Architect Archive

I wanted to point out something obvious that i dont think i saw mention, that indeed selling resources plain can make 2-6cpu, but when i go to sell a small house, or a factory of some sort, its extremely difficult to find someone who is willing to pay 3cpu. I see people selling small houses for 6k and i wonder how they can afford to do that. Incidental costs are too high. And the obvious question is, if i can make 3cpu simply selling resources, then why am I an architect at all? Why not just be a miner, it would remove some incidental costs and no critical failures anymore because there would be no crafting. (Another point is that people grinding because a holocron told them to ruin the economy and our market as well as other crafters markets).

What i think might help us architects out would be to get people educated on what kind of work or resources actually go into creating those wonderful houses they live in, and those factories or harvesters they use. If they knew what kind of work went into it, they might begin to understand why our prices are "so high".

---

Tarthos_Intarca wrote:

neway YES you can sell at what ever you want the REASON FOR THE POST was for those out there that understand business markup for retail prices most common in the real world is a 60 to 75% mark up so i posted this as FYI for those who cared. there was no purpose for the post but who knew it would rocket off like this.

I am not saying we charge too much but if we compare us to real life we are the best business ever

---

hehe.. just had to add something here... dont know how much experience u have in retail.. was a manager of a home electronics department through college.. and we had many things with .. 500-2000% markups.. even go to mcdonalds.. why do u think they ask if you want fries with everything u order... hehe.. yep you guessed.. it insanely high profit margin on those there fries.. :smileyvery-happynot that i have worked in a mcdonalds..just did a case study on the whole "supersize" phenom

---

Automath wrote:

Bit lame comparing with the real world.

Yet to encounter any produce that pays for itself in a matter of days and then proceeds to make one richer than the guy who built it !! But maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. Any one tell me of one ?

---

Oil.

Bit lame comparing with the real world.

Yet to encounter any produce that pays for itself in a matter of days and then proceeds to make one richer than the guy who built it !! But maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. Any one tell me of one ?

Hey folks, Its all supply and demand.

I'm only going to speak for my server but just about every server is close to the same more or less on most things.

1. There are more Master Architechs than Master Weaponsmiths and Armorsmiths


2. More people will have a weapon than a house or harvestor. And more will be requiredfrom Armorsmiths to replace damaged armor. Same goes for Weaponsmiths to replace/repair damaged weapons,


3. Players demand more products from Weaponsmiths and Armorsmiths. The average player will buy many different weapons as they progress up in skills, and will likely buy more than one suit of armor. also will need many peices of armor.


4. Most players are combat types, and many of those will have no survey skill to bother with Harvestors or won't want to commit the time andexp.away from fighting, and even if they do buy Harvestors, once they buy what they need they are done, no need to come back to Architech.


5. Nearly everyone has a house, but ~95% only have one house, and if they upgrade later, they will dump the old smaller house on the market for a low price, which hurts that market. Once you buy a house, no need to ever come back to architech.


6. There is a market for furniture, but these are low ticket items, and most people don't furnish their houses very much, but use them as extra storage.

In a nutshell, There are still too many Architechs. When the game first came out there was a huge demand for Architech products, so people jumped on the bandwagon. Now that demand has been satisfied and there are too many in the business. Because of competition the price drops. If 50% of all Architechs quit the business pricescould more than double. Why? Because Architechs buy most of the resources, but also Mine more resources than any other profession. So resource prices would most likely go up slightly, as resources supplies would become slightly smaller. The demand for harvestors will be roughly the same because thepeople demanding them are usually not architechs anyway. Same demand, but less supply means you can charge more for harvestors. The profit margin on being a resource seller will drop some, but not too much because the average resource price will move from around 3-4 cpu to more like 4-5 cpu because supply should drop a bit more than demand. The demand for Harvestors will not drop much because the profit margins to those with survey skills and time for extracting resources is still huge. Therefore, those that want to cash in will either have to pay the higher price for harvestors or just miss out on the profits hunting for a lowball price (which will also be double the lowball prices of today)

The side effect is that many the Architechs that get out of the business Iassume will go to being either Weaponsmiths or Armorsmiths and create more supply in those professions and thus bring the prices for those products down.

To make a long story short the only other 2 ways to see higher prices is to either...

1) Get all Architechs on a server to join into a trade Olygolopy (Like OPEC) and restrict supplies, therefore increasing prices. You will then be able to charge more, but will have the drawback of also selling less. The benefit is that the profit margins of what you do sell will be higher. This plan is of course not realistic, as there is no way to force anyone to join into this trade organization or punish those who do not adhere to its rules. And if one group did manage to get enough of the current Architechs on board and could start to artificially inflate profit margins, more non Architechs would be drawn into the profession to take advantage of the better profits, thus driving prices back down.

or......

2) Shift demand by getting SOE to make changes to how the game works (i.e. make houses decay over time, or require only architechs be able to repair damage to harvestors. ect) Note: You should all thank you friendly neighborhood Dev for making Gungan head statues. They are eleminatingat least90% of the problems of Holocron grinders dumping on the market. Anyway, this seems like the current plan the architech community is working on, however it still won't solve the problem of there being too many Architechs because there is only so much SOE will do to tinker with the economy when they know full well that eventually a free market will adjust itself and many of the current Architechs will change professions.

So... here are your choices, Stick with Architech because thats what you want to be, and live with the low profit margins for many months to come as the economy adjusts,and keep in mind that the Architech market will never again have the demand it did in the first few weeks of the game, or get out now while the getting is good. If you want to make big loads of cash I suggest becoming a Creature handler / Pistoleer - Join the Rebels or Empire and take faction missions that spawn FS MOBs that carry holocrons.Then use your creatures and bleed shot to solo the MOBs. Then sell the Holocrons you find for 5 to 10 million credits each.

Very well put by sysadmin.

Automath,

Examples of a manufacturer making far more money than the equipment supplier are quite common, but the most drastic examples are seen when you have a situation like this...

1. 100 companies exist that make widget "A"


2. 1 company uses widget "A" to make Sproket "B". A few other companies also do this but they are small and the first company controls the market.


3. 100 people per day want to buy Sproket "B"


4. The Sproket "B" producers benefit from competition among the 100 Widget "A" producers to get a low price


5. The #1 Sproket "B" producer uses the fact that it controls the market to set a higher price which it can do because many people want to buy its products.


6. Company #1 uses its extra profits to advertise to the 100 potential customers convincing them its Sprocket "B" is better that anyone else's Sproket "B" therefore making them willing to pay more for a sproket that is more or less the same as any other sproket.

Have you heard of Intel, Cysco Systems, Coca-Cola, AT&T ect, ect.... All are examples of companies that are or once were in exactly the above situation, and grew to the giants they are today. Were any of their suppliers of equipment or resources used to make their products reaping the same huge profits? Pretty much... no.

Now you don't have exactly the same situation in SWG as the above example, but then you have a factor in SWG that you don't find often in real life. In SWG you can only have a max of 10 Harvestors working for you. And nearly everyone who can build Harvestors also uses them to mine. Since Architechs can make many, many more Harvestors that they can ever use at one time the price on the extras is discounted because they are unable to generate revenue if the owner has no remaining lots. (Basically they just take up space in your bag) If SOE made it so there was no limit to the number of Harvestors you could place 2 things would happen. The price for resources would drop (because there would be a lot more resources being mined), and the cost to buy harvestors would rise (Because those that make them could place as many as they have time to run, leaving them with less time to make extras) until the profit earned from operating a harvestor would be only slightly higher than the costs to operate it.

That is a VERY good point SysAdmin.

So the answer to the architect profession is to give us all unlimited lots !!!! Go on SOE you know you want to

The fist person that mentioned supply and demand wins the cigar.

Profit on resources or items dont mean a thing if no one is buying.

The trick is to find what people are buying, sell that item for less than others sell it for, and sell a lot of them.

As for the med vs heavy, you can be very profitableeither way,A high volume guy making outrageous profit on every sale would dowell to go with the heavies reguardles of the higher cost.

It is not all one thing, it is a combination of things. makeing the highest profit on one sale means nothing compared to good profit on hundreds of sales.

omfg made huge post and the website ate it said i was not logged in I am sick of this crap. 6 months they cant even get a message board to work right. Unbelievable.

Anyway no longer have time for long post and this prolly gets eaten anyway.

A resource distributor spends 0 skill points and even at 0.5 cost cpu sell at 4cpu (easy to sell at 4) makes 800% profit.

That is more than any item I know of that an architect can make and the architect must invest 92 skill points.

I'm on the wrong server . On mine I have, at present, 20 heavy BER13's at 120k. Been there for over a week. Fusions? Sold 1 in 3 weeks. Houses? Did ok, sold, 3 Generic larges at 80k in last 3 weeks. Added a resource vendor, and I sell at 4 cpu the stuff everyone is looking for (I am a Master W/S as well as Arch, so I know what to look for), and I make more than I did as a weaponsmith (2.2 mill so far this week). It is supply & demand. There was a short burst of demand due to PC's, but that is gone now. Ourgoods have an infinite shelf life, folks are leaving, no new ones arejoining this game, the market is glutted, and resources sell well because if someone is making something & finfd they are missing a resource, they will pay to fill in the gap rather than wait a week to mine the needed material, or just want to PL thru a tree on a Holo fantasy. It's not game over for this proffession, but that day is coming sooner than we would like to think.

Yep, without decay this profesion will not be viable as a business, sooner or later.

Hi,

I think this shall tell us "Heavy Harvesters are less cost effective than others". However, there was a clear statement that this is intended and that Heavy Harvesters are for specific needs only.

They will not change Heavies to BER 13+.

If they do, I will be the first who asks for the head of those Devs :-)

Read ya.