Doctor Archive

I noticed in the recent top 5 issues for medics, doctors and combat medics that all 3 groups requested the ability to survey for their med components. The same response was given as an answer for all 3, that the Devs do not want to spread the survey ability beyond artisan. So how about a greenhouse structure that we can use to cultivate at least the plant components of a schematic?

The structure would require money and power as any other but also need water. A small amount of the resource to be grown would be placed into the greenhouse and over time would multiply. If money, power, or water levels reached 0 before the crops were harvested the Overall Quality of the plants would diminish rapidly. To keep artisans and their survey abilities in the loop, perhaps a resource can only be grown while it exists somewhere in the galaxy and when there is a shiftgreenhouse ownerswill have to go back to the artisans for new samples.

This would keep surveying a strictly artisan skill while giving the medical professions a way to guarantee a source of rare ingredients if they are willing to maintain the structure. Also this structure would not be only usable by the medical professions and if any player wanted to run a greenhouse as a business they could essentially become a professional farmer and sell to medics, chefs, architects and anyone in need of plant materials.

This is a positively excellent idea.

just a thought: bio engineers could maybe custom make plant seeds like they do with baby animals...

OMG matrix that would be freakin cool !

This is a nice idea, however, there are economical, profession and database problems with it and that's probably way it is not in game now and probably never will be.

Economy / Profession:

It would be possible to have one truly good spawn of flora last forever under the greenhouse system. Either by continuing to make sure you keep it powered, watered, etc or by saving a sample of the resource and continually reusing it.

You would no longer need to buy more than a small sample of good flora you want, killing the resource gatherers / surveyors. And in general. Harvesters also work fine in game as is, the only issue is a dependency on another profession (or taking it ourselves) to survey for a resource. There are no rare spawns of flora (altough quality will vary).

Database:

Many, many, many resource will start to vary in quality because of people not keeping up on their power, water, and maint and the database would be filled with what was originally one type of resource but is now an extra thousand or so on each server. The problem only gets worse when you sell/trade it. This would cause greater server slow downs.

The problems listed above is one reason Farmers (the profession) was removed (the other being SOE felt there would be a lack of interest). Farms basically did what you want with animals for products like Meat, Hide, Bone and Milk (lol).

Trust me, I would love this, but it's just not realistically going to happen. I really would like to keep my 950+++ multi-stat resources forever, but that'd be messed up.

Oh, I guess I did not speak clearly on why surveyors would be used less (since you did give a fairly good idea on how to keep them in the loop).

Anyone with only novice artist just needs to sample for it, not find a deposite for one. Also you can share that sample or a sample you grow with someonelse. Having Survey 4 would be disfunctional for the most part. Other professions will ask for the same advantages for chemicals and metals. Those can be justified by saying "You can make chemicals in a lab in real life already", and certainly in the a much more advanged galaxy that would be possible. I honestly forgot you mentioned the "shift" idea where it would have to exsist in the galaxy though is why I thought they'd last forever - I will assume you mean they exsist naturally too. =) You made a good solid post!

Alioninwinter, thanks for looking for the holes in the greenhouse, that’s the best way to develop ideas. Making the resources only viable for cultivation during a specific shift would hopefully reduce database clutter but your point about higher level surveyors being left out is correct.

Perhaps a skill, preserve sample, could be added that would scale as an artisan grows in skills. If the amount of a sample affected the quality of the preservation and you added a little randomness into the mix, you’ve got some variety to keep people interested. So for example a novice artisan might harvest a particular flora sample of 100 units, preserve it into 80 units of a renewable resource but with a hit of 50% to all of it’s stats. A master might be able to preserve the same quality with only a few units but with a larger sample could come close to the full stats of the sample, and loose less units in the preservation process also. Might also throw in a crafted device required to do the preservation just to add a few more variables into the equation.

Then Docs and others could shop around for the best quality preserved samples for their greenhouses but would buy from lower level artisans in a pinch or if the quality was there. Add to that the larger initial amount used to start the growing process the better the results, and you still have a need for harvesters or die-hard surveyors who will sample the same spot for a good amount of time. All of this is starting to sound like a whole farming system now that will probably never get looked but I like the challenge of trying to develop ideas like this for fun.

BTW theMattrix’s Bio-engineered seeds idea is really cool also, and much simpler. I’d like to see something like that get added also and I bet the BEs would love it.

This sounds like a great idea and the BE bio engineered seeds would be helpful. My question is this what type output would you expect from a green house. I do not think its likely that a green house will pump out thousands of units a day. Maybe it can be made to work while the resource has spawned and when the spawn shifts you collect what has been produced at a maximun of lets says 2k units. A green house in my opinion woudl be used to make personal use flora for meds. This way the harvestors still remain in play people can still harvest massive amounts of a resource for resale.

The way I was thinking it would work would be based on the amount put in to the greenhouse in the first place, kind of like gathering interest on money in the bank. So maybe it's got a total capacity of 5K or so and based on the quality of construction can add somewhere betewwen 10-20% a day if properly maintained. So one owner might drop 100 units each of 5 different flora items, gain 10 units the first day, 11 the second etc, and run each till the resources shift. Another guy drops 1 4500 stack of a single resource in, makes 450 the first day, then the greenhouse is full.

But your idea that the resource cannot be collecteduntil a shift occurs is VERY cool. Then this structure really does become more like a bank, saving good resources for the future. It also adds to the randomness and guessing since we never know how long a resource will last. In first example above having to wait to withdraw each resource means that there is a chance small amounts will compound very well over time. One of those 100 unit stacks might have doubled to 200 over 8 daysand anylonger that the resource doesn't shift it really starts to compound and grow well. In the second example if the resource shifts soon the guy has made a good 450 extra for a few days maint and water, but if the resource takes a long while to shift he could be waiting a long while to collect. Interesting.

Awsome Idea!

Hmm, maybe they could bring back the miner profession and combine it with a farmer profession or somehitng like your idea as an elite for survey 4. I don't see this as a doctor thing. I really like the idea however.