Artisan Archive

I'm thirty years old, have 2 children, and a full time day job. In other words, I play the game, but I don't have as much time to play as many people on the game. When I got to the point where I could build and place personal harvesters, I thought, "Alright! Now I don't have to spend so much of my time sampling!"

Unfortunately, I've found the yield to be unsatisfying. On a spot with 61% concentration, the harvester says that it will product 1.5Kg/hour.

"Great!" I think. "1500 units of material in an hour? I'll never have to sample again!"

Unfortunately, after a few hours (I don't remember how long... I ran off to do some missions since I thought I had the time to do so), there was only around 250 units in the hopper.

I was able to get this much while sampling for 20 minutes or so.

So, if Kg actually kilogram? Do different materials have different weights? If I tried to harvest some other resource, would I get more of it at comparable density levels? Is there any way I can look at a material and see what its weight is in Kg?

Sampling is faster (though not as ridiculous as it was prior to the sampling timer change), but the beauty of harvesters is that they work while you are out of the game or while you are off doing other things. One personal harvester can produce 2000 of a single resource a day from only an averageconcentration.

The only time I sample anymore is when I am looking for a specific resource that I don't want to run harvesters on(water, usually) or if I'm in camp and have a full mind and action bar (perhaps I'm resting up health or simply crafting). If you are a scout and crafter, the camp/sample/craft is nice combo for getting exp in 3 areas simultaneously (and replenishing resources).

Your calculation assumes 1 unit=1 gram. This seems to not be the case. A harvester at a 60% concentration area will likely pull in about 1500-2000 units a DAY, not an hour.

I'm also about 30 and have a kid, so harvesters are a godsend. The good thing about harvesters is that you can have them running while you're off at work or whatever.

From what I can TELL, 100 units is a Kg, but I don't know for sure. Just trust that you'll get 1000-2500 units a day, depending on resource concentration.

and don't forget to pay those maintenance costs!

One unit of a resource does not equal one gram. It's actually closer to about 10 grams.

The KG/H stat is really telling you units/minute.

And yes, personal harvesters are going to be slower than hand sampling. What you're paying for with that maintenance and power is the ability to be offline, or the ability to be online and doing something else, other than being trapped in one place sampling.

I just expected a little bit more bang for the buck. I still have to go out into the wild to get to my harvesters, since they can't be place terribly close to civilization. I still have to feed them money. And I had to build a power generator in order to run the harvester.

Basically, I'm still having to dedicate time and resources to making these harvesters work. I guess I just had my expectations set too high for the results.

Thanks for the answer to the weight/time question. Looking at it from units/minute will give me a much better idea of what to expect from it for a given amount of time.

"I just expected a little bit more bang for the buck."

Heh, you're using an item made with level 3 Engineering.

Wait til you plop down a Heavy Harvester made by an Architect with level 4 Installations...on a 60% source, those behemoths will pull in about 6 to 7K worth of resources in a day.

Sezirok,

Check out the harvestor caluclator tool on the SWGcraft.com website. You can figure out what a harvestor should produce and what the costs in maintenance and power are.

Pawlin

True, D'Tox. Just don't tell him how much it costs to run one of those puppies!

Thanks! Very handy link and tool.

How many credits should someone have to start a small 1-4 harvester operation?

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LtDyer said:

How many credits should someone have to start a small 1-4 harvester operation?

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Interesting question. Here's how to boot-strap a completely self-sufficient operation (you provide your own power) 4 harvester operation. Start with 6000 credits for 1 wind generator. Your biggest startup risk is that the resource will move on you immediately after you place the harvester. This is how I break it down:

- Initial purchase of wind generator 1500. Shop around on the bazaar and you probably can find one for 1000 or 1200. You may have to travel to another city to get the best deal. If you do travel to another city, run some delivery missions to that city if you do delivery missions.

- Initial maintenance of 1500. THis is assuming that you will check your harvester once a day at about the smae time every day. In this case, you want to keep about 26 or 28 hours of maintenance in the harvester

- 1500 for a second harvester when the resource moves2 hoursafter you place the first. It happens. Plan for it.

- Initial maintenance of 1500 on the seond harvester.

Now, you can reduce this cost by a) checking your harvesters more often (and therefore reducing the maintenance you put at risk on a resource shift) or b) getting Engineering III and building your own.

So now you're running a single wind generator. You have 2 options. You can stockpile energy, which I would recommend if you have another source of income. Assuming that you don't have other income, sell a portion of the energy and keep the rest. Price it to move so you can generate quick cashflow. Over time you should be able to build up another 3000 credits as well as a nice stockpile of energy.

Do not buy another harvester until you have 2000 extra energy (around 3 days worth for another harvester) and 3000 credits (or 1500 less if you can build your own harvesters).

Buy another harvester. Chemical, Flora, and Mineral have the lowest risk of resource shifts since you can usually easily shift these to producing a different resource when the first runs out. Place the harvester in a good spot. Put enough power and maintenance in it for a day or more. Sell the product, or keep it for crafting.

Buy more harvesters asyourbank account grows.

Buy bigger harvesters as your bank account grows.

Always keep a 2 day reserve ofenergy. If you don't have this stockpile, you may run into serious problemsif the wind shift and you don't catch it for a day (you lose a whole day's worth of energy production).

Decide what;s important to you - maximized production (most raw resources), maximized quality of resources (for personal crafting), or least amount of time to maintain. Chase the resources (move the harvesters) if you want to maximizeproduction or quality. Keep the harvesters (with the exception of wind generator which you basically have to move) in a single location. Switch what they harvest when a shift occurs.

So, the short answer is - 6000 credits would be a safe start.

Wow thanks for your time on breaking it all down for me. This info should get me going in the right direction. Thanks Again.

Heres how to calculate how much you will get per hour per day.

Here is the example.. A small (personal mineral) harvestors on a 72% location.

.72 x 2 x 60 x 24 = total for 24 hours

.72 is the percent

2 is the max harvesting amount. (on small harvs its 2.. on med its 4. etc..)

60 is 60 mins in an hour.

24 is the 24 hours a day.

So in a 24 hour period you will get

.72 x 2 x 60 x 24 = 2073.6 units of mineral.

The maintance fees and power consumption are kind of bugged.. but I go with 800 maintance and 800 power a day for small harvs.. x2 for med and so on. better to error on the side of overpayment.

Chex