Artisan Archive

Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be, and I would like it if AFK sampling was compleately removed. But as it stands I hear about people who do it without getting disconnected, and likes to know the secret.

I have auto AFK diabled but it doesn´t help, I can only stand on for a couple of hours maximum.

They are using a macro.

Ctrl+A. Macro Tab. Allows you to create macros for various purposes.

There is no secret. It is most likely your ISP or Lag making your connection to SWG lost. Some nights I can go all night sampling and then others I get disconnected halfway through the night.

Dandain - Chilastra

Master Artisan

Novice Weaponsmith 0 2 0 4

Let me guess... You're a Rodian, and you just kneel there sampling as long as you can, right?

If so, what's happening is that the game recognizes that you are doing *nothing*. No talking, no mouse movement, no commands, etc.

The most successful AFK sampling is done by using a macro that loops over and over (more than one way to do this), and in your case, if you've got the Action to support it, it might have to do nothing more than a /say command or something.

That being said, the devs aren't particularly happy with AFK sampling, and they're doing what they can to stop it. The special surveying events were a start.

put the command /afk or perhaps /say in your macro

that might help you from being disconnected as often

Out of curiosity, why in the world do people get so bunched up about AFK sampling?

Sampling is really not all that exciting an activity, even with the new *ahem* events.

Who is it hurting, really?

Who is this hurting anyway.

Well, considering that a noob character can AFK sample nearly as fast as 2 HEAVY harvesters on the same percentage spot, I would argue that AFK samplers are skewing the entire resource market. Those of us who chose to play as intended (harvs instead of afk sampling) are paying thousands of credits a day and thousands of energy a day to run them, but afkers get their resources for free.

I have never once heard an argument from the AFKers to justify why they should be able to set up a macro and harvest for free all night that didn't involve - well it's possible, so i do it.

IMHO sampling needs to be nerfed to 1 unit, period. You can sample for a resource to see it's qualities.If you want enough of it to build anything with - set up a harvester, or buy it off of the bazaar.

Bianca Minola

That was true in the beginning, but now you afk sample a lot less.

The exceptional events slow you down if you ignore them, and the sampling delay increased 200%. I think it's more like "faster than a medium" than "faster than 2 heavies"... and that's ONLY at survey 4.

Incorrect.

I, last week, needed some steel for a special order. I had 2 heavies on some, emptied the hoppers, and was still 2k short of what I needed for the order.

I began hand sampling, directly between the harvesters. In the time it took me to dig up 950 units by hand, the 2 heavies had pulled up 1050 units.

Do it yourself if you don't believe me.

Bianca Minola

This just started happening to me I believe around the last major patch if I step away from the keyboard for over 20 minutes I believe I get sent to the character select screen, this never used to happen.

did you macro or did you use the special events?

the special events can't be macro'd


What concentration was this on? I usually place mine at very high locations (80-90%) so I do know that at a certain point (around 70%) you will pull up 7-10 unit samples but your heavies will be working slow in comparison.

I have the macro, I have a /say in it and my ISP is rock solid. This is weird. Do you get backt to the char. screen when you loses connection? Because that's the way it happens for me.

And I think AFK sampling is a very small problem, but I would be happy if it dissapeared compleately.