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Exchange needs a more powerful Search Engine
cybershadow1
Member Posts: 1 Arc User
Am i the only one who thinks it is a bit useless that one can only search for items in the exchange by name with no wildcards and no searching of the descriptive text.
for people who analyze game mechanics and or require specific attributes within items or duty officers it is frustrating that the search is direct string matching when support for deeper more precise searching would be much better considering the complexity and randomness of items.
it is necessary for players to be able to find exactly what they need by searching directly for attributes. most players don't really care about the name rank or race of duty officers as long as they have the proper skills needed.
and most weapons systems share the same name aside from level and the exact attributes
can we please fix the exchange so that a more powerful advanced search is available
for people who analyze game mechanics and or require specific attributes within items or duty officers it is frustrating that the search is direct string matching when support for deeper more precise searching would be much better considering the complexity and randomness of items.
it is necessary for players to be able to find exactly what they need by searching directly for attributes. most players don't really care about the name rank or race of duty officers as long as they have the proper skills needed.
and most weapons systems share the same name aside from level and the exact attributes
can we please fix the exchange so that a more powerful advanced search is available
Post edited by cybershadow1 on
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purple projectile weapons officer efficient
This should work without selecting any categories or checking any filters. My guess is that the Exchange search uses simple SQL queries instead of an actual search engine. The Exchange search could be improved greatly if they rewrote it using open source tools, such as Lucene:
http://lucene.apache.org/
Anyway... they arent going to make checkboxes for every type of item. What they could do is make a second string search, so that the first string filters by name and the second string filters against description text. EG: name is Saurian Science Bridge Officer Candidate, description search is Efficient. Even that might not work if the records have widely different data structures.
Sadly the game needs so much more work on how it stores and categorizes data that slapping a new ui or engine on search would not be enough.
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Lucene is more general than that: it is not just for indexing HTML. You can use it to index whatever you want, but of course, you have to write the code to integrate your system with its libraries. Of course, it is much simpler to implement a system where each search field corresponds directly to a database column, which you would reference in the where-clause of SQL query. This is like the system we have now, where you select a category and a rarity. You could add more search fields such as traits and boff powers. But why do I have to tell the system what attribute each token should be matched against? Why aren't all the attributes part of its search index?
Really no other word than "pathetic" that this isn't already in the game seeing as how many variables Boffs and Doffs have.
Hell needed an efficent, logical research lab scientist. couldn't find one, doesn't mean it wasn't there just I might of not looked far enough or skipped it by accident.
1. Duty officer filtered search. Allow filtering by faction, specialization, department, rarity, and traits. Let me search for a purple-quality officer with Unscrupulous and Founder of the Federation!
2. Bridge officer filtered search, by rarity, species, sex, and traits.
3. Possibly most important - a total change to how consumables are handled on the exchange, using a model very similar to the dilithium market. Right now, given the combination of a lack of a sort-by-unit-price as a default and the way selling stacks of items works, in order to have a decent chance of selling, say, a stack of crafting items, I pretty much have to post them as individual items. So the way it should work: I search the exchange and find that Alien Artifacts are selling for 400 EC apiece. I ought to be able to post my 50 Alien Artifacts in a single go at a unit price of 400, and, when people buy Alien Artifacts, they pick how many to buy and at what price. The Alien Artifacts available at that price and lower are immediately bought by the player in the order they were put up, and the cost distributed to the sellers.
Said this before but I'll say it again, make DOFF traits into a viewable modifier in addition to the actual icons, i.e. Dlyrene [Efficient] [Eidetic Memory] [Resolve] [Tactful]
Also said this before, also will say again, for the new filter they installed they should make it ELIMINATE non faction matches, not just hide them. If I want to buy KDF colonists but there aren't any priced in the 1-400 price range, then I have to go find the names of specific colonists to check, that is a major design flaw.
Should also make things so they can actually be found on the exchange without hunting all over for them. Some things can only be found under an all search i.e. bonus pools and tal shiar command codes instead of a specific tab, that should not be the case. Some things are filed under tabs that make no sense, i.e. Fleet Ship Modules, why in the world are they under DATA SAMPLES? That would be like having shirts in your sock drawer. No one would imagine they would be there.
It's sad that there's a lot of filters at the moment but only a few are worth even looking at.
BTW does anyone know why we can't buy/obtain an exchange somehow on our bridges outside of buying a D'kora/Tuffli? Established lore/cannon ingame states that the technology is there i.e. the existence of the exchanges on the Tuffli/D'kora, and that the Ferengi (the manufacturers of the D'kora) have a technology sharing treaty/relationship with the Federation (Lore Vol. 26. Ch. 4.). Based on that the Federation should have the technology and should be able to put Exchanges on our ships. Banks and Mail too for that matter.