Architect Archive
Thread: Stop selling for under 5 credits per unit!
I am sick of seeing houses gong for 10,000 and 50,000 for a meduim and 100,000 for a large. People start to think thats the avg. When I try to sell them a large house for 195,000 they think im ripping them off. It is sickening that people lose so much money on their products.
The avg. price on the bazaar for raw materials is 5 credits per unit. The large house takes 37,000 materials to make. at 5 per unit it would cost 188,000. I mark it up to 195,000 when I should be able to do a lot more. I should be able to mark it up15-30% for my cost of time and skills. I cant do that when somepeople are selling half the price of the bare costs.
Please stick to the right places and make it a better place for all of us architects. The powergamers will soon be done selling their low price houses for exp.
You ARE overcharging.
If you're buying resources from the bazaar, you're wasting money. It costs me way less than 5/unit to run harvesters. I sell lower than you for two reasons. 1) I base my margin on what it costs me to operate. 2) I KNOW guys like you are charging way too much, and if more of us set reasonable prices, that 5 creds per unit "standard" can be lowered.
ShaneMcMahon0 wrote:Stop selling for under 5 credits per unit!
No.
I'm sick of people telling me what to price "my" wares at.
If you place a harvester on a spot of 50% or better it comes out to about .5cr a unit. I set "all" of my wares at around 3cr each.
If I manage my harvesters right, I don't pay any more than, say . . . 1.5 credits per unit of material. So, charging 3 times the number of resources is plenty reaonable. It also helps to have connections. I harvest ONLY power and trade that directly for ore, steel, aluminum, etc . . . at an even rate. This way, I only have to keep track of 10 power generators that only need to be moved once a week or so.
Play smarter, not faster. Buying your resources is great for a quick fix . . . but don't expect to earn much money from it.
I know we dont purchase the raw materials for 5 credits per unit. What I'm trying to say is we can either sell our materials for 5 credits per unit on the bazaar, and dont even have to make anything. If Im selling at what the raw materials cost, then where is the payment for my skills. Were not architects were just miners then if were selling at the same prices for bazaar.
3.5- 4 credits per unit is fine to me. But the peoplre who sell small houses for soo cheap just bugs the hell out of me. I mean I know it's your product your effort and you can sell for what you want, but I ask you whats the point in spending time earning xp to build these things, then using a factory and your skills to make these items when you can just as easily sell it on the bazaar for 1/100th of the effort.
I know my prices seem high comand to what houses are going for now, but are they that unreasnoable? Im selling at 5 credits per unit used. I have to spend 2 hours and 30,000 credits everyday to keep my harvesters going. When most items sell for 5 credits per unit I dont feel bad, I feel Im being more than fair, its just sad that some of you feel that your prices are fair when their more than fair to the customer.
Angry,
Sorry but you can not harvest at a cost of .5cr/unit .. simply can't be done 
Less you are using personal harvestors and destroying them when its time to move on. I think in your pricing you are forgetting about the costs of energy keeping that up, forgetting about the cost to move all your miners every resource change. There is a real "cost" of 3k/medium harvestor to move it, so 10 mediums is 30k/week you have to factor in to your "pricing" that so many people forget about and wonder why the come up short.
I find 4cr/unit to be a perfect middle ground, I make enough to pay for failures and all my harv moves, and I'm not out of the ballpartk on pricing.
Every message on this board complaing about houses selling too low irritate me. If you harvest your own resources (and if you don't, you're a fool), you're making a bundle. Do the math:
I harvest my resources for about 1.5 - 2 units per credit.
If it takes 37k resources to make a large house, i am only spending 18.5k - 24.6k per house to build. if i sell it at 100k, i'm still making a HUGE profit. I don't get what everyone is complaing about.
Bwrrl,
See my above message .. your math is messed up Lets do an example based on the ingame math show we ? We will use a medium mineral harvesting ore on a 60% spot which is pretty much most of our situation.
#1) Lets just flat out ignore the cost of our miners, we seem to do that anyway
#2) Medium miner costs 1500cr/day to operate, on a 60% ore spot that is 3456 ore / day generated (4 * .6 * 1440). So with just this number in hand it is costing .43cr / unit of ore, seems pretty darn good doesn't it ?
#3) Add in the 3k / week cost of "moving" that harvestor. Over a 7 day period this miner will produce 24192 units of ore with a maint cost of 10,500, now add in the 3k move cost your at 13500, or .56cr/unit.
#4) Oops ! We forgot about power ! Ok so 1 solar gen / 4 mediums roughly. This is another 1440/4 or 360 credits / day. This brings our cost up to .66cr/unit.
Now none of these numbers take into account the # of deaths getting to and maintaining your harvs, the sheer amount of time it takes to maintain them on a daily basis. Nor are your pricing schemes factoring in cost of failure, if you can sell the raw resources for 4credits / resource with absolutely no problem, why are you building houses and wasting time selling them for 3cr/resource ? I'm not telling you what to sell for but that is just bad math.
I totally agree with you...why am I one of the only ones? My new prices are 6 cpu, and will probably go higher. I don't like having as much as 60k resources hanging in the balance for one press of the assemble button. There's no other artisan profession that has no other choice but to deal with that for all of their big builds. They just make schematics...and they charge as much as 100 cpu, and get away with it easily.
If I didn't spend a great deal of time running around various planets to find just the right resources and just the right locations, then repeatedly running back to these locations time and time again, I'd probably be selling cheaper, but not by much. There's always the issue of being able to sell my resources for nothing but pure profit on the bazaar for 3-5 cpu on the bazaar...with no risk whatsoever. I'm not going to bust my hump, then roll the dice for 3 cpu. You can if you like...it's up to you.
Because my prices seem high, I have few requests for buildings. When I do get a request, I have all of the components on hand ready to assemble. My clients know they can get a building quickly for a set price. If I don't sell buildings any more, I could frankly care less. I'll just sell my resources on the bazaar, but I'm not selling out just because people think my prices are too high.
Shane's point is a valid one. Economics 101, finished goods should be more valuable than the raw resources.
Weaponsmiths apparently ended up with a lot of people with a mind for business. They typically get 50-150 credits/unit of resource on their finished guns. Architects apparently ended up with a horde of kids with no friggin clue how to factor their overhead & time costs into their finished goods. Can you survive on charging 3-4 credits/resource if you harvest all your own? Maybe. Probably, if your planet doesn't go wacky & start shifting resources every few hours anyway.
With people making 100k an hour doing combat missions on the hard planets, it's ridiculous to only ask 100k for a large house that takes all day to build. If I used the same pricing plan that I paid for my rifle, I should be asking 2,450,000 credits per large house.
You people who charge 100k should do the economy a favor & go be a bounty hunter.