Architect Archive
Thread: Don't Settle: An Architect's Guide to Selling
Page 1 of 1
DiscipleEX
Wed Jul 16, 2003 6:51 pm
#1
This isn't a preaching guide, its one I hope will help out the beleguered masses of up and coming architects actually make money instead of staying even, and at worst, going out of business.
Small housing is not a source of income!
First off, I see countless architects running around near broke, with no hope of finishing the profession that they had their dreams set on, finally giving up and going smuggler or some other combat profession. Usually these are the same people you see:
A) Selling houses for 5k a pop to provide for their harvesters.
B) Posting on the boards about how the market is going to **edit** because architect A) is selling for 5k.
C) Running around town squares yelling "HOUSING FOR SALE! MESSAGE DISCIPLE!"
The number one reason in my mind that people do not progress far within the architect tree, or give up, is because they are focused on leveling through house production. Housing is not a good way to make money, and it's certainly not a good way to level. Most early architects don't make factories for sale, mainly because they shirk at the thought of using nearly 4x the resources that they'd use for a small house, and then crit failing; even though factories are by far a better source of revenue, and the demand for them is higher (if you know where to look, I'll explain about that later).
Factories make life easy!
If you want to make money, and level, your going to have to craft constantly. Not craft constantly in the respect of getting your tool out and making each piece laborusly by hand, but crafting 24 hours a day ideally, or at the very least crafting whenever your online-- with a factory.
The factory guide that was put out recently is a wonderful tool that I'm sure everyone learned at least something from, but it's only useful if you really realize how utterly essential one is to progressing through the architect tree at brisk pace.
With one structure factory, you can pop in 20k lowgrade ore, 5k metal, turn it on with your structural module schematic in, and 2 hours later be 50k exp richer. Quite frankly, the only thing limiting a novice architect from becoming a master in a matter of days is resources.
But how do I get those resources???
It's really not as hard as you think. But it takes work. First of all, realize that essentially what your doing is trading resources for credits on a 1:1 ratio, and then in turn, trading those resources on a higher ratio, from 1:2 to 1:5 usually. What you want to do, is take all the credits you make and reinvest them into mining more and more resources, until you've finally got a base pool where your pulling in 30-40k ore a day, and a similar ratio for the other resources. The only resources you'll ever need essentially are:
Lowgrade ore
Steel
Aluminum
Copper
Inert Petrochemical
Reactive Gas
Inert Gas
Thats all you need to craft everything (not including the master artisan objects) in your line of profession. What makes it easier is that you can use any of the steel, aluminum, or copper to substitute for any generic 'metal' category that litters the schematics you build, ultimately you'll probably need aluminum, steel, and copper in that order most (aluminum for the tons and tons of generator turbines you'll be churning out). Thats seven resources that you should be able to find on most resource cycles fairly easily, as nothing is so specific like in the other crafting professions.
BUT HOW THE FUDGE CAN I GET SO MUCH WITH 10 LOTS!!!!
Architects are not loners, if you live in a hole and only emerge every few days, not talking or making any friends, you will fail. Meet combat people, get your friends to play, befriend noobs, whatever-- get their lots! Once they place down the small harvesters you give them, they just add you as admin and forget about it, those harvs are yours now. Ultimately you really can't have too many harvesters, and if you befriend, connive, buy, borrow other people's lots, you can save money by not using larger harvesters, and amass a respectable 50-70 platoon of mining machines. This is not money your throwing away, at the very least you can sell all your resources at 3-8 credits on the bazaar, you really can't lose.
Maintanence costs too much money, I can't afford 25k a day!
It can if you convert all of your resources to structures, and sell them to other player characters. But theirin lies our first problem doesn't it? Architects running around without clients to sell to.
First and foremost realize that an architect is at the top of the credit food chain. What do I mean by this? It's simple:
A) Combat units get credits from missions, or by killing npc's and looting the bodies. They then go see the weapon, armor, tailor, or droid crafters.
B) The crafters then take the money from these combat units, in return for the items that they produce from them. These crafters need factories, harvesters, and houses though to sell their items, and they get them from the architect.
C) The architect sells factories that all crafting professions need to sell their wares, as well as the heavy miners that they also need to aquire their resources. Houses are also needed, but definately not as much as the first two.
All the money funnels to the crafters from the combat units, and then to the architects from the crafters. Keep in mind that crafters don't really have anything else to spend their money on except structures.
So why are all the architects trying to sell their wares to joe shmoe who's main focus is to buy better weaponry to progress in level? Don't. Your target audience is the crafter. Travel to different cities on your planet, do searches for all the weaponsmiths, armorsmiths, tailors, merchants, droid engineers, and hell even biotech fellows-- and send them personal emails or /tells letting them know what your selling. Often times they'll thank you and either make an order right then and there, or at the least keep you in mind for when they need an architect in the future (which they most assuredly will).
To wrap things up
The architect is a great profession to make money in. It can be the fastest crafting profession to level in as well, and you will always, always have a job if you build up a client base and let people know your around. Don't sell to meet resource cost of your harvesters because that leaves no room for expansion, and the architect who stays at 10-20 harvesters with only 10k in the bank at a time isn't going to last long.
People come and go who will message you saying "I won't pay 60k for a factory! John Doe is charging 30k!". Respond to them simply to go ahead and buy from John Doe. Chances are John Doe doesn't have the resources on hand to make the factory because he doesn't have enough harvesters to make more then 1 factory a day. You on the other hand have been charging more, and because of that you have more harvesters, and more resources to use to produce buildings. Thus the person who's outraged at your prices will come back and buy from you, instead of John Doe, because your the one who can provide consistently.
Your ultimate goal is to create a client base of 4-8 people(preferrably crafters) who constantly buy from you and are used to your prices (and your reliability). With a little time and effort, you can at least create a steady pace for yourself money and experience wise, while steadily increasing your capacity to produce as well.
Thats about all I have to say about this subject, as a Master Architect on Bloodfin, one of the most populated servers I've seen it all, from yelling on the curb to bitching at other architects for selling so low, I've trudged through it and made a large profit on my way to MA. Hopefully my experiences through that will help anyone starting out, or someone thinking of giving up.
Disciple
Master Architect
Bloodfin
Small housing is not a source of income!
First off, I see countless architects running around near broke, with no hope of finishing the profession that they had their dreams set on, finally giving up and going smuggler or some other combat profession. Usually these are the same people you see:
A) Selling houses for 5k a pop to provide for their harvesters.
B) Posting on the boards about how the market is going to **edit** because architect A) is selling for 5k.
C) Running around town squares yelling "HOUSING FOR SALE! MESSAGE DISCIPLE!"
The number one reason in my mind that people do not progress far within the architect tree, or give up, is because they are focused on leveling through house production. Housing is not a good way to make money, and it's certainly not a good way to level. Most early architects don't make factories for sale, mainly because they shirk at the thought of using nearly 4x the resources that they'd use for a small house, and then crit failing; even though factories are by far a better source of revenue, and the demand for them is higher (if you know where to look, I'll explain about that later).
Factories make life easy!
If you want to make money, and level, your going to have to craft constantly. Not craft constantly in the respect of getting your tool out and making each piece laborusly by hand, but crafting 24 hours a day ideally, or at the very least crafting whenever your online-- with a factory.
The factory guide that was put out recently is a wonderful tool that I'm sure everyone learned at least something from, but it's only useful if you really realize how utterly essential one is to progressing through the architect tree at brisk pace.
With one structure factory, you can pop in 20k lowgrade ore, 5k metal, turn it on with your structural module schematic in, and 2 hours later be 50k exp richer. Quite frankly, the only thing limiting a novice architect from becoming a master in a matter of days is resources.
But how do I get those resources???
It's really not as hard as you think. But it takes work. First of all, realize that essentially what your doing is trading resources for credits on a 1:1 ratio, and then in turn, trading those resources on a higher ratio, from 1:2 to 1:5 usually. What you want to do, is take all the credits you make and reinvest them into mining more and more resources, until you've finally got a base pool where your pulling in 30-40k ore a day, and a similar ratio for the other resources. The only resources you'll ever need essentially are:
Lowgrade ore
Steel
Aluminum
Copper
Inert Petrochemical
Reactive Gas
Inert Gas
Thats all you need to craft everything (not including the master artisan objects) in your line of profession. What makes it easier is that you can use any of the steel, aluminum, or copper to substitute for any generic 'metal' category that litters the schematics you build, ultimately you'll probably need aluminum, steel, and copper in that order most (aluminum for the tons and tons of generator turbines you'll be churning out). Thats seven resources that you should be able to find on most resource cycles fairly easily, as nothing is so specific like in the other crafting professions.
BUT HOW THE FUDGE CAN I GET SO MUCH WITH 10 LOTS!!!!
Architects are not loners, if you live in a hole and only emerge every few days, not talking or making any friends, you will fail. Meet combat people, get your friends to play, befriend noobs, whatever-- get their lots! Once they place down the small harvesters you give them, they just add you as admin and forget about it, those harvs are yours now. Ultimately you really can't have too many harvesters, and if you befriend, connive, buy, borrow other people's lots, you can save money by not using larger harvesters, and amass a respectable 50-70 platoon of mining machines. This is not money your throwing away, at the very least you can sell all your resources at 3-8 credits on the bazaar, you really can't lose.
Maintanence costs too much money, I can't afford 25k a day!
It can if you convert all of your resources to structures, and sell them to other player characters. But theirin lies our first problem doesn't it? Architects running around without clients to sell to.
First and foremost realize that an architect is at the top of the credit food chain. What do I mean by this? It's simple:
A) Combat units get credits from missions, or by killing npc's and looting the bodies. They then go see the weapon, armor, tailor, or droid crafters.
B) The crafters then take the money from these combat units, in return for the items that they produce from them. These crafters need factories, harvesters, and houses though to sell their items, and they get them from the architect.
C) The architect sells factories that all crafting professions need to sell their wares, as well as the heavy miners that they also need to aquire their resources. Houses are also needed, but definately not as much as the first two.
All the money funnels to the crafters from the combat units, and then to the architects from the crafters. Keep in mind that crafters don't really have anything else to spend their money on except structures.
So why are all the architects trying to sell their wares to joe shmoe who's main focus is to buy better weaponry to progress in level? Don't. Your target audience is the crafter. Travel to different cities on your planet, do searches for all the weaponsmiths, armorsmiths, tailors, merchants, droid engineers, and hell even biotech fellows-- and send them personal emails or /tells letting them know what your selling. Often times they'll thank you and either make an order right then and there, or at the least keep you in mind for when they need an architect in the future (which they most assuredly will).
To wrap things up
The architect is a great profession to make money in. It can be the fastest crafting profession to level in as well, and you will always, always have a job if you build up a client base and let people know your around. Don't sell to meet resource cost of your harvesters because that leaves no room for expansion, and the architect who stays at 10-20 harvesters with only 10k in the bank at a time isn't going to last long.
People come and go who will message you saying "I won't pay 60k for a factory! John Doe is charging 30k!". Respond to them simply to go ahead and buy from John Doe. Chances are John Doe doesn't have the resources on hand to make the factory because he doesn't have enough harvesters to make more then 1 factory a day. You on the other hand have been charging more, and because of that you have more harvesters, and more resources to use to produce buildings. Thus the person who's outraged at your prices will come back and buy from you, instead of John Doe, because your the one who can provide consistently.
Your ultimate goal is to create a client base of 4-8 people(preferrably crafters) who constantly buy from you and are used to your prices (and your reliability). With a little time and effort, you can at least create a steady pace for yourself money and experience wise, while steadily increasing your capacity to produce as well.
Thats about all I have to say about this subject, as a Master Architect on Bloodfin, one of the most populated servers I've seen it all, from yelling on the curb to bitching at other architects for selling so low, I've trudged through it and made a large profit on my way to MA. Hopefully my experiences through that will help anyone starting out, or someone thinking of giving up.
Disciple
Master Architect
Bloodfin
terrorbeat
Wed Jul 16, 2003 7:24 pm
#2
Excellent post, thank you for taking the time to offer your wise advice to all of us. I for one appreciate it greatly. =)
Skedoozy
Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:45 pm
#3
Awesome work. You are wise beyond your years whatever they may be. Thanks for the enlightenment. 
Rath
Thu Jul 17, 2003 3:05 am
#4
The only thing is if these people realize that you're making money hand over fist they're going to want their lots back.
DiscipleEX wrote:
BUT HOW THE FUDGE CAN I GET SO MUCH WITH 10 LOTS!!!!
Architects are not loners, if you live in a hole and only emerge every few days, not talking or making any friends, you will fail. Meet combat people, get your friends to play, befriend noobs, whatever-- get their lots! Once they place down the small harvesters you give them, they just add you as admin and forget about it, those harvs are yours now. Ultimately you really can't have too many harvesters, and if you befriend, connive, buy, borrow other people's lots, you can save money by not using larger harvesters, and amass a respectable 50-70 platoon of mining machines. This is not money your throwing away, at the very least you can sell all your resources at 3-8 credits on the bazaar, you really can't lose.
Snogger1
Thu Jul 17, 2003 6:20 am
#5
Rath wrote:The only thing is if these people realize that you're making money hand over fist they're going to want their lots back.
I share my wealth with those helping out with lots. We work together using th elots, building things and each of us selling and finding buyers.. currently working with 2 others( a medic, and a MArksman). We all help with the maintaince of the Generators and the Harvetors, and we share the profits.. Usally they tend to let me keep more since I have no time to run around doing missions since I spend 85% of my time building, but usally on a 15k Sold house I keep 8k and they split 7k. Plus I build them things they need, like the mdic has a flora Farm I built for him(at no cost of course
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