Architect Archive

We need a standard of reference for all architects!

Our economy sucks because of losers selling our stuff at super-discounted prices!

Currently we can only sell things for 3creds/unit because ppl get scared when they see high prices.

Right now prices are as follows:

7k-12k - Small houses

40k-80k - Medium houses

75k-170k - Large Houses

20k-45k - Factories

10k-35k -Medium Mineral and Flora harvesters

12k-35k -Solar Power generators

30k-50k - Gas and Chemical Medium Harvesters

It's about 2x as much for heavy installations.

200k-450k - Guild Hall

Furniture is good as it stands.

These price ranges are far too LARGE.

We architects need to come to a compromise on these prices. It's hard for us to sell and make a profit anymore unless we sell things for ridiculous prices, and people won't buy them.

5 credits/unit might not be too much of an increase but we really need to come to a compromise on this. Our economy is at stake.

I see weaponsmiths selling their items for 10creds/unit and the same with tailors,armorsmiths, and many other professions. Please, we will all be much happier people for this.

Please don't flame me about this. I know we can always set up harvestors but, weaponsmiths and etc. can also do this but still charge 10creds/unit. The future of SWG economy is at stake here.

If you aren't an architect, don't flame us at all.

I will let everyone discuss this for a while before I post and will bump it if it needs bumping. Please speak maturely, thank you.

This is not a new problem and you are not the 1st one to try to solve it Our prices are the way they are for a lot of reasons, but mainly because of undercutting, some by legitimate players, others by people that have duped the heck out of resources. Either way our profession is going through a tough time and will continue to do so until SOE puts in some sort of structure decay or something similar. One bright light at the end of the tunnel is that SOE is fixing dupes and bugs left and right, and a lot of master Architects are going other routes, so there is less competition.

I don't there is there anything to "solve."

All I can say is welcome to the free economy, something which SWG has done very well to produce.

I recommend that instead of determining your prices by some rigid formula, choose your price based upon what the market can bear. You will find that you will increase profits and have return customers. In the alternative, if you insist on maintaining higher prices then the current market rate, youmay find that you do not have any business. This is simply the rules of a free-economy.

Price-fixing and the ideas you suggest will only result in other architects coming in and steeling the market from those who insist on maintaining some artificial price.

I would strongly recommond you read The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (please correct me if I have the title wrong, it has been several years since Econ I) a brilliant guide to economies such as the one we have created in the Star Wars Universe.

Another alternative, if you do not like the profit margin of architects, change careers.

Jarib Swabo(OMNI) - Kadaara, Naboo, Tempest (5300,6100)

"Set the Gearshift into the high-gear of your soul."

So far, architects (novice & master) charge what they feel like on their structures, and if that means selling structures for LESS than what they could sell the resources for straight out, itwill continue. No discussion will enlighten them on the error of their ways. Some are guild backed and will never have a care, some independents will find out the hard way and soon tire of it. I normally price at 4cr/unit for equipment/houses.

I agree with a poster above, set your prices as high as the market will bear. I charge a lot for my furniture...I feel like a weaponsmith! I have a great location, and I selll a lot! I raised the prices because I was tired of restocking the vender multiple times a day. I just now restock items once a day, but make more than enough to pay the bills and then some. I am actually getting a little time now to do more than restock aand check harvesters. Of course, with all the mini-resource shifts, I am spending more time surveying than I would like.

If I sell any lower I am out of the archiotect business - on Tempest the Resources are selling for 3k a unit so I have to sell for 3.5 and still cannot sell anything the same thing for furniture - everyone wants to sell high the resources but pay cheap for the end product

A no win scenario.

I posted this in another thread - but here's the deal, folks. You still make profit even selling it less than 1:1 or even 3:1 of resources.

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I wouldn't necessarily agree that undercutting is defined as cheaper than what you could sell the resources for. Undercutting, to me, means selling it for less than what it cost me to make.

It costs you money to harvest your resources. Credits and energy (and the credits for the energy harvs) to pump into those things so you get a workable resource to craft things. Granted, if you're smart about it - you find decent veins so that your expenses are minimal (a target of .1 to .3 credits per resource unit to harvest).

For example, I have a fusion generator on an 80% radioactive vein that is also a high enough PE to give me 2 for 1 (for every 1 unit of radio, I get 2 energy). This is very good. It means my cost to harvest this stuff is only .09 credits per radioactive unit. If you consider that it's worth 2 energy, that can theoretically drop it to only .045 credits per unit. Huge margin. Even if I sell the stuff at 1 credit for 1 unit, it's a slaugher of 10:1 to 20:1 profit (essentially, the 80% becomes around 13k of radio a day - it takes me 1400 to keep going daily, and selling that at a pure 1:1 is still a 10x profit).

Anyhow, with that in mind, we add into the fact that we use that energy to fuel our harvesters. Mine? A few heavies on a 65% ore vein. Now, that's 2160 credits and 1800 energy daily (per harv) to keep going. Energy, we have in spades and well below the 1:1 mark, so we can effectively remove that from the equation - but we're keeping it in to keep the numbers solid. This turns out to bring in 6500 or so units of ore daily per harvester. The "break even" sale price of just selling this ore, would end up being 0.3:1. Meaning, I could sell 3 units of ore for 1 credit, and break even. I'd be earning my costs to keep this all going - even steven. The more richer the veins you find, the lower your cost-per-unit to harvest go down. It definitely pays to find rich veins.

Anything more than that is pure profit. If I were to sell that ore at a full 3:1 price, I'd be making about 10x profit on the ore (since it only costs me 1/3 of a credit per unit to harvest).

Now that we know what it costs to pull all this crap up outta the ground - that can directly apply to how much it costs for us to whip this stuff up into deeds. Let's take a hypothetical example that I have a deed that takes 10,000 units of ore (and that's all) to make. Well, it'd cost me (considering the formula above, that it takes 1 credit to mine 3 units) only 3.333k to break even with this 10k-ore using deed. Anything more than that - is profit.

I know it seems wonky, but yes - those 10k unit using deeds can be sold at less than a 1:1 price, and still make profit. If you spread yourself out (as an architect) wisely in your resource mining, you'll do well. Typically this means 60% of your mining is ore, 20% is steel, 10% is copper/gas, and 10% is alum/chem. (Rotating the chemical and alum, and the copper/gas to gather up stocks of them - a day or so on chemical, then let it run for the rest of the time on alum - same thing for copper/gas). We don't use alot of chemical or gas, so it doesn't make sense to have it dedicated. Gather up a bunch, turn it into our generator turbines we need (gas situation).

Anyhow, with that all said - another thing comes into play. If you're all heavy harvesters - it gets expensive to keep this stuff going on a daily basis. You need to sell enough to keep your harvesters running, if you're turning the resources into deeds. Add up all the harvs and the cost for maintenance, and make sure you're selling enough to keep that going - and still make a profit.

Example - it takes me about 25-30k of money, and 20k of energy daily to keep my harvesters going. I need to make sure that I sell the equivelent of that to keep it all in the profit. It doesn't mean sell something worth 30k daily - it means - if I sell a coupla large houses each week, or some large harvesters - I'm making a profit. If I only sell two small houses the whole week - I'm losing money.

It also pays to gather up resources for a few days and turn that all into factory-crate items (turbine engines, ore mining units, fluidic pumps, harvesting/manf mechs, etc) - so you have a stockpile of those goods when it comes time to get an order to whip something up. Believe me, this definitely pays off. You may not be servicing customers for three-four days, but when someone walks in your door and wants four large harvesters ASAP, and will pay well (has happened to me more than once), you're ready and raring to go. But that is a whole other issue.

Well, all that said? Even though selling less than 1:1 is still turning a profit? I won't sell for less than 3:1 to anyone except repeat customers. There's profit - then there's a profit margin. If I'm earning +15 credits a week - yeah, that's profit - but not enough to keep me interested. The customer does pay for the time and energy it takes me to make sure my harvs are working, and whip the deeds up into something useful.

I wouldn't necessarily agree that undercutting is defined as cheaper than what you could sell the resources for. Undercutting, to me, means selling it for less than what it cost me to make.

It costs you money to harvest your resources. Credits and energy (and the credits for the energy harvs) to pump into those things so you get a workable resource to craft things. Granted, if you're smart about it - you find decent veins so that your expenses are minimal (a target of .1 to .3 credits per resource unit to harvest).

For example, I have a fusion generator on an 80% radioactive vein that is also a high enough PE to give me 2 for 1 (for every 1 unit of radio, I get 2 energy). This is very good. It means my cost to harvest this stuff is only .09 credits per radioactive unit. If you consider that it's worth 2 energy, that can theoretically drop it to only .045 credits per unit. Huge margin. Even if I sell the stuff at 1 credit for 1 unit, it's a slaugher of 10:1 to 20:1 profit (essentially, the 80% becomes around 13k of radio a day - it takes me 1400 to keep going daily, and selling that at a pure 1:1 is still a 10x profit).

Anyhow, with that in mind, we add into the fact that we use that energy to fuel our harvesters. Mine? A few heavies on a 65% ore vein. Now, that's 2160 credits and 1800 energy daily (per harv) to keep going. Energy, we have in spades and well below the 1:1 mark, so we can effectively remove that from the equation - but we're keeping it in to keep the numbers solid. This turns out to bring in 6500 or so units of ore daily per harvester. The "break even" sale price of just selling this ore, would end up being 0.3:1. Meaning, I could sell 3 units of ore for 1 credit, and break even. I'd be earning my costs to keep this all going - even steven. The more richer the veins you find, the lower your cost-per-unit to harvest go down. It definitely pays to find rich veins.

Anything more than that is pure profit. If I were to sell that ore at a full 3:1 price, I'd be making about 10x profit on the ore (since it only costs me 1/3 of a credit per unit to harvest).

Now that we know what it costs to pull all this crap up outta the ground - that can directly apply to how much it costs for us to whip this stuff up into deeds. Let's take a hypothetical example that I have a deed that takes 10,000 units of ore (and that's all) to make. Well, it'd cost me (considering the formula above, that it takes 1 credit to mine 3 units) only 3.333k to break even with this 10k-ore using deed. Anything more than that - is profit.

I know it seems wonky, but yes - those 10k unit using deeds can be sold at less than a 1:1 price, and still make profit. If you spread yourself out (as an architect) wisely in your resource mining, you'll do well. Typically this means 60% of your mining is ore, 20% is steel, 10% is copper/gas, and 10% is alum/chem. (Rotating the chemical and alum, and the copper/gas to gather up stocks of them - a day or so on chemical, then let it run for the rest of the time on alum - same thing for copper/gas). We don't use alot of chemical or gas, so it doesn't make sense to have it dedicated. Gather up a bunch, turn it into our generator turbines we need (gas situation).

Anyhow, with that all said - another thing comes into play. If you're all heavy harvesters - it gets expensive to keep this stuff going on a daily basis. You need to sell enough to keep your harvesters running, if you're turning the resources into deeds. Add up all the harvs and the cost for maintenance, and make sure you're selling enough to keep that going - and still make a profit.

Example - it takes me about 25-30k of money, and 20k of energy daily to keep my harvesters going. I need to make sure that I sell the equivelent of that to keep it all in the profit. It doesn't mean sell something worth 30k daily - it means - if I sell a coupla large houses each week, or some large harvesters - I'm making a profit. If I only sell two small houses the whole week - I'm losing money.

It also pays to gather up resources for a few days and turn that all into factory-crate items (turbine engines, ore mining units, fluidic pumps, harvesting/manf mechs, etc) - so you have a stockpile of those goods when it comes time to get an order to whip something up. Believe me, this definitely pays off. You may not be servicing customers for three-four days, but when someone walks in your door and wants four large harvesters ASAP, and will pay well (has happened to me more than once), you're ready and raring to go. But that is a whole other issue.

Well, all that said? Even though selling less than 1:1 is still turning a profit? I won't sell for less than 3:1 to anyone except repeat customers. There's profit - then there's a profit margin. If I'm earning +15 credits a week - yeah, that's profit - but not enough to keep me interested. The customer does pay for the time and energy it takes me to make sure my harvs are working, and whip the deeds up into something useful.

I've stopped selling installations, houses, furniture, etc., unless people ask me specifically to craft something for them. Instead, I've turned to mining and selling the resources "raw." I've done this because, on Flurry anyway, most people already have all the installations, etc, they need or want. I get about one request every two weeks for a harvester, etc. But then I'm a casual player, online for only about an hour or two several days a week. However, nonarchitect artisans are always on the lookout for the resources they need to craft their weapons, armor, clothes, droids, etc.

Unfortunately, some miners (like the guy who lives next door to me!) are now starting to sell resources for 2 credits per unit, so even here the profit margin is becoming lower and lower.

I have no solution to offer. Am waiting for advancements in the game (City Planner, etc.), which may change things for the better. I may create anew, second,character (NOT an architect) on a different server in order to stave off boredom.

Jae Alinn, Master Architect

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MadGrass wrote:

Right now prices are as follows:

<edit out prices>

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I *wish* I could get the prices you had up there.

I had a guy ask me (on Radiant) if I had any medium naboo houses for sale, and for what price. I said 70k, to which he responded "whoa! 75k? Man where do you get prices like that...too rich for my blood man..."

?!?!?! Heck, 75k is a **edit** fine price, barely a profit if I were to buy the resources to make it, and he thinks I am gouging him?! This is because of so many undercutters, who don't understand the premise that if you undercut a little, that is healthy competition, but if you undercut a lot, you are laying the groundwork for a ruined economy for your tradeskill later on down the road.

The quick cred they make serves to undermine the whole structure of what architects do. And to make matters worse, unless the person needs an upgrade in size, architects dont get the repeat customers like a weapon smith or armor smith does. Once they have that house, factory and set of heavy harvesters they want, they are done with you. You have made all the cred you are going to make with that person.

I have never sold anything at a loss. In fact I have sold everything at more than 200% profit, usually more like 400%. I just sell for a little less than some of you do.

And I agree that no ammount of discusion will ever enlighten the overpriced.

MadGrass,

I am on Eclipse... which has a VERY mature economy (relatively).

I sell for higher prices than any of those you listed.

I run 20 heavy harvesters directly, and additionaly purchase 100's of K of material from miners each week.

I can barely keep up with demand.

While obviously price has an impact, so do many other factors in the sucess of a business.

Focus on what you are good at (building), and work withpeople who provide skills in the areas you are weakin (possibly sales and marketing). It's they way real world businesses succeed, and it works here too.

Jae,

The fact that a miner has reduced his prices can be a good thing for you.

You may not be able to sell your resources for as much, but you can now buy materials for architecting at a lower cost. So as a miner you would lose a bit, but you gain as an architect.

A lower purchased material price means you can lower your finished structure prices and still maintain your desired profit margin.

If you are mining all of your own raw materials to use in your own structures it has no direct impact on you.

I find it really interesting how market changes in SWG differ from market changes in the real world.

In the real world a glut ( as weare now enteringin SWG ) would have been felt first at the resource level. But in SWG it was felt first at the most expensive level. PA halls and Houses, and then trickling back to resources. ( even more interesting that it was actually first felt at the small house level, but that may be due to the halving of mission payouts )

Not really what I expected, I knew prices would drop, they had too, but I truly expected to see it in resources first.

I am glad to see that resources are now starting to follow houses though. I mean how long could 3 cpu stand up to the fact that the finished product was often selling for less than that? There would come a time when no one ( in their right mind ) would buy the resource at that price and then prices would HAVE to plummet.

The one mistake I made in my expectations ( and I have noticed this for a while now ) is that the high end fell first and the resources are starting to fall last.

Not what I thought would happen. ( but then I am no expert )

But in retrospect it makes sense, as the demand slowed at the highest level first.

Not all of this has played out yet, it is just begining now.