Architect Archive
Thread: Man, i thought you guys were kidding about those hologrinders....
Sevardos wrote:
Nope, architects should be architects - and should price their products based on the assumption you need to BUY your resources and NOT based on farming resources from lot swaps.
Still don't know what your point is. "... Profits is the credits you have left over ... "(ummm... by the way, do you really think people didn't know this??) - however, they also should be able to make a reasonable profit and that is generally based on cpu. Where else but in this gaming economy does it make sense that you can buy a house cheaper than a weapon.
Why should you need to buy your materials? For the record I am TOTALLY against the idea of lot swapping, but assuming you use 2 lots for your house / shop and 2 lots for a factory you still have 6 lots to run heavy harvesters on, 6 heavy harvesters can gather you lots of resources, you don't need to buy them.
Going back to my original post i stated that price should be based upon what the market can bear, and not upon how many credits you could earn selling the materials. It doesn't make sense that you can buy a house cheaper than a gun, but thats a thats supply and demand for you, and for reference the biggest cost associated with buying a house in RL is the cost of the land, in SWG we don't sell the land so the cost of a house would be proportianally less when compared to vehicles etc.
My point was that if you want to you can sell at a profit for as little as 1 cpu, possibly less depending upon your other costs, so telling someone they are making a loss sellingat 2cpu is not true.
Actually it is true, business models (the good ones anyway) include a little item called 'opportunity cost'. In this case, if you can mine at 1cpu (as an example) and can sell those resources at 2cpu (which in this case has NO cost attached to it), then if you sell the finished product at 1.5cpu your opportunity cost is minimum0.5 cpu. So yes, you are losing money.
lisasdarren wrote:
My point was that if you want to you can sell at a profit for as little as 1 cpu, possibly less depending upon your other costs, so telling someone they are making a loss sellingat 2cpu is not true.
Bandola wrote:
Actually it is true, business models (the good ones anyway) include a little item called 'opportunity cost'. In this case, if you can mine at 1cpu (as an example) and can sell those resources at 2cpu (which in this case has NO cost attached to it), then if you sell the finished product at 1.5cpu your opportunity cost is minimum0.5 cpu. So yes, you are losing money.
lisasdarren wrote:
My point was that if you want to you can sell at a profit for as little as 1 cpu, possibly less depending upon your other costs, so telling someone they are making a loss sellingat 2cpu is not true.
Go figure...
You're kidding about the 6 harvesters right? No offense, but you're not making much sense here or you don't believe that Architects should do large runs of products. 6 harvesters would net you about 432K ore per week - that is JUST ore (assuming a 55% concentration, which is about the average for ore). To get enough resources to make just 1000 walls, it would take almost 2 months (maybe a month and a half if you luck out on higher concentration). Keep in mind, that is JUST for the walls alone.It will take multiple months to get a decent amount of resources to do a full run. If after all that, you're happy with making 1 to 2 cpu on all those weeks of effort - then all the power to you. I personally would consider it a complete waste of time and would rather resell the resources because I would actually make more money without spending 2 months to earn it. Now, lets say you do and you sell out quick (yay!), it will now take a few more months to do another run.
You're also leaving credits on the table. In a gaming economy, you have to factor in the lemming factor. I strongly disagree that the economy is in this state because of RL supply and demand laws - its simply the lemming factor that have trained the player base on how things should be priced. People see one yahoo yelling in Coronet some ridiculous price for harvesters - Architect A sees this, panics and runs to his shop and lowers his price - Architect A then runs back to Coronet and starts yelling undercutting the yahoo. Archtiect B now sees two yahoos selling at ridiculous prices and wants to be a yahoo to (any relation to a commerical jingle is purely accidental 
)
Another comment: Why would I use my limited number ofharvesters on ore that I can buy for 2 cpu when I can use them for Highquality resources instead?
If you're not interested in making a decent % profit margin based on cost of acquisition then go right ahead - it's your $$$ to SOE every month. Call it a RP thing with me but playing a merchant / architect, I do factor all these in when doing my pricing and what I'm willing to sell. I've avoided making Harvesters for months while focusing on just high margin sales for just that reason. Entering into the harvester market now, my strategy is not a low-price business model - its a location / volume / availability model.
Sevardos wrote:
You're kidding about the 6 harvesters right? No offense, but you're not making much sense here or you don't believe that Architects should do large runs of products. 6 harvesters would net you about 432K ore per week - that is JUST ore (assuming a 55% concentration, which is about the average for ore). {snip}
Okay so if we allow for the fact that many other resources have a much higher concentration than 55% you can mine enough resources in 1 week (using your figures) to make 20 heavy harvesters (for example)
Another comment: Why would I use my limited number ofharvesters on ore that I can buy for 2 cpu when I can use them for Highquality resources instead?
Who said you had too, that wasn't my point, I was just saying you could run a business without needing to buy resources, and without exploiting the ability to lot swap
If you're not interested in making a decent % profit margin based on cost of acquisition then go right ahead - it's your $$$ to SOE every month. Call it a RP thing with me but playing a merchant / architect, I do factor all these in when doing my pricing and what I'm willing to sell. I've avoided making Harvesters for months while focusing on just high margin sales for just that reason. Entering into the harvester market now, my strategy is not a low-price business model - its a location / volume / availability model.
If you check back to my earlier post i said that crafters should charge what the market can bear, so selling heavy harvesters for 130-150k each (on Wanderhome), which is far more than the resource cost is quite reasonable, and when i make harvesters i'll charge the same, or similar.
Selling those 20 harvesters made on 1 weeks resources will bring in a gross income of 2,600,000 Credits for a resource cost of about 260,000 Credits.
My point about the cost of resources was that if they only cost you 0.5 cpu then you are not making a loss selling for 2 cpu, not that i recommend you selling at 2 cpu or that i think selling at 5 or 10 cpu is ripping people off.
I will happily concede the point about 'opportunity costs', its not a concept i have come across before, and it does make a sort of sense, even though opportunity costs are not 'real' costs.
As for architects doing 'large' runs, the only problem i have is a complex one and doesn't just relate to architects. I'll outline it below:
First lets look at some restrictions put in place by the devs:
- Only 10 lots each - limited harvestors and storage
- Limited stack size on resources and factory crates
- An original limit of 100 items for a factory schematic
Assuming these hadn't been overcome in several ways then resources on the open market wouldn't be anywhere near as cheap as they are, so buying resources would not be so profitable. This would mean that in general most crafters would be smaller operations, relying on their own harvesters and buying some resources at higher prices, but having to charge more for the final product.
The most experienced crafters wouldstill be better than new crafters as they would have good quality resources, regular customers, skill tape enhanced clothes etc. and as such they could charge a good price for their in demand goods.
The newer crafters would still have a market as the top crafters wouldn't be able to meet the demand, and the poorer customers wouldn't be able to afford the prices of the best crafters.
So instead of there being a few crafters making billions and many others just scraping by there would be a large number of crafters able to make a reasonable living and compete.
Anyhow thats my opinion of why limits need to exist on storage, production capacity etc. It is also why i am against lot-swapping.
Oh, and to the gentleman calling me an idiot for just disagreeing with him, this simply shows your lack of maturity and manners, you are an ill bred, immature oaf!
Trax, please just appreciate that we have heard so many times and in so many ways the arguments people use when they want to justify their low prices (and I am not commenting here upon your prices, I am commenting on the argument that the cost of harvesting resources should be the basis for pricing finished products). Low prices for Architect goods do not bode well for the long term survival of the profession. We will continue to shoot down any defence of low prices for whatever reason until the sun sets in the East. The simple fact is that Architect profit margins are the lowest of all crafters, it is a legacy we have inherited from the early days and will not change one jot while there are Architects out there whose only response to slow sales and low weekly income is to reduce their prices and drive the market even further down, then come bleating on this forum about having no credits, and worse, getting support from others.
Can you imagine what would be the reaction if this kind of thing was suddenly to happen for WS or AS for example ?
Oh, and just to make reference to an earlier post, when I commented on the flawed extraction cost model and I said that you should then be a resource seller instead of an Architect, you responded
' Why? What if you don't want to be, you can make more money turning metal into guns than you can turning it into buildings. Does this mean all architects should become weaponsmiths?' That is a wholly different argument, we are Architects because that is what we want to be and we trained to be, it takes no training to be a resource seller, you just need access to the trade forums, or you can even stand at Coronet Starport and spam. Think of it this way, if you were the boss of a building firm and you bought bricks at $1 a piece, if somebody offered you $10,000 dollars for 5,000 bricks, would you still make a wallwith them and try to sell itat $6,000, or would you sell him the bricks and go get some more? If the former then I wouldn't want you working for my company.
Bandola wrote:
Trax, please just appreciate that we have heard so many times and in so many ways the arguments people use when they want to justify their low prices (and I am not commenting here upon your prices, I am commenting on the argument that the cost of harvesting resources should be the basis for pricing finished products). Low prices for Architect goods do not bode well for the long term survival of the profession. We will continue to shoot down any defence of low prices for whatever reason until the sun sets in the East.
I am not defending low prices, i was simply trying to point out what i saw as a flaw in someones arguement that 2cpu was a loss, when in fact it wasn't, their math was wrong and that was all i was trying to say in my first post. I am in full agreement with you that prices should not be based on resource cost, but on the value placed on the crafters time, the ability of the client to pay, the demands of the market etc.
Oh, and just to make reference to an earlier post, when I commented on the flawed extraction cost model and I said that you should then be a resource seller instead of an Architect, you responded
' Why? What if you don't want to be, you can make more money turning metal into guns than you can turning it into buildings. Does this mean all architects should become weaponsmiths?' That is a wholly different argument, we are Architects because that is what we want to be and we trained to be, it takes no training to be a resource seller, you just need access to the trade forums, or you can even stand at Coronet Starport and spam. Think of it this way, if you were the boss of a building firm and you bought bricks at $1 a piece, if somebody offered you $10,000 dollars for 5,000 bricks, would you still make a wallwith them and try to sell itat $6,000, or would you sell him the bricks and go get some more? If the former then I wouldn't want you working for my company.
Well you might sell them to him for 10k, if you were legally allowed to, and the paperwork wouldn't make it more hassle than it was worth, which it probably would since as a construction company you won't have systems in place to sell bricks retail.
However if you usually charged 6k for a wall you won't be advertising for brick buyers to buy 5k bricks for 10k, the brick retailers will be doing that. The brick buyer would go to the same wholesaler as you and buy his bricks for $1 each, or go to a brick retailer and buy them for $2 each. But if bricks retail for $2 each then you would probably charge more than $2 a brick for wall building.
But either way you are a construction company, not a construction materials retailer and i suspect if you went to the boss of a construction company and asked to buy 5000 bricks he would tell you that they didn't sell bricks and to try you're local builders merchant.
Anyhow this discussion seems to have got lost, we both agree that the price of finished products should be based on many things, including the value of the resources and that toolow prices are not a good thing for any profession. I was never saying that anyone should charge less than the market value of their resources or that prices should be lower because resources are cheap to harvest.
I was just pointing out that selling for 1.5cpu when your 'real' costs are only 1 cpu can't be considered a loss, it can be considered bad business practice, stupidity, bad for the profession or any number of other things, but it cannot be considered a loss because it isn't.
lisasdarren wrote:
My point about the cost of resources was that if they only cost you 0.5 cpu then you are not making a loss selling for 2 cpu, not that i recommend you selling at 2 cpu or that i think selling at 5 or 10 cpu is ripping people off.
Read it again, i was saying that it wasn't a rip-off.
EnFERn0 wrote:
lisasdarren wrote:
My point about the cost of resources was that if they only cost you 0.5 cpu then you are not making a loss selling for 2 cpu, not that i recommend you selling at 2 cpu or that i think selling at 5 or 10 cpu is ripping people off.
So if a Harvester is sold for 5cpu that is totally ripoff?
Based on the fact that a Heavy Harvester requires almost 28k resources.
Take for instance an Weaponsmith selling an T21.
It requires only 639 resources, but still people won't hesitate a split second to pay 450.000 credits for it..