Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Harvesters for meat!? read!
Aglanon wrote:
Actually it definelty would take away business from scouts/rangers. On eclipse and other servers there are Antarian Rangers that fill orders all the time. That's how they make their money.
Unfortunately, it's not that way on all servers.
What we need is a way to get more meat ... from whatever source.
I can't believe I'm doing this... actually helping someone who is suggesting the destruction of the ranger class, but here you go:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Bria&message.id=194485
They post all the time on the Bria boards. They've been around forever.
Its a good idea but the output should be lower to keep Rangers in business, it should work something like this:
To get a particular meat, you would have to sample DNA and make a DNA template of the crature with the DNA from that creature to match the stats of DNA currently in shift. For instance, if you want meat that is as good as the current Dathomirian Insect meat you would have to sample say Gaping Spider Queens and make a Spider DNA template with the DNA. The level of creature and stats on the template would determine the amount of meat harvested per day. To keep it balanced I would say a template of a level 50 creature with 1000 in each stat should cause the harvester to manufacture 5000 units a day. Much less for lesser templates say100 meat a day for a level 10 DNA template with 500 for each stat. When the meat from that planet shifts then the harvester shuts down. This will keep Rangers in business as to get the big orders filled (Herbivore Meat) we would still need to hire them on but also allows us to use the harvester for the smaller orders that Rangerhate taking on (like2k of Wild Meat and 3k of Insect Meat for some tissues as Rangers hate small orders, they want go collect 10k or more of something for the buig payoff). You would have to place the meat harvester on the planet where the meat is located, ti should take up 2 lots, and it should be expensive to maintain and require a lot of power.
People constantly bug me for stims, but I can't make pet stims if they don't harvest me some herbivore meat.
We need farms or SOMETHING.
Kittakat
MissileToad wrote:
And completely kill the market for Scouts and Rangers? I think not.
Done properly this wouldn't happen. It is a fact that a meat shortage exists. There simply are NOT enough scouts/rangers to satisfy demand. It is another fact that non-creature resources are pulled in the MILLIONS each week.
If they tie the harvesters into the trapping lines of the Scout/Ranger skill trees, make them 1 time use (no redeed), put a hefty resource requirement AND heavy maintenance with low extraction rates.... I just don't see how this would kill the scout/ranger market for meat. In particular would be the extraction rate / maintenance requirements. If those two are balanced properly, scout/ranger harvested meat would still sell for the 10+ credits per unit it does now because runnning the harvesters would be an ALTERNATIVE, but at a higher cost.
I wouldn't stop buying meats from scouts if the harvesters cost 20credits per unit of meat/hide/bone they extract. Or if that isn't high enough for ya, how about 30credits per unit extracted? I think 30 is pretty much a ceiling and then only for the high demand products.
There is NO mechanism in game to provide us with enough meat to satisfy a demand from chefs for additives. I don't see it any other way but machines to make these products worthwhile... economically chef additives at 20credits per unit of meat won't ever fly... something to keep in mind too.
Raise your hand if you have a 100k unit stack of a class 4 liquid petrochem fuel. *Raise*
Now lower your hand if you have less than 100k of herbivore meat to marry up with the C4. *Lower*
I get herbivore meat in lumps of a few thousand at a time... most i've ever managed to gather is 55k of a herbivore meat I was paying 20credits per unit for.... and oddly enough, during this time a resource dupe existed.
There is a problem with the availablity of creature harvested resources.. they need a solution.
GoldMemberBria wrote:
As a ranger, you know what we really need?A pet stim and creature harvester. Just bypass the BE's like you would bypass us. Just plunk down a "heavy" and generate thousands of pet stims every day. That would be SO cool, we'd never have to buy from you again. wohoo! I can't wait for this feature.
Are you finding it impossible to find creatures?
Haven't heard of there being a shortage of babies in the wild. Ohhhh so guess what? Your creature harvester already exists in the wild. 100% FREE CREATURES. Point refuted.
Are you finding it impossible to find pet stims?
B's are in abundance everywhere... why? becuase we can pull all of hte required materials using a machine. C's on the other hand are almost non-existant on my server because it requires Dathomir Insect Meat (no one hunts these and the meat as stunk for around 6 weeks now).
If you answered yes, to missing your pet stim C's... well its a meat shortage.
And free pet stims exist already. Store your pet and it heals. A stretch, yes, but I'll stick with my first part on pet stims.
MissileToad wrote:
And completely kill the market for Scouts and Rangers? I think not.
Kill what? replace a broken system more like. Rangers and Scouts are abviously not up to the task and the small amount of bonus meat you get as a ranger hardly is worth it. Harvesting wild meats is only marginally more effecient than fishing.
With chefs and BE's clamoring for more meat all the time demand is going to skyrocket and since supply is already too low this will make any market for meats non-existant.
To even get a relatively useful stack of herbivore meat to be useful a whole group of people has to go hunting for several hours. I can place a single mineral harvester down that pulls in 17,000 a day with no other human intervention. If BE and chef are going to keep up with demand.
The model for organic resources like wheat and fruit works and it should be applied to animal husbandry in addition to other items like eggs, fish and mollusks.
GoldMemberBria wrote:
So what is the difference? Either way you'd have to buy from scouts rangers? How is this different from now? Only difference would be that you've now invalidated the entire hunting lines of skill development from rangers and scouts, taken the fun of hunting away, and also hurt the combat classes.
But I guess what this idea really comes down to is... "wouldn't it be cool if awesome meat was free and we didn't need to do a thing to get it?".
I think you completely miss the point.
As I posted earlier, I"ll reiterate it again... done properly the ranger/scout harvested meat wouldn't lose its value. Properly balanced extraction/maintenance rates would PROTECT your market (i.e. ranger/scout meat would be cheaper)
You make a faulty conclusion in the last line. We are not asking for free awesome meat. We're asking for the materials of our profession to be available. Right now, there is NOT enough meat to do our job... invalidating much of the class. One 50crate of pet stim C's requires around 1300 units of Dathomir Insect Meat. That is 1 crate. These sell off my vendor the instant someone knows they are there. Turn to chef additives (particularly when the class is revamped).... the resource requirements there are a double whammy because our tissue takes meat to create and then the chef needs meat to create his product too.
Quite simply there is NOT enough meat being generated in game.
Bio Engineer is an elite class in many ways. Takes more effortto become one, takes a lot of effort to make our products, and now there is a lot of complexity in the clone part that many are not willing to deal with. The reward is that we have some of the most in-demand products in the game, and we have little competition because few are willing to deal with such complexities and challenges. Demand outpaces supply and this is a great position to be in. The fact that you can't fill that 100 crate order of tissues is a *good* thing, not a bad thing. The fact that you sell out of every pet stim you make within 24 hours is a *good* thing, not a bad thing. Means that tomorrow there will still be that demand waiting to be filled by you after you put in more effort on the aquisition side. But please don't be so naive. The reason for that is that every other BE has the same challenge. If every BE had unlimited resources (read meat), and every BE was able to meet 100% of their demand, everyone of us would sell less product and every one of us would feel more price pressures from one another and also have a much harder time selling anything at all.
Every week people suggest bio harvesters, dna harvesters, the reduction of skill point demands, reduction of experience points needed, and every other thing they can think of that would strip this class of its challenges and the things that make us unique.
For those that want an easier, less demanding, "harvest and craft" class, there are plenty like that. Be a weaponsmith, be an architect, be an armorsmith. Join a PA or get some friends that don't use their lots, have a field full of harvesters, and you can get an almost unlimited amount of the resources you need, aside from the occasional stack of hide which is easy and cheap to buy. But of course you will have a lot of competition and very little challenge. It's really up to you how you want to play. Let's just not make BE into weaponsmith for god sakes.
Sumorex wrote:GoldMemberBria wrote:
So what is the difference? Either way you'd have to buy from scouts rangers? How is this different from now? Only difference would be that you've now invalidated the entire hunting lines of skill development from rangers and scouts, taken the fun of hunting away, and also hurt the combat classes.
But I guess what this idea really comes down to is... "wouldn't it be cool if awesome meat was free and we didn't need to do a thing to get it?".
I think you completely miss the point.
As I posted earlier, I"ll reiterate it again... done properly the ranger/scout harvested meat wouldn't lose its value. Properly balanced extraction/maintenance rates would PROTECT your market (i.e. ranger/scout meat would be cheaper)
You make a faulty conclusion in the last line. We are not asking for free awesome meat. We're asking for the materials of our profession to be available. Right now, there is NOT enough meat to do our job... invalidating much of the class. One 50crate of pet stim C's requires around 1300 units of Dathomir Insect Meat. That is 1 crate. These sell off my vendor the instant someone knows they are there. Turn to chef additives (particularly when the class is revamped).... the resource requirements there are a double whammy because our tissue takes meat to create and then the chef needs meat to create his product too.
Quite simply there is NOT enough meat being generated in game.
There is no argument here. Meat collection is extremely labour intensive and the market for pet stims shows it.
It is all fine and good that there are going to be more pets in the game but who is going to heal them?
My PA conducts semi-regular forays to collect herbivore and insect meat for the one or two crafters that make these products. If we hunted constantly we could not keep up with demand.
It is long passed time in SWG for all resources to be automated including meats. There are plenty of interesting ways to do this including single use fish traps, or animal farms that you can insert animals into wild only, NGMO here hehe.
There would need to be an army of master scout and rangers to supply the resources in sufficient quantities and they simply do not exist. Especially when you consider that a ranger/master scout cripples their combat ability with the skill points lost so they actually hurt their resource collection rate. Better to get hunting IV and be a master TKA, master CH. At least then you can solo and kill fast.
Heck, I wouldn't even be opposed to upping the harvest per creature.. forget machine harvesters.
But I believe even a 10x increase to the harvest ability of a ranger wouldn't even put a dent into the demand for meat.
Shoot, make the meat harvesting machines Master Ranger only.
I don't care what the solution is, as long as there is a solution. Meat is a pathetically scarce resource.
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Arthur, I don't think making creature harvestables stupid scarce adds to the enjoyment of the class for *most* people. It frustrates me every single day when rather than being a Bio Engineer, I have to go be a slaughterhouse employee. I spend more time harvesting meat than being a Bio Engineer. This, and other threads, aren't calling for a freebie on meats... they're pointing to an underlying disparity between the crafting professions AND resource extraction rates.
I"ll agree with you that there has to be some challenge to a class ot make it fun. Other crafting professions have this in getting the good resources while they're available, and there is a thriving market for extinct resources on every server. We're talking upwards of 100credits a unit thriving on some materials. DNA harvesters I would give a big thumbs down to that... because that is a function of our class. I don't mind going out to harvest DNA... I'm sure Rangers don't mind harvesting their kills. These are function inherent in the class abilities. But meat/hide/bone/fish/milk/eggs, despite our hunting line pre-requisite (I"ll even argue that the creature knowledge skill is why we have to take this, not the harvesting), those are the realm of the ranger/scout... you are NOT playing Bio Engineer when you're out slaughterhousing your way across a planet.
Sumo, just be glad that we can't meet our demand ok? Are you hurting for credits? Do you like the fact that there is more demand than supply (rather than the other way around)? So why complain about this?
Ok, here is my counter proposal to all this madness, and this is actually something that HAS been requested by rangers and DOES solve the "problem":
simply make the ranger harvests bigger. For example, make novice ranger gets 2x the harvest of master scout right off the bat (I think they get like 5% or 10% more now which is a joke). Thenmake ita 50% increase with each box of hunting on top of that (right now, again I think it only goes up like 10% each box).
This would further validate the ranger class, further validate the hunting skills, make keep "the big hunts" an important and fun part of the game, Bio Engineers get more meat (although skill not meeting the very high demand, hopefully), everyone is happy.
Sumorex wrote:
Done properly this wouldn't happen. It is a fact that a meat shortage exists. There simply are NOT enough scouts/rangers to satisfy demand. It is another fact that non-creature resources are pulled in the MILLIONS each week.