Architect Archive

"wow I charge 180 for my fusions... (5 cpu plus a little more for factory parts)... I might sell half of what others sell but I make the same and have a lot more resources"

My addition might be flawed but don't fusions gens take 24950 units to produce not counting factory schematics? Your charging 7.3 and some change total per unit there Or is the 2.3 the little more for factory parts ....

I think this it isa goodidea that Architects should notlist their prices publicly. Everyone will tell you that you are either too high or too low.For me its best tojust keep it between myself and my customers.

Yeesh! 5 cpu?! Do you really think it's necessary to charge that much? The only way Icould justify you charging that much is if you buy -every- unit of resource you use for 3 cpu or something. I mine nearly all my resources with my own miners, and have calculated my costs to produce 1 unit of resource around .25 to .40 credits per unit. A heavy mineral miner costs me 15k to dig up, so isn't selling at 70kper deed enough profit? I would consider myself highly successful and always have plenty of money doing my job.

500k for a guild hall? What are you trying to be, a multimillionaire?

Just my two cents.

Email Iryu in-game for pricing.

I dunno... I ask 500k for a PA, and I can usually deliver within the hour if I'm online. And because I can do that I generally get 500k. In fact... it's because of my quick delivery times that I got 2 sales for PAs today. One of the customers I sold to wanted it quick, I quoted her 20 mins (I wasn't doing anything). Out of 5 other archs, I was the fastest to deliver, (2x 4 hours, 2x8 hours, 1x 24 hours).

You can usually get what you ask for (even if it's a little higher than Dollar Tree Architects, if you can meet with extremely fast delivery times.

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MonGiovanni wrote:

Yeesh! 5 cpu?! Do you really think it's necessary to charge that much? The only way Icould justify you charging that much is if you buy -every- unit of resource you use for 3 cpu or something. I mine nearly all my resources with my own miners, and have calculated my costs to produce 1 unit of resource around .25 to .40 credits per unit. A heavy mineral miner costs me 15k to dig up, so isn't selling at 70kper deed enough profit? I would consider myself highly successful and always have plenty of money doing my job.

500k for a guild hall? What are you trying to be, a multimillionaire?

Just my two cents.

Email Iryu in-game for pricing.

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Boy - you must have a lot of 90%+ spots...according to my math, on a 100% radioactiive spot and a 100% ore spot (thus paying just maint on the fusion and heavy min, providing your own power), the cost per unit of ore would be .24cr/u - the .4cr/unit is much closer to reality. It takes 63.5kunits of material for a generic planetary guildhall...so your costs for one are 15240-25400cr. A heavy mineral is about 27.7k units of material...so your costs are 6925-11080...

Weaponsmiths have no problem charging 50k+ for a gun that uses 500 resources...if you wish to undercut pricing, no problem...hope that a ton of people start placinig orders with you, only to see them go unfilled because you can't keep up. Supply and demand at it's best.

I did deliver in 20 minutes. Twice just yesterday. I keep a lot of resources on hand (I buy from a good supplier whatever I can't harvest myself) I work on my own, I don't have lots that I'm able to use from friends, I won't pester them with that, they are not miners. I don't have a PA supplying me with resources. I keep all sub components (not only PA required ones) with a minimum of 2 of each on hand (20 of each for structure and small structure storage modules).

My ability to deliver in under an hour for whatever product is ordered is what keeps me going, sure I ask a little more than the Dollar Tree architect, but I do deliver quicker. Sometimes it's not about how much it is, but how fast you can deliver. And, personally, I'd rather deal with the person that will pay me more for my product to get it in a very short amount of time.

"Yeesh! 5 cpu?! Do you really think it's necessary to charge that much? The only way Icould justify you charging that much is if you buy -every- unit of resource you use for 3 cpu or something. I mine nearly all my resources with my own miners, and have calculated my costs to produce 1 unit of resource around .25 to .40 credits per unit. A heavy mineral miner costs me 15k to dig up, so isn't selling at 70kper deed enough profit? I would consider myself highly successful and always have plenty of money doing my job.

500k for a guild hall? What are you trying to be, a multimillionaire?"

To this, I'd say two things - first, in support - not everyone is looking to make money on the architect profession. Some folks (like me) are looking to use architect as a base on which to provide resources to power level in something else (for me, it's weaponsmith). As a result, I either a.) give stuff away for free, if someone provides the resources (I might ask for something in trade for my time, but typically something nominal) or b.) set a price high enough to scare them off (see the second point, below).

Second, in rebuttal - Have you looked at the costs of raw materials? I would imagine that most servers are slightly different, but on Corbantis they range from 3-12 credits per unit (12 for the high quality weapons-grade stuff, 10 for Carbonate Ore, 3-5 for Steel, Aluminum, and Copper). So what? So, anyone looking to make money as an architect would be significantly smarter to sell the raw materials straight up without building anything with them. Now, I'm only at 2/4/4/4, so I haven't built any PA halls yet, but according to allakhazam (http://swg.allakhazam.com/db/abilities.html?swgability=1259), a generic planet guild hall costs 62,602 units worth of various resources. If, on average, a player could make just 3 credits per unit of resource (which is actually a pretty low price on Corbantis - galaxy-wide, mind you - that's not just one planet), he would make an average of around 190,000 credits without doing one single bit of work beyond just selling resources.

Further, having built a few heavy harvesters and houses in my time onlineI know what kind of time and effort is involved in construction on large items (though nowhere near as large as this). Even building a single heavy harvester usually takes me several hours when you consider the factory runs necessary to produce components from a factory(that "identical" tag means a long delay and NO experience for it, after all), let alone put each individual part together. Still, just for the sake of argument, let's be generous and estimate a two-hour turnaround time to build that PA hall.

So... at 70k per deed you are, in effect, reducing the market value of your components by approximately 60%, and of course doing all the work for no additional charge. Instead of a concept of "Value Add," you are instead doing a "Value Subtract."

Heck, if you're this willing to sell yourself short, would you be willing to just give me 120,000 credits for every 180,000 credits worth of material I buy? It'd be the same effect...

OR... if you're willing, I'll just buy materials from you for 1.1 credits each if that's okay by you? That'll save you a heck of a lot of time in building the PA hall, and by your logic you're still making a profit.

Shoot... you say 0.25 to 0.4 credits per unit, and I agree (I used to frequent swgcraft.com myself, and know how to do the math), but are you willing to sell that material to me for 0.6 credits each, or even 0.5? You'd still be making a profit, and I'd have a lot of material to power level with. Hey - I'm getting excited now - send me a tell in game if you're on Corbantis (Yukimitsu) - I'll pre-order 200,000 units of steel now. I'll have the 100,000 credits ready for you when you get it.

I rarely have more than a24 hour wait, my .25-.40 was a guess... maybe its around .75. Whatever the case, the only way I can see you being able to deliver a guild hall in "20 minutes" is if you have a large stock of resources due to the fact that you don't get an order every day, or you have an utterly massive daily ore supply. I don't feel I'm undercutting in a negative way, what do I need to do with 450,000 credits in profit on a guild hall anyway?

well if it took 15 mins to craft I would agree with you, but crafting thatin afactory takes a long time. You need 160 structural mods, 10 walls afterwards, Generator turbines, structure storage device. etc.

Lets say you have more than one factory. So now your upkeep has increased. PA crafting takes 4 hours in factory time alone.otherwise you leave it working overnight and go to bed. either way, its been working for a while and you need to take out the structural modules and turn them into walls. basically you are stuck babysitiing your factories if you want it done quickly. otherwise go grind the walls yourself and tkae your chances with crafting failures.

The time used to make a PA is pretty substantial no matter how you look at it. How much is your time worth?

I generally like to keep factory parts on hand at all times, enough to whip up two of something heavy. So, I've always got at least four fluidic pumps, ore mining units, etc - on hand ready to build. I also am uncomfortable unless I have at least 250-300 structural modules (wall components) in crates, ready to build something.

The wall is the bane of all us developers. I don't factory make walls - they're not that hard to build, and a nice source of XP when having to whip up some structure or factory. With three tools, takes no time at all to whip up 10 walls.

I do use fifteen harvesters, though. Three heavies on steel, six heavies on ore, one medium on reactive gas, two heavies on aluminum, one heavy on copper, and two fusion generators on radioactive to keep em all running. Costs are around 35-40k daily in maintenance (last i checked) and 30k in radioactive - if you find a fat vein of decent energy - its 2 for 1. Can get about 60k energy daily - and believe me - it pays to stockpile your energy.

Anyhow with so many larges on ore (my biggest need) - I only look for 65% veins or better - and still with 65%, I'm only taking in around 30k-40k ore daily. Still, this is enough to whip up a couple large items daily - and considering a medium house or factory is enough to cover my costs per day - and a large something covers my costs for a few days - as long as I sell a couple of those weekly, I'm ahead of the game.

I generally 4:1 my prices, and 2.5:1 my prices for guildmates or repeat customers.

As it stands, I usually take a day of the week and whip up a bunch of factory items. One day, I'll create 20 or 30 turbines, next will be ore mining units (geez, why cant these be crated?!), next fluidic pumps, the next - 200 or 300 structural mods....keeps me prepared for what's coming.

I don't understand why people think their time is valueless? I call them the 'Burger King' architects.. because I assume they are working at Burger King for 5 dollars an hour, and hence think that doing a lot of work for very little is how it should be done. It takes time to find resources spots, move harvesters, make schematics, wait for factory runs to finish .. etc.

My time isn't valueless.. I charge around 135-140 for a heavy.. 300-350 for PA halls.. don't make houses anymore because I don't need to, and yes I have a disgusting amount of credits that I have nothing to spend on. But at the end of the day, I have something to show for my work, and that's what counts.

All resources are base 3cr per unit. Because that's what I can sell them for. Making structures for anything less than that is foolish. If someone doesn't like my prices, I tell them to go find a burger king architect.

waldou,

You assume that I buy all my resources at 3 cpu, which I don't.

Secondly, the topic started on Starsider, not Corbantis. My numbers were coming from Starsider.

The only time I buy resources is if I either get a bulk deal at 2.5 cpu or lower (which I can usually find), or when someone wants a rush order and is willing to pay extra to have it done quickly, then I run to the marketplace and check the bazaar for extra resources. No matter what way I do it, I never pay more than 3 cpu, and generally stay below 2.5 cpu.

In response to your 'point' on profit, lets give a very high guess and say it costs me .75 cpu to mine one unit of resource. Now, I -could- sell it to you for .8 cpu, and yes there would be profit, but it would not be enough to make up for the time spent. However, if I whip up the resources into a final deed and sell for 2.6 cpu as a crafted item. Doing that, i make 1.85 credits per unit of resource I use in the deed, which can amount to quite a bit. Better yet, unlike most of the people I see posting here, I enjoy architecture and doing architectural business with people. That's how I enjoy the game, I don't need massive profits to have fun, just enough sales to pay the rent and be able to buy some toys.