Artisan Archive

Sampling is for pulling up a few units of a given resource so you can check the stats, right? (If you disagree, then explain to me what sampling is really for.) I use sampling when the resources shift so I can figure out what the best resources are to collect. Then, I place my harvesters on the best spots I can find. That to me is why sampling is in the game.

I see a few ways to change sampling so that itcan never better than a personal harvester, not used for unattendedgathering of resources,and can still be used to check out the resources' stats.

1) All samples will only bring up 1 unit of the resource. You only need one unit to see the stats. If you want more resources, put down a harvester.

2) Prevent people from sampling the same resource more than a few times at the EXACT same spot. This way you can be in one spot and sample all the different resources that are there, but you can't resample the same resource several hundred times. If you want more resource, put down a harvester.

3) Assuming #2, reduce the time allowed between samples. This will reduce the annoyance of sampling resources to get stats.

Sampling is also for rapidly acquiring a small quantity of an item in order to craft something with.

I think you forget the beginning toons with your ideas. I know when I started I used sampling to gather the ore I needed to make my tools and detection devices. I wanted to be a crafter not a combat toon so forcing me to do missions just to buy my ores til I can make my own harvesters is a bad idea. Sampling should be left as is. The benifit it allows those new to the field FAR outweighs the perceived problems of the AFK sampler.

Ghrym
Scylla

I'm inclined to agree with the original poster, however I also am concerned for the noob with nothing to his/her name.

My main gripe on the sampling isthe impact of free resources (meaning no money/power sink involved) on the markets. Maybe there is little to no impact, but there is no way toknow until we have access to some of the metrics. Maybe I can get Holo to tell us what percentage of total resources are sampled vs. mined. If it's a low % (under 10) then it isn't that much of an impact - but if it's higher, something should be done about it.

Can't we at least agree on that?

Bianca Minola

This just isn't possible. When a new server is set up, no one has any resources to make personal harvesters with let alone grid the exp to get to that point to begin with. On well established servers this could work well but it is a mute point anyways.

Sampling has little to no impact on the economy. The people who are impacting the economy do so with full sets of heavy harvesters and are too busy using those resources running from one factory to the next or making sales. The power gamers generally trade resources in100k lots, sampling won't get you there. I've personally used 250k in resources in one factory run several times before, using the 1000 schematic of course. I just don't see someone sampling for that much and having any impact, especially now that the afk macroing has all but been nerfed.

Well if it is shown to have no impact on the economy, I will delightfully withdraw my complaints.

Bianca Minola

Basically it does nothing to hurt the economy. Free resources whoopeee

If you can mine 6-8k resources a day, but you could do 20 missions on endor in a few hours and earn 40k from your 1/10 of the group share of 25k missions.

Then with those earnings buy heavies and power them and all of a sudden you can pull down 80k resources a day for just a little bit of effort.

I prefer to keep things the way they are but maby an answer to hurting the noob would be to give the starting artisan toon a crafting tool and the resources needed to make the others (all crappy stats and generic types). This way they could make what they need and you would stop the AFK harvesting. From personal experience I believe that AFK harvesting has minimal impact on the game. I started my crafting career by doing it and now I run med and heavy harvesters and don't bother to waste my time sampling. I could have reached where I am now without sampling but it would have been much harder and taken alot more time.

Ghrym
Scylla

Good feedback on this idea

I'll refine it a bit then...

Sampling has two basic roles to fill. First, allowing someone to get a small amount of a resource to check the stats. Second, to allow someone new the ability toget enough resources to make small things (such as Personal Harvesters which require 250 resources).

1) All samples will bring up resources simliar to how they do now. If you're on a higher spot, you get more per sample (with some randomness). I would like to see more of the special events, things like sample deeper, follow a small vein, and so on so you can get more resources on some samples by moving a bit. This will help make sampling faster and less boring, yet still require interaction.

2) Prevent people from sampling the same resource more than a few times at the EXACT same spot. This way you can be in one spot and sample all the different resources that are there, but you can't resample the same resource several hundred times. If you want more resource, put down a harvester.

3) Assuming #2, you can reduce the time allowed between samples. This will reduce how long it takes to sample enough to get the 250 resources to get a personal harvester.

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Shadow-Light wrote:

Sampling is for pulling up a few units of a given resource so you can check the stats, right? (If you disagree, then explain to me what sampling is really for.) I use sampling when the resources shift so I can figure out what the best resources are to collect. Then, I place my harvesters on the best spots I can find. That to me is why sampling is in the game.

I see a few ways to change sampling so that itcan never better than a personal harvester, not used for unattendedgathering of resources,and can still be used to check out the resources' stats.

1) All samples will only bring up 1 unit of the resource. You only need one unit to see the stats. If you want more resources, put down a harvester.

2) Prevent people from sampling the same resource more than a few times at the EXACT same spot. This way you can be in one spot and sample all the different resources that are there, but you can't resample the same resource several hundred times. If you want more resource, put down a harvester.

3) Assuming #2, reduce the time allowed between samples. This will reduce the annoyance of sampling resources to get stats.

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I really don't understand this rapid anti-AFK-sampling sentiment. Who is it hurting if some newb hand samples AFK for a while? I personally haven't hand-sampled in ages, but what is the over-riding urgency here to nerf this?

I agree that it's not an urgent issue, but I also agree that it shouldn't be allowed. Going to the bathroom or fixing dinner while you sample isn't really a big issue... it's the people who go to work or to bed and let run for 8+ hours. And to be honest, I'm not all that convinced that it has a big impact on anything. The main reason it irks me is because of the something-for-nothing mentality it implies.

My suggestion is simpler, but hinges on one thing: is it possible to choose what material to sample using commands? If not, then just up the delay between unbroken sampling *runs* (not individual samples) of the same material. From what I understand,macro-samplers defeat the pop-ups by stopping and restarting their samplings. So change it so that once you stop sampling a particular resource, there's a delay of a minute or two (instead of the usual 30 seconds) before you can sampleit again. Only for the same resource, though, otherwise you're punishing those who hop to a planet just to check out what all their resources are like.

I also see sampling as having two purposes. The first is to check the stats of a resource. However it can also be useful to accumulate said resource when it is not possible to put down a harvester (area is already built-out, too close to town, etc.) In an ideal world, the second situation would never happen, but SWG is not an ideal world. I try to check on my harvesters at least every other day. However resource shifts are random. It is not uncommon to find out a shiftoccurred hours or even minutes after I checked on a particular harvester. By the time I find out about it and try to move it to a new location, it is not unusual to find the high concentration vein already built out. Now there may well be several high concentration veins on a given planet, butit can be suicidal for a lowly artisan to go out venturing too far to find them on some of the harder planets (eg Lok).

I can understand people's distate for AFK sampling, however I doubt the AFK sampling is having any impact on the market. Rather, it is those who own the largets harvesters and who play 24/7 that can monopolize the markets. Nerfing sampling only hurts those who are new and those who cannot play 24/7.