect when making harvesters, broader/improved abilities, and a new type of droid for Droid Engineers. It would address many of the pains using and maintaining harvesters. It does not address giving the artisan class any combat related skills. I would see a miner class as a support class for someone who is not a full time crafter. And I did not take into account any sort of system limitations. The percentages and bonuses could be adjusted either way to balance the class. This view of the miner would have a component that could be sold to architects and be a purchaser of fire and forget droids from DEs.
Novice Miner:
Advance Survey Tool of each type.
+5% yield to sampling
-10% sampling HAM cost
Advanced Survey
1 New range (450 m)
2 New Range (600 m)
3 New range (800 m)
4 New range (1000 m)
Advance Harvester
1. Sm Harvester Component (+15% Power Efficiency)
Sm Harvester Component (+15% Maintenance Efficiency)
2. Md Harvester Component (+15% Power Efficiency)
Md Harvester Component (+15% Maintenance Efficiency)
3. Generator Component (+15% Power Output)
Generator Component (+15% Maintenance Effciency)
4. Lg Harvester Component (+15% Power Efficiency)
Lg Harvester Component (+15% Maintenance Efficiency)
Harvester Administration
1 Remote Admin (Region) Power/Permissions/Maintenance
2 Remote Operations (Planet) On/Off/Resource selection
3 Remote Admin (Region) Power/Permissions/Maintenance
4 Remote Operations (Planet) On/Off/Resource selection
Advance Mining (sampling)
1 +10% Flora
2 +10% Water
3 +10% Gas/Chemical
4 +10% Metal
Master Miner
Survey Droid use (new droid that can be sent to do a single type of survey on another planet and would return its resource list)
Master Survey Tool (All in one)
New Range (2000 m)
+5 % sampling (all types)
-10% HAM Cost for sampling
Mer'Vic
Surveyor on Wanderhome
No offense but that miner sounds pretty boring and useless, the Ranger of the artisan line if you will.
I like some of the other ideas more (forging, the core sample idea and others.)
I think that the previous suggestions are very good for possible skill trees. I'd like the ability to create alloys, and also perform smelting on some of the minerals to improve quality. It might even be possible to make alloys that Armorsmiths, Weaponsmiths and other artisans could use to make weapons that are exceptional in quality and maybe even some items that can't be made without them. I would like to see alot more creativity in the creation of items than just picking which minerals to use, however that's another forum thread.
Also, I don't know if anyone read in the dev's post on the upcoming huge update, but listed are terminals for Artisan missions, Scout missions, and entertainer missions. Whether or not these make it into final or not who knows, but I hope they do.
As far as the post about people putting up resources in 500 increments, I can only speak for myself, but ususally it is for minerals that are very good. Since the bazaar only allows up to 3,000 credits per transaction, I usually break up the minerals to make up the difference for more valuable resources. Usually it's only for off-world resources and ores. Everything else I sell in 1K increments. I have two vendors, but haven't gotten up the merchant tree to get them advertised.
Anyway, I hope that someday they consider it, even if it branches off of the surveyor branch.
Arandor Venthin, CEO
Venthin Inc.
(Venthin Mining/Venthin Pharmaceutical)
Radiant, Naboo: -4847/5379 (N. of Theed)
Here's an important point that needs to be kept in mind. Because the miner's task can be accomplished, to a lesserdegree, by anyone with a harvester, the advantage of being a miner depends solely on the state of the resource economy. If the market is glutted, the advantage of more efficient resource production is diminished. It could very easily get to the point where the miner's extra capacity is just not worth all those skill points. It's still early in the game, and I don't think anyone really knows where this economy is headed.
The same goes with any sort of redundant capability between professions, things need to balanced on a knife edge, or one profession or the other becomes useless even with the slightest imbalance.