Artisan Archive

we all know that SOE is trying to cut down on lot traders.. I for one run some statics.. i have about 20, Some are from people that quit and stuff got stuck, others are freinds that still play and i give um stuff for free. To me statics are just a nice way to give you junk metals to use on parts that need nothing speical, or if ya get lucky boost your haul of something good.

Now that being said, even being the big miner that i am i belive something needs to be done to lvl the playing feild.

My idea, would require code changed to resource spawns, but this is how it would work.

When large harvesters of clusters are together, the likly hood of a High % resource spawning there is reduced.. This would give people more incentive to move harvesters, as being stuck on a 20% for 3 weeks is just not good.

2, the longer these harvesters are on this spot, the likly hood of a good resource of any % is reduced. soo the statics may get some decent % of crap-mid but the chance of a good resource from a field of statics goes way down.

This could be tracked fairly easily.. well would ahve to be coded obviulsy but my idea on how to do this is...

once a day, a pulse is set out, that find all the harvesters on a planet, all there locations are saved.. Now this pulse goes out once a day and it keeps track of how long each harvester has been not moved. Now if a harvester has been not moved for more than 4 weeks this spot now becomes flaged in the spawn program. The spawn porgram already controls all resource shifts. This flag system would modifiy the spawn to give a lower % chance of a decent % or resouce spawning at the Red flag, aka static spots.

If these static sites get pickup say, this area will still be flaged for a week or 2.. This wouldnt kill spawns, but would make you find new spots to drop. and would really put a huge damper in cross-server lot traders.

perhaps you would need say 3-4-5-6 harvesters in one spot for a monthto get flaged as a static spot.. But 10-20+ in one area would be auto-flagged after 2 weeks.

Once a harvester is pulled it clears the drop time.. Are there ways around this?? possibly yanking harvesters every week and redeading. But that means people are around and working on them.. Perhaps there could be a varriable that would change locations and dry up spawns all together in that area for a month.

Ive been a miner since launch and i know tons of spots that always have 80% + for certain things and honestly id like to see more varrietly, or perhaps shifting good zones.. soo that ore drys up in one area, but a spot that has always been bad is now good.Miner is a legit Prof, but cross server lot traders are really hurting it. Sure i have a few lot trades from people on my own server,, but people with 25- 50, 100-200+ fleets of lot trades.. that is what im talking bout. this is just one idea on how it could be changed

A perfect examle why they are bad is when you see someone with 100 swoops on a vendor for 10k each... you can bet your A$$ they aer a lot trader

Je'Cy

Haha, One stared.. cause you dissagree instead of coming up with reasons why this should not be.... Guess with small brains a click is the only come back

Je'Cy

--
Former Artisan Correspondent
Eoto LightDark, MIA, TestCenter
Noeco, Trader (Engineering) Chilastra
Atren, Medic, Chilastra

this is what we do on our server:

any posts regarding Lot trades...we heckle them til they remove their post

Mucus' " tHe FiNe aNd gRiNd "
Specialty Resources - Premium Grade Resources - Grind Resources
South Coronet (SoCo) Ship Systems
Both located: 600m South of Coronet (JTL) Shop @ (-266 -5514), (Resources) Shop @ SoroSuub Mega-Mall (-235 -5560),
Uber Ships & Components for Uber Pilots (SoCo) Price List : -Clicky-

ROFL

I thinkthat you're underestimating the profitability of lot trading.

Even on a 1% spot, paying 1.5 cpu for power, the cost per resource per harvestor is still less than 1 cpu. Since you can sell grind quality material for 1.5-2 CPU on pretty much all galaxy markets, this means the more the better, and no one wants to mine grind quality, so the statics will always have their niche.

One thing I would worry about with your plan is that the shifts would start moving to unfriendly terrain, making it impossible to mine a quality shift the regular way. If Guru's advice is taken and they reduce the terrain restrictions on mines then that would move to counteract the problem.

What sort of disturbs me is that you think working against lot traders would somehow "level" the playing field, and the expectation that someone who started 1 week ago can compete with someone who started 1 year ago. If that were the case we may as well be playing mario bros., as the role-playing element of "building" your character would be totally shot. There are people out there with litterally billions of resources. I don't think it would be fair to them if someone could come in on their first day and start competing as though they had been there a year, but that's pretty much the way mining is set up. You're capped only by Architect prices, and if you choose that as your starting profession then you'll quickly amass all the resources you want and need.

If SOE is really interested in getting the hoarders to give up their lots, their going to need to give them incentive to do so, as there is no rule about making a character on another server and dropping lots. It would probably include making a mining profession that would be able to expand a characters lots. Then there would be an associated skill cost with the ability to have a few hundred harvestors down.

Another point I'd like to make is that a lot of what the static miners get is grind quality material. I think it's necessary to have the grind quality material, as the really high quality material only supports the higher end crafting economy. What about the new players who aren't interested in mining? They need suppliers who will give them low prices, and I can tell you from experience that no one will sell you 10 CPU resources at 2 CPU no matter how nice you ask. Lowering the availibility of resources (as what you suggest would do) would only serve to drive production down, and then the crafters wouldn't be able to meet demands as supplies and back stock thinned, and so you'd have a high-demand market, or a sellers market, and most merchants would start raising prices, making some of the medium ranged items too expensive to be afforded by newer players. In essence, I think what you're suggesting would have an opposite effect on the economy in the long run than what you desire.

Cheers

its not a bad idea but you are misunderstanding something, there is no problem with lot trades within one server. what the dev's would like to target is cross server trades.

this was discussed at length at fanfest and the arguments have all been about a small number ofcharacters with an unfair access to a huge number of lots via cross server trades were able to corner the resource market. this was most notable in the days of hologrinding when pretty much any crap metal was fair game for grinders at much higher prices than the more selective market tolerates now.

to make any changes that are targeting static harvesters in general is unfair since this also punishes groups of people who are combining their lots within the server the primarily play on for mutual advantage. for example, guilds with static fields that allow for ready resources for the guild crafters. there are completely valid reasons for setting up lot trades within your own server so long as all the participants are contributers to that same servers economy. your proposal makes it that much harder for people to combine efforts and since this is a game that is all about interacting with other players, imo it goes against the spirit of the game on some level.

Flagging static spots is a nice idea, but I don't think it's likely to be implemented. It's similar to implementing depletion of resources.

The concentrations are basically topological maps placed over the planets. Calculating the peaks, incline, etc. for each spot simply takes much processing power. Most likely they have implemented it as a set of predefined topologial maps the size of a planet. When they spawn a resource, a random map for the correct group is chosen and placed in a random spot. The parts ending outside the planetary map will then wrap around and fill the missing parts at the left and the top. Then they just add your coordinate with the maps upper left corner and use that to look up the actual concentration for the selected map.

To implement your suggestions they have to create a list of depletion/static spots for each planet. This has to be updated regularily, maybe on each resource shift. When surveying they have to look up the depletion/static value and match it against the concentration.

So it will take additional database space, and more processing which slows things down. I don't think they will do that unless it's considered a critical change. Personally I believe this would have been an interesting change.

>But 10-20+ in one area would be auto-flagged after 2 weeks.

We had a JTL steel spawn with CD 998 which stayed for 20 days. Since it spawned on only one planet, it's needless to say that it resultet in some impressive harvester fields there. With your rules, it would have been depleted pretty quickly regardless of any lot sharing. A lot of people wouldn't be happy with that.

A more likely change is to shut down a harvesters a certain number of days after it has been placed. And it can then only be reactivated by re-deeding. Unfortunately the long duration of JTL spawns means that this period must be at least 24 days. This will stop pure static lot trades. Still most lot sharers would be able to cope with moving the harvesters once a month.

They did in fact almost half the number of Minerals on each planet in Publish 12.With far less to choose from, this was probably the hardest blow to static lot trades so far.

Lunariel

You all have some valid points, but unlike you guys to me the idea of having to mine in rough terrain for some uber resource is aucally a great thing..You all are forgetting that personals can fit anywhere and could turn valuable resources into gold. This in a sence would limit the amounts of very high end stuff. Instead of people collecting 5 million + of some 990 irolumn they might only be getting 500k, Sure 500k is a ton of gas, but if you are selling tons of weapons you will go through it farily quick. By reducing the amounts of top end reasources or making them harder to get tons this in effect could make the high end smiths also make a second line of stuff that isnt as good, as to save there high end stuff for a certain market.

Ive wanted astroid mining, and rare spawns that may only show up in one spot of supper rough terrain as you can only get persons on it..Or astroid mining that say you can land go survey ext,, now say 100's of astroids all ahve the same make up.. But there is that one rare gem that may have something incredible. The spawn would start a count down tick as soon as a harvester was placed on that resource. or that resource would be there till it was mined for a set amount say, its 50k or 200k or what ever. Turning a surveyor into a miner, and really an entire class, or sub class if you will.

One last thing on static lots, I dont have a problem with lots of people getting together and droping stuff. As a guild we had over 200 lots in use for mining, while others had the storage vaults and so on. Some of the miners would not even own a house just soo all 10 lots would be mobile, while combat classes would set up houses for them, or use the 1 lot naboo, The thing was though, the statics where mostly semi-static. The would get droped for a period of time and mine a few shifts till that area sorta dry'ed up too to speak and then would be moved to another location of something that was nice and new and they would be planted for another 2-5 weeks. or what ever.. These people where in game and playing soo to me thats not abuse. But someone thats running 100+ from either people that have left, or cross server this is where the problems come into play. SOE has said numerous times that they want to cut down the number of lot trades, I use a few, not many and mainly cuase there is such a high turnaround in the game. If my friends that i used there lots stayed for as long as me i wouldnt have needed to, but to have to transfer buildings ever few months or risk getting a store house with 15 million units of uber stuff stuck is not somthing i want to deal with. All my store houses are mine, and i use some trades for4 factories and a slice house.. dont think that is crossing the line : )

One last thing as for resource dealers that sell for high end credits,, that aint me.. I just gave away 250k units to 2 different brand new WS's of some of the best stuff since launch.. Im always gving out rares in small amounts like 1-2k to people that ask, My big one is RIS.. In exchange i have made some great freinds, Got some GDK scales for myself, some sweet sliced weapons,on top of the fact im making someone else happy.. Its a good thing .. One last thing, none of my resources have ever been sold for over 10 cpu, with most at about 1.5-5 range.. well cept that one nice tat fiber for docs,, but heck 20 CPu for something that sells for 100 on the baords is a very good deal /wink

Je'Cy Dax

Miner since launch

Dealer of high end rares

I have an alt that I do nothing but run his harvesters in the same place, so just because I do that, I would get flagged? Why? Alot of good points, but I disaggree with the smalller groups of harvesters

i think they should just make it like so.......

Harvesters must be moved (redeeded) after 21 days or there is a 'land tax rate' of 50k credits per eachharvester.

....that would take care of it.

Mucus' " tHe FiNe aNd gRiNd "
Specialty Resources - Premium Grade Resources - Grind Resources
South Coronet (SoCo) Ship Systems
Both located: 600m South of Coronet (JTL) Shop @ (-266 -5514), (Resources) Shop @ SoroSuub Mega-Mall (-235 -5560),
Uber Ships & Components for Uber Pilots (SoCo) Price List : -Clicky-

You sir, are ignorant.

Heavy Harvester (BER 13) on 1% Concentration

Yield Per Day = BER * Percent * 60 min * 24 hours = 13 * 0.1 * 60 * 24 = 187 units per day

Cost Per Day = 2160 Maint + 1.5 * 1800 power = 2160 + 2700 = 4860

Cost to Mine = 4860 / 187 = 26 cpu

Lesson learned - you want to talk out the orifice you sit on, at least do the math first.

SWG Lexicon: "Every Player" Means "Except Crafters"

---

Ewach - Founder of Travelers Respite on Sunrunner
Located halfway between Anchorhead and Mos Eisley (2180, -4684)
Visit my Shop at (2030, -4660)

I think I made this suggestion once before, but why not just require harvesters to be re-deeded and dropped again to change the resource being harvested? Reduce the cost to redeed, of course. Basically, when you drop the harvester, you choose the resource to be harvested and this can not be changed.

This would kill cross-server lot trades for the most part, as well as make survey and sampling a much needed skill.

It wouldn't appear to be very difficult, code-wise.....but then, I don't program....