Architect Archive

I am a Master Architect on the Scylla server. I charge 5 credits per resource for all structures. I don't do much business, and that doesn't bother me one bit. It simply isn't worth my time to feed my harvesters, produce factory components, assemble a structure, redo the whole thing because of a critical fail and do all of this for less then 5 credits per resource when I can sell the resources for 3 credits per. Ore I can't purchase most of the time for much less then 5 or 6 credits per. So if someone wants a structure, then I'll be happy to make it for them at 5 credits per, if they shop around they can get it for much less, and that's fine by me. SWG is a deep game and there are numerous other activities that I can occupy my time with other then spending my time making items that I could sell the raw materials for more then the price of an object it's taken me days to harvest resources for and hours to complete. Had one guy tell me he could get a large house for 30k when I quoted him my price. Since it takes 37,344 resources to make a large house, the architect selling that house can't even pay for his harvesters at the price he's charging. He's not only giving it away, he's paying to have someone take it from him. I don't get it.

Most people laugh at me when I quote them a price and I tell them how I calculate my price and some of them say that sounds reasonable (and go find someone selling them for 1 or 2 credits per resource) and some of them say I'm a moron and I won't ever sell anything. And if I don't, that's fine. I provide my guild with structures at no cost and that is why I became an architect to begin with.

I do have to agree with people who say that it is kind of unfair that other professions are able to sell their items for a much greater per resource price. My girlfriend is a Master Tailor and sells at 10 credits per and is often told she's underpriced. The thing is people don't blink when they have to spend 1 or 2k, but when you quote something over 100k to them they choke.

The final factor is that there is a limited market for structures. New people will be always coming into the game, but that will be a relatively slow trickle. So until these things start decaying the architect profession is really a dead end anyway.

You guys have just inspired me to charge more...I think im gonna cry....

It's totally legal and I have been at a giant loss for these houses I had 300k to start and now am thriving to survive I need to bring up my prices until I can afford living again. 4 cr/u should do just fine

"Ill sell you the materials at the price you are willing to pay for the house, and you can go live in that."

hahahahaa, thats a good one

Heh, set your prices as you want, if you are perfectly happy doing work and selling stuff rather than making more by selling the resources, more power to you

Ive made my living off architecting, and err well it would take me a few months to run out of money now.. not even having to sell resources to support myself.. So I just let them BUILD up if i get no orders for a while

And whoever keeps commenting on this 'declining market blah blah thts why i sell low' arent you giving up a bit quick? As you can see from these boards the market is NOT DEAD yet... yet i say... so why on earth charge prices for stuff you make like it IS dead already? Your glass is always half empty i guess

On the price of resources -Now the price for any perticular resource does vary quite a bit. Some that are low OQ and not in demand simply won't sell well. Those resources tend not to be harvested much and if they are harvested, it is by people who either don't know or don't wish to move their harvesters and work at mining. Those resources tend to be used by grinders and sell for a low price. There are other resources that have high OQ, CN, UT whatever that make them very desirable. When they go out of shift they tend to sell upwards for 10cr/u. Now for 90% of the other resources out there, it is 3cr/u. Sometimes it is 3.5cr/u, sometimes it is 2.5cr/u. The overall average cost on most servers for most resources is 3cr/u.

If you are getting 90% radioactives with a PE of 1000 and on a 90% ore spot, then the power and maintenance costs for harvesting that resource will be low. The finding of both of those and the luck it takes to get both of those is worth something, that being the extra profit you get from reduced mining costs. If you are pulling form a 40% spot or a 90% spot the going rate is still averaged out to be 3cr/u. There is more to the cost of mining than power and maintenance that is .2cr/u under ideal conditions and 1cr/u under poor conditions. The market takes into account the average maintenance fees, power costs, travel costs, bazaar/vendor fees, cost of the harvester to get said resources and most importantly the labor it takes to get those resources and then sell them. 3cr/u is the average aggreed cost. Supply and demand still take hold and that price may go up or down on an individual basis.

Now that the 3cr/u point is clear, and I hope it is even though people can aggrue this all day with uncommon antidotal examples. With that said, Dayln I am not sure which schematics you use, but mine call for a lot of different minerals, gases and chemicals. They also call for a lot of of these resources. Running to the bazaar for the going rate on this resource or that resource is pointless. I use a lot of resources so staticially it is safe to assume that 3cr/u is what those raw resources are worth. What it cost for you to mine is irrelivent, that is you as a minner not as an architect. This game is designed and works best when people work together, even if you can do some things all by yourself. It is the market price for that given resource that is important. If you are making stuff out of hide and bone that sell for an average of 5cr/u, then you woulduse that number.

With 3cr/u in mind, if you sell below that number, you are losing money you could have otherwise obtained by just selling the resources. Not only that, but less than 3cr/u some how suggests that you make those resources less valueable bymaking a structure out of them. If you sell for more than 3cr/u then your craft has value. Now Dayln you may not believe this, but I do believe your work has value. So much in fact that I believe you add value to those resources you use, so much in fact that they would be worth more than the market price of those resources.

Architects use so much resources for the bigger structure it is very much like selling off 60k of resources in a pretty package. If someone buys a structure from you for 2cr/u, they walk away thinking to themselves "what a sucker, look what I got dirt cheap". They will be your best friend and you think you are building a big customer base when in fact you are getting ripped off be your so called friendly customers. As with all things in life, people are out there to rip you off, even in a game. With so much information on the value of resources and crafted items, how can you not feel like an idiot for selling off your work at an under value rate? Not only are you taking a hit as a miner, but as a craftsman as well. Don't be too egger to please people that don't value your work even if you are still pulling in a small profit. They care about getting something for the least amount of work. If that means sweet talking you for a few minutes, then fine. In the end you do yourself a disservice and the community as a whole a disservice. If you don't care for the term 'idiot' you can use 'fool' or 'misinformed' or any other adjective or noun that is befitting someone that allows themselves to be ripped off by 'happy customers'. If I bought a new Hummer for 10k, I be a very happy customer, even if it only cost 8k to make, cause the going rate is 50k.

With that said half of the structures I do make go to my PA for free. That is a two way road though. I get extra lots for free. I am given medicines and food to sell on my vendors for free. I am given free hide and was greatly supported during my leveling time. No one is being used or ripped off and everyone is happy working together. If you are selling for 2cr/u and getting something back from your customers, then good for you. If you aren't, as many that shout in town selling small house deed for 5k and do sell to people they will never see again, well I hope the exp is worth it. However those prices do make it difficult for everyone else that is trying to do at least better than a simple minner.

Basically if you don't get more than 3cr/u, then don't sell. If you get 2cr/u and exp, well I can see doing that. If you get 2cr/u and a big stack of hide, then you are doing well. If you are a master and just selling for 2cr/u and run round boasting about it, please stop griffing the entire community by undercutting below production cost. This game is designed for the economy to be interdependant on each other. Architects are suppose to go to miners for resources. If you do the mining yourself and then make the structures that allows you to sell at a very low price point, I guess that isn't an expoit but it sure does go against the spirit of interdependability the game economy is based on. It is called undercutting and vertical monopoly. That would fit the deffinition of griefing much like large PAs sticking it to the small time crafters. Unless of course you don't know any betterand allow yourself to be talked into a lower price than what the structure is actually worth.

Dayln,

This is not meant to be a flame, but I think you need to look into a few basic economic principals. These will always end up happening.

Monopolistic compotition is defined as a pricing strategy where the goods have little or no variation in quality or aesthics. That is to say an ear of corn is an ear of corn. In this particular macro economy, there is no diferential between basic resources. In every single instance I have seen, the concept of '3cpu' has been adopted. It was a wide spread price fixing, and will continue to exist. You are rigth in saying it may come down in time, and yes in large quantites ofa single transaction it can be lower, the guys yelling in town are anouncing "3CPU". We did not set this, the market did.

From this you must include this cost into yourpricing considerations. The very fact that you personally choose to ignore this basic piece of accounting is part of the overiding problem facingthis profession. Somewhere along the way, someone cried I will not pay 5cpu for a house. So they found someone willing to sell it to them for less.

Combine that with the fact that houses do not go away, and you have the state of our market.

The fix is easy. Agree to charge a flat 5-6Cpu. Nothing less than half to a quarter of what a bad weaponsmith would sell for.

But that will not work, because of people who demonstrate the same attitude you do.

Lazurk

Soon to be former Master Architech of Kaiburr Enterprises

I must agree with you. I too have adobted an attitude that Architecture just isnt worth it in it's current state. Running around like a madman gathering resources. Dealing with shifts which interupt your supply from harvesting, shifts that render an expensive to make factory schematic useless.......etc. All so some idiot can tell me that the reasonal price of 16k that I quoted him on a medium harvester is too high. Bahh.

Being an architect means being a miner. It's the only way to really stay in business and get resources at a price that you can afford to sell your structures for... unless you have someone else mining for you and giving them to you like one poster says. That's not even being in business, thats being a quild lackey.

I have yanked up all but 3 heavy harvesters and stopped selling all structures except by special order. I accumulated a LOT of resources prior to that. My prices are realistic but higher than most yet I dont expect to sell many. I keep materials on hand to make them in less than a half hour.

Example

Small House 11k

Medium House 55k

Large House 110k

Heavy Harvester 110k

Fusion 125k

My suggestion to ALL architects is to establish a fair and reasonable price and stick with it. Even selling cheap to guild members is shooting yourself in the foot.

There are a lot of things to do in SWG. I for one do not want to have to "work" when I am online playing a game. Mining/architecture/merchant on any large scale is work and too time consuming to sell for less than what materials would cost.

Farradin....Intrepid server

I am not a monopoly and can never be a monopoly, I hold a very few lots, everyone has the same assess to materials that I have. I hold no monopolistic access, nor do I have any advantage that others do not or can not posess.

You are free to buy and sell resources at 3cpu and I wont complain, please do not complain if I ignore that piece of overpriced fantasy and set my own prices on my resources that I harvest at under .5 cpu.

My goal is NOT to just make the most money I can with the resources I have, my goal is to provide my customers with a very competitive product and a very competitive price that also nets me a large profit.
I have been very successful at this working my way to Master Architect and see no reason to change my pricing structure now that I have made master.

If others demonstrate a good positive customer oriented attitude like I do, then I salute them.

I'm not overly suprised by the differing opinions on this. I can agree with both sides of the thread here on some points.

Dalyn, if you buy any resources whatsoever to make your houses and then sell themat less than 3cpu, you might be able to make a profit for a time, but unless decay is added, you're selling a one time sale. Houses for example not decaying could possibly be deluding you into thinking that you're garnering a nice customer base. They might come back to you for other items, but since houses do not decay, experimentation on them is pointless right now. There is no difference between poor quality and high quality atm. Don't let this fool you into thinking that these people you are selling to dirt cheap are going to come running back to you anytime soon to buy another house for themselves. Yes they will more than likely recommend you to their friends/guild members which in turn is more buisness for you, but without decay, it's still a one time sale. They'll continue to have that house until decay is added or they decide they need the lots for something else. And then, are they going to detroy something they paid however many credits for? Not likely. More often than not, they'll give it away, trade it, or sell it to someone else (Which takes away from your earning potential).

On the other side of this coin, is that what you're doing is also forcing others to leave the architect profession. That in and of itself IS a smart buisness move in that once the items are becoming increasingly rare you will be able to finally make up for the lower profits you've been making (If you've been making profits at all) by charging more per resource than the 3cpu which is what most are calling a bottom cpu rate for selling their goods. Like I side, smart, but also risky. I may have missed it in another post somewhere, but I do not know if the devs plan to add structural decay. If they do, you're the one on the right track. If not, then you're indeed contributing to the architect being a dead end (As far as making credits is concerned).

One of the mot basic principles ever taught ineconomics is that you should sell your items for as much as you possibly can. Ethical or not, it is still the driving force behind any economy.Price warsand price gouging does nothing to stabilize the economy which is why in RL they're illegal. From the buisness perspective, if you're not turning a hefty profit doing what you're doing, then your business is failing, period (even if your character can remain an architect indefinately, eventually you will run out of the means to provide houses on demand just from the resources you've stockpiled and will eventually have to resort to buying resources to satisfy the customer). If that happens and you continue to sell at your current rates you will find yourself broke before long and those loyal customers will get impatient waiting for you to harvest more and seek their houses elsewhere. From the economy perspective, even if you are turning a profit, it will have a very definate capacity as far as items sold are concerned ultimately causing the entire profession to dwindle to near nothingness which would then be considered a depression instead of just a recession which is what it currently is in a state of. In fact, the only way to fix the economy for architects at this point in time will be for SOE to add decay to structures. Once that is done, in order to make being an architect profitable will be to never sell below a certain cpu that way the process doesn't repeat and the economy stays stable allowing for all architects to turn a profit by not flooding the market.

Now then, you say your getting a large profit margin, but I do not see how. I'll use a small house for example. If you mine all the resource required yourself and it costs you 0.2cpu, it would cost you 678 credits to make a house. If you sell this house at just 2cpu, you would sell for 6,776 credits. After subtracting the cost (678Cr) you end up making 6,098 Cr inNet profits. Thats only 6100 credits which is 900% profit.

Now, let's take that 6100Cr and take future costs out of it. 6100 -678 (to restock your house that you just sold) leaves you with 5,420 Cr. Now, I'm going to assume that your harvesters are all mining the various resources near each other, and you do not have to use the shuttle or starport to access them, and also that you're producing your own power. That will leave you with only 5,420Cr as a Gross profit for each small house you sell. That makes your profit margin 800%.

Now let's say you sell those resources for 3cpu on the bazaar. That brings in 10,164Cr. Minus the costs of 678Cr and the 80Cr listing (4 different resources to list on the bazaar at 20Cr each listing) = 9,386Cr. Minus future costs = 8,708Cr which is a little over 1200% gross profit.

1200% versus 800% profits.....as you can see the numbers don't lie. Also, I didn't even begin to take into account the costs of maintaining vendors if that's how you're selling them. You're cutting your own throat by selling your houses so cheap. If making credits is your goal, you're going about it the wrong way, and making others suffer by doing so.

Me personally, I sell my houses and structures for 5cpu, but at the same time, I am also doing all the experimentation and using the best resources in the case that decay does get added. My customers are typically more than willing to pay the higher number for a house that won't get nerfed if/when decay is added. I also have no problem doing so and I am turning an 1200% gross profit (my resources are higher to produce because of locations and efficiencies for the higher quality resources). This is equates into making the same profit as selling resources at 3cpu on the bazaar. The only difference is I am still getting xp for it also. Once xp is no longer a concern, I will be raising my prices to compensate for the xp I no longer need.

Hope this puts a better light onto what the others are trying to explain to you.

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Gla1ve wrote:

Price warsand price gouging does nothing to stabilize the economy which is why in RL they're illegal.

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Exactly what statute outlaws price wars?

You mean when Wal mart sells a toothbursh for less than Sears they are breaking the law... wow. What you dont know about business is amazing.

Right, but not houses, not cars not other big ticket and very competitive business. The competition between business that sell those kind of items ( and most others ) is tremendous.

No, there is nothing to explain to me, I understand it very well. It is perfectly good for me to sell my products at very large profit margins to my customers and at a very competitive price.

It is up to me to worry about my business and my profits, I am not about to worry about your business for you. I don't think Ford CEO's stay up nights worried that their competition isn’t making enough profit.

"Hey Jack, lets raise the price on that car so we don’t hurt those poor Chevy guys too much"

Right ( rolls eyes )

I don’t work for you, I don’t work for other architects, I work for my customers. Anyone that doesn’t has the wrong perspective ion my opinion.

Here is the thing, successful weaponsmiths are pulling in 1 mil a day, 900k of that is pure profit. How can they make all that money? Because there is that much money out there to be made. People can afford to pay 5cr/u on any structure. 250k for a PA hall when they are walking around with a gun they paid that much for isn't an issue.

The problem is people are selling too cheap. If you are a casual gamer and buying most of your resources rather than mining because of time restraights, you can not be an architect. You'll never break even because of the under cutters. People that play in a certian style that inhibits others from playing is griefing. I wonder why these great conciderations that are being made for customers do not apply to fellow architects?

Now I don't aggree on resources being 3cr/u. I belive 2cr/u is a fairer price. However it is 3cr/u, like it or not. Anything crafted needs to be above the basic resource cost. Anything below is undercutting. I try to shoot for 4cr/u and often settle for 3.5cr/u. I don't price gouge nor am I a greedy weapon smith. At the same time I refuse to grief fellow architects by undercutting. I do mine my own resources and have PA backing, so I can make a nice profit at 2cr/u. It is called having respect for your fellow player and realize that after all the mission expoilts, resource dubing and credit dubing that there is a lot of money in the economy. If anything prices should be going up do to inflation like all the other professions are doing. All I can see are prices going down.

Who do you want to be a jerk to, the guy with a couple mil in the banking making more money selling resources at 3cr/uthan you looking to by another harvester, or the new player that thinks being an architect would be afun profession having to use personal harvesters and buying resources form the big time miner. I would choose the guy with a few mil creds. Even then my pricing is very fair and I am not even being a jerk at all charging 4cr/u. Dayln isn't the only one undercutting and griefing gamers, so I don't want him singled out. But really what goes through peoples heads when they decide to undercut others just because they can? Is it the attention or the need to be know as the cheapest and therefore some how best architect out there? This isn't a weaponsmith selling at 5cr/u to undercut competition now and still making a huge profit. This is selling belowthe cost for whata lot of people pay to make their structures.

Walmarts practices althought legal, are unethical, specially when it come to estabishing a micromonopoly in a small town. They have huge buying power and get goods from 3rd world countries that pay their workers 1 dollar per day. They use that buying power and low priced goods to destroy the small mom and pop businesses only to raise prices after all competition is gone. I guess it all comes down to what type of person you are and how you want to play the game. Everyone is free to charge what they want I guess, but it would be nice if SoE addressed the price griefing, though they do have more important issues to work out.