Architect Archive
Thread: Get a taste of the good life 10c per resource!
I'm not sure how many of you are interested in being a WS, but it seems to me that a person with the level of resources we have could grind out WS pretty darn quick. Here is the problem:
Architects are bashed for charging 3 or more credits per resource.
No one will dare argue that the Architect carries BY FAR the most intensive resource requirment in the game. The sheer numbers can be staggering: 3300 sm house, 13k factory, 56k guild hall, 28k hvy miner, etc...
And yet it seems that if we charge 26k for a factory, we're pushing it! So either you mine and power all your own stuff and break even, or buy from someone else and go broke.
There is no degradation of our buildings, and the quality of the resources mean nothing. This means no repeat business. 400c a day to maintain a sm house! Even a 2 hour old toon can do that indefinetaly! Why do I need a new one? I'd much rather save up for that 15k laser rifle that I'll be able to use in about a month when I get to that skill level!
Weaponsmiths can and do charge 10c and up for weapons.
It seems to me that inflation has taken hold of this class and run. I dont begrudge WS making money, but not at my expense!
Solution:
All you Architects out there become Weaponsmiths and charge the same rate you did for houses, 2-4c per unit. Use your connections and resources to run up the skill tree, and undercut the WS. Make them compete with you. Soon they will be coming to you complaining about your actions. Ask them why it is okay to charge only 2c per unit for a house, but 10c a unit for a gun. And then ask if he/she has considered how much it bites to have a large house crit on you. And how you have to eat that huge loss.
Maybe this will shake things up enough for the Devs to notice us and implement a "salvage" ability that returns a portion of your loss. Or better yet, returns all the components in the schematic and you lose the raw resources only.ONE wall unit is over two THOUSAND units!
Weaponsmiths charge upwards of 200 cred/resource sometimes. That doesn't mean they're making 50 times more money.
Medium Mineral Harvester, what, 3.5k resources or so, sold at 5.something cred/res=something like 18k I think. (Arch mines his own, quality doesn't matter, it's easy to find everything he needs) Profit to the Arch: 4.5 cred * 3557 resources=16k profit.
Scout Blaster, 111 resourcse. Sold for 15k, that's 135 credits / resource. (On bria, some WS's sell their Scout blasters for 30k--270 cred/res) Anyways, at 15, say they buy the various resources at 6 cred/unit each. That's 129 Cred * 111 res= 14k profit.
Both have several subcomponents to make.
It's not simply the profit/resource. It's also the profit at the end of the day.
i envy you your prices on what ever server your on 
im on starsider and they are **edit** prices, but eh what can ya do. LOLYeah, but Adune, alot of weaponcrafters buy their medium harvs from us......so they have a medium harv that makes 3.5k of resources a day. I really doubt there'smany weaponcrafters that buy their resources.Just assuming that a weaponcrafter has enough harvesters for one of every type of resource, say five resources, we'll assume he gets 3.5k of whatever he needs so we'll use 3.5k as the final figure.
His figure looks like this if he mines his own.
3.5k/111=31X15k=465000
Four hundred and sixty five thousand credits. Minus some crits, and some harv upkeep.
An architect owning five medium harvesters at 3.5k of resources at three creds a resource gets 52500. Fifty Two Thousand and Five Hundred Credits. That's a 412,000 difference in credits. Half a million rounded.
The differences between architects and their other crafting brethern is amazing, no?
Adune wrote:
This is where having a clue comes in handy...
Weaponsmiths charge upwards of 200 cred/resource sometimes. That doesn't mean they're making 50 times more money.
Medium Mineral Harvester, what, 3.5k resources or so, sold at 5.something cred/res=something like 18k I think. (Arch mines his own, quality doesn't matter, it's easy to find everything he needs) Profit to the Arch: 4.5 cred * 3557 resources=16k profit.
Scout Blaster, 111 resourcse. Sold for 15k, that's 135 credits / resource. (On bria, some WS's sell their Scout blasters for 30k--270 cred/res) Anyways, at 15, say they buy the various resources at 6 cred/unit each. That's 129 Cred * 111 res= 14k profit.
Both have several subcomponents to make.
It's not simply the profit/resource. It's also the profit at the end of the day.
You're forgetting that the weaponsmith sells about 10 x the amount of stuff that an architect does. So to be fair at the end of the day the architect sells 1 medium harvester for 16K profit, if he doesn't crit fail, and the weaponsmith makes 140K a day. Furthermore why do architects have to be miners too? So we buy our resources at 5 creds / unit, and lets see, wow that puts cost at 17.5K. **edit** guess I have to eat it, huh. Lastly why can't the weaponsmith mine all his own resources. Thatwould be 111 resources at .5 resource is 55 creds cost with 14945 profit. Doesn't that seem just a little out of whack to you?
As an arch, I can drop 25 heavies on the closest good source of any metal/ore, and I'm good to go for a week.
If a weaponsmith did that, they'd be producing absolute crap. There's a myriad of different requirements, and depending on the weapon type, some very specialized resource requirements. These resources also have quality requirements that DO matter. A weaponsmith entirely mining their own stuff would spend a huge amount of time on resouce/harvester management, as they would be ALL OVER the place. At 100 cred/res selling price, any smart weaponsmith has dealers that get him the resources he specifies.
It's not a flat out, wow, they get 100 cred/resource! They're making 20 times more than I am!
Say I make 3 heavy mineral harvs a day. That takes what, less than 30 mins of factory management/click time to get them out. I get 540k cash for 83k of resources. Those harvesters then sell very easily, and for very little work, I've made a profit of several hundred thousand.
To do the equivalent amount of work, A weaponsmith would have to make AND SELL over 750 scout blasters. Let's be realistic, that's not happening. 75 Scout Blasters a day, maybe, sure. One of the well known weaponsmiths can probably sell over 75 guns a day.
If the weaponsmith is selling at over 100, & doing 75 guns a day to my 3 heavies, he's making about twice as much overall profit as I am. That's hardly anything to get all worked up over.
Man! On the one hand I'm jealous that Live people can make so much money, but on the other I realize that SWG isn't about accumulating money, it's about playing. On TC, the economy is weird and always will be. We sell sm houses for 3k, Med houses for 10k, factories for 10k, and so on. Basically about 2c per resource. I currently have to run missions nearly every day to fund the 9 medium miners I have down. I'm not being sarcastic, but it must be nice to support yourself from within your profession. 180k for a Heavy miner?! Jeez!
You know, it seems like 2cr per resource is about right, though. I'm all for making enough so you can spend some time doing things other than crafting and maint runs. I like to go on a hunt every few days. Soon, (may plans have been updated, I'm taking DE) I'll be branching out and placing miners on different planets because resource quality will soon matter to me (like the SHOULD to an Architect).
I'm all for a free pricing structure, but you know what? One day (hopefully) the economies will balace out. We're only a few months into SWG and soon the non-hackers will start to drop. Soon the game will be fixed up so that we can all do profession-specific tasks (poor DE and Commando's). I'm looking forward to seeing how the pricing structure for all items in the game work out. Unless they institute a decay/repair feature for Architect things, soon there will be as many houses on the market as there are players. No one loses houses. If I decide to quit, unless I'm a totall loner, I'm not gonna delete the character without asking around if anyone wants my house, 2 miners, weapons, etc... So with the only way that houses leave the game being through accidents in re-claiming the deed and quitters not giving theirs away, we will be in trouble in no time.
I think this will effect the pricing. Why would a new player pay you 180k for a heavy miner when someone he met is guitting and offered him 2, AND a medium house?
Now hopefully this wont happen. Hopefully SOE will add some sort of reason for a person to have repeating need for Architects. Take guns. I've lost 2 guns to weapon repair tools. I had to replace them. Guns degrade and wear out. Heck! Even pets do with their vitality rating! Droids have charges, armor quickly degrades due to damage (and it should), and just about every profession except Architect has consumable items. And why cant we create these battle emplacements Commando's can use? That doesn't seem to be too hard. Have a WS create the weapon and you install it into your bunker, they give it to a Commando. Wha-la! Consumable item that is useful.
So, back to the original thread, I'm suggesting using your connections to play WS for a bit and see if you can work this issue so there is more of a balance in the profit margins of crafters.
Adune wrote:
This is where having a clue comes in handy...
Weaponsmiths charge upwards of 200 cred/resource sometimes. That doesn't mean they're making 50 times more money.
Medium Mineral Harvester, what, 3.5k resources or so, sold at 5.something cred/res=something like 18k I think. (Arch mines his own, quality doesn't matter, it's easy to find everything he needs) Profit to the Arch: 4.5 cred * 3557 resources=16k profit.
Scout Blaster, 111 resourcse. Sold for 15k, that's 135 credits / resource. (On bria, some WS's sell their Scout blasters for 30k--270 cred/res) Anyways, at 15, say they buy the various resources at 6 cred/unit each. That's 129 Cred * 111 res= 14k profit.
Both have several subcomponents to make.
It's not simply the profit/resource. It's also the profit at the end of the day.
medium harvesters sell for about 13k or less -.-
silmaril
I know you, as an architect, have to complain about something.
However, your numbers are skewed and inaccurate.
1. Architects can sell what they make all the way from Novice to Master. Only Master weapsmiths can sell weapons for anywhere near the numbers you are citing.
2. Weaponsmiths have to grind worthless Projectile Rifle Barrels in order to level up. So, in order to get a fair comparison, you **edit** well better count the 450,000 units of steel that a Weaponsmith has to burn through (at zero revenue) to get to the point where he can sell weapons. By the time a weaponsmith reaches master, he is probably a 2 million credits in the hole (considering harvester costs and the 450,000 plus steel needed.)
3. Rare resources. Weaponsmiths are slaves to a long laundry list of rare resources needed to make anything. Gathering these resources is extremely costly. There are shuttle expenses. And, frequently, one has to place a harvester on a really crappy percentage (like 40pct). This increases the cost.
Additionally, these rare resources flat out disappear from the planet. A weaponsmith only has so much link-steel aluminum before he cannot make any more laser weapons at all. Linksteel may not come back for a long time. You are **edit** well right that Laser Rifle is going to increase in price. That's called scarcity.
The grass is always greener, right? Please don't apply your Cr/resource calcs to weaponsmithing. You are spreading misinformation.
Go ahead and become a weaponsmith...I dare you. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?
Why would I grind out WS? That would just be tedious and pointless. If I spent the time and money it would take to master ws, I would charge all I could get for weapons. On the flip side, what would stop ws people from grinding out architect and undercutting us?
The fact remains if you are a good sales person, manage your resources and cash properly,explain to a customer why an item costs what it does, you can make a decent buck being an architect. You might not make weaponsmith money or armorsmith money but you will make money.
"And, frequently, one has to place a harvester on a really crappy percentage (like 40pct)"
Imagine having to mine a 40% spot... thank god it doesnt take 2000+ units of this material to make one weapon... *cough ore cough*
Jyss wrote:
"And, frequently, one has to place a harvester on a really crappy percentage (like 40pct)"
Imagine having to mine a 40% spot... thank god it doesnt take 2000+ units of this material to make one weapon... *cough ore cough*
I almost cried once when I found 62% ore spot.