Artisan Archive

If the harvesters really now stop as soon as your maintenance contract runs out, what happens then? Do they shut off and stop degrading? That would make sense. If it's not running, it shouldn't break down. Or do they keep degrading and you still don't get more resources. So you end up with a 4000cr repair bill, and you didn't even get to get a reduced efficiency out of it while it was breaking down?

To be honest, I sort of like the idea of people not being able to run a harvester into the ground like tey've been doing. As it was, I'd see people run out to a nice steel vein and set up 10 harvesters, not paying a penny in maintenance. Then they'd just let them all run for a few days and come back. The machines would be smoking something awful, half dead, but they'd havea bunch of steel in them which the person basically got for free (credit-wise).

But I don't like them stopping as soon as the money runs out. They should just drop in efficiency, until they are at a random percentage level, then break. This randomness would give people an incentive to keep them maintained, but also give them the option of running a little closer to the edge, without the exploit of never paying a penny to them and just building them to die quickly.

Yes, and yes.

Thank all the people who were bragging about how they were just letting all their harvesters rot.

Personaly, I kept mine operational, so didn't bother me. But in the long run, maybe adjusting this back down so they stop working at maybe 75% is a nice compromise... at least give the crafters a few hours to make it to their harverster before it shuts down completely.

So have we verified that a harvester will continue to degrade even if it's not running? If so, this is the stupidest idea the devs have had in awhile, as far as I'm concerned. Why would my machine completely degrade in a few days if it's just sitting there? What the heck did I make it out of, paper and string? Shoot, even string doesn't wear out just sitting there

Try letting a car sit in your driveway for a year... don't start it, don't touch it. At the end of that year, you'll have alot of work to do if you want to drive it again.

Hate to tell you, but things degrade even if they're not doing anything.

Yes, but if I go to the store on Saturday and stay home on Sunday, my car door isn't going to crumple into dust when I try to open it on Monday.

Yes things do degrade if they just sit there for a long time....but that takes years. I just find it strange that a harvester won't work at all...even at 99%. They really need to drop this down some. maybe to 75% or 60%.....that way people have to pay maintenance but they have time to earn the cash to do so. I'm sorry but I don't want to have to run 14 destoy missions a day just to run my havestes so I can make a few guns. And then not be able to sell the guns I spent hours making with a cafting station and high quality materials. Then turn aound and not be able to sell those guns because someone who has twice as much free time as I do exploited their way to Master Weaponsmith in less than 2 weeks. This patch hasn't fixed many problems...it has simply solidified the status quo. No new competition in the market....and no way for new players to advance but to grind....even more than before.

Joe hit one nail on the head with the problem of not being able to sell your stuff at low levels. I ground my way to architect because the only thing I could ever sell as an engineer were powerups and two harvesters. You know how many powerups it takes to get to architect? About twice as many as it took my heavy axes. But you can't sell 400 powerups on the bazaar. You can't afford to list them, and they won't all sell.

And I had to sell resources from my harvesters (about half what they pulled) to pay their maintenance to keep them running. So right there they are running at half efficiency for me. And of course no one is buying low grade ore, which is what an architect harvests most of, so there goes that

Anyway, I'm glad I put in my time and made it to Architect before this patch. Ican finally make stuff worth selling, like houses and factories. Now I can hopefully stop running missions to pay for my harvesters.

The way that harvesters are working currently, is the result of people doing an end run
around maintenance because the most econmical thing to do was tolet them degrade
however, this was not the intent.

The fix that we have now is a quick fix. Not a long term fix. It works for now but is not very
elegent. The Dev's know this, but for the next month or two they will only be putting in quick
fixes for the most part. The idea is to get the main exploit addressed and then come back
and tweek the system. The design intent was to have maintance due if you had a harvester
in the ground. If the maintance went below 100% then the machine would degrade and stop
working. We all know that did not go as planned, and a quick fix to address it was put in place.

When you leave something outside it does degrade. If we where to leave a car in the driveway
RUNNING it would run until it is out of Fuel, then stop working, then it would start to degrade.
I believe that when it is all said and done, we will have a system that works in much the same way.

What needs to be adjusted is how qucikly the system will degrade once the maintance runs out.
Right now, boom it just stops like a parking meter, we don't want a parking meter we want an
engine the runs out a fuel and then stop and then degrade. ( the fuel being maintance fees)

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speardancer wrote:
Try letting a car sit in your driveway for a year... don't start it, don't touch it. At the end of that year, you'll have alot of work to do if you want to drive it again.

Hate to tell you, but things degrade even if they're not doing anything.

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In your example you tell him to let it sit a year. Of course something is going to degrade over "time", but when that "time" is just a few hours, that seems a little ridiculous. Even a sugar-cube would still be 75% good after a rain storm

WhileI know this is just a game there should be some realistic aspects concerning at what % the harvesters will stop working. Yes things will degrade. I'm sure the intention was a quick fix and not long term. Even if something has degraded a few percent it will still run. That's why there are percentages, otherwise it would be On or Off. You owe 3000 credits to turn it on. That wouldn't be cool. We like percentages, I'm sure the devs will bring them back later and add some realism to a completely virtual world

What would be best is if the production efficiency degraded along with the machine. So if a machine produces 100 ore per hour at 100% condition, at 90 % condition it would produce 90 ore per hour. At 50% condition - 50 ore per hour, 30% condition - 30 per hour, and so on down to zero (well the harvester would poof then anyhow).

Interesting points. Yeah, I agree that the degradation rate of harvesters should be slowed down if they're not doing anything. But there should still be some degradation, maybe 1/5 the normal rate. I think this would really help out the gamers that only play a couple of times a week.

However, it also might be more realisitic that it costs more to repair a harvester than to simply maintain it. Say it costs X amount of credits to keep a harvester from going down from 100% to 99% every unit cycle. It should cost several times that amount to bump a harvester up from 45% to 46%.

And in reality if you leave a car running and unattended on Tat its going to degrade quick with the sand storms and baddies that frequent the areas where I put my stuff it will be dust sooner rather than later. It amazes me that so may people Beech when someone picks a silly name because they are degrading the integrity of the SW universe but when you have to maintain somehting that in reality would degrade and some reality is thrown into thegame people complain.

Its so freakin amuzzin