Artisan Archive

The cost to reclaim a harvester every week is nearly 80% on top of the cost to run the harvesters.

a 50% reduction would be very helpful to a lot of aspiring miners

I thought I read some place that after a recent patch, all the maint that you have to put in to redeed the harvester stays in the harverster to be used when you reset it up. IF that is the case, then it costs nothing to redeed.

yeah it they unpatched it shortly after

No, they didn't. The cost to redeed is still 100 times the 30 minute maintenance cost (or: 50 hours worth of running time.) Any maintenance you have over that amount and all power is kept in the harvester when you place it again.

Let's do a little analysis of the cheapest and least efficient harvesters for a moment:

Wind generator:

A wind generator costs one credit per minute to run. It produces up to five units of power per minute on 100% concentration. 50% concentrations aren't that hard to find, and 40% is pretty trivial. Let's say you're on a 40% concentration spot and that wind stays around for six days after you place before cycling. The cost to run for six days is (6 * 24 * 60 = 8640 minutes * 1 credit per minute = 8640 credits + 3000 credits to re-deed =) 11,640 credits. (That is assuming you re-deed. Wind generators are still almost always worthwhile to destroy instead, unless you pay far in advance.) The number of units of power produced is (5 * 40% * 6 * 24 * 60 =) 17,280 units of power. On this 40% spot, re-deeding, power costs about 0.67 credits per unit to produce. Power typically sells for 2-3 credits per unit in small lots. This is a good profit margin. The lowest price for power that I've seen on the bazaar (my own) is 1 credit per unit, and this is still less than that, which is good for a beginner. Of course, if you find a higher concentration, you can reduce costs. And by replacing instead of re-deeding and taking care not to feed too far in advance, you can further reduce costs.

In any case, we'll use the 0.67 credits per unit cost as the base for the next thing:

Small Harvester:

A small harvester costs 0.5 credits per minute to run. In addition, it uses 25 power every 30 minutes. Minerals tend to have higher concentrations, so lets assume 60%. The cost to run for six days is (0.5 * 6 * 24 * 60 = 4320 credits maintenance + 25/30 * 6 * 24 * 60 = 7200 units of power at 0.67 credits per unit = 4824 credits power + 1500 credits to re-deed =) 10,644 credits. A small harvester produces a maximum of two units of resource per minute. On this 60% spot, the number of units produced is (2 * 60% * 6 * 24 * 60) = 10,368 units of resources. The cost to produce this resource is about 1.03 credits per unit. I have never seen resources sell for less than about two credits per resource on the bazaar--and most resources are snapped up at this price. Three credits per unit is typical, and more valuable resources go for more. Regardless, selling at two credits per unit would be a good profit if you're selling, and paying one credit per unit is good if you're using.

The additional advantage with a small harvester is that you can pay in power and not worry that it's going to go poof when the resource changes. Since the power cost is over half of the normal operating cost of the harvester, this is a very good thing. For the most part, it makes sense to re-deed small harvesters now, since you'll keep whatever power was left when the resource shift happened. (Between the shift and when you get to the harvester, only maintenance is consumed.)

In any case, these costs to produce resources when re-deeding are quite low. And of course, if you look at the costs to run larger harvesters, things only get better. A fusion-ion generator costs the same to run per day as a wind generator, but produces three times as much. As a bonus, radioactives tend to have higher concentrations than wind or solar (but aren't always available! so make sure to keep solar around, just in case.) On my current spot, I expect to produce in six days (15 * 0.79 * 6 * 24 * 60 =) 102,384 units of power, for the same cost as a wind generator. So the cost per unit is (11640/102384 =) about 0.11 credits per unit. I'm quite happy with the profit I make selling both my fusion power and my solar power (cost per unit about 0.31 credits) at 1 credit per unit on the bazaar and to private buyers. And with my energy costs reduced, I've even been known to sell really low quality material that I happened to dig up at 1 credit per unit to private buyers (although I don't go below 2 credits per unit on the bazaar.)


So what's the summary here? Well: the costs of production are low enough compared to prevailing prices that I can routinely sell under my competitors prices and make a reasonable profit. (A huge profit? No. I'm more interested in a reliable income to support my other habits.) And they're low enough that cost to produce is still as good as my lowest price on low quality materials sold in bulk to individuals--which means that a cost conscious crafter can still spend less money on materials than it costs to buy them on the bazaar. (Although they may have trouble produce the quantities they require, and may begrudge the time taken to tend harvesters.) Cost of entry is fairly low, although it takes a little shopping around to make sure that what you harvest is salable--and a little attention to make sure to get in on a new resource early in its life cycle. If you're only up for a day before a shift, you take a reasonably large loss. Which, in my opinion, is good: the trick to harvesting is *paying attention*.

Any reduction to the cost of maintaining or re-deeding harvesters is entirely unneccessary. Maintenance fees are reasonable, and re-deeding costs are the one tiny risk factor we have that makes it *interesting* to run harvesters.

I wonder where you guys find that vital data on how things really work in SWG (harvesters, stations, factories, weapons, etc, etc, etc). I guess there must be and advance guide for sale in the stores

Anyway, I'm totally agree with your analisys Hypatian and I found it quite revealing, but there's another point that can be as important as your economic reasons. High redeed fees opens a market for low level artisans. Since WPGs are 3 eng. level deeds, this allow this artisans to place their crafted WPGs in the bazaar at prices bellow redeed fees so they can get good cash sellingthem, along withextractors.

So reduce redeed costs will messed up this market and make moredifficult tolow level artisans live of their craftings.

'till next

SatchChackr

What you have to bear in mind is that the re-deed cost is also there to try and stimulate the market for installations - often its cheaper to let it burn and buy a new one (not sure about the bigger installations but certainly true of the personal ones) and thats good for the economy.

I do not personally believe that a reduction is necessary. There needs to be some cost associated with moving a harvester for several reasons. The big one is that you are going to be more careful about when and where you drop one if its going to cost you credits to move it. Secondly its a money sink in the game and desgined to eat credits out of the game.

I think its too easy to redeed them. What I would like to see is the credit cost remain the same but require a power node of some kind be plugged into the structure you want to move before it can be moved. This would be made either by Master Artisans or Architects and give them another good saleable product. We need more ways to simulate the economy and that means more items avaible that people want or need to buy.

As it is right now many items in the game sell for way below their cost to make. A lot of people do not understand how many resources go into making things and feel they are being ripped off if they are forced to pay the real cost of an item. A way to offset this is to provide more smaller items that people need to offset the lost credits from the larger stuff that is often sold at a loss.

Hypation, you left out one niggling little detail. For the starting character, and the non-artisan character, redeeding harvesters now makes sense. It is possible to put 10 or 20 days worth of power & maintenance into a harvester and redeed it for a fraction of the value of the power, let alone the remaining maintenance, eliminating the worries that it'll stop before the resource runs out.

However, using your 1 credit per resource mined example, a character with Engineering 4 (to make the chem extractors as well) can gather the 250-260 resources necessary to make a NEW harvester for less than 1/6 the redeed cost (1/12 for wind generators). For these characters, it makes sense to destroy the harvesters & make new ones, not just financially, but now that they've fixed personal harvester to give General Crafting XP instead of Structural XP, from a character advancement standpoint as well. Building 10 new harvesters every week used up aproximately 2.5k worth of resources or less than 1 hour's production of a single harvester, but gives 5k worth of GCXP!

And you know, until I got to where I bought a bunch of Mediums (and now trading up to Heavies), that's exactly what I did every time the resources shifted.... Of course, I got a bunch of Structural XP, but oh well. Maybe I'll be an Architect when I grow up. *g*