Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Humbling asking for DE Support to the Architect Community
Kollos wrote:
LukeBorgman wrote:
Someone working for SWG should do a tour of the galalxies and try to buy a set of Crafting Stations rated > 40. If you can't get a set of them after searching for some reasonable amount of time on every galaxy, then work to make them easier to make. Crafters are thwarted my so many obstacles, some inherent to crafting but many created by design and error of SWG. Can we get this one fixed?
Crafting Stations is where is all starts for a crafter.
Why bother? Is there any actual proof that a 43.xx Crafting Station is any better than a 25.xx or even a -10?
A friend of mine performed a series of about 200 tests (a long time ago, so things may have changed) with a -10 station and a +23 station. There was no statistically significant difference.
Pootian wrote:
Exactally!!! I made my self a +23 crafting station and i had more critical fails on that than i did on my old 3 rating one. It got so bad I put my old one back and been crafting just fine. Another thing, some people just want crafting stations, no matter what the rating. Its only the high level artisans that want the best of the best, and they have probally had theirs for a long long time. My 6 functional rating stations sell like hot cakes on the bazaar for 3k each. I dont see what the big concern is.
Wow, I'm speechless...database engineering and programming is somehow suddenly so much easier...I'll be sure to inform the guys down the hall making $120,000 a year doing nothing but finding ways to organize our databases effectively....They'll be stunned to learnthey don't need to work overtime every week...
However, you are right on one thing, database programming is somewhat easy. This was not a database programming change. This was a database engineering change. Database programming is nothing but you go in, you get data and you spit it out...this was a change in the database itself. It is an engineering issue, not a programming. However I will submit that databases are some of the most important and most complicated areas of programming out there...I'm sorry, I could write a 3D graphics engine given no time at all, since I'm replete with my multivariable calculus etc from college. But see, this isn't useful...there are plenty already made. Plus all it is is programming math...its easy. Dealing with people and large, complicated systems is hard.
Ask some college professor, they will tell you "Ooooh, that's cool, and its hard to do...big project, yes big"...ask a project manager in an enterprise level company, and you'll get "I have a pool of hundreds of people I could hire that can do that...I want somebody who can effectively organize data so other people can use it, adapt it, and change it without breaking everything" Everybody in the industry has a nifty little piece of paper that says "I can do programming and math"...just a warning, if you are a CS student or something, it isn't anything special.
The fact of the matter is this was a simple change of moving the database object into the proper schema...to not follow that schema would mean heavily modifying it to fit this one particular case. Its database suicide, and honestly I've no desire for them to be doing that with a game I play.
I think where you are getting lost here is you have no idea the scope change control needs to take in this kind of application...as I said, get out in the industry and away from the school books.
I havne't made JACK as an architect. no one wants to pay what the stuff is really worth. On my server there are people that expect to pay 10k for a 10 BER harvester that is just rediculous. As to crafting stations, I am honest with my customers and tell them that there really is not difference between a -10 and a 43 station. SO...as i said in my original post I sell crap stations for cheap, and I sell them in bulk. I don't really make much of a profit, but thats fine by me I just want my name out there.
Nyght wrote:
Pootian wrote:
Exactally!!! I made my self a +23 crafting station and i had more critical fails on that than i did on my old 3 rating one. It got so bad I put my old one back and been crafting just fine. Another thing, some people just want crafting stations, no matter what the rating. Its only the high level artisans that want the best of the best, and they have probally had theirs for a long long time. My 6 functional rating stations sell like hot cakes on the bazaar for 3k each. I dont see what the big concern is.
Your missing the point here. At least for archys.
Bigger numbers mean they can charge outragious prices for them, regardless if there is any actual difference in proformance. Preception and 'the pitch' is everything.
So consider: You, as an arch have made a ton of money by telling everyone that 43s are the only way to go.
Now you can only offer 20somethings.
The poor babies will probably go broke now.
Database. A bunch of data. One type of data: schematics. Properties of schematics: name, icon, schematic size, what resources are used, WHAT STATS AFFECT EXPERIMENTATION. These should be able to be hand changed to anything they want them to be. if not, they did a poor job designing their database. Throw around some more fancy words and definitions "oh, thats not database programming, that's database engineering..." blah blah... If you can't have control of the data in your database, then you made a crappy database. This excuse of "we had to change those to make it work with this other..." might be true, but if it is, which i doubt it, then they need to fire their database guy. That'd be like me writing a database of phone numbers for my customer base, but i can't change your phone number unless I move you into the "delinquent payment" category.
Databases are hugely important yes and I didn't mean to down play their importance. Something to keep in mind though, now of days it is becoming more common that the db programmer is not down the hall making 120k, most of them were laid off. It is the guy in India making 11k a year. 1 in 10 tech jobs in the US will be leaving the US this year. In 10 years there will be just over half the programing jobs in the US that are current available. I am not a CS student, assuming such a think is wrong. At this point in time one would be very foolish to study CS, at least in the US.
We are talking about two different things. I am talking about a few variables being changed, or in this case code that was copied from one droid schematic and pasted into the DSC. This is completely different than 'engineering' which has little to do with actual programming and more do to do with design. Janitors get the title of 'engineer',so that word tends to get poorly used. Database programming and database design are related, but are different.
demosthenes810 wrote:
Let me play devil's advocate again here....you say that unless a higher rated station can be made than what could be made previously, you can't sell the things. So in the old system, with only OQ on it, the highest that could be made could be made...well...all the time, at least certainly on my server. Tons of top level OQ metals spawn each month, so everybody is making top notch, so once those are all sold...you'll never sell another, based on your theory.
New system, it is now harder to make the best, and the spawn rate of the resources needed is far reduced. So now, a new res could come up and suddenly people can make better, so they can now sell these better ones to the people who bought the older best-at-that-time version.
Yes, the market is saturated with the old 44 level stations...but that will weed itself out. On the old system, there was no hope, now there is somewhere in the future...am I getting lost somewhere here? As I said, the old way was buggy, this is now how it should be...not everybody and his mother should be able to make 44% crafting stations all the time...
Maybe 6 spawns ever of high OQ metals on Tempest, all before Sept 2003.
ONE SPAWN EVER of high OQ/Conductivty copper. Ever.
This is not coming around every month. Thanks to the dedication of fellow players we have our own server specific archive of spawns. I'll take my shotsfrom your opinions. Mistating the facts to a ludicrous degree is another thing.
Fivo Asia
Cafa wrote:
Maybe 6 spawns ever of high OQ metals on Tempest, all before Sept 2003.
ONE SPAWN EVER of high OQ/Conductivty copper. Ever.
Hmm...none huh? Just 2 days ago, I found a spot with some copper 942 OQ and 890 Conductivity. And to boot, it is onan 85% deposit. That is not "perfect" by any means...but definitely good. It is still plugging away.
As far as metals...lol. Well, I just had 3 heavy extractors sitting on a 79% deposit of 980 OQ steel for about 2 weeks. Just ended last night.
It seems you should spend more time searching for materials than you do complaining on the forums.
Armor and crafting stations are 2 very different things. Armor degrades and needs to be replaced, crafting stations do not. The only way to sell a new station is to make a better station. This change effectively ends carfting station production save for those witha lot of the old schematics on hand. Even then the market is pretty much saturated until a better station can be produced on each server. This is in stark contrast to armor that will always have a demand no matter how good or poorly it can be built.
The two are simply not comparable, so don't compare them.
This is not a question of what the developers said or about what DE's have said, this is about what the developers have done. Whether you feel that a good FR crafting stations makes any difference, I can assure you that it matters to the customer. I have had many people ask me about my crafting stations and they inevitably ask, "Is it over 42". I can tell you with certainty from making many many crafting stations, that the droid storage compertment makes the biggest difference in the final quality for small changes. In fact, I was unable to reproduce my highest rated stations with a DSC made from 996OQ metal compared to the 997 OQ that I normally use.
I spent vast amounts of time and money to be able to produce the best stations on Ahazi at the best prices in any galaxy. My vendor is always well stocked with 43.XX stations for 16K. I wanted to point this out so that you will not think I am some greedy architect whining about not being able to charge as much (I also sell BER10 Minerals for 25K and BER 10 Chem, Gas and Flora for 50K, extremely reasonable pricing.)
The issue I have is consistency. I have a reputation as being able to provide a certain level of crafting stations. Not only do my customers depend on it, my competitors routinely recommend my stations to their own customers. The highest OQ metal on Ahazi has been 997, there is no metal anywhere with a combined OQ+Con of 1994 and there never will be. Therefore, new stations will never reach the height of functionality they did previously and I will not be able to provide the same level of consistently excellent stations as I did before. This hurts my trust with my customers.
Coke made a hige mistake when they introduced 'new coke'. Their customers didn't like it and they eventually had to do away with new coke and start selling only 'classic coke'. They made this mistake of their own accord. When they realized they were loosing customer loyalty, they made ammends and changed back. If the change in coke had been due to a fundamental shift in the way physics works, they would never have been able to fix their mistakes and they would be a second rate player in the soda market today.
GenChaos wrote:
I spent vast amounts of time and money to be able to produce the best stations on Ahazi at the best prices in any galaxy. My vendor is always well stocked with 43.XX stations for 16K. I wanted to point this out so that you will not think I am some greedy architect whining about not being able to charge as much (I also sell BER10 Minerals for 25K and BER 10 Chem, Gas and Flora for 50K, extremely reasonable pricing.)
I would like to make it clear that I was just busting you guys chops a bit. I hope you can take it in that light.
What is amazing to me is that this company can make changes that effect someones game experiance this massively and then just sit back and say "we had to do it". No indication of regret. No applogies.
I, on behalf of the DE community, say that I am sorry this whacked your game play so badly.
It's apparent that the developers and their reprsentatives don't feel sorry enough to say so, but we, your fellow players do.
Best Wishes
Nyght