Architect Archive

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RabidDawg wrote:

Sorry dWhisper and Acanis. You're still not seeing the difference between cost and value. With your argument, a CD would cost us around 50 cents...25 cents for the materials and 25 cents of pure profit for the recording company.

The cost to pull up resources is really not that high. At most, it's around 0.75c per unit. That's assumes pretty horrible locations for both the power you use to supply your harvesters and the harvesters themselves. This doesn't include anything having to do with redeeding harvesters, your time to find an optimal location, travel expenses, regularly feeding and other headaches such as a pack of Kimogilas using your harvesters as a scratching post. The accumulation of these figures is the total cost of extracting your resources.

You still have to add in costs for your time AND expertise to make schematics, juggle factories, feed factories, redeed factories, assembly, paying for your continuing education as an artisan and of course, critical failures. Sum all of these up and that is your cost of doing business.

You may attach very little worth to all of these 'fees', but they do exist...I hope you can at least agree with me on that.

Enough on costs...on to actual worth.

The simple fact that the very same resources you use to make up your product sell for 3-6 cpu on the bazaar and regular vendors sets the actual worth of the product. This is not imaginary (besides the fact that it exists only in the form of a cartoon), it is a picture of the true economy and a baseline to be used by all artisans when pricing your resources...not your final goods.

If you don't put any value on any of your work after the resources are pulled up, then 3 cpu would be a very fair price. I, for one value my time, and the worth of a product that will last forever is also higher than zero.

This will all be moot though soon enough when everyone has at least a medium house and some combination of 8 heavy harvesters and factories, all bought at rock bottom prices. The price of structures will plummet and all the drifters will move on to other professions. Of course the cost of weapons and armor will contiue to rise.

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We are seeing the difference between cost and value. What we're saying is that you can't set a price on value, you have to set it according to cost. Yes, that CDcostsabout $0.25 for them to make, but it is valued in the retail sector at $14. There are plenty of other costs behind it that make the price closer, and we do not deal with those.

The costs of juggling harvesters and gaining skills would both be considered negligable. Med's take 3k to re-deed, and Large's take 4.5k. Resources reset every 7-12 days, at least that's my best guess. In that time, you'll spend quite a bit more or maintinence and power. So the overall contribution from that is very low.

The same goes with gaining new schematics. Very few people ever pay to train skills, since Architects aren't rare enough to be missing all-together. We also have the very unique spot, shared only with BE's and Medics, in that we don't have to grind to advance. If you can't advance through producing in-demand structures or components... something is very wrong. So costs associated with that are minimal or non-existant.

And yes, I can sell my resources for a healthy profit on the bazaar. Or I can make things in my profession at a smaller profit and sell them, therefore advancing in my profession. If I sell them to someone else, they'll make that finished good. If I use them, I sell it.

All I'm really saying is that everyone needs to look at where someone is defining undercut from some people. I sell lower than most, and I still easily make a profit. Just because I'm willing to make a 50-150% profit, and not a 400% one does not mean I'm undercutting you. It means I'm selling to people at a price they want.

dWhisper...this comment doesn't make any sense to me: "We are seeing the difference between cost and value. What we're saying is that you can't set a price on value, you have to set it according to cost."

If you can tell me why Ican't use value at all to set a price, and whymy productsmustonly be set according to my costs, this discussion will be over.

You have to know your costs, and yes, all of the items I listed are costs...to you they may be negligible, but to others, they aren't. I can't believe you think a critical failure is negligible. I'm not saying these costs have to figure in as a huge portion of each build, but they are all there...they all exist.

YAWN. YAWN.

Boo Hoo hoo ah hoo,someone is "undercutting me".

SO, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT??

Well, absolutely nothing because there's nothing you can do to stop that. Yeah, trying to limit supplies by monopolizing really work. NOT. You can't limit supplies because you can't stop the "undercutter" from making more. Until then, you're just stockpiling what will become worthless once demands had waned.

Secondly, the undercutter may just ignore you and sell to the general public. So you just bought a bunch for rapidly depreciating assets which you prolly won't be able to give away for free soon.

And even if you did manage to buy up every last one of the house, the public now know the low price some idiot paid for them, so they will only payfor as low if not lower price. You see, by mass buying the low price houses, you just set the standard for the public. You try to turn around and sell at a higher price, they'll just laugh at you.

Simple question.

SO WHAT CAN YOU REALLY DO TO THE UNDERCUTTER??? **N**O**T**H**I**N**G**