Shipwright Archive
Thread: Focus Thread: Factory Support
ravingbantha wrote:I've been SW sine the friday after it went live.. at first I liked the idea of no factories. It allowed all up and comming SW's the oppertunity to not have to try and contend with the guy's like me who had tons of resources and could have cornered the market doing factory runs.Now as the newness of personalizing each and every single item.... I would really like to see factory support. The profession is starting to die out, and to keep it going we need at least a limited factory support...
I still find this hard to judge. A agree, that the number of SWs is declining. But so is the number of active pilots. For my part, I do not experience rising sales. Which suggests, that the decline in demand (fewer components needed by pilots) is more the offset by the declining supply (fewer shipwrights). If this is the case, keeping stocked vendors becomes easier and the need for factories is not higher, then it was before.
So what is the overall experience of the comunity. Are sales stable, falling or rising?
Regards
Niacia
Message Edited by GraySeven on 12-17-2004 07:05 PM
GraySeven wrote:
1. No, but would have voted for support
2. Support needs to be increased, but does not need to be increase across the board. All components need to be factory capable. I like to craft, but no crafter does nothing but craft. To be able to stock a vendor with items would require I do nothing but craft. Its especially important to be able to factory craft items that degrade quickly, such as armor and shields. It makes no sense to not provide factory support for shipwright. Its just another crafting profession.
Chassis do not need to be factory supportable. The sheer amount of resources needed to make the more desireable hulls preclude huge factory runs of them. Its much simpler to make those to order and stock a few in vendors...
Consumables (missles and ECM) are already supported, which is good. Component modifiers are factory craftable, but since I have to hand-craft every component, it makes no sense to have crates of these lying around. Only when I canmake schematics for blasters will I make crates of armor enhancements for them.
If you are not going to increase factory support for shipwright, then you had better reduce support for all other crafters. No more should people have crates of composite helmets or T-21's. The only race that hand crafts starships are the Mon Cal, but I bet they have factories pumping out the Turbo-lasers that go into their cruisers.
When will the Dev's show up and finally tell us the truth about the lack of factory support? Its all well and good to say they have reasons, but until they let us know they are just excuses to our ears. Besides, there are no good excuses for the lack of factory support. Everyone I've read who has been against it are using tired, false arguments that warp reality to make things look bad unless its the way they want it.
Message Edited by GraySeven on 12-17-2004 07:05 PM
QFE!!
Its absolutely stupid to not have factory support. People wonder why many SW are highly priced. Well, I can tell you that its just not the product they are buying, but also my time. there are other more important things to do in the game rather than sit in your shop and click buttons all day. This is an absolute death blow to the SW profession. anyone who says otherwise is either blind, or truly enjoys clicking all day. SWs are quitting by the dozens on my server. Not only is is funny, but the those that are left don't know how to react, the increased business is good im sure, but can they keep up?
There is absolutely no good reason to not have factory support, unless if this is some joke the Devs are pulling.
Any argument I've read here, (and yes I've read every one) can easily be applied to any crafting proffesion. Imagine if your local chef had to handcraft every single bottle of brandy. Its just stupid. no one would want to do that.
If this isin't fixed soon enough, they'll have to up the space loot drops because their won't be any SW left to deal with the nonsense of nofactories. You can still be a personalized profesison. people are going to need custom orders all the time.
The only reason I'm still a SW is because I've invested everything into it, and I have hope that the SoE SW Dev team dedicated to thiswill unmerge their heads from their a$$, and friggen treat this potentially awesome profession fairly.
Message Edited by Homper on 12-17-2004 08:12 PM
Admittedly, it can be a pain to spend an hour or two standing in front of a crafting station to restock your vendor (though I don't see this as being too outrageous a condition for what is supposed to be a crafting profession). I do see how the use of our time in crafting can raise prices somewhat, and it's also clear that, to a starting pilot, it might be a hassle before he can find a reliable vendor with good wares at a good rate--though how this is any different from ANY vendor, be it weapons or armor or food or resources, I can't see.
These aren't small issues--right now being a shipwright means spending a lot of your day as a shipwright, and I suppose there's some of us that consider that a worse state than the typical crafter spending a couple hours a week collecting resources, dumping them in a factory, then unloading crates of product into a vendor. But when weighed against the impact of factories on economic stratification between the richest players and all the rest, with the inflation this breeds and the lack of choice, competition, and personal service that tend to come with it, I think the price we pay as the only true crafting profession in this game is well worth it, one we can't sacrifice for the sake of convenience.
MonsofoLexius wrote:
How about this for middle ground as we don't seem to be gettting there (I am as guilty as anyone in my own thoughts).
- Subcomponets and reloads (missles, CM, etc)- As they are
- Armor - Set to standard limit (1K units)
- All other components to 10
So we get factory support for the items to save some of us the time. We do have to spend the resources of 11 units to make ten as opposed to 10 for 10 for hand crafting. With the number of resources used in many of the items this is a huge penalty.
Thoughts??Suggestions??
A person with a Jedi character, 1 medium house and buying resources could run off 180 components per day assuming it took 24 hours to complete a 10 component run. That's a single person working within the limits of the lot allocation system. Can your server's marketsupport 10 such people generating 1800 ofa singlecomponent per day? And what would separate the 1800 components manufactured by those 10 people from the components manufactured by the rest of the server?
That's what factory support did to Architect. With a single person selling crates of ten 13 BER harvesters for 1 million credits and has 10 crates of each type in stock, along with singles, what need do I have of going to another Architect's shop? The decor? The system is designed with an upper limit on the quality of the product made that anyone with Master and the resources can achieve (more limited in Shipwright than other professions since Shipwright lacks experimentation SEAs). That upper limit once reached negates any possibility for differing characteristics between the crafters. Now the competition is reduced to3 things:
- Advertisement (macro spamming shouts with waypoint info to their shouts)
- Location (veterancy on the server meaning the choice locations being taken already)
- Product in stock (which enhanced factory support would minimalize - negate)
ravingbantha wrote:
To be honest I am seriously considering dropping SW. I hate to do so, because of the potenial it has, but honestly I have a pretty well stocked components vendor and in the past week I have sold a whopping 4 Level 1 items at 6k each. I may move my vendor to my main location and see if that improves things. SW is really getting rediculous in the fact that the newness of space has worn off... and so both pilot and SW professions need some sort of shot in the arm....
Honestly, neither need anything at the moment except a chance to stabilize. The newness of the profession guaranteed an oversaturation of Shipwrights. That oversaturation has to ebb for things to begin stabilizing. One of the factors that will cause that ebb is the current levels of factory support.
This was inevitable from the start. In order for the Shipwright profession and it's market to reach a normal level of production and sales, the number of shipwrights have to drop on their own. Be it through discouragement through the time investment to keep vendors stocked. Or as the fantastic profits can no longer be sustained as the people become unwilling to pay extreme prices en masse. Upping factory support would affect this natural process detrimentally in 2 ways:
- It would make it easier for those unwilling to invest any time into actually playing the profession to soak sales from those who do play the profession
- It would oversaturate the component market, extending the 'dying' period indefinately.
I'd say the best source of regular sales for a new Architect would be furniture as long as the Architect maintained a good stocke of variety. They can hang it up on reoccuring profits from harvesters as there is little variety in those and people have mass produced a surplus to last a very long time. That's what ship components will be with more factory support. A surplus sitting in a storage house/factory because there is little variety to sustain any regular sales for the Shipwright. So what if you carry Experimental Blasters? 20 other shipwrights carry nearly the exact same items and have just as much, if not more, stocked. And the nearness in similiarity means there's no reason to choose you over the other 20 shipwrights. It's simply a matter of whoever I'm closer to.
Rhysen wrote:
MonsofoLexius wrote:
How about this for middle ground as we don't seem to be gettting there (I am as guilty as anyone in my own thoughts).
- Subcomponets and reloads (missles, CM, etc)- As they are
- Armor - Set to standard limit (1K units)
- All other components to 10
So we get factory support for the items to save some of us the time. We do have to spend the resources of 11 units to make ten as opposed to 10 for 10 for hand crafting. With the number of resources used in many of the items this is a huge penalty.
Thoughts??Suggestions??
A person with a Jedi character, 1 medium house and buying resources could run off 180 components per day assuming it took 24 hours to complete a 10 component run. That's a single person working within the limits of the lot allocation system. Can your server's marketsupport 10 such people generating 1800 ofa singlecomponent per day? And what would separate the 1800 components manufactured by those 10 people from the components manufactured by the rest of the server?
That's what factory support did to Architect. With a single person selling crates of ten 13 BER harvesters for 1 million credits and has 10 crates of each type in stock, along with singles, what need do I have of going to another Architect's shop? The decor? The system is designed with an upper limit on the quality of the product made that anyone with Master and the resources can achieve (more limited in Shipwright than other professions since Shipwright lacks experimentation SEAs). That upper limit once reached negates any possibility for differing characteristics between the crafters. Now the competition is reduced to3 things:
- Advertisement (macro spamming shouts with waypoint info to their shouts)
- Location (veterancy on the server meaning the choice locations being taken already)
- Product in stock (which enhanced factory support would minimalize - negate)
Just trying to find a middle ground 
I am for 100% factory support FWIW
MonsofoLexius wrote:
Rhysen wrote:
MonsofoLexius wrote:How about this for middle ground as we don't seem to be gettting there (I am as guilty as anyone in my own thoughts).
- Subcomponets and reloads (missles, CM, etc)- As they are
- Armor - Set to standard limit (1K units)
- All other components to 10
So we get factory support for the items to save some of us the time. We do have to spend the resources of 11 units to make ten as opposed to 10 for 10 for hand crafting. With the number of resources used in many of the items this is a huge penalty.
Thoughts??Suggestions??
A person with a Jedi character, 1 medium house and buying resources could run off 180 components per day assuming it took 24 hours to complete a 10 component run. That's a single person working within the limits of the lot allocation system. Can your server's marketsupport 10 such people generating 1800 ofa singlecomponent per day? And what would separate the 1800 components manufactured by those 10 people from the components manufactured by the rest of the server?
That's what factory support did to Architect. With a single person selling crates of ten 13 BER harvesters for 1 million credits and has 10 crates of each type in stock, along with singles, what need do I have of going to another Architect's shop? The decor? The system is designed with an upper limit on the quality of the product made that anyone with Master and the resources can achieve (more limited in Shipwright than other professions since Shipwright lacks experimentation SEAs). That upper limit once reached negates any possibility for differing characteristics between the crafters. Now the competition is reduced to3 things:
- Advertisement (macro spamming shouts with waypoint info to their shouts)
- Location (veterancy on the server meaning the choice locations being taken already)
- Product in stock (which enhanced factory support would minimalize - negate)
Just trying to find a middle ground
I am for 100% factory support FWIW
Architects don´t have crated deeds.
It is very well possible to get a good spot for a shop, there is always fluctuation in front of Coronet (and a good place is not nessessarily there, but in any well running other shop, too).
Being Architect on my server for some time now I see numerous other Architects having business, too.
And what did factories do to me there? They help me having time for my friends.