Artisan Archive
Thread: Question of the day 7-28-03 Harvester Maintance Too much too little?
I still say Harvestor Maintenence is too high. Explaining that they are trying to maintain a balanced economy in the game makes sense as far as that goes, but is completely unrealistic. It's like saying the Real-World would work by charging folks who found large veins of Gold something like a 35% fee based on how much Gold they extracted. Utter-Unreality is what this system is designed on.
I'm an Artisan who gathers the resources and builds the harvestor myself. Stands to reason I have to power it. Why does it need creds? (I'll steal a comment I posted in another thread quite long forgotten) Does my Harvestor have a gambling problem? Or does it have a Spice problem? What other reason could make me required to pump creds into it to keep it working? I built the darn thing, stands to reason my know-how can keep it running albeit possibly with the purchase or crafting of some tools. But what's the rationalization to having to put over 1K into it daily to keep it running?
Harvestor Maintenence Too Much! Unless you come up witha darned good rationale for it... 
agreed. Maitanence and power usage need the same unit of measurement. I don't think the rates are terribly over priced but it could be a little cheaper. Perhaps the rates would be better, if say, durability was experimented on during the creation page. I don't like the fact that my harvester stops working at 98%. Why can't it go down to say 80% before it stops working.
Bottem line, the thing with harvesters, houses, vendors, etc. One central billing location or window is needed, so you don't spend eons running across the earth to pay maitenance. This is totally unneeded and not really fun at all. The day they make a central billing station that you can have on you as an item perhaps, is the day that we can really start having fun.
I'm afraid I dont have time to read the 3 pages of posts so I'll just pitch in with my suggestions
Re-deeding a wind generator should not cost 3k - thats way too much IMO (as an aside, it a minor point but I dont see why wind resource changes type, location and density yes but why type? Wind is wind, dont know if Solar has the same behaviour)
Harvester main costs seem fine to me (havent tried to re-deed one yet so I can comment on that cost) but they need to sort out the maint/power consumption. I dont know if its linked to downtime but I've repeatedly given my installations over 24 hours of maint/power only to return to it within 24 hours and find it damaged or out of power (or both).
Installations should depreciate at the same rate they consume power! In other words if my installation ran out of main fees for 24 hours it should cost the same to repair it to 100% as it would cost to run for 24 hours. Couple this with the consumption problem above and this is crippling.
To those people saying that maint obviously isnt high enough because some crafter have millions, I would say this (and I _dont_ have millions). You cannot punish successful people just because they are successful. The best you can do is have a scaling maint fee based on the yield of the resource it is mining. The higher the % the more maint it needs. I personally dont want a system like this (because it still hurts the new player who want to mine high yield) but its the only way I can see that you can link the resulting money the player makes with the cost of running the harvester.
Kisedd wrote:
1) Either a timer on resources so we can do some planning.
2) Email when the harvester turns off.
3) No power and mainentence costs when the harvester is off.
4) Power and maintence stay in the deed when you move it.
3) Power should not be used, but I still think SOME maintenance should be used. If you have a car or some piece of equipment, even if you don't use it, it's going to degrade overtime. Just not as quickly as if it's in use constantly.
Thank you for all the responses!! I'll be going though thsi topic today and getting a tally of where everyone stands and posting a summary on it. It is nice to see so many people take the time to post their views.
Jaliss Anarawyn
Master Artisan/Novice Merchant/Novice Chef
Interface with differing units is confusing as hell.
There should be sliders for money/power that show number of
units *and* the hours of operation that number is good for. (**edit** is '1:54')
"Oh, and we should be able to recover excess power and maintenance
when redeeding a harvester."
Recover above the redeed cost that is. Or you must have full redeed
cost in maint but maint pool doesn't poof. The redeed costs are
insane, I would never redeed cause I can make a new one for not alot
of resources. I feel sorry for those people using haversters that
can't make them.
"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?"
No it doesn't use *power* but it does rust, paint fade & peel,
seals/gaskets/hoses dry out and crack. In otherwords it useses
maintenance. Leave your car in a desert or swamp, see how much
maintenance it requires.
Real world examples are pointless(only game play matters), but real
world examples that are wrong are not smart.
[I think there should be way to "shut off" harvesters for when you
won't be online for awhile. If redeeding wasn't so broke the way to
to do this would be to go pick up your harvesters. They do need
to go poof if they are left, ignored and loney for over a few days.]
I think remote payment of maintenance, droids to collect your
resources or any other of the "automating" ideas are supremely
ill-concieved. Personally, I do enjoy running from place to place, is
fun to get out from behind the crafting screen. But there are sound
reasons for it.
Forcing a trade off on where I'll put my harvester? On the 75% that is
close to town or 95% ultra spiffy spot in the middle of Krayt dragons?
Also, what's the point of vehicles and mounts if there is no need to
travel.
It is fair and balanced. Other classes don't get to do there
"thing" remotely or autmatically. Fight monsters remotely from the
bank. Heal people out in the desert while comfy in the cantina.
Jeez, Artisans already have the bazaar, vendors, factories and
harvesters that automate so much of our profession.
Finally, it puts a damper on resource supply(as others have pointed
out), which *is* important.
Just about everything WillyWatanabi said I agree with. Esp. the
points about spending time.
Email that your buildings are running out of power/maint are ok. But,
if the bugs some people experience and the deposit power/maint
interface was comprehensible I really don't see that much need.
Email that resouces shifted, would counteract one thing the
resource-shifting is good for. That is allowing people who enjoy it to
spend their time hunting for good resources instead of fighting or
grinding. It is good that there is an advantage for those people
"2) If I am only notified of a resource shift after it has happened I
need the ability to withdraw excess maintence/power. This way I can
overpay and I don't have to check each and every night."
That is the best solution of the two.
"2) Email when the harvester turns off."
"4) Power and maintence stay in the deed when you move it."
Yes!
"2000 credits is a lot for me. I try running delivery missions this takes a LOT of time"
No offense, you are doing something wrong then. 2200-2400cr(4 x
c. 600cr) is the reward for a round trip delivery missions between 2
distant cities. (on my planet Eisly and Espa). It costs 230 for a rt
shuttle, it takes maybe 15min. I usually hafta to go there to pick up
something from the bazaar anyway. It's almost free money.
Do you take 2 missions at a time?
Do you only take missions going to the same distant city, starting lt 140m away
to start? (hint "Refresh" button)
Do you use waypoints and city map to quicky find the targets?
Maybe Tatoonie is blessed and missions on other planets suck. Now
that I have harvesters raking in money, I don't bother running any missions.
"Fix delivery missions." read the in developement page.
"I will add that for the 3000cr that it costs to move windmill I could buy the resourses to build 2 more."
Exactly! Hello? the dev's smoking the wacky tabaky again?
"Unless you come up with a darned good rationale for it.."
How 'bout "the game would suck more if there was any less of a challange".
[y is the forum so retarded thinking every less than symols is an html tag?]
Oh well...I guess my post got eaten or something. My original main points were:
- Maintenance costs are OK
- Remote Monitoring OK
- Remote Maintenance OK
- Remote Powering Not OK
If remote monitoring and maintenance are possible from the datapad then I would like to see additional features to pay for selected harvesters are the same time. Also I would like additional maintenance criteria such as choosing to pay for a certain amount of days, instead of credits or amount of units for power. Also in hopes of getting a little more economic boost out of our resources I would vote for the power of energy to have some effect on harvesters making some types of energy more efficient than another instead of just being all the same.
"If remote monitoring and maintenance are possible from the datapad then I would like to see additional features to pay for selected harvesters are the same time."
What I meant was that I wanted to be able to select harvesters and choose to pay maintenance for the selected ones all at the same time.