Artisan Archive
Thread: Question of the Day 7-31-03 Miner Profession
Well, the question of whether each world would produce enough miners to meet the demand is not really an issue.
If a world doesn't have enough miners, resources will be at a premium and very expensive, so people will look at that and say "Wow! Miners make buttloads of cash! I'm gonna be a miner!", then there will be more miners and the prices will drop. Hell, that's what happened with the whole dot com thing. Sort of.
Me, I don't care if there IS a miner or not. In fact, the idea sounds appealing, I just say leave the personal harvesterswhere they are. In the hands of the artisans. The artisan is the base profession, after all. So it shuld have a little of every profession in it.
Oh, and on that note, I don't remember if this had been stated or not, but Miner should branch off of the survey tree.
-----Fuzzy Animator
I've read through the thread, and would like to thank the correspondent for bringing this topic up for more serious discussion. I see some folks who do not actively consider themselves miners, or consider themselves part-time miners, who seem to think we are okay without a miner elite class. I'm a fulltime miner, and I have to say that I desperately want this class. I got this game specifically to be a miner, and I intend to continue being just thatin one form or another for a long time to come.
I've read some great ideas thus far, and I won't presume to know better than the devs... but I will chime in on what I'd like to see...
As far as harvesters go. I think anbyone should be able to use personal harvesters, but all of the larger harvesters should require certification through the miner tree (just as bigger and better weapons do). At the very least the largest of the harvesters should be restricted to miners, even if this means introducing a new "elite" harvester of some sort.
Many folks have echoed my desires for a skill tree. I won't request absolute specifics as only the devs know what is and is not good for the game in the long run.
I do like the idea of a Forge/Metallurgy skill tree. I originally thought it would be cool if resources were broken up into common, uncommon, and rare so that you would have to progress up the miner skill tree to gain the ability to locate the less common resources. But it would be so much cooler if we got to actually MAKE the rare resources by combining others and using experimentation. This would be a very cool discipline, and would allow miners to eaither sell their massive loads of resources or utilize them to make smaller quantities of less common resources... This discipline would likely grant access to the tools needed to do forging, and provide the experimentation ability for the act of forging.
AHarvesterMechanic discipline would likely be the discipline that gave access to larger harvesters. Skills within the discipline would also likely lower the cost and power consumption of the harvesters.
A second harvester oriented discipline, Mining Experitise, wouldincrease the amount of resources a harvester can extract, so that higher level miners can meet the demands of higher level artisans. It could also have a small effect on the number of resources gained through hand sampling.
I like the idea of a Prospecting discipline. This would allow for increased range in surveying, as well as maybe some ability to estimate (note that I said estimate) what resources will be shifting, or even when or where general kinds of resources may be found after a shift. I'm sure those smart devs could refine this idea and make it worthwhile... 
Agains, there are lots of good ideas in this thread. Some may be better than mine, but being that I am a huge proponent for the miner class and would dedicate the unhealthy amount of time I spend playing this game to mastering that class if/when we get it.
Miner could easily be made into a fun, interesting and vital part of the galaxy. All this without nerfing the artisans current abilities and without flooding the market with resources. Here's how I see it:
Prerequisites:
Surveying 4 from artisan obviously and Terrain Neg 4 from scout. This makes the perfect surveyer and a great place to start.
Skills:
We need 4 skill lines to make the class.
- Mining
This is the art of getting the most resource out of the area. It might include getting better output from an area, effectively turning a 65% spot into a 70-75% spot. It might also let a miner use advanced mining equipment (made by architects of course) to gather a second resource with the same harvester. At higher levels the skill might allow a harvester to harvest more quickly, but by raising the maintenance costs considerably, thereby shifting the machine into double time. This option, while not nearly as cost effective, would allow a miner to fill an order quicker, or perhaps to maximize the appearance of a rare resource for the time it is around.
- Mining Management
Allows a miner to use mining droids (made by DE of course). Droids are capable of depositing energy and maintenence, and retreiving results. This gets rid of the tedious duty of making that run to your harvesters when you've found a good vein waaaaay out there. Higher levels of this skill allow you to use more droids, and gives certs for better/faster droids to speed up the process.
- Advanced Surveying
No sampling for the miner! This whole line of skills is based around finding what you want. It would include a much better surveying interphase that allows you to plug in a resource type and a stat level, and perhaps a resource density. For example if you wanted good conductive copper, you plug in copper and conductive 800 or better in at least a 60% vein, and the surveying device searches the area for all copper types and reports back which are found with the specified quality. Also, there would be a way to save common searches for repeated use, allowing you to set up multiple items of certain qualities as quick load searches. Higher levels of this skill allow for multiple stats to be set in the inquiry, and for more search requests to be saved. For the miner always looking for those few particular things they know they can sell.
- Refining
This allows a miner to either manually refine material into a higher quality, or to eventually run a automated refinery (built by architects of course). This process uses a great deal of resources to get a much smaller amount of superior quality material. This right here is what prevents the market from getting glutted, as it effectively eats up resources, and should be somewhat costly. Anyone who finds a natural source of high quality ore should have a much lower overhead, but this process should help master crafters get thier hands on very good quality material for a price.
I think the class would do several good things to SWG. It would relieve artisans of the task of maintaining thier own resource gatherers. It would provide more resources in general which should make some materials cheaper on the open market (thus relieving the artisan of the feeling that they need to do it themselves to be profitable), should open up higher quality resources in better quantities (and making them available more often even after resource shifts), but at a cost. It gives the player who enjoys mining several things to do by automating tedious parts like running to harvesters, while making enjoyable parts like exploring/surveying for good material both easier and yet more engaging. The miner is one part scout, one part artisan and all businessman.
I think the Miner/Harvester profession would be a good addition to the game. I have two suggestions to make:
1. The ability to or adevice (manufactured by engineers) to survey while in water. The ability to place in watera special harvester that would operateonly inwater (manufactured by engineers of course).
2. This has been mentioned before, but I would like to elaborate on it. The ability to use a special survey probe droid (manufactured by droid engineers) to obtain a list of the resources available on distant planets upon reaching Master Miner/Harvester. This list would not tell where the resources are locatedor in what concentrations. The probe could only be used once.
I've also liked most of the previous suggestions on what this profession would be capable of doing and hope the Dev's will really return the miner to the game.
Loreena,
on Sunrunner
Oh my, sorry my previous post used such alarge font, I used Arial/small. Well I guess I'll see how small this one posts using Arial/xx-small.
Loreena
on Sunrunner
In the early game it'svery simple to give yourself the ability to do just about everybasic thing, poorly. You can scout, you can shoot, you can heal yourself, you can make survey and make simple things, you can even dance for your friends, with only a minimum of cost. And I don't think that's a bad thing, it's a a good way to figure out which profession you want to continue in.
But at some point, you have to decide that you want to be a very good hunter, and that you are going to lose your medical skills in order to do that. Or you decide that since you want to be a very skilled crafter, that you are going to have to retire your slitherhorn.
But for a skill cost of practically zero, you can be the best resource collector in the game. All you need is a lot of money, and a friend to tell you where to drop the harvester.
So, I think that artisans should have an ability to harvest resources, minimally, the same way a scout can handle a rifle. Maybe a personal harvester. But there should be players who are just a lot better at it. (I'd add to the wish list the ability to immediatly know what the stats of every newresource are, instead of having to sample each and every one.)
As to claims that it just wouldn't be fun, if you don't think it sounds fun, don't play it. There seem to be others who are happy to fill that role. Economy-wise, I'm not sure what the problem would be. If miners become really profitable because there isn't enough supply, more people will become miners. If there is just too much quality resource on the market, the devscould make the mineral pools smaller. With resources moving around every week, no one can monopolize the best locations. And I think between all the different kinds of resources (All different kinds of metals and chemicals for weapons and armor and tailors, organics for medsand chefs) there would be lots of niches.
Of course, with some of the existing classes being to completely broken, it would be pretty unfathomable for them to go and make more new classes anytime soon.
I see a lot of posts by people who like to mine and why they want a mining profession. I don't really see a reason why there needs to be a miner profession or how it will help Joe crafter do the things he likes to do.
If I just like to craft stuff and don't want to run a harvester colonyand buy all my resources then a mining profession must do several things.
1) It must provide a huge variety of resources as well as quantity.
2) It must produce resources at a resonable price. I saw a post about a young miner who coudn't compete with the powergamer weaponcrafters on his server. Transferring money from crafters to powergaming miners doesn't make the situation any better, it just changes who has the money.
I see two camps. One just wants to tack a miner profession onto what exists so that a miner might produce more quantiy and cheeper prices. Another group wants to get mining out of the artisan profession and make it exclusive to miners so that only they can do it.
Right now anyone can mine. Bounty hunters, pistoleers, weaponcrafters, medic, doctors, entertainers., anyone. With this system in place and people running harvesters of all sizes and shapes, there aren't enough variety and quantity and quality of resources that if I didn't run any harvesters at all, there would be enough resources for everyone to make things. Right now I can't get all the resources I need to make things. Simply can't find them or not available or its 32 qaulity selling at 10cr/unit.
I'd love to support a professoin that would let me just buy resources and make things I wanted to. But from what I've seen while the professoin has ardant fans, with everyone mining now, demand is mostly greater than supply.
Kisedd wrote:
I see a lot of posts by people who like to mine and why they want a mining profession. I don't really see a reason why there needs to be a miner profession or how it will help Joe crafter do the things he likes to do.
If I just like to craft stuff and don't want to run a harvester colonyand buy all my resources then a mining profession must do several things.
1) It must provide a huge variety of resources as well as quantity.
2) It must produce resources at a resonable price. I saw a post about a young miner who coudn't compete with the powergamer weaponcrafters on his server. Transferring money from crafters to powergaming miners doesn't make the situation any better, it just changes who has the money.
I see two camps. One just wants to tack a miner profession onto what exists so that a miner might produce more quantiy and cheeper prices. Another group wants to get mining out of the artisan profession and make it exclusive to miners so that only they can do it.
Right now anyone can mine. Bounty hunters, pistoleers, weaponcrafters, medic, doctors, entertainers., anyone. With this system in place and people running harvesters of all sizes and shapes, there aren't enough variety and quantity and quality of resources that if I didn't run any harvesters at all, there would be enough resources for everyone to make things. Right now I can't get all the resources I need to make things. Simply can't find them or not available or its 32 qaulity selling at 10cr/unit.
I'd love to support a professoin that would let me just buy resources and make things I wanted to. But from what I've seen while the professoin has ardant fans, with everyone mining now, demand is mostly greater than supply.
Its not about helping Joe Crafter. Its about helping Joe miner.
There is a third camp.. the largest camp.. that wants to see a miner profession which grants new abilities, not just increase extraction rates. That was all it had before, and is why it got dropped. Things like additional survey modes and remote control of harvesters. All this could be added in the form of a profession.
I dont think anyone is advocating removing the current personal harvester level of mining from artisan's survey discipline. Those of us who do it full time just want some skills and abilities to aid us in this endeavor.
I think you will see the market change over the next few months:
1) Pricing will become consistent
2) When merchants become stable, we will be able to sell larger chunks of resources
3) Demand will decrease as people stop grinding for xp and just make what they need to sell.
4) Increased access to larger harvesters. Most people still use personal harvesters. This will change.
I personally run multiple tiers of pricing that run from 2cr/unit for low grade bulk (like low end steel and energy) all the way up to 10cr/unit for specific required elements that have shifted off the server. As more people get the feel of how to price their product, your experience purchasing resources will become more consistent. Once merchants become more reliable, you will be able to go to stores to buy what you need from professionals who know what things are worth.
I really dont think the high resource demand can continue indefinitely. Increasing supply due to harvester size and decreasing deman as people finish their crafters will have a dramatic impact.
Maybe 
Regards,
Artuk
I'm sleepy and I have only skimmed the last four pages of posts, but I think that like the majority of the people posting here, I would love to have a miner profession.
I, like so many of you, am playing as a miner right now. Sure, my title may say Doctor or Combat Medic (depends on my mood), but I travel across the galaxy to walk with my head in a survey device seeking out that motherload of the perfect resource.
I'd love to see something that allows me to tinker with a Harvester making in more efficient or producing a higher yield. It'd be great to have my survey device have a higher range, or to make my sampling a little more productive.
I think that this profession didn't get that much interest in Beta because of the lack of economy. We've hit a point in the life of the game that people have money to spend on rare or high quality resource. I have found that in the past week or so, more and more medics/doctors/combat medics are coming to me for the materials to make Advanced Components.
We really want this profession back!
Icod Ahi
Galatic Trade Federation
Doctor/Combat Medic/Miner
Starsider
(Now if I could just use my Industrialist XP for this...) 
here is something I posted a while back:
New profession: Harvester
To make a better economy line in the SWG system, it would be nice to create a specialist in the resource commodity.
This would be a specialty above "Surveying". This specialty would have 4 lines : Harvesting, Farming, Refining and Surveying (lvl 5 to 8)
Extractor operation: The"Harvester" would be the only class that would be able to use miningextractor / farms(either personal or larger ones). The extrators would now need a "certification" to operate them. That would mean taking them out for all other artisan and other professions. The size and type of harvester would also come as level progress. Also, some resources will only be available with the harvesting skill.
Farming: This specialty would have flora farms but should also have livestock for bone, meat and hides. Would be nice to see little farms with NPC livestock (white dots) running around. I would consider new type of construction like "Farm", "Hydroponics bay", etc.
Refining: Making a base resource into something better. Example: mixing steel with copper to get the best (or worst) of both resources. Same could apply to gas, organics (cross-breeding, etc) or even energy.
Surveying: Large surveying devices that have range from 1k to even several Kms (orbital surveying?)
This would add a specific line to the economy specialized in giving the SWG population base resources to make the other stuff in the game.