Chef Archive
Thread: Can a Casual Player be a New Chef?
I plan on being a chef after the revamp, and won't have too much trouble doing it. Here are some tips:
- Use harvesers: When I dropped cgef in October last year, Medium harvesters only produced 4 BER, and heavies were 7. Now 10BER medium harvesters are quite common. Use this to your advantage. Place a harvester with a weeks worth of maintenance/power, so even if you don't have a chance to check on them, they'll keep going.
- Make big batches: Most components take 48s each in a factory. That's 2 crates in a hour, so if you had the time, you could make a few crates of food in a couple hours. But you don't have that time, so make 1000 batches of components, so you have them on hand when you need them. Also a factory running 1000 components will take 13.3 hours, which means you can leave it overnight and it'll do the work for you. Of course, storage will be a problem, it's always a problem.
- Don't promise what you can't provide: If someone orders something special from you, tell them a rough guess of when you can finish it, if it's not what they want, then there's nothing you can do about it. Most people prefer honesty over missing deadlines.
- Decide whether you can be a chef of the masses: You can't pause SWG. When you're not there, the game doesn't stop. If you don't have the time to provide food to the public, you might want to think about providing food only to a close group of friends. Spend your time meeting some people who will trade food for other things you need, but don't have time to find on your own.
- Use SWGCraft.com: Those hardcore players are good for something. They catalogue all of the resources currently on your server, and post them for all to see. If you want good resources, spend a couple minutes looking at that before you go surveying, it'll save you a lot of work.
I made a 1k batch of aludiums, it took longer than 13 hours.
Try three days 
Well, I do use harvesters of course, and mediums with collection rates of 10 are my bread and butter. I refer to SWGCraft.com. I make big batches. That is not the point.
Ionly have a few lots.I only have a few hours everycouple of days. With this new system, you will have to have, in-stock, large amounts of dozens of different resources. How can you gather them all? We still need subcomponents, and now we have to add another subcomponent, containers. Right now, I have two factories and it is all I can do to keep my vendor in stock. What am I going to do to keep a vendor fully stocked when I have to add all these new things?
Under this new system, a Chef will need the following to play this game:
1. A house with a vendor.
2. One or two food/chem manufacturing facilities (for food and drinks)
3. One equipment manufacturing faciliy (for containers)
4. A reliable supply of BE components
5. Several flora harvesters
6. One or more gas harvesters
7. One or more mineral harvesters
8.Two or more power harvesters
MartyMacGraves wrote:
3. One equipment manufacturing faciliy (for containers)
Unless you mean making all of the components for containers, this is wrong.
Containers are made in a Food/Chem Factory
You're right for a complete chef (no help at all), that is what you would need. However, I wouldn't wish that kind of job on anyone.
I'm currently looking for a merchant to sell my food (I'm sure there's someone out there that likes the middleman idea). I know people who are Master Artisans and Tailors to provide the Trim (You don't need to make it yourself) And if you don't want to go through the work of Additives, tell customers if they want additives in food, bring them along with them. Otherwise, talk to BE's when you see them at the shuttleport or whatever, they'll probably be happy to sell you some additives.
That only leaves the chef part. And that can be done by one person alone.
You're right, there is no way to be a self sufficient chef/tailor/artisan/merchant as a casual player. That's suicide. But an MMORPG is not the place to do things alone.
I do think it is going to be more difficult to be a casual chef and mostly, as you pointed out, due to lot restrictions..
I dont know your personal circumstances or play styles but one thing which may be able to ease the lots would be to consider the possibility of placing a vendor in a mall somewhere? Not all malls are demanding on their crafters that they constantly have to have full stock, many would just be happy to have the items as and when you could produce. If you have a nice group of crafter friends or a player city, this could free up the house for a vendor...
Im guilded and lucky that im with many people who are mainly combat orientated and hence dont use all their lots (although the hologrind made this more of a rarity). Ive had people in the past hold permanent structures for me like houses or factories... obviously this isnt really a possibility with harvesters..
*Maybe* see how many other chefs are in the same position, perhaps you could do a cross server lot trade with another chef again on permanent structures...
Are you friends with any other chefs on your server who are maybe in the same position? You could go into business together as a partnership and split the work load somewhat... obviously the way profits would then be split makes things more complex but perhaps this could work if you have any close chefy friends
These are just suggestions of ways you could possibly ease the lot problem... but overall, I do agree with you that it is becoming considerably harder to manage this profession as a more casual player
Kind Regards,
Tally, Master Chef of Eclipse
MartyMacGraves wrotes
Under this new system, a Chef will need the following to play this game:
1. A house with a vendor.
Any crafting profession needs that
2. One or two food/chem manufacturing facilities (for food and drinks)
Docs need at least 2 IMO to produce a decent amount to stock a vendor
3. One equipment manufacturing faciliy (for containers)
This one is an extra requirement, but only a lot requirement
4. A reliable supply of BE components
No, this is not a requirement. A casual player IMO will still have some people to sell to Obviously you aren't going to be able to make the best stuff, but you have already given that idea up just by being a casual player. A Hardcore player will always have a better chance at getting better resources.
5. Several flora harvesters
6. One or more gas harvesters
7. One or more mineral harvesters
8.Two or more power harvesters
9. One or more chemical harvesters
Docs and almost all crafters need those as well. Chefs can get by with outsorcing their harvesting but the profits go down as well. You have to have dedicated miners though. People raren't harvest good flora. I would guess this is because most chefs to mine their own resources though.
I suppose you can try and rely on other players for some of these things, but the bazaar system is practically unused these days and there is no method for remotely searching vendors. You are left with doing all of this yourself or running all overthe galaxy searching for it. I just don't see how I can put all that time into the game as a casual player.
While I don't know as much about other professions, they clearly do not have to go through all of this. It is my understanding, for instance, that doctors really only need a few components to make their healing kits. Why are we being given this hugely complex system?
Chef is no different than any other good crafting profession. The exception is DE and Tailor where resources don't matter. Crafting is extremely complex in this game. While this is a bad thing to some, this is why many people are so interested in that aspect of the game.
Many weaponsmiths have broken out into certain weapons. Like some will just do Melee. I put chef with tailor or architect on the amount of possible items. Furniture is horrible to keep a decent stock of. Same thing with tailor as there is almost infinite number of possibilities.
Because of these, crafting is very hard to do as a casual player. There are just so many aspects to it that it isn't something you can log on for 20 minutes and do a few things and feel like you are done for the day. A combat prof can do this. You can get 2 missions, go complete them and log off.
Crafting is just like running a business. You have to manage the time well. How much time you have is what determines how your business works. If you only have enough time to produce 10 different items, that is all you can do. That is a choice any person has to make. There is no chef here that will be stocking every single item they can make after the patch. It just won't happen. And if they do, it will be rotating items. 20 one week, 20 another week and so on. Noone can keep 60+ items stocked at all time in decent quanities. Factory time is the limit there.
The suggestion about specializing in a few well-selling items is a good one, but it scares me. If Chefs have to resort to that sort of thing, isn't the player base poorly served?
Possibly, but usually there are those that see some aspect that isn't being filled and fill it.
Jennith wrote:I made a 1k batch of aludiums, it took longer than 13 hours.
Try three days
This is post-revamp, I've only had 1 component (Sweet Cake Mix) that takes longer than a minute (64s) in a factory. There is no Aludium.