Architect Archive
Thread: Building Costs
Sorry if this has been posted somewhere else.
I'm a new master architect and was wondering what the average prices others charge for their buildings? I probably won't be making many, it seems that buildings are a pain to construct and most everyone has what they need alredy, but I'm going to make a few.
Thanks
Below is the entry from the FAQ. See the thread in bold for examples of pricing architects use.
Q-5.3: What should I charge for a building/harvester/piece of furniture??
A-5.3: Short answer: Specific prices that you choose are going to be very server dependent. No price is too high if your customers will gladly pay it and no price is too low if you make a good enough profit.
Here is a thread with some example prices from various architects, note that this information is dated and does not represent every server so your mileage may vary:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=architect&message.id=67514
Copy/paste from ZenDragonMLS -
"Find the vendors for many of the Master Architects on your server. Go visit them. Copy down the prices. Talk with miners and ask them where they get their harvesters and how much they pay. Check the Bazaar for furniture prices. Check the Trade Forum for your server.
Then sit down and figure out what kind of business *you* want to run. If you want to be a low-cost / high-volume guy, then figure out how you can keep your operating costs as low as possible and yet pump out lots of stuff (high-volume means you will need extra lots and/or people to mine for you). If you want to focus on furniture, then you need to make sure that your vendor always has a large selection on it and you need to advertise a lot. If you want to only service miners by making high-end heavy harvesters, then figure out the economics of *their* business and charge for your harvesters based on their payback (e.g., selling someone a money-making machine that never decays for an amount that they can earn back in 2-4 days is not a recipe for long-term success.)
You get the idea: price is only *one* aspect of your whole business model. Think through how you want to play and pick your prices to fit that model. Whatever you do, don't take some "rule of thumb" like "charge X credits per unit of resources that it takes you to build it" and call it a "business model". Take more control over your business than that."