Bio Engineer Archive

Ojes and other BE's who are on the 'other side' of BE crafting from me ... here is a question. What advice would you give to people starting out on tissue crafting? Should they wait until they can produce the '5's or try to sell to new chefs/tailors. How should they go about marketing.

Well, actually, what would be fun to hear is stories about how you yourselves got started, how you built up your business, how long it took you, how much effort you had to put into it and investment in time and / or credits ... Let's get the scoop from the people who have done it! I think it would be interesting reading for many just getting started and others who mainly craft pets.

Dor

Dor - That sounds a lot like a correspondent talking there

I'd be happy to share my experiences of the BE startup. However, this all comes with the caveat that I started with 2 significant legs-up on the average guy starting out in this profession: 1) I had the guidance of a master chef who I had a long-standing relationship with before the CU went live and he was able to pass along a couple of important pieces of information that helped greatly (thanks Eerif). 2) I was a buffpack crafter pre-CU, so I had a pretty good understanding (so I thought) of crafting and resource selection when I started (not to mention a sizeable stock of tissue-quality avian meat).

When the CU hit, I quickly got myself up on the new stims and enhancers (this is where my resource stockpiles came in most handy). I was contacted by my chef friend to start making tissues for him (just the nutrient tissues at first - MNS, BSN, INN). My first try was close to the mark (MNS 56 as I recall). He clued me in to the use of wood as the generic organic component to help boost my numbers. He was also got me in touch with Lantyssa's chef tissue calculator (all the secrets of tissue production lie in that code) and was willing to work out deals to provide me with high quality floras from his personal stockpile when mine ran slightly short of the mark.

I learned to use the resource deeds as a survey tool and was quickly able to find high quality in-spawn resources (flora as well as meats) to be able to sustainably produce 7s (MNS 57, BSN 87, INN 117). On Flurry, there have been several 7-capable spawns of wood, meat, and flora every month since the CU went live. You simply need to stay on top of the spawns and get your contacts working on the spawns when you spot them (I have a list of hunters/harvesters that is over 50 names deep from back before the CU willing to harvest meats at 20cpu and all machine harvestables at 3cpu).

The fine tuning of resource selections took me into the code of Lantyssa's calculator. It was in there that I learned the added complexity of BE crafting vs pre-CU buffpack/stim crafting - the variable use of resources (i.e. 35organic, 25flora, 20meat for a BSN vs 18wheat, 18fiberplast for an aBEC). That makes a lot of difference in resource selection.

Along the way, I have had bumps in the road (like a couple droughts in meat or flora - and the recent departure of my friend Eerif), but the shift to MBE crafter from MD crafter has gone much better than I originally thought it would. If I could just find a safe place to place my factories (with minimal nuisance critter spawns), I would be a happy man...

That what you were looking for, Dor?

More pointedly, each of the nutrient tissues have a separate base value, but each has a range of 30 points. That means that every 3.33% experimentation will give you 1 additional bonus point on your final tissue (83.3%=25, 86.6%=26, 90%=27, 93.3%=28, 96.6%=29).

Assuming you are using wood as your generic organic, the flora and meat formulas for the MNS become: OQ37.5% PE37.5% FL25%

Hope that helps...

Message Edited by Ojes on 10-20-2005 10:04 AM

Totally what I'm looking for - wow it's a lot of work...you mention in an offhand manner - staying on top of resource spawns but we BE's can use almost any resource on the server and tracking them all is a collosal task whereas tracking some of them leaves you in a constant state of anxiety as to what is out there that you might be missing.

How much time do you (and the others) spend a week or a day tracking this do you figure ... and moving harvesters around ...

Dor (and not really being in correspondant mode b/c ... well ... Tiggs and the others decide don't they and we won't know until we know ... )

I have kind of fallen off of the resource tracking bandwagon recently. Eerif's departure made me contemplate dropping the profession or at least scaling back quite a bit, so I already have enough resources to craft at full capacity through the end of the year I figure.

When I was actively scanning, I would use my resource deed to check the following set of resources (nearly daily): 30 woods, 10 berries, 10 fruits, 10 fungus, 10 tubers, 10 beans, 10 greens, 10 dom wheat, 10 dom oats, 10 dom rice, 10 dom corn, 10 carnivores, 8 insects, 4 domestics, 8 wilds, 8 avians, and 5 reptiles. I would then update swgcraft.com for all of those resources that were new. I only update stats if the resource had decent stats (kind of subjective, but it saves a ton of time).

Because I was doing that daily (and I got good at it), I could do it all in 1 hour. It is a busy hour, but it can be done. The key is to ignore any resource that you updated within 7 days since they all last that long. The other time saver is to not bother updating swgcraft with stats when they are not good. When I was updating all stats on all new spawns it would take me another 30-45 minutes to copy down all the numbers and type them into swgcraft.

Now that I've said that, I will also say that I can be rather stubborn about these sorts of things. Most people would probably not have bothered to update the site as frequently or trimmed down your list of resources sooner. You will probably note that I ignore flowers, all wild cereals, and herbivore meat. They all have caps that will render them nearly useless in making tissues, so they are simply not worth the time to keep updated. If I start doing it again, I will probably not bother with the domestic cereals either since their FL cap makes it very difficult for them to meet my standards.

Of course, there are specific needs for flowers and cereals for other BE products, but I tend to just buy those from vendors since I don't need to get large volumes.

As for harvester placement, I have all my lots (and those of a RL friend that I rent lots from) tied up in factories (12-15 depending on demand), and rely on my network of hunters/harvesters to collect all my resources. I would strongly recommend this if you are trying to supply high-volume chefs. When a good flora comes along, I offer 3cpu and hope to have 5mil or so units delivered to my vendor when the spawn is done. That sounds like a lot, but with just 9 factories running full speed on nutrient tissues, you will need 990k wood, 675k flora, and 495k meat per week and you will get 9 full runs of each nutrient tissue for your efforts (assuming you can turn your factories farily efficiently). The resources just fly through my hands.

Hello and welcome ...

Your ability to tame creatures is independent on your own combat level. You can tame up to level 10 as a non-CH and of course if you become a CH you can tame above that. When I say 'tame' I mean ... tame a deed. Only CH's can tame animals from the wild.

As far as using a pet deed that you make. You will only be able to tame level 10 pet deeds and below. You will not be able to have level 70 pets tamed by you although you can store them in your datapad if a CH hands one to you. You will not be able to call it however. To call and use a level 70 pet you need to be a master CH.