Architect Archive
Thread: Architects and their economy
I don't know about the rest of the servers, but on Corbantis at least price systems are pretty screwy. A T21 Rifle, made with 639 resources (thanks SWGCraft.com!) sells for at least 80,000c, sometimes as much as 100,000c or higher. But lets just be conservative and say this weaponsmith sells it to a good friend for 60,000c. Thats just under 100c/1resource.
At the same time, an architect makes a small house, costing 3388 resources, for 10,000c! Thats only 3c/1resource! Even worse deals come with mines, selling for as low as 2 or even 1 credit per resource. For crying out loud, many architects consider furniture the best way to wealth, and it sells 5c/resource tops!
Now, there are many theories, I suppose, as to why this is. It might be at-a-glance ajust plain screwed up economy, but thats hard to believe since this occurs on (correct me if I'm wrong) all or nearly all servers.
Another, much more in-depth reasoning would be that some crafters naturally would make more money for dealing with combat professions, since thats the main inflow of cash from game-to-player. Since a house or a harvestor pose little value to a commando or a bounty hunter or a dancer, one must peddle that structure off to a realtive niche group, the other artisans. This poses a serious problem to the economy therefore-the architect in fact depends upon the weaponsmiths for money. Since the marksman/brawler makes all the money, since missions are the only inflow of money, the marksman/brawler also spends all the money. And where else to spend it but on a weapon? The marksman/brawler sees little point in owning a home or a harvester... but a weaponsmith does! They can use the house for vendors, harvestors for resources. So, the architect can only make money by selling the house to the weaponsmith
Still, the weaponsmith is not like the marksman/brawler. He cannot spend all his money on one thing; he must pay for high quality resources, and still save money for maintenance if he does wish to purchase one of the architects structures. So, the architect is paid a rather meager sum for his structure-but forced to accept, for no one else would buy one of these structures.
But the weaponsmith is holding back on funds because he knows he'll have to keep investing, and this is where the cure could come. If architects were paid a small cut of the maintenance fees, it could spur the architectural economy. Put the Construction tree elsewhere (or remove it completely) and instead put in a Maintenance or Repair tree. Each level results in the architect getting a larger cut, starting from 1% to 2.5% to 5% to 10%, maybe even 15% at master. These numbers are not exact in any way, I encourage you to argue on that. Perhaps even more important is whether the architect gets a piece of their own maintenance fees chipped off, so they pay less.
The alternate way of revitalizing the architectural economy is one that has been discussed much more, but seems much more difficult and time-consuming, and that is to reshape structures to be enticing to the marksman/brawler, and hope to drive up prices by increasing demand. I fear this is a far too difficult task to cover in a single patch, rather it will have to be an extended effort over a year, perhaps even two years. Providing maintenance and repairs benefits, however, would do much better.
Now there is the problem of cutting into a sink, creating a faucet. For those who don't know of what I'm talking about, here's a quote from Raph Koster off his website.
"A faucet->drain economy is one where you spawn new stuff, let it pool in the "sink" that is the game, and then have a concomitant drain. Players will hate having this drain, but if you do not enforce ongoing expenditures, you will have Monty Haul syndrome, infinite accumulation of wealth, overall rise in the "standard of living" and capabilities of the average player, and thus unbalance in the game design and poor game longevity."
Maybe I'm just trying to resist the drain, but I'm not so sure. This could well be a temporary relief, untill we develop a way to split the faucet and make the combat player interested in a house as well as a weapon. But at the moment, things are so unbalanced we may start to find that there are no houses to be bought, for all the architects have left. I think this is an important step in maintaining a good, diverse economic system. The trick is in making the cuts not too large, so we don't kill the sink, while not too small, so we don't kill the architect.
Ockibis Genock
Still-Learning Architect
Sabacc League
Corbantis
I'd disagree. If that were true, you'd see Master Architects doing well.. but they're thrown in the dirt with the rest of us. The problem is that the faucet sink is too direct-we have a direct link like this:
COMBAT PROFESSION
V
V
V
V
WEAPONSMITH
V
V
V
V
SINK (MAINTENANCE)
When we want (and, I think, need) this:
COMBAT PROFESSION
V
V
V
V
CRAFTERS
V
V
V
V
OTHER CRAFTERS, MINERS
V
V
V
V
SINK (MAINTENANCE)
Could be true...and your idea is a good one, however on my server, Master Level Architects are doing very well. Maybe going off thread here a bit, but on my server many Master level artisans will not train lower level ones, that goes for just about all Artisan classes and sub-classes. 2 people flat out told me that they will not train...nothing personal they added, but they just didnt want to see more competition. Knowing that nobody will buy low level stuff So they just keep cranking out high end items and selling away...
Hopefully your idea will work.
For AS's, Composite legs (5 subcomponents) use 379 resources: 70 Intrusive Ore, 70 Known Solid Petrochemical Fuel, 40 Aluminum, 36 Fiberplast, 35 Metal, 35 Nabooian Fiberplast, 30 Beyrllius Copper, 30 Wooly Hide, 24 Steel, 9 Inert Petrochemical. At 20k credits, Composite is selling at 52 credits/resource. (Other comp pieces use less, so profit on gloves, boots, bracers is higher if the selling price is also 20k)
For comparison in Architecture, a Medium Mineral Harvester (6 subcomponents) uses 750 Low Grade Ore, 720 Metal, 517 Steel, 500 Aluminum, 250 Chemical, 250 Copper, 250 Carbonate Ore, 200 Reactive Gas, 150 Non-Ferrous Metal, 20 Inert Gas; for a total of 3607 resources. At 18k, That's 5 credits/resource.
Quality matters for AS/WS far more than it does for Arch (Most of us agree it doesn't matter at all), so resource costs are higher for AS/WS than Arch. Let's say WS are paying an average of 8 Cred/Res for their materials. (Help me out someone, what are WS paying for resources?) AS have more specialized needs like wooly hides, so I'm guessing their resource costs are closer to 12 credits/resource. And for Arch, let's hypothetically say they found someone to sell them resources at 2.5 cred/res.
WS: Res costs of 8, Selling at 180: Profit of 172 cred/res so 19.1k profit per Scout Blaster
AS: Res Cost of 12, Selling at 52: Profit of 40 cred/res so 15.1k profit per Comp legs
Arch: Res Cost of 2.5, Selling at 5: Profit of 2.5 cred/res so 9k profit per Medium Mineral Harvester.
Daily Production
Let's say the WS can make & sell 20 scout blasters a day (Some master help me out here, roughly how many weapons can you make/sell a day?) so the WS can make 382k less 1.3k for schems so 380k a day for his time.
The AS can make 15 composite pieces day (Again, master AS give me rough production numbers), so the AS can make 226k a day, less 7k for schematics so 219k.
The arch can also make/sell 15 medium minerals a day so the Arch can make 135k less 13.5k for schems, so 122k a day.
Schematic Costs: To put things on even footing, we'll assume everyone factory makes everything. As a rough guess, we'll put schematic costs at 150% of the base cost. So daily the cost of schematics, and the Total # of the same resource type required are:
WS: 1332 Credits, Under 3k total resources.
AS: 6822 Credits, 6k Total resources.
Arch: 13526 Credits, 58k total resources.
Summary: Given roughly the same crafting time, here are comparisons of crafter pricing:
WS: 20 items, buying res at 8 cred/res, selling at 180 cred/res, using a total of less than 3k resources for a profit of 380k.
AS: 15 items, buying res at 12 cred/res, selling at 52 cred/res, using a total of 6k resources for a profit of 219k.
Arch: 15 items, buying res at 2.5 cred/res, selling at 5 cred/res, using a total of 58k resources for a profit of 122k.
Degree of Error: My guess is that purchase price for WS/AS is lower than 8 & 12 respectively, but I'd need confirmation from resource sellers. I also suspect that WS/AS make & sell more than 20/15 items a day. For me, my daily resource intake is closer to 80k, so I could produce closer to 20 mediums a day, but I use about 25 lots of harvs to get that. I have seen resources sell at 2.5, but that's not reliable, so arch buying costs would be closer to 3. To be more accurate, I'd need exact resource costs, & exact production numbers from master WS/AS.
Conclusion: Arch prices can go as low as 3 cred/res & be marginally profitable. (Arch making 73k on 15 medium mineral harvs) WS prices could probably go as low as 27 cred/res (Guns at 3k each: WS making 57k on 20 guns), and AS prices might eventually go down to 18 cred/res (Comp at 5-7k each piece: AS making 76k on 15 comp pieces). If AS resource buy prices are closer to 6 or 7, the sell price could go down to 12 (3500-5k a piece at the same profit on 15 pieces)
Selling price / resouce isn't the entire story.
Whee! That was fun!
Why are people so hung up on what other professions are getting as credits per resource. You can't use a resource you use a finished product. Prices on finished products are driven by their utility to the buyer, not how much stuff went into making them.
Good weapons have high utility, thus high prices
Structures have low utility, thus low prices
If you collect your own resources you should be able to turn a decent profit selling to folks at 3-5 credits per. I have 300k in the bank, not a ton, but Im happy with that. I made most of my money selling structural mods to another architect for 800 apiece, barely over 3 credits per.
Quit trying to compare our products to weapons on a per credit basis it is just silly. The one thing that does make me mad, is that low grade ore is in low %s. We need tons and tons of the stuff and can't find veins over 60%. So our cost on low grade ore is higher then plumbum iron or whatever that is an 80% vein.
I guess my biggest problem with the economy in general is that there is no demand for low end items, and I feel that this is caused by the mass amounts of money floating around. I think everybody that has posted here is on the right track and has very good ideas to boot.
In real life...which I realize this game is not...you can buy a suit for 50 bucks or 2000 bucks! Of course everybody would like the 2000.00suit but economic realities prevent us from buying it. But the demand is still there for both items. We dont see this in Star Wars. So those of us who craft those 50 dollar suits cant sell them cause everybody can aford the 5000.00 suit.
As much as I hate to say it maybe item insurance will fix this.
Sorry if this is off thread.