Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: 19 answers
Great post, the age old crafting rating question has finally be answered to some degree. I think these sessions are a great idea.
My question is: I dont suppose you want toelaborate onhow significant the qaulity rating on stations is? I only ask because i did some crafting for arch and doc and used an even amount of - vs + toolkits in the crafting process and could not find significant differances in regards to final assembly crit fails or exp crit fails.
Thunderheart said:
Bio-Engineering was designed so that players could play out being a genetic engineer. Genetic engineering is not an exact science in that duplicating results is currently a nigh impossible task. Hypothetically speaking, maybe you want to add a gene to a bunny rabbit to make a green glow-in-the-dark bunny rabbit, and it works and you have a green glow-in-the-dark bunny. So then you want to make another green glow-in-the-dark bunny but when the second process is complete, the bunny rabbit only glows 5 days out of the week instead of 7 because of some recessive gene the scientist wasn’t aware of.
Erm, that's totally false. Cloning, in the research sense, is a very tightly controlled process. Once someone makes a genetically-modified animal and the said animal is phenotypically and genetically characterised, all other animals made with the same genetic mutation share exactly the same phenotype. If it wasn't the case, I would be out of a job. The fact that gene expression can be so tightly controlled in lab animals provides the basis of the investigation. The fact that a certain gene has been deleted in a transgenic animal allows us to investigate that gene's function by the effcts of it's absence. If it were affected by some unknown "recessive gene", it would defeat the whole point of the exercise. It seems that TH has been watching too much of the Discovery Channel, if all he can come up with is a poor interpretation of the effects of constitutive expression of Green Flourescent Protein (that's what it's called, TH) in mammals.
Medic: What are higher rated crafting stations and tools supposed to do for you, exactly? (Assuming they are even working, of course.) and how do droid crafting stations relate to the standalone stations, since we cannot see any kind of rating numbers on droids?
The effectiveness rating on crafting tools and stations influences the chance of success or failure during the assembly and experimentation stages. As far as the droid itself, it has a neutral relationship (does not effect) on the crafting process.
TH! You totally avoided answering that one!!!!!!! AND IT IS SO ANNOYIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The crafting units IN the droids SUCK! They are near impossible to make in a positive range. Something is broken with them!!!!!1 THey wern't asking about the droid, but the crafting unit IN the droid, they have ISSUES!
Morthon wrote:
Great post, and I love finally getting answers to a lot of basic issues, but there are two things that trouble me a bit. I have listed them and tried to offer some ideas also.
[snip]
With merchants they want to fix it so people who drop merchant skill can not keep their vendors. Logical yes, and once again I can see why merchants would like this, but what would it do to the game? I would guess that more than 50% of the vendors ingame now are owned by non-merchants. Thischangewould eliminate competition and drive prices up. This also seems to be a perfect way to make people buy two or moreaccounts, and essentially punish those who cant. With the current storage limits,I would be forced to destroy everything I looted or stand around and spam to sell it before I could hunt again. I would effectively be a merchant every time I looted something. As I hate spamming and love hunting Im faced with the choice of making my one character useless for hunting and/or pvp, orhavinghunting itselfbe pointless? Not everything logical is good.
As couple proposals, I would suggest that they keep a few items like ubese shirts, belts etc as non-decaying items, and make some similar items for tailors. Then recode be enhancements to decay over time, say 90days, then you need the be part re-enhanced. This would give both tailors and BE's repeat business without hurting players to they extent a 100% decay on all items would. Right now I only use +1 sea's but if I ever loot a good one that my character can use I would really hate to see it decay and be gone in a short period of time.
For merchants I would suggest making merchant deeds, franchises if you will. A master, or whatever level, merchant could produce a deed that a non merchant player could then use to place a vendor in their house. These vendors would then pay a "franchise" fee to the creator, perhaps with an option of a fee per month or a percentage of items sold. You could then scale the vendor fees, which would still need to be paid buy the home owner, to the price of goods sold to avoid excessive use of vendors for storage. That fee would be completely waved if the vendor was being operated by a player with appropriate merchant skill.
Im all for fixing bugs, but lets remember this game is supposed to be fun for all. So I hope fixes will look at the effect on the population as a whole and not just the one profession.
I'm all for everything staying the way it is AS LONG AS I get the TKA Meditate line for free. I mean, come on, this game is supposed to be fun for everybody! Sheesh
Exploiters will always try to justify their exploitation. Too bad the devs don't place as much value on the crafters that actually support this game by retaining merchant as they do in the exploiters that don't.
Fivo Asia
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Thunderheart wrote:
[snip]
Even still, it was a pretty popular request, so what I’ve done is changed it around so that it’s a weekly event. Instead of doing them one at a time, I’m going to do "19 answers". I’ll answer one question from half the professions on the first week and half on the next week. Then I’ll cycle around and do it again. So on Mondays, I'll post the "19 questions" for the correspondents to answer and you should tell the correspondents which question you feel is most pressing for your community.
The intent is to do this on Wednesdays, but sometimes verifying the information runs a little long. This batch of questions has a great example; I had to go into some low level code with one of the devs on the droid crafting station question to confirm it has a neutral effect on the crafting process.
The weekly breakdown of professions is:
Week 1:
Architect, [snip]
Without further ado…
Architect: What is the exact effect that the effectiveness rating on crafting tools and Crafting stations have on the crafting process and are they working as intended?
The effectiveness rating on crafting tools and stations influences the chance of success or failure during the assembly and experimentation stages. These are working as intended.
[snip]
Please feel free to discuss these in the professions forums.
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Thunderheart,
Let me applaud you doing something. Any ACTIVE communication is far better for the game and the community than a wall of silence.
Let me also (selfishly) applaud putting the Architect question out first. You might notice that the majority of the Architect questions have really been every crafting profession questions. This one is no different.
However, sir, you specifically did not answer the stated question. Sir, I'd also like to mention that this is NOT the original question I was privy to, and you have notedly cut out adjectives that change the qualification of the entire question. But for now let's talk about what you stated.
When someone ask you for an EXACT effect they are not asking for the general function. If you are not willing to give the exact effect please state so. If you need examples, we ALL will provide you them in any mathematical fornulae you require to understand the situation. I personally wanted to see some math here from you on the exact formula and the effect of the crafting station thereon. As one of the people that's be begging you for over 5 months now to answer this question I sincerely feel that you are either unable to do so or refusing to do so when you give me PR answers to technical questions. The logical side of my brain says that can't be true, but passion is asking me why I continue to even try. The utter futility your answer provides give me little faith in ever getting a straight answer over something that should take 10 seconds, mate. 10 seconds.
The amount of money we all pay for this service should be worth a few honest answers. We do not need another Clinton "What is is?" discussions to ensue.
I can bring up the posts, from you and other devs, where you have indicated that this is NOT working as intended. Now suddenly it is. Which is it sir?
P.S. Sir would you please stop either using MS Office XML schema which is illegal for posting replies or turn on replies filters to edit the schema out? It causes us to spend another 5 minutes editing your messages and invariably times out the forum connection everytime.
Masen wrote:
RE: Stations
No, TH did NOT contradict himself. The Architects asked if their stations were working as intended. He said yes.
[snip]
No, we asked what is the EXACT EFFECT of a station on the crafting process as many many months of testing showed that sometimes there is NONE between a -12.96 and a +43.44 station. Means statistical testing over 2,000 results showing averages that indicate not a single thing is different. Then results change with hotfixes, we get walls of silence. Changes possibly with publishes, walls of slience.
Now we get subjective editing of the question and an answer a 10 year old could see is evasive.
Thunderheart wrote:
I’ve been pushing hard to get the Combat Balance back on the schedule and everyone agrees that its high priority so we are talking about how we can best accomplish this. We're in the planning stages now and should see these changes before the GCW revamp. I want to help set expectations as best I can here. At this early stage, I would make the following comments:
That is the most depressing thing I ever heard.
As it currently stand, schedule is
May : Publish 8
Droids Rebuilt)
Mid May : Mini Publish: (Correspondent issues/ new content)
Death Watch Hideout Opens
June : Publish 9
Jedi Phase I
Mid June : Smuggler revamp
CS Issues (Bug fixes/ tools)
QA Issues (Bug fixes/ features)
Mini Publish (Correspondent issues/ new content TBD)
"Social Adventure" Opens
July : Publish 10
Jedi Phase II
Squad Leader Revamp
CS Issues (Bug fixes/ tools)
QA Issues (Bug fixes/ features)
Mini Publish (Correspondent issues/ new content TBD)
Star Destroyer Opens
August : Publish 11
GCW Revamp
Merchant Vendors Revamp
CS Issues (Bug fixes/ tools)
QA Issues (Bug fixes/ features)
So Combat Balance will be done sometimes before Auguest? Wow.
Lonkley wrote:except there have been tests with high grade architect stations vs droid stations and the differences have come out inconsequential over a couple hundred of the same item.All i was stating was the information provided by TH and how the system is suppose to work based on his answers. If there are issues with it i highly recommend you bring them to your DE Core repSo it makes me wonder if the formula used while a droid is involved is the same formula as while a station is involved.
After all if you dont include the station portion check from the formula, that could be different than the Droid=0%, and would make sense based on the previous tests.
I think you should get the droid modules not having any effect on the issues list.
KStarfire
Thunderheart wrote:
I said that I would be happy to do that Then another correspondent asked and another and so on and so on until I had a ginormous list with over 400 questions on it and everyone has wanted "their ten questions" answered. The upside is that it’s a great way for me to get information to the players. The downside is that even if I did the lists one a week, it would still take too long to get them all in the eyes of the community. Even still, it was a pretty popular request, so what I’ve done is changed it around so that it’s a weekly event. Instead of doing them one at a time, I’m going to do "19 answers. I’ll answer one question from half the professions on the first week and half on the next week. Then I’ll cycle around and do it again. So on Mondays, I'll post the "19 questions" for the correspondents to answer and you should tell the correspondents which question you feel is most pressing for your community
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Droid Engineer: What are the design rules/principles that DEs will need to adhere to when making proposals for DL20+ (Droid Commander) suggestions? Many want to help work up this system prior to Space so we have it fully tweaked and ready to go
This is a tall order for a list of single questions, but it is a great idea. I will work with the dev team to establish some submission guidelines and get them to the correspondent
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