Architect Archive

start with reading all the sticky posts above....
then continue reading the rest of the board....

I'm not kidding

Here's a useful answer for ya...

if your friendis still grinding architect, here's an easy way to skill up. Link up with an existing architect. Offer to build walls for him. He provides the materials and you grind them. you get the exp and he does not have to mess with making blocks and walls himself. You can also find a market to sell walls you make from your own materials. DO NOT use a factory to crank out blocks. Sure it's tedious, but I've helped several PA members to master holoarchitect by having them grind walls for me.

Materials to stock are metal and ore... and more ore. For houses, quality does not matter... yeah, it should, but you can make the same quality house with ore with 10s in all the ratings as you can with mega ore with 900 in all catagories. Save your good materials for things that are affected by quality, like harvesters and components.

Have LOTS of friends! Offer to build houses for a tiny fee if they provide materials. Makes your friends happy and saves you from wasting your hoard, and you get the exp! Also remember, fighters have lots... and no use for them. Most of them can store their entire life in a small house. You on the other hand will be stockpilling resources like a squirrel getting ready for winter! Have trusted friends drop medium generics houses as warehouses for you. You get a place to keep materials and keep your lots open for harvesters.

The way the game is set up, architects need to cooperate with others in order to survive. People who will gladly pay 200k for a pistol which they will wear out in a month, will accuse you of price gouging if you charge 70k for a medium house. (Thats only 3 credits per resource! You can't buy the materials alone for that!) I'd suggest finding a player city or PA in need of an architect. Get them to help you by dropping harvesters. in return you sell them discounted structures. You can break even supporting harvesters by charging 2 CPU. Many solo architects end up frustrated and moving on to professions that make money like armorsmith and weaposmith. You can make some serious coin tho if you have a good support group.

Your friend is already a master architect. Unless you are going to *become* their expert, I suggest that you work on getting them access to this forum. There is a LOT to read and digest (reading all of the pinned posts really is a "minimal" start - you need to know the stuff that is in there.)

After reading the pinned threads, read through the first couple of pages here. I suggest reading the "solo architect" thread (http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=architect&message.id=42722) not because it lays out how you *have* to work or even *should* work, but because it highlights some of the basic issues that you have in operating your business.

Good luck.

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Manipulative wrote:

Pricing: Run around to the other archs in the neighborhood. What do they charge? Use that as a guide, along with your true costs.

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and don't be fooled into thinking you need to charge less than the competition, get a few points in Merchant, advertise on the planetary map, or use your trade forum to advertise your wares, better still do both! (but whatever you do DON'T advertise on this forum, you will get short shrift for that). You can easily charge as much as the other architects, or even more if you advertise well and keep stocked up. People are lazy when it comes to buying, it is a necessary evil that they want to get over with as quickly as possible so they often can't be bothered to travel around looking for a better deal, especially as they probably have to visit 5-6 vendors just to find one that is stocked, they want to get on with the game. So unless you price crazy high compared to your server, or you have a vendor in the house next door selling at half your price (in which case I recommend that you move location) then you will probably still sell well.

If he always has 1000 walls in reserve everything else is easy.

Fivo Asia

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Cafa wrote:

If he always has 1000 walls in reserve everything else is easy.

Fivo Asia

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Pawlin wrote:

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Cafa wrote:

If he always has 1000 walls in reserve everything else is easy.

Fivo Asia

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Unless they have a bunch of cash or materials available, 1000 walls might be a little much for someonewho is just starting out. That would constitute about 6-9M credits value of raw materials and about a week's round the clock factory time at perfect utilization.

But I agree with the idea, if you can stock up on walls before handit will make things easier. Otherwise you're customers have to wait while you make walls and that can take a while.

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There is no IF in my world. Not having walls in stock means no product. If anything, I seriously recommend NOT opening shop until you have at least a reserve of 500 if you are going to provide harvestors on a regular basis.

A little much, yes. Want the business of customers that need harvestors regularly, stock is all that matters most of the time from my experience.

Fivo Asia

I run a low-volume operation. I think that the most I've ever had at one time is about 150 walls. I make decent-sized runs of generator turbines (300-400 each run) so I can make schematics, but I build things (typically harvesters) in small batches as my vendor sells out - 2-6 harvesters of a particular type at a time.