Architect Archive
Thread: Is being an Architect currently viable?
Excellent post. Keep the faith and I'll stay tuned in to wish you well.
The slow approach truly does work best. I took my time and recently hit Master Arch. I didnt put everyday into it. I did have the luxary of combatmission payouts for my first couple weeks so I got to save up some money. Not really trying to throw a wrench in your plan or give you any unwanted advice but for those thatare reading. I would suggest the slow approach over anything. Have fun with it. If you dont have a bank account when you get to Master theres not point in being a master anyway. So pace yourself.
The key part is upgrading your own fleet if you are planning to self mine in stages. Set a goal to upgrade one miner every sell or every other sell. If you dont you will have person after person sending you a tell saying 'can you make this, that, the world and everything'. You will naturally tell them yes because you dont want to loose the sale and run yourself ragged for that sell and the next and the next. Thats the mistake I made. I suggest periods of removing your architect title all together while you are upgrading, but only if you can afford it. If you are selling your items for a good profitmargin and not worrying aboutmatience costs on personal harvesters (itsMUCH cheaper to make one yourselfand justdestroy it than it is topay full matienence to re-deed).If you dont it may end up being a lot slower than you want it or you will spend tons of money on resources. I didnt use a vendor the whole time.The architect tag itself isa flashing red sign of advertisement. I waited till i was well established and had a good stock before I opened up shop.. (reminds self to change sig ) Just my hint 
MadRatter wrote:
As an update, I sold a Equipment Factory (50K) last night. Thats another 3 days worth of maintenance costs in the bank.
I did get Planetary Advertising and Installations IV. It will be interesting to see what affect if any they have on my business.
Current unsold inventory include 4 small houses, and 2 mineral mining installations.
I also have a couple deeds that aren't really inventory since they are earmarked for my use (med. chemical and structure factory) that are currently not placed.
The go slow approach at least for me continues to be viable.
nice...what I dont understand is how a factory can sell for 50k...and a medium house sells for like 65k -.- medium houses have 2 to 3 extra wall units...and they only sell for like 10-15k more -.-
sil
Aye, you have to be a very dedicated architect to make it work this way. I cleared 900k the other day. The sales have gradually gone up a bit, I get alot of traffic in furniture and factories from my vendor.
Even then, clawing your way up the architect tree now would just be an undercutting nightmare, espicially on Starsider, where you CANNOT sell for more than 4 creds/resource. I haven't had anyone go "WHOA you're high priced!" lately, but I stillcringe everytime someone asks me for my prices.
Keep it up, but I'd still tell anyone looking at crafter professions that doesn't have a passion for architect to not pick it.
Well it has been a very good day. The guy who wanted the factory came on and I had the material so built and sold it for 55k. Then my merchants sold both an automated Flora Farm (Med) for 60k and a Med Chem (50k). That totals out to 165k. I did spend over 20k training some merchant skills and did my daily rounds of adding maintenance and power to my harvestors. That leaves me at 440k.
Maybe I could convince people to have Holiday weekends more often 8).
I don't wear my architect title, I go by master artisan. The few tells I got while wearing the Novice Architect title were always asking for things that I couldn't make, so I stopped wearing it. All my sales go to neighbors, or people who see my vendor on the world map. I only wear the Master Artisan title so that people looking for training can find me.
I had hoped to start selling equipment factories today, but my first final assemble was a crit fail 
Still, it doesn't really set me back, it just keeps me from adding that to my product list for another day or so as my harvesters replace the lost resources. Making all the components got me several thousand closer to furniture 4 anyway, so it wasn't a complete loss.
MadRatter,
Interesting post. It is true that I have more than 10 lots, I has2 ( soon to be 3 )business partners that are not archetects and require fewer resources, I take up most of thier lots too. What I provide for them in return they tell me far more than makes up for the lots.
My side of the business alone pays for the house and costs of ALL extractors, even those that are not dedicated to archetecture. I provide power for all of them along with Pay mantenance. As competition increases ( as I expect it too ) I will need them to contruibute more, but for now they can just grind for XP. hey know this are are working hard to start pulling thier weight as low price retailers in thier profesions. Our house is becoming a popular place, we now have 3 vendors selling items at below market rate. My partners have not totally bought into my real world business ideals, but I am working on them. They do sell for less, but not substantially less.
But back to your point, I am a low price retailer that does have more than 10 lots. I dont think of it as getting rid of inventory, I think of it as building a customer base. But it is true that inventory is evil ( from a business stance ) it is only potential money that cannot be used sitting in storage.
There is no question that archetect is a viable class right now, I can point tomany that make good money, both those that agree with me and those that dont. The question is will it be viable 6 months from now, or a year from now. That question conserns me and is the biggest reason I am a low price retailer.
The best part of being an archetect to mewas that I made money off of what I quickly grind for XP, that is not true for many profesions. The fact that Structual Modules and Walls were VERY VERY sellable to other Archetects along with building blocks for your own sales was very helpfull.
For those that hate me, here is another reason to hate me, when selling to another archetect, I used your prices at 3cr per resource or more, becasue they believe in that price.
muhahahahhahahahaha!
I don't hate you although I am sure that there are some who do. As I said in my original post, I think the game mechanics are VERY much to blame for the state of this profession.
Like you, I am most concerned about the future. Right now, this class is clearly viable in the sense that I can make money at it and I can sell my product even while I am leveling.
In the long run, all I see for SOE's view of viability is the Urban Planner which costs yet more skill points (which are very scarce to start with). Even the market for those buildings will eventually dry up.
Hopefully, SOE will get a clue before everything dries up. We shall see.
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As to the sales potential currently of our stuff, I got a tell yesterday afternoon asking about heavy minerals. I stated my price was 135k but that I did not have the material. They asked if I could make them if they supplied the material. I said I could and would credit the material I needed at 3c per resource. They wanted the extractors badly and started gathering the material.
The got it together and I started cranking. My first shot at it was a crit. Ugh. The second one went fine. I managed to scrape enough material together between what they supplied and my harvestors to make a third try. Success.
Minus the material they provided I cleared 87k. Not great but at least in the black and I made a ton of exp working the order. Its a good thing my price structure can stand the occasional crit.
So all told for the day I sold a factory (55k), med chemical (50K), Automated Flora Farm (60k), and two heavy minerals (135k each - cleared 87k for the two). That is by far my best day in the business. I am now just barely short of furniture IV.
As always, I hope this is an encouragement to others working on this profession.
The only problem I see with the Archetect profesion is the future.
I have no problem with Crit failures as they are now
I have no problem with what we craft
I have no problem with re-deeding extractors or the avaliability of materials.
But I do see problems......
Some profesions need a better reason to own a house
Although the game will support many archetects, I believe it will only support a very limited number of Urban Planers ( I expect to start our with my prices under 3cr a resource from the get go ) I expect competition to be fierce for that smaller market.
We need a decay rate on houses ( even when pay mantenance is paid ) and for experimentation to mean something to archetects.
All in all I think our profesion is one of the best for a business minded person.
Dalyn, I have a problem with Novices who don't know the profession who speak out as fact things that they don't have any idea about.
Urban Planners should start out the prices high, not low. You weren't here in the beginning with the guild architects, were you? Starting low ruined the prices for us, drove droves of architects out of the game, and gets us insulted when we quote prices now. And you want to continue the tradition?
I have been here since beta 2.
I did take a break during the initial sales of SWG due to personal issues with my family. But I am back now and back into my favorite profession. Architect.
I am not going away, and as long as my business succeeds I will set my prices as I please. , Currently that is between 2 and 3 cr per unit of resource.
If you are asking if I plan to continue the tradition of good business ruining things for bad business, yes I do.
Business is war, it is PVP war, and I love it!Fortunately for you with my limited resources I will never be able to take over the market. ( sigh )
Well my personal opinion is that I feel architect is not a viable profession. There is absolutely no hook for us. Houses are not a necessity and they don't degrade. Factories and harvesters are needed, but last forever also. Architect is the easist crafting profession to master. Experimentation does absoluetly nothing. These things all cause our prices to drop. Personally I feel that a viable profession is one that does not need to be self-reliant. At the current pricing schemes it is not possible to buy all your resources and sell to break even, let alone make a profit. Right now you said you are selling your structures happily to level. What happens when you hit master? 15K for a medium harvester is just under 4 cpu. Every decent resource you mine can be sold for that. What is even the point of wasting your time to turn it into a structure. Furthemore a critical failure on the final combine, not only negates any profit you made, but also eats up more resources that you could sell for 4 cpu.
My current pricing scheme is 10 cpu for everything. That puts a factory at 135K. I know novice architects that sell them for 30K, so needless to say I haven't sold any. The thing is that is what I have decided where it is worth my time to make a structure.