Artisan Archive
Thread: Artisan Issues Designer Responses
d)Players would like to see a way of tracking harvester and structure maintenance rather than having to go to the particular structure all the time.
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?
I say it should be some kind of structure you could place in your house/pa hall. You would then dump money into it for maintanence - it should however be an Architect item and not an artisan.
Add my vote to the list of people who think that a Data Terminal furniture item should bring up a spread-sheet like window when you Use it. Down the rows, list every building by name. Across the columns, list lot usage, maintenance, power, and estimated time when both will run out.
Then add one more column, a variable comments field. If it's a house, list item count and limit (like 83/150, or whatever). If it's a harvester, list resource and units/minute (zero if it's stopped). If it's a factory, list schematic, and number of items made so far versus final total (73/100, or whatever).
Athough if you didn't want to create such a crowded screen, it occurs to me that there is an interesting potential alternative. Every time you drop a building, it creates a waypoint in your datapad. Why not have all of the status information available in the description bar on the left when you click on the waypoint in your datapad? That'd make flipping through them pretty quick!
"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?"
Data Terminal!!
*Multi-survey tools. Carrying around a tool for every resource is a bit bulky/annoying. I'd love to be able to craft a set of highly-experimented survey tools, then combine them all into one tool and switch around within it via tabs.
*More 'weapon upgrade' styled tools/buffs. An addon that makes armor a little more protective for awhile, or one that makes droids do just a bit more damage, or creatures a bit faster. Always something that runs out. Let artisan be like a discount slicer class: Never creating a permanent edge for one item over another, but always helping out in the short run.
*Items that grant minor edges/conveniences, such as...
** Being able to craft a visor that outlines aggressive creatures on the map in red, non-aggressive in green. It'd help for faction cases, and would just be a convenience tool.
** Watches/PDAs! Nothing too fancy. Let us check 'em so we can tell the hours till sunrise/sunset (I know, '/time' does this already or something close) or let us know when the shuttles are about to run. A nifty little IC organizational tool - could probably link it to harvester upkeep, etc as well, or provide a way to organize waypoints on the datapad, etc.
** Tools suitable for a merchant class. I'd love to be able to post a price-list in my shop (I'm primarily an architect) for items that may not be on the vendor. Or even have some device there with a menu of 1-5 messages to answer common questions about the items sold there. Basic, fun informational tools.
Basically, and this goes for any class in the game, whenever the devs think up something that'd be a neat/fun addition to the game, I think they should first ask how feasible it would be to give it to a craft class in item form first.
"d) Players would like to see a way of tracking harvester and structure maintenance rather than having to go to the particular structure all the time.
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?"
Ummmmmm, hmmmmm......DROIDS!!! How about you maybe make a profession usefull? =) We might be able to sell something then and be like REAL crafting profession! 
"** Tools suitable for a merchant class. I'd love to be able to post a price-list in my shop (I'm primarily an architect) for items that may not be on the vendor. Or even have some device there with a menu of 1-5 messages to answer common questions about the items sold there. Basic, fun informational tools."
Very cool idea! This could easily be done with a data terminal...maybe make it like a mission terminal but instead of 5 missions, it has messages (like email) and the user can click on that and read FAQs, price lists, instructions, guides, what not. That would be very cool!
My New Harvester UI proposal
Well they asked us for ideas on Harvester UI, here is mine
1) Maintance. - Credit is information not physical thing, so why do we have to be there to put it in physically? I think that once a day, probably during daily server restart, you every harvester should charge a day's worth of maintance fee from owner's bank. If you don't have enough money in your bank, it stop and send you an email telling you why. This would reduce the database space problem since now every single harvester no longer have to keep track of how much money they have.
2) Power & Output hopper - I realize that power and output hopper are physical item, so some kind of physical interaction is needed. But does it have to be you? What I propose is that for a fee, your bank should be able to send out a droid for you and collect stuff from your hopper (access thru new UI) and deposit it to your bank safety deposit. Ofcourse if you are out of room in your safe deposit box, your bank would still charge you plus penalty and send you email why they couldn't "retrive" it for you. Same for the power. As long as you have the power in your safe deposit box, same droid can take it and "deposit" it into your harvester for a fee. Ofcourse fee for both carrying your power and brining back content of your output hopper should be much more for harvesters in off world planet than one your bank is in.
3) New UI should accessible from datapad. This new UI have two part.
Part I) resource information
This should list all the resource currently avaliable on server. Which planet have them, and what is the resource's detail information. It should also tell you how much longer that resource would be available there, because as much as I HATE spending money and power on harvester then find out resource just shifted, I hate more for the fact that I just spend 3 hrs doing that with 7 of my 5 different type of harvesters. You should still have to physciall go and get your harvester, move it to new planet and search for a good spot, but when you spend 2 hrs doing it, you should know that it wasn't for nothing.
part II) Harvester control
This list all the structure you own. and when you select the structure, it should open up ONE screen that give you complete control. Change name, Change resource, turn it on/off, admin list and what not.
The idea of being able to make the data terminals something that can track your harvester/building info is great. IYou should be able to go to your home and look up all your current strutures status, and also use this terminal to pay maintanance fees for each of them as well. As for the process of collecting these resources from harvesters, that should remain a manual operation. It makes sense that a person would want t o make visual checks of his physical structures on a regular basis, and this should be the main reason for making personal trips to the harvester sites.
d. harvester tracking (partial snip)
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?
I want this to be a Master Artisan crafted tool. Do not put thsi info in the data pad I'd much rather see it added as something that people come to crafters to buy.
DarthRoe wrote:
Q-3PO wrote:
d) Players would like to see a way of tracking harvester and structure maintenance rather than having to go to the particular structure all the time.
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?
There are several requests that this be a droid function.
I agree, this should be a droid function.
lol --- these where non-answers...all he said was we are looking into it...then answered with a question....
anyway..on the UI...there are TOOOOOO many windows in general...every function opens some new pop up...its the same with many features in the game....i would suggest getting ALL the crafting into one screen...right now its open crafting tool - schenatic screen --- choose that new window ingrediants --- then assemble...the the experimataion/schematic/proto type ---- then the experimentation screen....then back to the choices....then the proto type customization....
also...the major problem with crafting in general is that XP Is based on the amount of resources used...the scehmatics often have nonsensical amounts required...a large object might take 50 of 1 ingrediant while a small one 20 units of 2 different types....items in higher skill boxes tend to give less XP than things below them...somewhere an items complexity and other factors should come into play
This is a phenomenally BAD idea. If you want to have an interesting economy, you have to avoid giving perfect information about the market to the consumers and producers. If you specify the average price of a particular kind of item (all CDEF pistols, for example), then any potential consumer is going to check the average price first, and use it as a tool for determining what is a "good" price to pay for that item. Anyone pricing the item at or above the average is essentially put at an even more substantial disadvantage because the "average" heuristic provided by the game tells the consumer never to pay that much.
So, all new entries into the market will be at or below average cost. Because of this, the average price will drop (since new entries are below the old average), and the entire market will generally suffer rampant price deflation. Given the immense amount of money floating around in the economy, prices should already be higher than they currently are.