Development Cycle Archive

Names of cities need to agree in at leasttwo places - the Planetary map andthe shuttleport/spaceport ticket terminal.

Please check this. I forget what planet it's on without being in game, but there's one city that is called the Agro outpost, but is also the Pirate outpost. I think it's Dath, but may be Dant?

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Thunderheart wrote:

Sure I miss the ideas of the farmer and miner a lot myself. ... Brand new stuff is going to be a ways off for sure. I do like the idea of a "resource engineer" though.

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Well, a friend and I kicked around the thought of a miner profession a while back. Maybe you can file these thoughts away for when it would be more appropriate.

-Full-planet survey scans. With the propper tools this would provide a shaded map of the whole planet, representing general concentrations. At novice, it could be as basic as two-color (present, or not-present) in a 5x5 grid over the whole planet. At master, it could be at a much higher resolution, with 5 or more shades (5 shades would be None present, 1%-25%, 26%-50%, 51%-75%, 76%-100%). Also, at higher levels, these more powerful survey devices could sample and analyze microscopic quantities (Less than 1 unit... no actual resource item is added to inventory) to provide the resources stats.

-Remote mining control. At various skill levels, more and more could be done remotely including checking status, paying maintenance, turning the harvester on and off, changing the resource being harvested, and perhaps even (with a fee), depositing power and emptying the hopper (with the use of specialized droids... note that Imperial Probots are capable of hyperspace travel). At the highest level, the operators physical presence would only be required to place or redeed the harvester.

-Lot rental. This would be a game-mechanic facility to allow miners to rent lots from other players. Rented lots would be available for use in the same way your own lots are used, eliminating the need for the player loaning out his lots to actually place the harvesters for the miner. At the lowest skill level, the miner would not have a 1:1 ratio of rented lots to available lots. For instance, at Novice you may need to rent 4 lots in order to increase your lots by one. You could have a 4:1 ratio at Novice Miner, 3:1 ratio at "Land Acquisition II" (or some other skill line title), 2:1 at "Land Acquisition IV", up to 1.5:1 or 1:1 at Master Miner. You could also limit the maximum number of rented lots in the same line, giving you (for example) a maximum of 12 lots at Novice Miner up to a maximum of 25 lots at Master Miner.

-Efficiency. Much as Merchants gain bonuses which reduce their maintenance fees on structures and vendors, the Miner could gain bonuses which reduce harvester maintenance fees and power consumption rates.

Lazarus Long

It is nice to see so much red response, TH. Even ifsome of usdisagree with you, we do appreciate your time.

I just have one simple question. Are "/group" commands such as /group notify loot item, /group notify incapp, group notify death, etc...going to be fixed? "/group notify credits" works automatically.

The lack of an indicationas towho is lootingand what they received seems like a fairly big flaw in group play.

Can we get a definitive answer if any the defense stacking on the pvp templates is changing this publish (6) or when it will be changed? I know the combat balance but it would be nice to know when that is. There is a debate on my server and this would clear alot of things up.

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Thunderheart wrote:

Actually Im a big fan of the miner profession. I wrote several monster posts during beta and fought hard to keep it in the game way back when. Its something that players and devs want alike, but there is a really difficult balance issue to consider at this point.

Miners mine (go figure ). That basically translates into, "survey, place harvester" Sure, there are lots of other secondary skills that could be added to make the miner class more interesting, but their main focus is pulling resources from the ground. As it stands, there is as much resource pulling as the game economy can handle and in essence, its a redundant profession.

There are alternatives for sure, but its something that wont be considered until a lot of other current activities are completed.

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This will also serve to drive up the price of resources (especially if a Master Miner can "craft" some small amounts of better resources by "smelting" or "refining" raw ore and such) and create more of a money sink for the economy.

Think about it.

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Thunderheart wrote:

Actually Im a big fan of the miner profession. I wrote several monster posts during beta and fought hard to keep it in the game way back when. Its something that players and devs want alike, but there is a really difficult balance issue to consider at this point.

Miners mine (go figure). That basically translates into, "survey, place harvester" Sure, there are lots of other secondary skills that could be added to make the miner class more interesting, but their main focus is pulling resources from the ground. As it stands, there is as much resource pulling as the game economy can handle and in essence, its a redundant profession.

There are alternatives for sure, but its something that wont be considered until a lot of other current activities are completed.

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There's so much more potential for a Miner profession than you're letting on. And as for the level of resource pulling going on, that's precisely why the Devs can confidently revamp the system and restrict it a bit more to require skillpoints.

Here's an idea I had for Mining in another thread:

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PREREQUISITES FOR MINER:

I'd like to see Miner be an offshoot of two or three skill branches. Surveying 4 is the easy one. After that, I'd say Exploration 4 because of the prospecting background a Miner should probably have. But I could also understand a need for Engineering 4, considering the options for machinery operation and tinkering.

CHANGES TO LOT ALLOCATION:

There should be a differentiation between Housing Lots and Harvester Lots. All players without relevant skills should have no Harvester Lots, and should thus be unable to place harvesters. People with relevant Surveying and Mining skills will be able to place increasing numbers of harvesters, and will have many more lots than they would currently be able to access under the existing system. Miners will have access to Harvester Lots in addition to regular Housing Lots, and the two will be different from one another - housing and other buildings will never count as harvesters, and vice versa. Current harvesters owned by players without the proper skills will be turned off and be prevented from being turned on again, but picking them up and transferring them to a Miner will be an option. Disabled harvesters should be left in place for 4-8 weeks, in case the owners are out of town, but after that, they should be destroyed automatically. Harvesters placed after the change wouldn't be subject to the timer; that would just be a way to prevent grandfathering of old harvesters.

HARVESTER LOTS:

Much like Creature Handler's Creature Level, Harvester Lots should be distributed throughout the skilltree to reward Miners dedicated to the profession. Here's how it could work, as seen in skilltree pyramid form and in the order of Mineral & Chemical Harvesting (M/C), Gas & Energy Harvesting (G/E), Harvester Technician (HT), and Refining (R):

Master: 15

M/C4: 7 / G/E4: 7 / HT4: 2 / R4: 2

M/C3: 6 / G/E3: 6 / HT3: 2 / R3: 2

M/C2: 5 / G/E2: 5 / HT2: 1 / R2: 1

M/C1: 4 / G/E1: 4 / HT1: 1 / R1: 1

Novice: 3

Surveying 4: 1

All told, a Master Miner would have 75 lots total. I know that many of the current resource dealers in SWG operate many more lots than that, but the numbers I'm putting out are subject to a lot of tweaking and balance. But I think that with the ability to drop heavy harvesters and the abilities to tinker with the output of those harvesters, 75 is plenty. I could be wrong, and I'm sure I'll hear about it if I am.

CHANGES TO SURVEYING IN ARTISAN:

Surveying skills should be reduced to about 80% of the maximum hand sampling ability, with the remaining 20% put into Novice Miner or Master Artisan. Someone with Surveying 4 should get access to a Personal Harvester (not energy) and one Harvester Lot. Surveyors will essentially become prospectors, who go out and sample by hand, and Miners will become technicians who handle mining machinery and advanced resource skills. Surveyors should also lose some Surveying range, dropping down to 300 meters maximum at Surveying 4.

THE MINER PROFESSION:

I see many options for potential skilltrees here, but these are my current preferences:

• Mineral & Chemical Harvesting
  
• Gas & Energy Harvesting
  
• Harvester Technician
  
• Refining

The first two are essentially what you'd imagine in a Miner skilltree - you'd get better base extraction rates, surveying range, and the ability to operate heavier machinery.

The third - Harvester Technician - is a grab bag of performance, placement, and other issues. This allows regular harvesters to be placed in more challenging terrain, allows harvester/refinery performance to be tweaked and "overclocked" (much like slicing), and is basically the tinkering branch of the skilltree.

The fourth - Refining - is the crafting line of Miner. It is a type of chemist that takes existing low-quality resources and synthezises them into better resources using a new type of factory.

Mineral & Chemical Harvesting / Energy & Gas Harvesting:
This encompasses the ability to locate and mine certain types of resources. Each box will of the Mining profession will offer more lots for harvesters, but these two branches of the tree will open up comparatively more (see above), and will offer access to better harvesters with increased extraction rates. Access to more pure forms of energy will also appear as you climb the Energy/Gas branch. Keep in mind that each branch of the tree would be specific to particular resources, so that you could have Mineral/Chemical Harvesting 1 with a 500-meter range, but Energy/Gas Harvesting 4 with an 800-meter range for these resources.

Anyway, here's how it could work:

• Novice Miner - 400-meter surveying range; additional lots; cert for Wind Harvester
  
• Harvesting 1 - 500-meter surveying range; additional lots; cert for Medium Harvester
  
• Harvesting 2 - 600 meter surveying range; additional lots; cert for Solar Harvester
  
• Harvesting 3 - 700 meter surveying range; additional lots; cert for Heavy Harvester
  
• Harvesting 4 - 800-meter surveying range; additional lots; cert for Fusion Reactor
  
• Master Miner - 1000-meter surveying range; additional lots

See the discussion on Harvester Lots, above, for more info on how these would be divided up in the skilltree.

Harvester Technician:
This effectively makes you the McGuyver of the Mining world - you learn how to rig harvesters in unique ways that improve their productivity, usually at a cost to their condition. Hey, let's just call the skill /rig. Much of this is similar to slicing from Smuggler - you take a pre-existing item and make it better at a certain task, sacrificing other qualities like durability. Rigging would allow a Miner to reconfigure the harvesters themselves (and Refineries - see below), adding bonuses like increased efficiency, better energy efficiency, etc. You could /rig an harvester as many times as you wanted, reusing the harvester for different tasks at different time. However, every re-rig would cause a permanent loss to the overall condition of the harvester, akin to a repair kit (hopefully more effective that that, though...). As a Master, you could earn the ability to rig two bonuses at once. The effectiveness of /rigging would increase as you climbed the skilltree. Another bonus is the ability to place certain harvesters on terrain that normally wouldn't be buildable, much like housing restrictions have been relaxed for player cities. I don't think Heavy harvesters should be able to be put on bumpy terrain, though - just Mediums, which would already be a godsend for people who survey and find a great vein of resources up in the mountains. Finally, some kind of a notification system for harvesters would be a great addition to the skilltree, and would save people a lot of time and energy. Anyway, here's how this line could work:

• Novice Miner - Rig Hopper Size; Rig +10
  
• Tech 1 - Rig Energy Efficiency; Rig +10; system notification that harvester has stopped working
  
• Tech 2 - Rig +25; relaxed zoning for Personal Harvesters; system notification that resources being harvested have shifted
  
• Tech 3 - Rig Harvesting Efficiency; Rig +20; system notification that power or cash reserves are at 24 hours
  
• Tech 4 - Rig Refinery Processing Efficiency; Rig +25; relaxed zoning for Medium Harvesters; system notification that the type of resource being harvested is no longer available on the planet
  
• Master Miner - Rig Multiple Qualities; Rig +10

There are lots more qualities that could be Rigged and potential notifications that could be made, but that's a start.

Refining:
This encompasses the ability to blend resources to create more desirable stats. I've seen many proposals on how to do this, but most boil down to being able to mix large amounts of inferior resources into small amounts of high-quality resources. This would happen in a new type of Factory called a Refinery, which would be built by Architects. There would be different sizes that would convert larger amounts of resources much faster. Here's how it could be broken down:

• Novice Miner - Liquid Energy Refining; Refining Experimentation +10; cert for Small Refinery
  
• Refining 1 - Mineral Energy Refining; Refining Experimentation +20
  
• Refining 2 - Chemical Refining; Refining Experimentation +20; cert for Medium Refinery
  
• Refining 3 - Gas Refining; Refining Experimentation +20
  
• Refining 4 - Radioactive Energy Refining; Refining Experimentation +20; cert for Large Refinery
  
• Master Miner - Refining Experimentation +10

CONCLUSION:

Anyway, those are some ideas I had on how to make Mining a viable profession. I think if it were done right, we could make a fun profession, foster greater interdependence, and help the game in general.

I'd like to see your ideas on other Miner plans - I know people have been kicking ideas around since Beta, and this is the perfect forum to try again at getting the profession reinstated.

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http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=csystems&message.id=3413

TH you say Miner would be a redundant Prof. to have in the game but isn't Smuggler the same way? why did you guys keep that in if there was/is nothing to smuggle (till recently with this imperial crackdown update)

Since my question has been ignored...