Architect Archive
Thread: Kettemor Harv Prices, how sad is this
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Bandola
Thu Jul 29, 2004 12:40 pm
#14
Dcengr,
I would love it if you would try a little experiment. If you have so many accounts, then maybe you have the opportunity to set up another vendor in a different location. It does not have to be far away from the existing one, around the corner will do. Set up that vendor and stock it with MOST of your harvesters, leaving the first one with a few but not too many. Now price the harvesters on the new vendor around 40% higher. Then come back in a couple of weeks and tell me which one made you the most credits.
I am willing to bet my engraved pen set that the higher priced one wins hands down, and I am also going to predict that you will not suffer a significant decline in sales.
(BTW if you let the lower priced vendor run out, the higher priced will probably sell even more!)
Pawlin
Fri Jul 30, 2004 12:18 am
#15
Agreed. Its a free market and we are all free to do what we want as far as pricing. If it succeeds then great, if not then live and learn.
There is nothing "wrong" about any pricing scheme, high or low.
Inmarsat
Fri Jul 30, 2004 12:45 am
#16
Pawlin,
The discount I offer will depend on the # you order. If you purchase 10, I will give you a 5% discount. If you purchase 50, I will give you 10% discount. Over 100 will be 20%.
My resource collection is largely due to the # of lots I have from 4 accounts. The cost to extract the minerals are cheaper than .5 cpu. My estimate is that it is on the order of .2-.3 cpu, including the energy cost and redeeding cost. Cost to run factories, vendors, storage is minimal.
I do large runs so that the schematics are efficient. Its not unusual for me to make 1000 small storage containers at a time, and I have 2 factories dedicated to making nothing but walls. Usual harvester runs are 40.
My resource gathering is also production centric. Usually theres 40 harvesters sitting on the same resource, so that I do not have to change schematics. I also have business partners who help me with the resource gathering by placing harvesters. At any given time, there's likely 80 floating harvesters gathering for my operations.
The price I chose is simply based on my cash needs. If I could wait for the customer willing to pay for more, I would simply do that. I have a lot of training costs, upkeep costs, etc. that demand cash now. Hence as I stated before, once I reach a certain cash buffer, you may not see these aggressively competitive prices. But lets do the math a bit:
26k resources for a heavy harvester. I gather it at .3 cpu, that puts my cost at roughly 8k. I am selling it at 80k, which is a 10x return. It certainly isn't a 15x return, but if any RL business had that sort of return than they'd feel very comfortable with it. Ofcourse this does not factor in RL time spent on harvesting and crafting them. I spend about 2 hrs a day maintaining the harvesters and crafting architect products. This is much higher than I want, and I will have to resort to hiring in-game help if my demand is steady or increasing.
I will likely resort to a lend/lease program for hires, by offering them free medium harvesters and purchasing resources at 1 cpu or less, but I'll have to see when I reach that point.
Anyways, its quite fun trying to develop the market and balance the cost, supply, etc. Coming from Flurry as a pure PVP type, this has turned out to be a fresh change of pace for me.
radientsams
Fri Jul 30, 2004 8:11 am
#17
Everybody and their brother is a mining whore these days. If you can get 10cpu for any type of mineral I'd highly suggest you sell it. Hell if you can get 4 cpu i'd sell too. There just isn't the market for massive amounts of minerals anymore. Even good steel with numbers over 950 won't go for over 3cpu on my server.
Therefore if putting these minerals into structures gives you a higher rate of return, however so little, then it is worth it.
Pawlin
Fri Jul 30, 2004 11:10 am
#18
Sell high, buy low.
I've bought ore at 2.5 cpu and sold old good steel at 15 cpu this week on Kettemoor. I also bought 100k of the same old steel for 7 cpu off someones vendor after auctioning off mine for 15 cpu.
I'm pretty sure I could have gotten ore for cheaper than 2.5 cpu butI was being lazy.
I also traded 300k of thegood steel for 900k of grind ore and metal with a guildmate and both of us thought we were getting a good deal.
Sure this all revolves around me having or knowing how to get an old good steel which others don't have. But how hard was it for me to buy 100k of steel off a public vendor? And how did I get 900k of this stuff in the first place? I mined it like anyone else then sat on it for a while cause I knew it was worth something. How could I afford to sit on it? Sell high, buy low.
I bought 20K+ of good hide off some newbs vendor for 1 cpu that I plan on auctioning soon for minimum bid of 5 cpu. Sell high, buy low.
Standard disclaimer: The economy varies a lot from server to server.
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