Architect Archive

Now this is something I totally agree with. And something I've also noticed happening. People will buy a small house, then a few weeks later they will contact *you* to ask if you can make them a medium one, and if you can make one for one of their friends as well that's coming to join 'their' city.

I remember when I started out as architect that I was very very proud someone asked me to make them a cityhall. I didn't have the resources for it, so the person that asked provided part of the resources, so I took a considerable chunk off the price (which I considered pretty decent) for that.

And it felt great to finally click on the last 'create object' button and have that first city hall deed in your inv.

Now *that's* what I'm architect for, not to fight over or even discuss pricing. I sell for what I think is reasonable, in terms of effort, fun, etc.

My furniture is relatively expensive, my houses are relatively cheap, my miners are normal for my server. But my main reason to 'undercut' the price on small houses for example, is the very happy newbie'ish people that can actually *afford* to buy their own house.. *their* *own* *house*

And to add a comment that's also related to this whole discussion about worth and cost: The 'cost' of a resource isn't very much, unless it's a resource that's been out of roulation for 2 months or so. The 'value' of a resource is *NOT* what you *might* sell it for. Since if you might sell it for 3cpu, I'll let you try to sell 200K of the stuff for 600K. Either you've gotta be very lucky, or it's going to take a long time. While in the meantime by converting it to walls, and building factories out of it, and selling those for reasonable prices, you make a little less pure profit, in a lot less time.

And as far as underpricing goes: I have enough income every week to buy the things I want, to buy resources, to buy fun toys (BE Creatures , to give people stuff, to help out newbie artisans/architects, etc. So I don't think I'm 'underpricing' anything.

Just ftr:

Houses 5/50/110K

Miners 120K (unless it's a gas one, that goes for 140 or 150, only make them on special order)

Factories 35-40K

All other structures: Priced depending on mood, person, etc.

Furniture: 5cpu for normal resources, 10cpu for rare resources, 15cpu for even rarer resources (dathomir leathery hide)

I guess a lot of people would consider that underprice. I also have had a lot of people tell me I'm too expensive. So I can't really be bothered anymore, I'll sell for what I consider to be reasonable, and then go on and have fun helping people furnish their homes.

Mad.

ps. I'm sorry if I'm rambling. Tired, been sick, etc

This has all been beaten to death time and time again. I don't have anything new to add. But I'll just throw this out there for people who are worried about low priced competition and the closely related "death of the profession".

According to the Merchants Friend (I'm trusting it's numbers) I've sold 80M worth of harvesters since I became a master architect in mid January. After material costs and other overhead that's probably 50M in profit. I had to buy most of my ore at ~3cpu, so my profit margins weren't quite as high as some people. My heavies were priced about average compared to the other architects on Bria.

Some of my compeitors advertise often on the trade forums and starport spam incessantly. I don't advertise at all lately. There are some of these architects selling far, farbelow what I charge. One in particular advertises 110K for a heavy compared to my 140K/160K/180K (fusions and gas are more). He charges 30K for a factory compared to my 70K. I considered him a threat to my business for about 3 seconds before I decided I had bigger fish to fry.

About a month ago I finished up several large runs of heavies and had over 250 heavies on my vendor, and about 100 factories. I ignored that vendor for a while, thinking I had plenty to last a while. I checked my vendor the other day, and I was out of flora, chem, mineral and factories. Moisture, gas, and fusion were all I had left. Despite the supposed waning architect sales and the fact that there's a far cheaper architect not far from me, I've sold 40M worth of heavy harvesters in the last month.

I'm currently gearing up to make about 800 harvestersand a few hundred factories. As long as I see personal harvesters in the ground -and I see plenty - I know there is a market. I'm not worried about "undercutters" or market decline.