Artisan Archive

I put up my first harvesters since beta when they didn't even need maintenance last night and deposited some credits for maintenance in the Wind generator I put up next to it. I was somewhat shocked to find that it takes 1 cr per minute for maintenance on the generator, but if thats what it takes...

Anyway, being the starving artist, I only had enough for 4 and a half hours maintenance, so I turned the equipment off to save the machine until I could be there to turn it off in a few hours. Today when I logged on next to it, I found it out of maintenance pool money, and damaged down to 83% (1600 maintenance cost to repair) and now I can't pay the maintenance, can't run it while its damaged, and don't know what to do with it.

What I want to know is, shouldn't off be a no cost phase for the harvester? I can't afford to have that thing sitting around if its not, and I can't really afford to buy metal at the rate I am earning credits grinding out stuff. I shudder to think that I will someday be a weaponsmith or droid engineer out kneeling in the dirt sampling for a bit of ore I need to piece together an item.

Just wait till you get the disappearing maintenece money bug. But Q said they are trying to make it so harvys dont take money while they are off. So I hope that is soon.

Yes... somehow... while not operating... the harvester you made falls apart. I still don't get that one either. Combine it with a 1500 cost to pick up one.

One cannot turn off Entropy.

How they are working Maintenance and the concept of true Maintenance are two completely different things.

The facilities should run as long as they have fuel, but slowly degrade. As they degrade their performance decreases until it reaches 0 and is completely inoperable. To avoid this you pay maintenance to keep it at peak performance.

You can only put in a limited number of harvesters in one area, right? It's probably there to keep people from "griefing" harvesting by parking a large number of harvesters all over the place and leaving them there forever turned off. If they programmed it right, it should use a lot less maintenance when it's turned off. But really, stuff that you leave sitting around turned off slowly rusts away too.

My suspicion is that maintenance exists (and is always paid) for a couple of reasons. First: it provides a very big moneysink for the economy, something that's reasonably important. It also provides for another means of constraining "land ownership"--if you can't afford to pay upkeep, you can't afford to have the plot. I suspect they may have wanted to use only upkeep costs originally, but put in the plot limits to prevent complete ownership of a mineral vein by one individual.

In any case, the biggest useful feature of maintenance fees is that buildings eventually blow up. Why is that good? Because if you go on extended vacation (i.e. stop playing the game for a month or two) or the like, your buildings go poof. If you build some buildings and then decide you don't care about them and forget about them or go to play on another server, poof, they're gone. That second one is more important--the account is paid, the character exists, you're just not using it. Well, after a while of experimenting, half the world would be covered with "left behind" buildings. Rent means: they'll never last forever.

Finally, it's my opinion that rent is too low. At least, for the current economy. For god's sake, the prevailing price of power is three credits per unit. I was getting three units per credit with wind generators, and now that I have solar, it's even cheaper.

All in all, if you aren't going to be using a harvester while you're not there, sample by hand. If you are, try to set yourself up so that you can go two days between fueling and paying (that's 1440 credits for a small harvester for two days, plus 1200 power for two days. If you produce that power yourself, it'll cost you 1440 + 2880 = 4320 credits to run one small harvester and one wind gen, and you'll use up 1200 power. That will leave you with around 6000-8000 power left over, which should sell for at least 9000 credits. In fact, that would be really low based on prices I've seen. Congratulations, you're making a profit. If you buy the power, you're going to pay 1440 + 3600 = 5040 credits per two days assuming a price of 3:1 for power, or 1440 + 2400 = 3840 credits per two days at a price of 2:1. More expensive, less time consuming. Or: buy materials from someone who specializes in this (like me) and does the power and resource production both. Since I have plenty of power and some left over to sell, I can sell resources at good low prices.

You might try contacting people you see selling resourecs on the bazaar and see if you can arrange a deal. Bulk contracts are likely to get a discount, because they won't drop the prices on the market appreciably, because they're predictable, and because there's a limit to how many sales you can make on the market at one time. (With 8 lots of small harvesters and providing a resale service for a colleague, I'm now starting to hit that limit. Now that I'm setting up medium harvesters, it will grow worse.)


Anyway: If you find that it's too expensive to harvest your own material, go to the specialists. If their prices are too high, re-think what you're doing and figure out how much cash you need to start up and avoid high overhead like not paying the maintenance fees or having harvesters up that aren't running because you don't have enough power. The markets on my server are becoming slightly glutted in some areas, but sales are still pretty brisk. Prices are starting to drop on the high-volume items, as well, but there's still a *lot* of room for them to drop further while still being profitable for the producers.

Why would anyone buy power?

As far as I know you only need to run other Harvesters and if that's the case it'd just be cheaper to save up for you own generator to make your power.

Two reasons I can think of.

1) Plot limits. If you have two harvesters to produce your own energy, then you can only have 8 other harvesters to mine other resources. Some people might want to buy energy so they can a full allotment of 10 harverster to mine other resources.

2) Laziness. In other words, why take the time and effort to do something, when you can pay somebody to do it for you??

The other reason to buy energy is if you want to be a very casual harvester. You can plop mineral, chem, and flora harvesters in a single area and essentially never have to move them even if the resources move. Sure, you won't maximize production (or get the highest quality resources), but you will produce a lot of resources and maintenance will be easy since everything is in one place.

This isn't possible with wind (and water) because when the resources move, there's a very good chance you will be producing very little wind energy without moving/rebuilding the harvester to a new area. If I could consistently getenergy resources for 1.5 credits/resource, I would be very tempted to stay out of the energy game as the hassle wouldn't be worth it.

Yet another good reason is to make up for lower percentages after a resource shift. When I first set up, my wind concentration was about 40-50% to run my harvesters. After the shift, it's closer to 20. I'm slowly moving them to nearby regions that are at least in the 35-45% range, but in the meantime, I still need power for my harvesters. I haven't needed to buy yet, but if a shift doesn't happen soon to a higher concentration, I'll buy a couple of k of wind and be stocked up and it didn't involve me abruptly moving my wind generator and losing maintenance I already paid for.

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Happymob wrote:

The other reason to buy energy is if you want to be a very casual harvester.

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This reflects my thinking. I am not a professional crafter and don't really want to sell resources. Mostly, I don't want to take time away from the other things I enjoy to sample. For the casual harvester, it is more about opportunity costs than turning some kind of profit. It is worth a couple of thousand credits to me to not have to take a knee for a few hours a week. If I can stockpile resources and keep them at the bank, it will be money well spent.

It is kindof tough on you when you place your first harvester and aren't prepared for some initial upkeep, I placed my first one yesterday, and if it's produce doesn't sell by lunchtime, I'm probably going to end up losing money. Certainly if I was any less prepared I would have lost the whole effort.

I have a solar generator which does pull in some decent engery. I prefer to buy any excess I need simply because its cheaper and does not take up my lots. Without a miner professions its hard to find what we need for sale but we also can not afford to put too many generators down because we won't have enough lots for other harvesters.

In the absence of the Miner professions I'd like to see more lots as you advance though the different skills sets. A bonus at Master Artisan, a bonus at each novice elite craftingprofession and bonus as you advance though your elite crafting line.