Artisan Archive

---

Dimear wrote:

They thought about making a surveying profession at one point, but decided that there weren't enough skills to make it a worthwhile profession. They decided to roll it all into artisan (kind of like they've been doing with merchant)...

---

• Harvester certification. Heavies (and possibly mediums) could only be used if you spend the skill points in miner. This can also lead to certification for even larger harvester sizes.


• The ability to get a "core sample" and determine the stats for every resource of a given type


• Planet-wide surveys (possibly tied in with a survey droid) to determine locations of high concentrations.


• A possible tie-in to the scout's / ranger's ideas for a "creature farm" that acts as a harvester of creature resources.

Right now, "Trapping" doesn't lead to anything either, although I think that might be the new pre-req for the Ranger revamp instead of requiring Master Scout.

---

sciguyCO wrote:

Well, from what I remember about the early development of SWG, there was an idea at one point to have a "miner" elite profession branching off of surveying.

The problem was that it's tough to find enough useful skills just in mining to fill in a full profession. Plus, resource gathering is such an important part of crafting that most players would feel the need to spend points in it just to keep their business going, reducing the amount of non-crafter dabbling they'd be able to do. It's unlikely that players would feel like spending points in an elite prof and focus on resource gathering strictly for resale. Players do that now, but only because they can get by with just Novice artisan for the survey skills or evenjust placing static harvesters and pulling up whatever's spawning at the highest concentration.

The Miner does still havesome advocates. Some ideas I've seen for it included:

• Harvester certification. Heavies (and possibly mediums) could only be used if you spend the skill points in miner. This can also lead to certification for even larger harvester sizes.


• The ability to get a "core sample" and determine the stats for every resource of a given type


• Planet-wide surveys (possibly tied in with a survey droid) to determine locations of high concentrations.


• A possible tie-in to the scout's / ranger's ideas for a "creature farm" that acts as a harvester of creature resources.

Right now, "Trapping" doesn't lead to anything either, although I think that might be the new pre-req for the Ranger revamp instead of requiring Master Scout.

---

---

Altyrell wrote:

again... they could always make it so it only cost "ZERO" Skill Points

---

I doubt there would be enough to make a whole profession worthwhile, but maybe at reduced skill points (a la ID).

Possible skill branches:

• Land Management - gives additional lots


• Industrial Harvesters - gives certifications for improved harvesters


• Advanced Surveying - allows for planetary surveying and core samples


• Refining - allows for an equivalent to RE but for resources (resources would have to be of the same kind, ie: Phrik Aluminum or Plumbian Iron)

My ideal solution is to make harvester BER increase with survey skill. This would be change to how harvesters work of couse so I'd be willing to see new and better harvs with survey requirements on them. I put all that down in another thread somewhere.

Kind of like moving the entire 'miner' proffession into the existing survey tree and crafting masteries.

---

sciguyCO wrote:

Sorry, I can't help poking holes in design ideas:

1) Additional lots. Would be a tough balance, especially with the prevalence of alts. One reasonable restriction would be that these lots could only be used on harvesters and any "bonus lot harvester" couldn't have a non-miner on the admin list.

2) Industrial Harvesters: again, miner alts could throw this out of whack. A possible restriction would be that the admin list is restricted to players certed for the installation.

I don't see alts as being an issue... they are a paying account just like any other. However, I think you suggestions for restrictions are pretty reasonable. One possibilty would be to treat these different from standard lots, perhaps something like "Claim Plots". Industrial Harvies would use "Claim Plots" similar to the way faction bases or vendors are tracked. Maybe 1 plot per box in that line +1 for Master Industrialist for a total of 5.

3) Refining. There are a lot of technical details preventing the ability to do this, it came up a lot when recyclers were first being talked about. Basically, every resource that exists is an entry in a big database table (you can browse it with a resource deed), so making new resources would require adding a new entry every time you refined something. One possible way to implementa itwould be to make a "refiner" a container object that gets it's stats (including stack size) locked in when you activate it with resources inside it. When crafting with the refined stack (or using it in a factory run), it'd get treated like a very large crate of subcomponents. This would require modifying the crafting / manufacturing system to treat these objects properly. Different levels of the "refiner" could have different stats regarding max stack size and stat degradation. You could get a small stack of very refined, high-stat resources, or a larger stack of less refined stuff.

In theory (I'm not a programmer) you could do something similar to the Recycler code. Say I refine some Phrik Aluminum from 3 different kinds. The result would be "Refined Phrik Aluminum" as opposed to a new named resource that appears on the table. Of course, I'm not sure how stacking is tracked, so it may be impossible to combine two stacks even though they have the same stats.

Advanced surveying is almost a given with a miner prof, I don't have any complaints about that one.

---

Unfortunately, I doubt they'd ever do it... it's not like the adverts are "You could even be a Crafter! Become a valued, integral part of the game while enjoying a rich, rewarding experience."

Would that be false advertising nowadays?