Artisan Archive

Ok, I was really excited to place my first harvester and today I found a nice spot of Fodeokris. According to my survey tool the resourceis at 75% in that location. I placed the harvester down, slapped several thousand credits in itfor futuremaintanence, and fed it 500 units of some radioactive junk for power. I power it up, and what a dissapointment!

It took the infernal machine 20 seconds just to harvest 1 unit of the resource! Is this normal? Granted, the resource is only listed at 75%, but even if it was in the high 80's or 90's I can't imagine that it would be a significant improvement over this.

Even if you're only in Surveying II you could easily 'out sample' a harvester.

From my experiences withmy wind and mineral harvesters Ican state that they are extremely innefficient, and I question their use in the game.

This is a direct quote from the manual that came with the game:

"Once you reach a rich resource deposit, you can use your surveying tool to extract

small samples of the resource." pg. 155

Here is another quote, this oneabout Harvesters:

"As you progress through the Artisan and related professions, you'll eventually gain the

ability to build mining installations (known as harvesters) capable of automatically extracting

large quantities of a resource." pg 156

My survey tool looks like it fits in the palm of my characters hand. A harvester is several times the size of the survey tool, and even my character. It takes my harvester an hour to collect 180 units of Fodeokris. ButI can get well over 1000 units of the same resource in the same spot in the same time with my survey tool. Anyone else seeing the flaw here? Doesnt this contradict what the manual says?

Either jack up the output rate of harvesters, decrease the output rate of survey tools, or do a combination of both! I realize that if you do this you will also have to change the resource requirements for items. For the sake of balance! Or you could make a new profession thats an offshoot of the Surveying tree, say 'Miner'. Make them the ONLY ones able to use harvesters. Just like theres different guns, there could be different harvesters, some better than others, and the better ones available only to Miners higher in the skill tree. You could even give them commerce skills. It would add something to the player driven economy...just imagine..monopolies of resources...and wars between mining companies!

If you have a harvester you basically assume the role of 'babysitter' having to always pay maintanence fees, fufill power requirements, and having to pick up the resources from the hopper. Why go through the hassle of a middleman? Do it youself. Its more efficient, and its faster. Did i mention its more profitable this way? This makes the harvester ALMOST useless, thus it needs balancing.

Yes, you personally are more efficient than a personal harvester. But I leave mine up and running (currently have 3 about to drop my fourth). Reason? Because, once you sleep overnight, they'll have a goodly amount of resources in them. Right after you start, no. Give it 24 hours. Then you go sample out the other component of what you need, go collect your harvester, and then go craft, craft, craft. That's what it's best for. My harvesters allow me to spend more of my time online crafting, and less of my time online sampling. Once you hit Survey IV, there's really no point in sampling any more than you have to.

Mike

AKA

Oka Higre
President, HigreCorp

yeah just like he said i placed a mineral and a chemical extracter then i went on vacation for a week i came back and i had like 7k of each resource wich i still havnt used up i just keep making barrels its an ez way to get lotsa experiance

You don't work while you sleep. You don't work while your pools are regenerating. You don't work while you run. Your harvester works 24/7

I see your point, but if I want 1000 steel, I find it easier to place a harvester on a 70% spot and leave it overnight than to spend at least an hour surveying, resting, repeating.

Also there is a certain joy about having your own harvester.

The two main advantages of harvesters are:

1) they work 24/7

2) you can have more than one

Sampling is quicker, when you're at your pc sampling, and when you only need one component. If you need 4 or 5 components, the last thing you want to have to do is run around sampling each one individually. Considering a fairly easy "Destroy" mission can earn you 1k, you can take 2 at a time, and they only take about 10 minutes, you can earn enough cash to keep 5 harvesters running for a day inside an hour. Assuming you find a decent sample (I only place harvesters on 90% or above samples), that's easily 4k or so of each component a day, for an hour's work. 20k resourcesfor an hour. Then you can go off and do something else with the rest of your time that day. Try doing that by sampling.