Artisan Archive
Thread: Having a LOT of difficulty with harvesters
1: You never want your harvestor to get to where you have no credits in it. Once it does, it stops working, like if it dont have enough power. When you do not have enough credits, the condition goes below 100%, and for each point you lose, that is how much you have to pay just to repair it, not to keep it running again.
2: You are selecting a resource for it to gather first, right? Also seems to be a condition where you do not have either enough credits in the machine, or enough power.
Message Edited by Dapper_Dan on 07-20-2004 07:34 PM
Speederbiker wrote:
OK, I'm rather new to the Artisan profession, I'm aiming for Droid Engineer, so I'm working my way up the engineering tree... and I've encounteredone or tworeally, really irritating issues with my harvesters. Here's a summary:
1. Whenever my harvester's condition is below 100%, it doesn't work, and I have to give up money - albeit a small amount - to get it working again. It also seems that it looses 1% condition each time I turn the machine off. This means that each time I turn it off, I have to pay more money.
you are paying repair costs only? on the radial menu use check status and it will tell you how much time is left for the credits you put it....you will be much better off keeping that well above zero. i keep 5 days minimum in mine usually, in case i can't log on for a couple of days. it will not work at all at zero credits, anything below that is damage you have to pay to repair.
2. Sometimes, even when I have 30+ power in my harvester, I told it to harvest,and the harvester is "on," the machine suddenly tells me that it's not gathering any resources - as in, when I click on "hopper," there's nothing there, not even a resource with 0 units.
if the previous resource shifted, and you have to change resources to select another, sometimes you then have to close the operate machinery window and open it again. then turn on the harvester. at least i think thats what you are seeing
P.S. What's the best stuff in the engineering tree to get crafting XP?
crafting tools then personal harvesters, make them in practice mode unless you need them for something
Speederbiker wrote:
OK, I'm rather new to the Artisan profession, I'm aiming for Droid Engineer, so I'm working my way up the engineering tree... and I've encounteredone or tworeally, really irritating issues with my harvesters. Here's a summary:
1. Whenever my harvester's condition is below 100%, it doesn't work, and I have to give up money - albeit a small amount - to get it working again. It also seems that it looses 1% condition each time I turn the machine off. This means that each time I turn it off, I have to pay more money.
2. Sometimes, even when I have 30+ power in my harvester, I told it to harvest,and the harvester is "on," the machine suddenly tells me that it's not gathering any resources - as in, when I click on "hopper," there's nothing there, not even a resource with 0 units.
P.S. What's the best stuff in the engineering tree to get crafting XP?
The main point that I think you're missing is that you need to put in excess cash and power. The rate that the harvester lists in the Statuspage is how much maint and power it eats up every minute (I think), therefor it takes alot ofcast to get them to run continuously without having to be there to start them up again every time they turn off. I usually end up putting in 10,000 credits and 7,500 power into each of my heavy harvesters. This is usually enough to last them 5 days or so before they run out of maintenance, and start to get damaged.
I usually made most of my Engineering XP by making bone armour, but that is a pretty component heavy creation (you have to make 3 bone plates and a roll of fibersomething first, then make the armour).
Message Edited by KabaI on 07-20-2004 09:57 PM
Speederbiker wrote:
2. Sometimes, even when I have 30+ power in my harvester, I told it to harvest,and the harvester is "on," the machine suddenly tells me that it's not gathering any resources - as in, when I click on "hopper," there's nothing there, not even a resource with 0 units.
As other people have said, you need to "pre-pay" maintenance and power for the harvester to run. The 0 units collected, though, is a bit of a bug.
Harvesters aren't really running in-game 100% of the time. It's a bit like quantum mechanics: they only exist when there's an observer. 
What happens is that when no one is around to view the harvester, it gets unloaded, remembering its current state (maintenance pool, power reserves, resources harvested, etc). When someone comes by, it gets reloaded, checks how long it was out, and figures out what state it's supposed to be in given it's last state and the amount of time that passed.
The problem I've seen is that if it ran out of power or if the resource shiftedbetween the store and the reload, the "resources harvested" calculation is screwed up. If it ran out of power, it seems to be saying "hey, I didn't have any power to run with, so I didn't gather any resources".
This problem is more common when you put your harvester in a low-traffic area of the planet (since fewer players pass by forcing a refresh), and go a while between harvester checks. I had a couple harvs on Talus once, left them there for 3-4 days, and noticed on swgcraft the the resource had shifted out that evening. I went to gather them up, and each had something like 100 units in them. 