Artisan Archive
Thread: Please bring back the Miner profession
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Azmodean
Wed Jan 28, 2004 5:59 pm
#1
Problem 1: Any player can place a harvester, regardless of their skills. You don't even need surveying, since you can either lay your harvester down next to all the others or get a friend to survey for you.
Problem 2: Every player can place up to 10 harvesters regardless of their personal need or dedication to resource harvesting.
Problem 3: It's more economically viable to harvest and sell resources than to become an Architect or Droid engineer, with the exception of a small minority of the items Architects and Droid Engineers can make.
I think the Miner Profession can solve these problems, or at least reduce their impact on the player economy.
1.Changes to Lots: Limit harvesters similar to the way that you currently limit vendors. Rather than taking up one of the character's 10 lots, a harvester counts against a skill-based total. At surveying 3 and 4, you get additional harvesters.Novice and Master of the advanced tradeskills gives you an additional harvester. Novice Doctor and Combat medic would give you an additional harvester. Thus, the most you could have without being a miner would be the current 10, but that would require spending most if not all of your points on tradeskill related skills. Miners would recieve 1 extra harvester at novice, then one for each of the skillboxes in the harvester line, and 3 at master, giving them their 10. In addition, miners could recieve other perks. An efficiency skill mod similar to that in Merchant that applies to harvesters (and lowers the maintenance cost by more than the merchant efficiency skill). This fixes problems 1 and 2.
2. Harvester Certifications. You would get access to personal harvesters and wind power generators at Surveying 3. Novice of the elite professions would give you access to medium harvesters and Solar Generators. Only Miners would recieve access to heavy harvesters and fusion generators. Without the proper certification, you would be unable to place or pay maintenance on those harvesters you weren't certified in (but, if this change were added, they would have to allow a one-time free redeed for all harvesters, so players could pull up the harvesters they can't use).
3. Permenant harvester decay. Harvesters should slowly decay over time, even with maintenance paid. This should take around 3-4 weeks of up-time. Once the harvester decayed completely, it would simply stop working and be unable to be redeeded. You would still be able to access the hopper, however, so casual players who can currently keep their harvesters running wouldn't have to worry about losing all their resources because they didn't check their harvesters in time, nor would they have to worry about missing out on productivity, because resources turn over at a much faster rate anyway.
4. Increased efficiency. Miners would be able to lower the amount of maintenance and power their harvesters require as the progress through the profession.
5. Harvester powerups. Through their day in, day out experience with harvesters, miners have managed to come up with specialized components, ranging from jury-rigged add-ons to custom engineered solutions. These are crafted by miners and could be used by an architect to further increase the effectiveness of their harvesters, similar to bio-engineered addons for food, or Krayt tissues or armor addons for weapons and armor.
6. Better surveying skills. Miners would be able to survey areas more effectively than surveyors. Perhaps, they could even implement Droid Engineer Crafted resource probes that work similar to bounty hunter droids, seeking out the highest concentration of a specific resource in the area, or even providing a resource map of the entire planet at Master level.
None of these would fix #3, of course. Only changes to the Architect and Droid Engineer professions could change that. However, it would at least limit its effect on the player economy considerably. The main difference in doing this is that, while it still allows players to profit off of selling resources, it requires them to spend significant amounts of skill points to do so. So, no longer can a bounty hunter make hundreds of thousands of credits a day off of resources, while simultaneously doing bounty missions and normal missions for additional cash. To be effective, he'd have to choose one or the other.
Azmodean
Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:44 pm
#3
I'm posting this as a Master Architect and an Armorsmith... so I see both sides of the resource need vs resource reward spectrum. And, as such, I can say that, while the rampant resource harvesting doesn't affect my armor trade at all (I can buy resources for 10cpu, or even 20cpu if I have to, and still make a huge huge profit), it does affect my architect (I can literally sell the raw resources for more money than I can sell 75% of my products). I wouldn't mind it so much if players actually had to make a permenant investment to achieve this kind of economic success, as I do with Master Architect/Armorsmith. However, it's the fact that they don't that gets me.
You have to get combat skills and effective weapons to get high paying missions. You have to get higher investigation skill as a bounty hunter, or tracking skill as a ranger to get higher bounty or exploration missions. You have to get higher tradeskills to get better items and make better money. So WHY should resources be something that anyone can do with 0 skill, and still be one of the best paying activities in the game? THAT is exactly why it needs to be nerfed.
Sentee
Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:44 pm
#4
Sounds like a way to provide high quantity of high quality resources to crafters
/vote yes
Llahmo
Thu Jan 29, 2004 10:27 am
#5
no bad idea overall.
As I have argued before, any harv certs or any other type of restriction on harvester placement simply reduces the amount of resources being mined which increases prices for crafter and end user alike. Their are not enough resources coming out of the ground as it stands.
I spent my skill points on surveying and I don't need further restrictions in applying harvesters through another tree. Now if they want to give me more skill points then that is fine.
Also, their is a large sub-market of lot rental that allows certain large PA's to function (i.e. - some large energy providers) these guys are widely useful to many crafters, and any harv cert program puts a restriction on what they can provide, further driving up energy costs and therefore final costs to the user.
As I have argued before, any harv certs or any other type of restriction on harvester placement simply reduces the amount of resources being mined which increases prices for crafter and end user alike. Their are not enough resources coming out of the ground as it stands.
I spent my skill points on surveying and I don't need further restrictions in applying harvesters through another tree. Now if they want to give me more skill points then that is fine.
Also, their is a large sub-market of lot rental that allows certain large PA's to function (i.e. - some large energy providers) these guys are widely useful to many crafters, and any harv cert program puts a restriction on what they can provide, further driving up energy costs and therefore final costs to the user.
Velisimner
Thu Jan 29, 2004 1:49 pm
#6
i can agree with some of the things stated. i also not agree with some things. i would love to see a miner profession develope.
CheeseBurgerAnimal
Thu Jan 29, 2004 3:22 pm
#7
/Vote NO
People like you are just trying to push up the sell price of raw resources. Your the vulchers in the HOLOcronomy
Mangoman
Thu Jan 29, 2004 3:49 pm
#8
Big no on the harvester decay as you described it, all the dead harvesters clogging up the planet would make it even harder than it is now to put down a new harvester where you want it.
Squidbush
Thu Jan 29, 2004 7:04 pm
#9
This has been suggested a number of times since beta. It'll never happen because of WAY too much opposition.
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