Artisan Archive

Now that survey missions have gotten some much-needed attention, perhaps we can bring attention to a number of other issues (beyond the payout doubling problem, of which SOE is already aware):

1. There is no correlation between the resources requested and the resources actually available on the planet. If the resource is not available on the planet, the payout should triple, to cover travel costs to other planets. If, on the other hand, survey missions are meant to be accomplished locally (as in, not having to travel to another planet), then unavailable resources shouldn't be listed at all.

2. There is no correlation between the available concentration of a given resource and the amount asked for in the mission. For example, I have never seen an ore available in 70% concentration. Ever. If the resource is not available locally at a 70% concentration, the system should not give out missions for that resource at that concentration.

3. Water, fiberplast, and flora are not represented at all in survey missions.

4. The success check for survey missions should require that the surveyor at least be outside of a city, preferably beyond the no-build zone, where someone could theoretically place a harvester. Finding a 70% concentration for a client in downtown Theed can't really be of much use. If this change were made, payouts would need to be increased accordingly.

Some sort of official response from SOE acknowledging these issues would be nice.

Does anyone else have any other problems to report with regard to survey missions?

Actually, as of this morning's patch, survey missions aren't working at all. At nearly 700 meters away from the Mission Terminal, it was still telling me the spot I was on was "too close to be useful" too my client.

Now maybe, just maybe, it was because I was still within a building zone, but if that's what was causing the mission to fail, the error message needs to be updated to explain that.

So how am I supposed to raise money to feed my harvesters? Maybe pick up a few danace missions? Lol. People might pay me to NOT dance...

-Tann

I had a similar issue on starsider. I picked anon-ferrous, whent to my harverst that is currently mining copper 550m away from the terminal and survey (75%) and still too close. Just to give it a shot i picked a mission in Anchorhead for Radioactives, flew to Eisley to check my fusion and it worked.

So maybe the distance is > 512 now?

Just a heads up

The distance from the mission terminal/giver required for survey mission success was increased, as of this morning's patch.

Care to share the new Distance?

If I knew, I would tell you. The patch notes for Test Center did not specify

<snip>

- Increased the range you must travel in order to successfully complete survey missions.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=TestCenter&message.id=10427

Ah! Thank you. I'm going to run a test here. Unfortunalty im at work so it may be a while.

/Waits for boss to step out

The new range is 1024 meters.

Supposedly, it's 1024 meters. However, I'm sitting on a 90% vein of Inert Petrochemicals 1084 meters from the mission terminal and it's not working. I'm no longer even getting the "You need to be farther away" message.

Like you, I have VERY limited time to "play" this game and it's just so frustrating to always have to figure out how the rules have changed today. Now it's a race to see if I can figure out how to make money before my harvesters start burning...

Well, at least the droids I make are in high demand. Oh wait, they're not 'cause droids are still broken...

*sigh* Are we having fun yet?

Confirmed 1024. I acutally have to be standing on the spot that is of sufficient density though. So the spot itself that is fulfilling the mission has to be 1024 away. This works for me anyway.

[quote]

90% vein of Inert Petrochemicals

[/quote]

This is probably because of the bugged resource shifts that make new resources unsurveyable for missions and un-sampleable for some period of time.

I'm so glad they nerfed our only way to make money BEFORE they fixed all the bugs involved with them. Thank goodness ARTISAN mission payouts are based on weapon skill, so I, as a Master Artisan, can get lower missions than a combat player with 4 levels of pistol. Just so I can run twice as far to get half as much. YAY

NOT

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Slythetove wrote:

This is probably because of the bugged resource shifts that make new resources unsurveyable for missions and un-sampleable for some period of time.

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Well, when I tried to sample on this 90% vein I got a message that was something like "the resources aren't dense enough for you to sample here". 90% isn't dense enough? *sigh* And the person "hiring" me was only looking for 68%...

So then I had to find some other vein of 70% or better thatCOULD be sampled and, sincethe one I foundwas a different type of chemical, head back to town for a new pairs of missions. THAT finally worked. (Yes,the new range is indeed1024 meters.)

Today's score? 4000 meters of walking before I got one credit of payout on the new missions. And there's no way for players in the game to know that the distance has changed without coming onto the boards -- the game still talks about being at least 512 meters away from the mission terminal.

Goodthing I have pistol 4 so I can actually get some money for my 8 minute (round trip) walk.

This change and the upcoming nerf on vendors have essentially killed the game for non-combat types. I am so deeply frustrated that 1. Merchant skills are broken 2. Missions have been pushed so far out into zones full of reds that i died 3 times trying to do a survey mission that I am just about done trying to make this pos game work for me. I cant be on 24/7, i dont want to play a combat class...looks like there is no game here for me. Ah well, maybe in a year or so it will be worth checking out this game again.