Bio Engineer Archive

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Fred_Skinner wrote:
As one of these dedicated harvestors I keep my prices far below market. I make plenty of money, even then. However, neither my band of merry men or I can produce enough to get these lower prices to become the norm. Therefore, Eclipse typically have Avian Meat sales for 200cpu. That is not a typo.

If I had multiple resource harvesting and/or VASTLY increased harvest (we figured x10 would have to be a MINIMUM increase here) we can undercut those price hikers and they will not be selling at that price. I have about 10 steady customers and I'm lucky if I can give even one what they need. So they buy some at my price, and some at the "increda-price".

Now, I have to make choices for my time, and I usually gravitate to those that make the most money for my time. Therefore I have to forsake the grinder market and some professions like architect for more lucritive ones (like BE, Chefs and the most lucritive: Docs). If I could harvest all of the animal, I could cover more markets and sell at multiple pricings.

Also, many who do not have exposure to scout/ranger professions have been used to the VASTLY superior production levels of miners. Those prices reflect this. Uber Steel of Unbeleavably Good Numbers can get away with 5cpu or less because any shift can yield whole warehouses for 100k stacks, while an organics shift we are lucky to collect a single 100k stack before it is over. Overhead is MUCH grater as well, I'd be hard pressed to keep costs below the 60 cr/hr a harvestor maintainance has. The mission payout helps here, but the difference comes to about 100cr/hr after buffs, ticket sales, weapon cost, armour, ect. are factored.

Lately, we Rangers have asked for improvements here, sense August actually, but the devs seem intent on putting this off for some time. I don't think they see the magnitude of the problem. We are asking for your help in pointing it out to them.




Thanks.

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You will have the help you need from us.

As one of these dedicated harvestors I keep my prices far below market. I make plenty of money, even then. However, neither my band of merry men or I can produce enough to get these lower prices to become the norm. Therefore, Eclipse typically have Avian Meat sales for 200cpu. That is not a typo.

If I had multiple resource harvesting and/or VASTLY increased harvest (we figured x10 would have to be a MINIMUM increase here) we can undercut those price hikers and they will not be selling at that price. I have about 10 steady customers and I'm lucky if I can give even one what they need. So they buy some at my price, and some at the "increda-price".

Now, I have to make choices for my time, and I usually gravitate to those that make the most money for my time. Therefore I have to forsake the grinder market and some professions like architect for more lucritive ones (like BE, Chefs and the most lucritive: Docs). If I could harvest all of the animal, I could cover more markets and sell at multiple pricings.

Also, many who do not have exposure to scout/ranger professions have been used to the VASTLY superior production levels of miners. Those prices reflect this. Uber Steel of Unbeleavably Good Numbers can get away with 5cpu or less because any shift can yield whole warehouses for 100k stacks, while an organics shift we are lucky to collect a single 100k stack before it is over. Overhead is MUCH grater as well, I'd be hard pressed to keep costs below the 60 cr/hr a harvestor maintainance has. The mission payout helps here, but the difference comes to about 100cr/hr after buffs, ticket sales, weapon cost, armour, ect. are factored.

Lately, we Rangers have asked for improvements here, sense August actually, but the devs seem intent on putting this off for some time. I don't think they see the magnitude of the problem. We are asking for your help in pointing it out to them.

Thanks.

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Hairycarpet wrote:
I support you, but this is the 'Smuggler' forum, for smuggler issues. Inbalance and broken skills, low mods and being outdone by other profs is something we all have to suffer to a greater or lesser extent. I support you but not at the expense of having my own profs fixed, sorry

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Just to reiterate the point: We are not asking for any big change. You guys have a revamp in the plans. The changes asked for above should really only be a line or two of code (if they were smart about it...). It should be hotfixable (even if we will probably have to wait a few publishes before they get around to it). The whole point of this change is to get something that will help everyone (your spices do use organics. You might not use them now but you almost certainly will after the revamp) that takes a minimal amount of time to fix. The Devs should be able to make a change like this during their coffee break. That's the whole point of asking for something small. This sort of change will only begin to make our profession useful. But we know the Devs don't have time to do a full revamp on us as well. So we wait on the rest.

Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server

You have my support.

As a new armor smith I cannot afford the high prices for organic resorces and have to resort to nagging my PA members to gather for me.

Another point on this: This thread has been posted in all the forums that need some type of organic resource in their crafting. We are Rangers. We don't know how much of whatever resources you use. But we do know that at least some of you can and do use them. The way we look at it, this is a change thatmight effect anyone who can use organics. They should at least be told about it.

Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server

stupid double post /sigh

Just out of curiousity, what combat profession are most rangers picking up these days? When I dabbled in ranger long, long ago most were carbineers or riflemen in order to feel like a true "hunter".

The reason I ask is that melee characters are far and away superior for creature combat. My swordsman can destroy an entire lair in a very, very short amount of time thanks to spin attacks. With the exception of very, very high quality wooly hide I do all of my own harvesting. In the proper setting I can pull in 6K-8K of hides per hour with novice scout. With a ranged profession this simply would not be happening.

Don't take my question as a lack of support for your initiative. I fully support enhancing the way organic resources are harvested. If you look at our schematics, they're simply not balanced. It takes roughly the same amount of wooly hide as nabooian fiberplast (for example) to make a piece of comp, yet I can plop a few harvesters down on a good spawn of any inorganic and pull up more in one day of unattended mining than the average hunter couldactively harvest in triple the amount of time. Something's gotta give, and too often it's our pocketbooks.

Cal I am with you 100% behind this. I am a new master armorsmith on Starsider server and the more I can get the better I love. Rangers need loving guys!

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Nemo0 wrote:

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Hairycarpet wrote:
I support you, but this is the 'Smuggler' forum, for smuggler issues. Inbalance and broken skills, low mods and being outdone by other profs is something we all have to suffer to a greater or lesser extent. I support you but not at the expense of having my own profs fixed, sorry

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Just to reiterate the point: We are not asking for any big change. You guys have a revamp in the plans. The changes asked for above should really only be a line or two of code (if they were smart about it...). It should be hotfixable (even if we will probably have to wait a few publishes before they get around to it). The whole point of this change is to get something that will help everyone (your spices do use organics. You might not use them now but you almost certainly will after the revamp) that takes a minimal amount of time to fix. The Devs should be able to make a change like this during their coffee break. That's the whole point of asking for something small. This sort of change will only begin to make our profession useful. But we know the Devs don't have time to do a full revamp on us as well. So we wait on the rest.

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Please don't take this the wrong way, but we have a lot of our own demands at the moment, and I don't believe we can afford to let anyone else cut in front of us in the long"fix me" line of SWG professions. Smugglers still can't SMUGGLE, and leading up to what is sure to be a controversial revamp,we're fighting tooth and nail to get the Devs toimplement a meaningful form of smuggling in the game.

I wish Rangers and Scouts the best, and I know that they get a raw deal in just about every aspect of the game, but in my opinion, Smugglers simply don't have any time to donate to your cause, not for the foreseeable future. First we need to finally get the revamp plan. Then we need to test it. Then we need to see how it pans out in live. And then we need to try to get fixes for all the broken pieces that make it through. I anticipate that that will fill many weeks and months.

As for the fact that this seems like a minor change, Smugglers have been begging since launch for better documentation. For example, look at our Master box - oops, you can't, becasue it's empty. Look at the new contraband evasion skills the Devs slipped into Underworld - oops, they aren't written down. Look at how slicing works - oops, the Devs have never toldanyone what goes into the equation. This is stuff that HAS to be written down somewhere, and CAN'T take long to fix. Except it hasn't been fixed. In fact, a number of tiny things in this game which you'd THINK could be fixed in a matter of minutes have lingered broken since launch. So I just don't have any faith that the Dev team knows the concept of a quick fix. As simple as your problem might seem to you, it doesn't change the fact that the Devs will spend months dawdling about what the problem is, then probably decide it's not such a problem if they can stand to dawdle for so long, and thus the problem will end up staying a problem. That's how I've seen this game "develop."

So anyway, I can't speak for the forum, and believe me when I say good luck, but that I feel we're too deep in our own mess of problems to allow you to cut ahead of us in the "fix us" line.

Ive personally been a BH/ Ranger with a LLC, a TKM, a Pistoleer, Swordsman and now im working on fencer...

for no other reason than to find out what combat profession best supports the way that I play the game. like you said, right now, if i were to choose which profession to come back to, it would be swordsman.

The main advantage i found to tka is the really low overhead in weapon repairs, often times, I use crap weapons to do my harvesting jobs for the simple reason that In one 20 to 30k harvesting spree, my condition on my good weapons drop considerably.

Stims, buffs, travel, armor and its repair (my 71% kinetic ubese dropped in condition from 100% to 60% in one of my harvesting trips over a period of 5 days)

thanks for the responses so far...I hope to see this idea implemented.

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Tathace wrote:

i agree there is aproblem and that traps/ranger need a very good looking at. i kinda think the prices per unit are obnoxious because of greed. i sell whatever extra resources i have from 1-10 cpu. 20to 50 is just plain insane, and you aren't going to get around that with any amount of profession or supply fixing. i work just fine on a daily basis with the supply i have. just be prepared that a designer may say that the item being crafted with the resource may be powerful, so they don't want many being made.

i disagree that you say a fighting class can get novice scout and harvest more then a ranger. why? because a ranger can stillbe a master tka or pistoleer or something along those lines. hence, a master ranger can still harvest more then a master combat with novice scout.

i think, the main problem is master ranger isn't quite appealing enough to master combat professions since (IMHO)ranger is almost completely broken. i think the only thing that works 100% is creature knowledge and camps. now i alsothink the crappy part about master ranger is that if you don't have very good combat skills, it is completely worthless. i recently mastered ranger thinking it would compliment my bio-eng very nicely and decided to drop everything but thecreature column.

so hmm, well, that's my take on the issue. i hope rangers get a proper fixing.good luck to yas!

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A few thoughts. As for the extremely powerful items, they will be made either way. When crafters can spend 200 cpu on resources (and they do, trust me), they can get almost anything they want. It just leads to inflation (as the crafter usually won't be willing to take a hit in their profits).

As for a Ranger mastering a combat profession, it is almost a necessity. We don't mean a single combat master can outharvest us. We mean someone like a Commando with Novice Scout or someone with TKA/Fencer/Rifleman. They can just go into a bunch of creatures and clear them out with almost no trouble. It is a lot more challenging to kill stuff with only a single combat mastery. Yes, I can solo a rancor. But that TKA/Fencer/Rifleman will have no trouble taking 3 or 4 on at once. And, using AoEs, they can kill them just as quickly. The extra skill mods really do help out.

As for Ranger being completely broken, it is arguable. Most of our skills work. They just don't really have much of a use. And we don't really get anything over a Master Scout. We know we need help. But we can't seem to convince the Devs of that. So we wait. And we try and push for some simple changes. Given that there are more Jedi than Rangers (at least as far as I've seen on my server), it's not surprising we have to wait. And a large part of this is due to having to wait. There used to be plenty of Rangers around. Most of them got tired of waiting.

Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server