Droid Engineer Archive

I don't think the heavies should be excluded to master artisan, but I'm not averse to the idea that the certs scale up the surveying branch, with surveying 4 giving one access to the heavies.

First off let me say that as of right now I am neither a Master Artisan, nor a master eLite crafter. However, that will change very soon. Therefore on my daily scouring of the forums, I was shocked to see that in the Top 5 list for Artisans, they want harvestors to have certification. With novice artisan and no survey, they want you to use personal extractors only. As you progress up the survey skill tree, then you can use the medium ones. They want Heavy extractors for themselves, and no one else. Here are some links to the discussions:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=artisan&message.id=36994
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=artisan&message.id=37151

The artisans feel they are the welfare crafter, and this will help put money back in their pockets. This makes me laugh, because i believe artisan is a novice profession and not really supposed to be making as much money as the elite crafters that spend more skill points.

Currently the arguments for Certs for Harvestors are as follows:

1. "I need scout to skin animals, so why can a non artisan harvest
resources."
2. "This will help put money back in the pockets that need it, namely
artisan community." I laugh at this one, because artisans will
be in a position to price gouge all customers that want bulk
resources in a timely manner, for they alone can get the most
amount of resources , the quickest.

3. "You have to be certified to use the best weapons, so in all
fairness, you should be certified to use best harvestors."


IF we learned anything from this last image designer update, it's that the developers seem to have an affinity to take "Content" from the larger player base and give it to a small community, instead of developing new content for the profession in need of it. One would think that Space Expansion will yield some new schematics, and a new need for artisans to customize the ships.

If this is allowed to considered, and eventually implemented , i feel one or more of the following will happen.

1. Elite Crafters will now be stuck with medium harvestors, unless
the spend skillpoints on Master Artisan. Kiss your combat skill
bye.
2. For those elite crafters that stick to medium harvestors, they
will no longer be able to be self sufficient in getting resources
They will have to tighten their supply and make less items,
and thereby raise their prices. Or they may contract master
artisans to gather their resources, but again this will add to
cost of items.
3. Master artisans will rule the resource market, charging whatever
the market will bear, leading to resource shortages. New
crafters will not be able to compete because they are using their
slow personal harvestors.
4. People that are planning on doing Shipwright will now have to
spend more skill points to harvest materials. Leaving less points
for some sort of combat build. I can already forcee a shortage
ships if this happens.
5. Some elite crafters will in an uproar over this happening.
Less crafters = shorter supply = inflation in prices.

I understand that the most elite crafters don't usually bother with their own resource gathering. THey get guildmates and friends to drop harvestors and they pay them for what they gather. If this change is allowed to happen, using your combat buddies will be a thing of the past, in terms of resource harvesting. Moreover, many also use static lot swaps to get their needed resources. You should be warned that the artisan community wants they ability of static lots through lot trades elminated also.

If this is allowed to happen, then i call for some more changes in the name
of balancing. Feel free to add to this list.

1. Elite ,or best armor should only be worn by people with a master
combat profession.
2. Craftable items, such as harvestors should now be subject to decay
penalites on death. Heck, we have to worry about our armor, why
not let the artisans worry about losing value also. I know this
will not be a popular. IF crafters need protection, they they can
hire combat types to be bodyguards while they make their harvestor
runs.

In conclusion, after all my ranting and raving here I hope that the crafting and not-crafting community will let their voices be heard. DO NOT IMPLEMENT HARVESTOR CERTIFICATIONS. Harvestors are a tool, and i feel that novice artisan should be enough certification for the use of any of them.

-Ho'mer (FLurry)

p.s. sorry for the poor paragraph formatting. Its been awhile since i posted, and didn't try that hard to make it look neat.

I am a Master Artisan/ Droid Engineerand i disagree with that thread. I do believe that you should have a least novice artisan to operate a harv, however, i do not think it should scale upward. There is a post in one of those threads that makes a good case for why. The reason is that the supply of all resources would go down due to the lack of people able to operate the heavy machinery.Therefore all prices on items would have to go up. The devs seem to track the economy pretty closely so i dont think they will go that route.

I do have to say that its not that hard to make money as an artisan. I dont understand where they are coming from on that thread. Its not as lucatrive as being an armorsmith (which i am grinding now hehe). But i make decent sales on travel packs, vehicles, etc.

Interesting thatyou come in here, to this forum, and repost what I am sure you've posted everywhere.

You should know that a LARGE percentage of Master DE's also carry the mantle of Master Artisan.

Sooooo... I have two questions:

1) How much gasoline should we use and

2) Do you have any aversions to 15-foot tall crucifixes and rather LARGE nails?

sssssssssSSS(:-<

Hehe Master DE and Master Artisan go hand in hand. My factories make more artisan parts than DE parts. Any change to artisan would not affect DEs in the least. OK maybe there are a few that are not master artisans, but not many.

As to the main point. 1) MA is a 1st tier profession. Maybe if they ever add the Miner profession that they have been talking about, then your points may be valid for them. And I would have no problem with needing the Mining profession to harvest resources. 2) The game is already saturated with many many people already using heavy miners, what happens to them? 3) Why would you want to raise the prices of commodities and products even higher? As was pointed out in a recent friday feature, more money is leaving the economy than entering it, we dont need the economy more screwed up than it is.

I don't think the heavies should be excluded to master artisan, but I'm not averse to the idea that the certs scale up the surveying branch, with surveying 4 giving one access to the heavies.

While this would not affect Droid Engineers in the short run, the long term inflation due to a change of this magnitude would change the way the entire game is played.

note: i'm not saying it should scale up the survey branch. I'm just saying I am not oppossed to the idea. The other poster is right, any change that adds certs to harvesters is going to have a massive affect on the in-game economy and should be approached very cautiously. For that reason, I'm not standing behind the idea of certs for the harvesters. I'm just not opposing it. I do oppose the idea of putting it in MA. The resource market would dry up completely if that were to happen, and inflation would run rampant.

Bah... they may as well put the industrialist profession back in and cert harvesters and factories to them

No, I do not support this idea.

Harvester is the main money sink of the game.
It'll be a long time before they do that change.

Most if not all of the elite crafters are master artisan.
Even the artisan only have 10 lot and they do need storage and shop, more than others (loots take less room than factory crates).

What would be nice, is a system like the weapon one.
Everybody can use every single weapon, and usualy do better than without a weapon, but far less than with a cert.

So maybe, something like, if you don't have novice artisan, the BER is cut in half might be usefull.

But at the price the good resources are now, I'm not fond of that change.

As for artisan making money, that's the droid batteries that does pay my bills.

Ack what a horrible idea. It's hard enough to find resources you can afford with everyone having the right for harvestors. With this limit no one will be able to touch resources out there. And as for the most MDE are also MA's theory well I'm not. So I have to drop my combat to place harvestors. Oh wait I have a house so I can sell my merchendise well that cuts the harvestors I can have. Oh now my friends who happen to have a few extra slots that they loan me so I can have the resources to make my droids can't. This is a really bad idea that will only destroy an already teetering economy.