Droid Engineer Archive

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Pluto9Moon wrote:

This has been by far one of the more positive posts of late. They say that initiative comes to those who wait. With that in mind what we are proposing is something that throws Creature Handlers back into the loop. This also is somewhat of a defeatist proposal in two ways. First, I believe it acknowledges we are combat support. Second, we really cannot come up with a plan if the Devs will not implement it. So it is with the largest fear that we will not have any voice that we put ourselves on the line. We place too much thought into something that will possibly be overlooked or shot down. All that being said, here goes "Corral Plan: A Rough Draft 1".

When I was thinking about this over the past few days, I came to the realization that some of this seemed just too easy. We are asking for automated harvesting of hides and the ability for BE to DNA sample animals inside the structures. In order to incorporate structures we need a well thought out plan. I have decided that it is in our best interest (and in order to make Creature Handler worth something) that harvesting structures should be tiered. Merchants gain the ability to place Merchant Tents at Efficiency 4. I wish to combine this line of thinking with the BER style of harvesters into the CH tree. What follows are 4 types of structures; each coming in a different tree of CH and different harvesting rates (not really different but you will see).

Manger

Gained in Creature Taming I: Basic Domestication

Monetary Maintenance: 30cr/hour (720cr/day)

Power Maintenance: 15u/hour (@2cpu 720cr/day)

Food Required: 1/pet/hour

Animals Held: 5

Lots Required: 1

Shearing Rate: 100% of Animal Base Harvest Rate. The CH has to be conscious of what they place.

DNA Sampling: No

Stable

Gained in Creature Management II: Advanced Organization

Monetary Maintenance: 60cr/hour (1440cr/day)

Power Maintenance: 30u/hour (@2cpu 1440cr/day)

Food Required: 1/pet/hour

Animals Held: 10

Lots Required: 2

Shearing Rate: 100% of Animal Base Harvest Rate.

DNA Sampling: No

Barn

Gained in Creature Training III: Martial Obedience Education

Monetary Maintenance: 90cr/hour (2880cr/day)

Power Maintenance: 60u/hour (@2cpu 2880cr/day)

Food Required: 1/pet/hour

Animals Held: 20

Lots Required: 3

Shearing Rate: 100% of Animal Base Harvest Rate.

DNA Sampling: No

Corral

Gained in Creature Empathy IV: Consonance of Will

Monetary Maintenance: 120cr/hour (5760cr/day)

Power Maintenance: 60u/hour (@2cpu 5760cr/day)

Food Required: 1/pet/hour

Animals Held: 40

Lots Required: 4

Shearing Rate: 100% of Animal Base Harvest Rate.

DNA Sampling: YES

Maintenance is self explanatory. You have to pay to run any of these structures. The power requirement is for the automated shearing module (to be explained later). Some may suggest the rate is too high. Since we are only harvesting hides it is my feeling that this rate should closely reflect current market values. If one puts in a creature that has 100 units of hides as a Base Harvest Rate that is 2400 units per day. Grind Quality anything is about 3cpu. The first creature (or more in the case of larger installations) you place in the structure will cover your costs if it is around 100. Remember this is a rough draft and I do not have numbers available to me on harvest rates per animal. In the scheme of things this seems rather fair.

Food is necessary to keep any animal healthy. It is required to keep animals. If the food is not available, animals will have a base 5% cumulative chance per hour of catching a disease. This disease is only curable by a doctor. Any disease animal increases the chance of any other animal’s disease check by 10%. For example you have 4 food items left in a Manger that holds 5 animals. The fifth one dramatically fails its check of 5%. The next hour each of the 4 animals that will be missing food would have a normal base 5% plus an additional 10% because disease already exists in the Manger. This brings the check up to 15%.

Animals Held was doubled as the costs double. These are numbers that could be played around with to a certain extent. But keep in mind a Merchant can basically harvest all day long at near null costs. This is not unprecedented in game that higher miners will have better output per cpu of cost.

Lots Required is self explanatory but let us append this to read that only one such holding/harvesting structure can be placed at any given time per CH. If you have a Manger you cannot have any of the other 3 structures.

DNA Sampling. See Interdependencies-Bio Engineer.

Interdependencies

Architect: The structures have to be made. These could be made with the same template for resources as harvesters. Maybe there could be a wood requirement instead of ore.

Droid Engineer: The Architect will need an Automated Shearing Module produced by the DE’s.

Ranger: Since the Ranger is the one we are most afraid of alienating, we must with all our might keep them active in this proposal. We are only asking to shear hides. Bone and meat would still be a viable source of income for Rangers. In addition, we are asking that a Tranquilizer Dart be made for Rangers. This Dart would place an adult creature in suspended animation. Adult creatures could only be placed in holding structures. They would not be given a Tame tab but an Awaken tab. This would allow Rangers to participate within our new market. One other restriction would have to be placed that any (baby) could not be sheared. This would provide incentive to buy Ranger goods.

Doctor: These will be needed to heal diseased animals. It is my preference that we form some automated email system to allow us to know if an animal becomes diseased. It would be further beneficial if we have a Doctors List. This would allow us to place a Doctors name on the list to be emailed. Of course, it behooves the CH to get permissions from the Doctor first, so they do not receive unwanted email spam.

Bio Engineer: This to me seems the trickiest of all to implement. I have placed DNA Sampling in the Corral only. It seems that if everyone could do it there is less motivation to get nearer Master CH. What we need here is feedback. If it is automated then is 1 sample per hour enough with 40 creatures in a Corral? That is some 960 attempts per day. What success/failure rate is applied? Do we place an insta-death stipulation such as BE have already? If it is automated then where do we get the DNA sampling module? BE or DE?

In discussing this proposal in the thread, we CH have tried to keep everyone in the loop. Not pushing anyone totally away and trying to incorporate more into the picture than necessary at times. It is a rough draft. It is fair to mostly everyone. Ok there it is, pick it apart. One star it. But offer input.

Message Edited by Pluto9Moon on 04-07-2004 04:54 PM

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Jenden wrote:
This is the reason me and many other DE's I know never stocked storage compartments, the few times I had an order for them I'd just make a limited run.

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By most peoples definition CH is no longer a Combat class, it is combat support. Doc is combat support and sell buffs making them a hybrid without any artisan skills at all.

It would be more beneficial to everyone if the posts could be made in the LINK at the top of the page. Again, I would love to see feedback feel free to talk amongst yourselves here. I will likely peek in from time to time. But the main discussion will be on the Linked page.

Instead of modules, perhaps actual droids? similar to the Protocol chassis needed for shuttleports, you might need to add a chassis from an LE repair or something, maybe other components such as droid brains, sensor packages, etc etc.

I can see zipping past a ranch on dantooine, pikets (or what have you) milling about in a corral, CH,BE, Ranger,(whoever)busy inside working with the animals, an LE Repair puttering about randomly, looking busy with menial labour animations....fixing a fence, shoveling manure, etc etc

maybe have the option of adding more droids of different sorts in order to reduce power use, maintenance costs, add a surgical droid to reduce the chance of a disease spreading (reduce, not eliminate, keeping doctors involved is a swanky Idea), a power droid to keep the power bill down, Probots to chase off predators (or decrease predatory losses.....there's something you could add in)Maybea BLL for no reason other than they're big...maybe pushing animals around

I'm not saying that should be the setup for all of them, but If someone wanted to go really gung-ho on the ranching, they could upgrade from a basic pen filled with grazing animals to a full out automated ranch...

I don't know if it would be workable to add droids to a structure after it's completed, but it would be a nice option to have. Then we would have opportunity to supply parts to an architect during the construction phase, and added opportunity to have some sort of involvement later on in the life of the structure, at that time dealing with the owner of the structure.It's good to be involved in the construction phase, as with shuttleports and the required Protocol chassis, but how much repeat business has any DE gotten from that? once a shuttleport is up, it's up, and that town or city will never need another one.

Now THIS is the kind of thread I like to see - a SOLID suggestion to the Dev's generated from a particular prof on away to add DEPTH to the game!

While there is a LOT asked for here and could be nitpicked to pieces I must say that it stands a good chance of review by the CH correspondent at the very least.

You'll excuse me if I don't go read through the other link, but I don't want to pollute the thread when I'm not a CH.

My suggestion? This could easily become an elite elite prof - Rancher - drawing fromScout and CH in the appropriate trees. Just a thought from the first read-through.