Harvesters (Game Mechanics)
Game Documentation - Harvesters
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Harvester Basics
Harvesters are structures that you can place in a resource rich spot of that will automatically sample resources for you while you're off doing something else. Basically, you craft or buy a harvester, find a spot of land that contains a good concentration of the resource you are looking for and place it. You must then feed it power and pay maintenance to get it up and going.
Anyone can use any type of harvester. If you have the deed for one (see sections 2.3 and 2.4), you can place it, assuming you have the lots available (see section 3). Although any player can place a harvester, the Surveying tree in the Artisan class is required to locate particular resources (see the Surveying FAQ), so the harvester can operate most efficiently.
A-05: PE of 500 or less counts as 1:1 ratio of power : units used. For any PE rating over 500 you will get PE / 500 effective power in your structure for every unit of resource used. (e.g. 1 unit of PE 750 fusion will give you 750/500 = 1.5 units of power when put into your factory or harvester.) Wind and solar have not been seen to exceed 500 but fusion usually ranges between 500 and 1000.
How do I place harvesters? Harvesters are placed like any other structure. Once you locate a suitable spot for your harvester, open your inventory and double-click the deed you wish to place, or select "Place Structure" from the radial menu [ed note- is that what the radial menu says?]. You will be shown an overhead view of your current area, with a "wireframe" outline of the harvester to be placed that you can move around to different locations by moving the mouse. The "footprint" of the harvester will be a square or rectangular block that moves around with the wireframe diagram. Move the wireframe around to find a suitable location. If you can place a harvester, the footprint will become green as you move it over the spot. If you cannot place a harvester in a particular location, the footprint is red. You can click the right mouse button to rotate the footprint and try different orientations for your harvester. Once you are satisfied with the location of your harvester, click the left mouse button to place the structure. If all the requirements are met, the deed will disappear from your inventory and you'll see a structure marker appear where you placed the harvester. After a few moments, the harvester itself will appear, ready for you to use. If you can't find a suitable location, press ESC on your keyboard to return to the normal view, move to a different location, and try again. 3.2.1) Harvester placement notes Each harvester (regardless of size or type) requires excactly ONE lot. Players have 10 lots available to them, so there is a max on the number of harvesters you can place. If you have no more lots, you cannot put down an additional harvester. Harvesters require a flat space to be placed. The larger the harvester, the larger the area required (usually) for the harvester. You'll have a very difficult time placing a large harvester in the mountains or on hills, because there needs to be enough flat space for the harvester's footprint. Some harvesters have irregular or rectangular footprints. You can rotate the footprint during the placement process by using the right mouse button, allowing you to try different orientations. You can move the footprint around quite a bit while searching for a suitable placement spot- dragging the footprint to the edge of the screen will cause it to scroll automatically, up to a certain distance. However, if you can't find a suitable location, you'll have to try elsewhere. 3.2.2) Common placement problems These are some of the most common issues when trying to place harvesters. 3.2.2.1) The ground is all yellow and/or red where I'm trying to place my harvester, and I can't put it down! Harvesters cannot be placed near points of interest (POIs), municipal zones (static cities), or near lairs. If you're too close to a POI or static city, you'll need to move further away. If there's a lair nearby, you can destroy it (assuming you can take it on) or find another location, or wait for the lair to despawn.
Once you have placed a harvester, make sure you have added the appropriate amounts of power and maintenance (see sections 3.4 and 3.5), then select "Operate Machinery" from the radial menu. From the resulting window, you can click the "Select Resource" button to select a resource to harvest. The available list will be dependent on the location and planet you've placed your harvester. After selecting a resource to harvest, you can click "Turn Harvester On" to start the harvester, or "Turn Harvester Off" to shut it down. The "Operate" screen also shows the Base Extraction Rate (BER) of the harvester, referred to as "Spec Rate", and the actual extraction rate, which is based on the density of the resource at a given location. So a harvester with a BER of 10 on a 50% resource would get 5 units of material per minute. 3.3.1) What is required to operate harvesters? Power and maintenance (money). Anyone with these two items can run a harvester- there are no class restrictions on who can own or use harvesters. However, only people with the Surveying tree in Artisan can use survey tools to locate resources. Without surveying, locating a spot for placing a harvester isn't possible, although you could pay an Artisan to find a spot for you, or just place one anywhere, although this probably won't yield very good results. 3.3.2) How do I get resources from my harvesters? Open the "Operate" screen and locate the button marked "Open Output Hopper". From there you can select which resources you wish to retrieve and do so. There is also a button marked "Dump Hopper". This empties the hopper and clears it of all resources mined. DON'T USE THIS UNLESS YOU WANT TO ACTUALLY DUMP THE RESOURCES. IF YOU DUMP THE HOPPER, YOU DON'T GET THE RESOURCES. It's just a shortcut for getting rid of the resources in the hopper without having to fetch them into your inventory, but you should not use it unless you want to destroy what is in the hopper. 3.3.3) Do I have to shut down my harvester to empty it? No. 3.3.4) What happens if a harvester's hopper fills up? It will shut down automatically, and you can't restart it until you remove some of the material from the hopper. Note that hopper size is determined by factors involved with the creation of the harvester, so some will be better than others in terms of how large their output hoppers are. 3.3.5) How do I set the harvester name? Select "Set Name" from the radial menu and enter the new name. Keep it clean or a CSR will probably either change it to something else for you or worse- like simply removing it from the game world. Note that only the owner of a structure can change its name. 3.4) How do I power my harvesters? After placing your harvester, you can access the "Status" page by clicking on the harvester, selecting "Manage" and then "Status" from the radial menu. This will give you a report on the harvester's current condition and status. It will show how many days of maintenance and (if applicable to that harvester type) power are in the harvester. To add power, select "Deposit Power" from the radial menu. A screen will be displayed showing how much power you have on you, and you can enter an amount or drag a slider to select the amount of power you want to deposit. A couple of notes about power- there are a number of items in the game with the word "fuel" in them, such as liquid petrochemical fuel, and solid petrochemical fuel. These are NOT used as power in harvesters, although the wording in certain sections of documentation and descriptions might make you think so. Here are the types of power you can use for harvesters:
The first two are harvested from solar and wind generators respectively. The energy is stored in liquid form in a canister-like object. The third is either harvested by a fusion generator or by a mineral mining installation set to mine radioactive mineral. Generally, using a fusion generator is much more efficient for harvesting radioactives. Also, remember that the actual number of "units" of energy you have is affected by the PE (Potential Energy) rating of the energy you carry. The rule is, a PE rating of 500 or less on a give power resource equals exactly one unit of power. Anything about 500 and the amount of power you can get out of a resource is increased. For example If you have 1000 units of radioactive material with exactly 500 PE, you have 1000 units of power. If you have 1000 units of radioactive material with only 250 PE, you still have exactly 1000 units of power, as you can't go below one unit of power per unit of resource. If, however, you have 1000 units of radioactive material with 750 PE, you have 1500 units of power! The formula works like this: For anything with a PE over 500, take that PE rating, divide it by 500, then multiply the result by the amount of the resource you have to figure out how much power you have. If PE is greater than 500- Formula: P = R * (PE/500) Where P=Amount of power and R=Amount of resource. If PE is 500 or lower- Formula: P=R Examples: 1000 units of PE 750 radioactive: 1000 * (750/500)=1500 3200 units of PE 920 solar power: 3200 * (920/500)=5888 7200 units of PE 114 wind power: 7200. PE is low, but you can't have fewer units of power than you do units of resource. 3.4.1) I have more than one type of power in my inventory. Can I choose which one is used when I add power to my harvester? No. The game seems to take from the stack that was placed in your inventory first, but there is no way of being sure about this. If you want to only use one particular resource for power, it is recommended that you drop any but the particular resource you're intending to use before going to deposit power in your harvesters. 3.4.2) Can I remove power from a harvester? No. Once deposited, it's there for good until it's used up. 3.4.3) How much power do harvesters require?
Note that not all harvesters require power- wind, solar and fusion generators produce power, not consume it. 3.4.4) Do harvesters consume power when not operating? Yes. 3.5) How do I maintain my harvesters? Harvesters are pretty much self-maintaining, AS LONG AS THEIR MAINTENANCE IS PAID UP. Seriously, don't let them fall behind, or you'll regret it. It's much more expensive to repair a harvester that's damaged than it would be to just pay the maintenance ahead of time. If a harvester runs out of maintenance, it starts to become damaged. If it takes enough damage, it'll start sending you emails. If you don't do anything about it, the harvester, along with anything it has extracted and any power left in it, will be destroyed when its condition rating reaches 0%. You can't get it back if this happens, so it's a good idea to keep your maintenance paid up well in advance. http://soe.lithium.com/swg/board/message?board.id=artisan&message.id=20637&query.id=459424#M20637 Q. I've lost the waypoint for one of my harvesters - how can I find it?
A. If you know what resource it was harvesting and what general area it was in then you can try to survey in that area for that resource and see if you can find it that way. Failing that once the harvester has run out of maintenance credit it will start to decay. Once it hits a certain level (50%?) you will get an e-mail to warn you and it will include the co-ords of the harvester.
Q. My harvester ran out of maintenance and took damage. How do I fix the damage?
A. Simply putting more maintenance cash in will allow it to repair.
To check your harvester's current status, select "Status" from the radial menu on the harvester. It'll show how much money is in the maintenance pool. You can add to this by selecting "Pay Maintenance" and entering an amount you want to deposit into the maintenance pool. 3.5.1) Can I take money out of the maintenance pool? No. So be careful! Some people have accidentally deposited millions of credits into a harvester and regretted it. 3.5.2) How much maintenance do harvesters require?
For maintenance purposes, all power generators use the "medium" rating for their maintenance rate, so regardless of the generator type, it requires 1440 credits/day to operate. For all other purposes, such as who can create them, placement, and extraction rate, a wind generator is considered a "small", a solar generator is a "medium" and a fusion generator is a "heavy" harvester. 3.5.3) Do harvesters consume maintenance when not operating? Yes. 3.6) How do I redeed my harvesters? Redeeding a harvester is the process of removing it from the game world and converting it back to a deed that you can carry around in your inventory (convenient, no?). However, before you are allowed to redeed a harvester, several requirements must be met:
Note that if the maintenance pool is low you can still remove the harvester, but it will not be redeeded in this case- it will simply be destroyed and removed from the game world, and you will no longer have the harvester or the deed for it. If you want to remove and redeed a harvester, select "Destroy Structure" from the radial menu. You'll be shown a screen that shows if the maintenance and other factors are correct for redeeding the structure. If all the items are green and you proceed, you'll get the deed back. If any are red, you won't. So choose carefully. If you proceed, the system will generate a random number, usually 6-7 digits, that you have to type into a text box as a final confirmation that you do want to destroy the harvester. If all conditions are met, you'll see the harvester disappear from the game world and a deed placed in your inventory. How much does it cost to redeed a harvester? The formula for the redeeding cost is 50 x maintenance rate. So if you have a harvester that has a maintenance rate of 30, the redeed cost is 1500. 3.6.1) What happens to power and maintenance in a harvester when I redeed it? Power and maintenance remains in the deed; if you examine the deed in your inventory, it will show the amount of maintenance and power in the harvester. Note that when you redeed a harvester, a certain amount (the minimum in the maintenance pool for that harvester) is deducted from the maintenance pool as a "redeed fee", so you'll lose a little bit of money each time you redeed your harvester. However, power is not affected by redeeding. http://soe.lithium.com/board/message?board.id=architect&message.id=62113 When I'm servicing my harvesters I look at their status and see something like "maint - 5 days and X hours" and "power - 6 days and Y hours". I just ignore the hours, and hit the appropriate function keys to bring everything back up to 10 days. So in this case I'd hit the HARV_MAINT button 5 times and the HARV_POWER button 4 times. It saves having to think about the actual amounts - I just want them always to have 10 days maint and power when I walk away.
Yes. There are two ways you can allow other people to use your harvesters. You can add individuals to the Admin list or you can add them to the Hopper list. Being on the Admin list lets people affect all aspects of a harvester's operation except the name and redeeding (only the owner can change the name or remove a structure). Admins can turn a harvester on or off, remove resources from or dump the output hopper and add maintenance or power to the structure. Persons on the Hopper list can only access the output hopper to retrieve resources. To add or remove people from the permissions on a harvester, simply select the appropriate item on the radial menu.
Harvester Types Quote: What kinds of harvesters are there? There are harvesters for each type of inorganic, and SOME organic resource in the game. (There are no harvesters for any organic resources that come from animals, such as hide, bone, or shellfish- these must be killed and harvested by Scouts or sampled manually with the appropriate tools). The general types of harvesters are:
In addition, each general type of harvester may come in several varieties, from light (personal) harvesters to heavy (industrial-class) harvesters. Each type is detailed in specific subsections below.
Mineral Mineral Harvesters Mineral harvesters are used to harvest anything mineral (well, duh). This includes all metals, ores, solid petrochemicals, and radioactives (see also fusion generators in section 2.2.4). Basically, if it's not solar, water or chemical, you can get it with a mineral harvester. A mineral harvester can be used to extract any resource found using a mineral survey tool. These are far and away the most common harvester types, as almost every crafting profession requires minerals of one type or another. Mineral harvesters come in three types:
The larger the harvester, the more it requires in maintenance and power, but the more minerals it is capable of extracting.
2. Chemical Chemical Harvesters Chemical harvesters are used to harvest anything, well, chemical. This includes everything you can find using a chemical surveying tool (see the Surveying FAQ), such as inert petrochemicals, liquid petrochem fuel, fiberplast, lubricating oil, and other chemicals. Chemical harvesters come in three types:
The larger the harvester, the more it requires in maintenance and power, but the more minerals it is capable of extracting.
3. Wind Generators Wind Generators Wind Generators are used to harvest wind energy for use in other installations. The energy harvested by a wind generator is produced in a liquid form and stored in a canister-like object that you can carry in your inventory. This power can *only* be used in other harvesters, factories and so on as a power source. There is only one type of wind generator. It has no power requirements, as it produces, not conusmes power. It does have a maintenance requirement, however. See section 3 for details. In general, wind generators are considered to be the low end of power generation. They do not produce large amounts of energy, but they are suitable for running a few small to medium harvesters, or for low-volume operations. Their main advantage is that they are cheap, as they can be produced by Artisans and do not require an Architect to make. An Artisan with Engineering II can make a Wind power generator, although it will not be a very good one.
3. Solar Solar Harvesters Solar Harvesters, usually referred to as Solar Power Generators, are used to harvest solar energy for use in other installations. The energy harvested by a solar generator is produced in a liquid form and stored in a canister-like object that you can carry in your inventory. This power can *only* be used in other harvesters, factories and so on as a power source. There is only one type of solar generator. It has no power requirements, as it produces, not conusmes power. It does have a maintenance requirement, however. See section 3 for details. Solar generators are a good middle of the road power generation solution. They are not too expensive to maintain, yet produce a decent amount of energy. You won't run a huge fleet of industrial harvesters with them, but you can get some pretty decent amounts of power, if you get some with a good Base Extraction Rate
Fusion Generators Fusion Generators are the high end of power generation. Fusion generators are placed on veins of radioactives, preferably with the highest PE (potential energy) possible, and produce this resource by the ton. Oddly enough, it is also possible to harvest radioactives with a mineral harvester (see section 2.2.1), but this is not very efficient, as you don't have to spend power to do it with a fusion generator. Fusion generators, properly used, are the best bang for the buck in terms of power generation. You can get a lot of power very quickly with a good fusion generator
Wanna be a moisture farmer on Tatooine? Well, here's your chance. Moisture vaporators are used to get water from the environment. Although no one is required to drink water or anything like that in the game, many medical components and craftable items require water of one type or another- the most popular being Talusian water, from the moon Talus. 6. FLORA "Flora" refers to anything organic that isn't an animal. This includes stuff like berries, wheat, wood, and other organics that you would normally farm and/or harvest from trees or plants. Many medical components and spices require flora of one type or another, and chefs need a lot of flora items.
A-3.5: It is dependent on the extraction rate of the harvester in question. The extraction rates vary from harvester to harvester depending on the experimentation results during its crafting. The general formula is: Output per hour = Extraction rate in kg/h * 60 * density% = # units produced / hour Output per day = Extraction rate in kg/h * 1440 * density% = # units / day Example: A medium mineral harvester with an extraction rate of 6 kg/h on a 75% aluminum density will give you = 6 * 60 * 0.75 = 270 units per hour production or 6480 per day A handy rule of thumb is that for a 70% density you will get roughly 1k output per BER daily. So a BER10 on 70% will give you about 10k a day.
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