Artisan Archive

I am not sure if this is the proper place for this, but I could not find any better so here it goes.

I would like to propose a new elite profession based on the Survey line of the Artisan profession. There could be various ways of implementing a Resource Supplier. I will list out just a few, some of these a lot of people some others a lot of players will consider a major nerf to all other professions.

Name: Resource Supplier
Goal: To be the main supplier for all crafting professions needing resources which can be sampled.
Pre-Req: Survey 4

Possible skill trees:

1) Droid find. Much like the BH version of the droids that can hunt down their marks you can start on a resource vein and give the droid a direction and it will attempt to locate the highest concentration. You can buy the droids from Droid Engineers (helping them out some).

The modifiers that can gained by this tree could be:

* speed of locating a high concentration.
* Number of droids that can be deployed at a time.
* Max concentration the droid can find
* Type of resource they can be set to find (either mineral or flora or …)
* Maybe some type of specialty droid for finding rare resources.


2) Harvesters. This one people will complain about, but it will add a lot to the game. Limit people that do not have the Resource Supplier profession to only be able to use personal harvesters, and a total BER(Base Extraction Rate) of 12. This line will allow the use of higher end harvesters and maybe some specialty harvesters.

The modifiers that are gained for this tree:

* Types of harvesters that can be used.
* Total Max BER that can be used by the Supplier.


3) Harvester Modifications. This line is about allowing the Supplier to modify their harvesters to have mild effects on the resources they are mining. One such modification might be to increase OQ by 1 point at a cost of 10 points to other stats. The down side of this is their stacks would not stack with any other stack of the same resource.

The modifiers that are gained for this tree:

* Increase in the amount that can be modified. And decrease in cost of modifying.


4) More Harvesters. This line would give bonus number of lots that can be used by a Surveyor for harvester purposes.

The Modifiers that are gained for this tree:

* +1 or +2 to max number of harvester lots per level of skill.


There are other possible trees/skills that can be integrated with these. Some that come to mind would be increase harvester efficiency with at the cost of durability (overclock the harvester). Another modifier might be to increase the sample ability and decrease the cost.

Any thoughts?

They had a mining profession in Beta. I made nearly master miner then (no app points to pull it off) and it was the most boring profession ever. It made Merchant look like a fun packed ride of action.

Thankfully they pulled it, because too many poor saps would have picked it up.

On paper it seems it would have been cool, but in practice... survey 4 is all we need.

Here is a site that IMO is a good place to be creative and talk about such things.

http://wwww.swgxpansions.net

It is kind of funny that they pulled miner because it was so boring, and yet now that the game is live, resource gathering seems to be one of the most profitable and active professions in the game.

I like the idea.

While we're on the subject, try adding something in there for them to get milk and eggs. =P

Hey what a great idea!

You could call it.. Miner!

Wow. SOE probably never thought of this.

(The previous post was facetious and in reference to the miner class which was cut from the profession list during beta.)

I for one would love to have a miner profession. Survey 4 is not all we need. We need the ability to survey farther and I really like the seeker droid idea. Is mining boring? Sure it is, it's boring in real life too. But at least give us the option to be bored. And everyone should have personal harvesters. The mediums and heavies should be for the mining profession only. We should also get more lots for mining only. In any case, I do think there should be an elite profession after survey 4.

Xare Aboo

I like the idea too.

But I would recommend anyone can use medium harvesters but onlyminers can use large harvesters. Architects would lose a lot of sales if only miners could use medium and large.

Also, they should have the ability to place harvesters where others can't. Hilly and Rocky areas. Over water...etc.

So you suggest that you further marginalize the Ranger profession so you can be a solo uber-crafter? Thanks, mates.

Your new class eliminates one of the few useful things a Ranger can do in SWG.

Bog

I didn’t realize that they already had a miner class in beta. What kind of skill tree did it contain? I know it may sound like a boring class, but people are already doing it. Why not let them specialize in it? There are a lot of combat characters that would say that any crafting/entertaining class is boring too, but that doesn’t mean they should be removed from the game.

Regal, I like the idea about everyone being able to use personal and medium harvesters, but I think I would change it so that they could only run them at half efficiency. This would allow people to be able to be able to still pull in a fair amount of resources, but not be able to compete with the Miner/Resource Supplier. And as for Architects continuing to make money I think that would be better solved by having harvesters decay over time.

ConaryMor, I fail to see how this class would in any way hurt the Ranger class. The idea here is to actually remove the ability for people to be able to be solo uber-crafters. Right now anyone with novice Aritisan can go out and find a waypoint to a great resource plant down 2 BER 17 fusions and 8 BER 13 Heavies and have enough resources to be able to make factory runs for quite a while. I have always seen the Ranger class as being a version of this class but more for the organic resources. You have the ability to track creatures that have the resources you need, and you have the ability to gather more resources from those creatures than any other class in the game. If mining was such a major part of your class why is it that the Ranger class does not even have the ability to Survey?

Rangers are a nice support class in creature hunting but we can kill, on our own, only the lower level creatures, unless we choose to go with CH -- not something all of us necessarily want to do. So to harvest organics, I have to find a group willing to let me tag along and harvest. If I can't group for some reason (typically I don't get more than an hour or two of unbroken play time at any given time) then I am reduced to hunting vrelts or womp rats for hide/bone/meat. Not my idea of fun.

Instead, I am a resource hunter. Since I can avoid non-NPC aggro, and move fairly quickly over rough terrain, I can go just about anywhere in search of good sites to put down my harvesters. It's what I do. I use up 29 skill points just so I can have Survey IV.

Bog

Actually it sounds like this new class would be perfect for you then. You would have still have the ability to be able plant your harvesters where normal miners would not, because of your ability to just walk right up to big nasty creatures. It would probably increase your demand since there probably would not be many people able to mine where you were going. A Miner would not have the ability to mask scent by default they would still have to take scout for that or Ranger if they wanted to use camo.

I like the idea of a miner profession, but there are some other things I would like to see done with it.

1. Anyone can use any harvester, but miners can "slice" harvesters for better BERs.


2. A harvester placed by a miner can have a range that it can mine from, not just a single spot (this would let you mine from inside a mountain or river).


3. A miner can "refine" a resource for better stats.


4. Miners get reduced maintence rates on all harvesters.


5. Resource stats show up in Advanced Survey Tools that only miners can make and use (maybe even planetary survey).


6. Reduced action costs for sampling.


7. Increased sample rates and amounts.


8. Miners can remote access status on harvesters (including hopper levels).


9. Allow Binary Load Lifters to carry 50 stacks of resources (something to do with them)