Artisan Archive

Two questions... Every time I put energy it, it gives me amessage saying that the reserves are now at *a number less than I put in*. Is this typical and just based off the different types of energies?

Also, my harvestors will say that I have 2 days left of energy, and I come back a day later and its all gone. I've tried redeeding and the same thing hapenns. Is this just a bug I have to live with or is there any way around it?

To your first question... after your harvester runs out of energy it can keep running. Then when you put your power in it takes the amount that you were in the negative (even though you don't know what that was). I think if you redeed and use your deed again you can *beat* the system.

Don't know about your second question but hope someone can answer it.

Tivor - DE3004, Armorsmith0011, Master Artisan. - Bria

Ahhhhhhhhh, that makes sense. But I assume although it's still running it's not extracting resources, otherwise I'd never put energy in it. Thank you very much for the info tivor

Your problems are somewhat connected. The status window is doing an incorrect calculation as to what the power reserves should be.

[note: begin speculation on how the SWG engine deals with harvesters]

When you placea harvester and put inpower, the server records that number. Then, when you start the harvester (beginning using power), the server records the time. Then you leave to go do other things. The server doesn't update the harvester information in real time, it just uses those numbers to calculate what state it should be in when you come back. So you put in 48 hours of power, then come back in 30. The server says "Ah, you've been gone 30 hours, the power consumption rate is Z, take the initial power input, subtract 30 * Z, put that number in the display for the reserves, then divide by Z to get the remaining time".

What seems to be happening is that instead of using 30 * Z, the status window is using 30 * Z * 2. But the power reserves aren't set up to show negative numbers, so it displays as zero. Then you, seeing that it's apparently out of power, put in another 1000 units. That 1000 gets added to the initial deposit you made (but the time isn't updated), which leads to the situation where the reserves don't match your deposit. If it was at -250, the reserves would now show 750. If the reserves were at -1500, the display would still show zero.

Now, the important thing is that the part of the code that determines how long resources are being harvested uses the correct equation. This is why your harvester still runs even when the display shows zero power. Also, you can't run a harvester indefinitely, only as long as the initial power deposit. So if you start with a shiny new, never-been-used harvester, put in 1 hours worth of power, after 30 minutes, the reserves will show zero units, but it will still be gathering resources. After another 30 minutes the harvester stops gathering resources, so this isn't something that can be exploited.

I suspect there's some places in the code where the rate is applied in half hour increments, in others it uses hour increments, and the display is using the wrong one.

Finally, there is a way to reset the display to show the proper reserves. When you stop and restart the harvester, that resets the "start time" and "power reserve" numbers stored with the power deposit. Fortunately, the reserve update uses the correct rate calculation, so you'll now be showing positive reserves. I've also heard you can reset the power display by selecting a new resource then switching back, but I haven't checked that myself.

[end speculation]

So remember:

1. Don't trust the status window unless you've stopped and restarted the harvester.


2. The power reserves displayed drop at about twice the normal rate


3. Even when the display goes to zero (using an incorrect calculation) the harvester is still gathering resources.


4. If the display goes to zero and the harvester is still running, the status window thinks the power reserves are negative, so depositing more power means that the displayed reserves will be less than what you deposited.


5. You can't get more extraction time than what you'd get from the initial power deposit. If you put in 24 hours worth, the harvester will only run for 24 hours. It'll just be displaying zero reserves for the last 12 hours.

Oh, one more thing: redeeding when the power is negative seems to wipe the slate clean, when you place it again it will actually have zero power, wasting what you actually had stored. Always stop and restart a harvester before redeeding.

Thank you so much sciguyCO i've been panicking for three days straight, and I'm so happy to have cleared up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/bow

Can I also add that if you turn theharvestor off, then on again that it will update the display correctlyin some cases. whoever designed the harvestors should have used linux rather then windows 3005.