Architect Archive

This will be a rant. It will almost certainly get 1-starred, because I will be ranting about SOME architects (not all, but some), and doing so in the Architect forum. But I have to get this off my chest because it really annoys me.

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To Whom It May Concern:

I understand that, as a function of resources required to make a given Harvester, Mediums are more efficent than Heavies. I understand that Heavy harvesters only experience a 30% increase in extraction efficiency compared to Mediums, at the cost of 3x the resources required to make them.

And you know what?

I don't care. Really, I don't.

The Master Architect in my guild flatly refuses to make anything but Mediums, because the inefficiency of the Heavys as a function of resources required to make them offends his an*l-retentive geek sensibilities. And he's not the only one. I am seeing this more and more on my home server. I know of at least three other Master Architects who also refuse to make Heavies for this reason. But rather than figuring out a price for their Heavies that would fairly compensate them for the resources they use, they just refuse to make Heavies.

They tell me "The resources used to make one BER 13 Heavy could be used to make three BER 10 Mediums, for a total of BER 30!"

I reply "Yes, but I have limited lots available. And four BER 13 Heavies will get me more of the resource I'm after than four BER 10 Mediums."

And one person actually responded to this with "Well get some of your friends to drop harvesters for you."

Yeah, let me cultivate a network of contacts of people who aren't using their lots, because all of the people I hang with regularly are running their own harvs and don't need their lots taken up by my crap. And then let me wait 6 hours for some guy to log on with his harvester to put down on a spot I specify.

Dude, I don't WANT to have to go through all that trouble just to drop a freakin' harvester. If I wanted to do that sort of networking, I'd attend a stockholder's meeting.

If it costs you 3x the resources to make a Heavy vs. a Medium, charge 3x the price and let me, the customer, worry about how efficient they are. I promise you I'll still buy 'em for the higher price. Just don't give me a lecture on how inefficent they are, because, really, I don't care.

Love,
Volsted

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And there you have it. You may 1-star at will.

I make both BER10 mediums and BER13 heavies. I let the customer decide which direction they want to go it. I price them solely based on the value to the customer in terms of a "payback" period (I should do more "life-cycle" but that's more complicated than most people are willing to deal with.) That means that some are more "profitable" for me to produce.

My personal POV, and one that I explain to customers, is that heavies are absolutely the way to go. I regard mediums as a "stepping stone" to get to a fleet of heavies during that period when you don't have much capital.

As you say, a single character has 10 lots. When a resource spawns it is only there for "n" days. You make absolutely the most profit - *bar none* - by putting out a fleet of heavies as soon as something spawns.

Again, during certain periods of an individual's (or guild's) lifetime it *does* make sense to put out a fleet of mediums because of the capital investment. But as soon as the resources start flowing, upgrade to heavies.

I will make whatever my customer wants me to make.

You work for the guy that gives you the money.

Not a hard concept to grasp.

I hear what you're saying Volsted. Though, if you'll also consider the following..

Most master architects (and crafters in general), wouldn't benefit much from monetary compensation on a heavy harv, simply because money is not a concern to them (they're rich enough). The price they would need to charge on a heavy would be so much higher to "justify" the cost of extra materials and factory time, that nobody would buy them anyway (or very few anyways).

The plain and simple fact is a medium takes 5 mins to make. A heavy requires a factory run, if you don't have the components on-hand. Also, I'm sure many architects are still replenishing their resource reserves after the mad city-building and houses rush, so from their perspective it's more useful to hold on to their current materials or spend on something that's quick and easy to make, like a medium.

I have to agree with the poster. We all know that people in this game (and I suspect other's like it) are obsessed with having the aboslute best that they can possibly have. Two guns, one has just 3 more points of max damage than the other, but costs a whole lot more . . . which one is going to sell? Just ask Iduno how he got all those credits.

As to harvesters, for many folks it makes sense to buy Mediums. I sell those. For people like architects that need as many resouces as they can get, Heavies sounds like a better choice. I sell those too. It would never have occurred to me not to make heavies due to some nonsense about efficiency. All I know is people will pay more, so I can charge more. What's the problem?

I agree that if a customer asks for something, just make it, after all they're paying.My previous post was just to mention that not every architect wants to make everything, for whatever reason. And that's fine, it's their choice to make what they want, and people shouldn't look down on them or insult them for that.

Obviously there is no cnotrolling what people want. Just provide what they want but charge a price to make it worthwhile to you. Sometimes price ends up dictating what will be provided to the customer. For example, Heavy chem/flora takes twice the resources of a Medium chem/flora. Perhaps people are willing to pay 150K for a heavy chem/flora but not willing to pay 75K for a medium chem/flora. Well guess what then, unless some architect is willing to shortchange himself, why would he make medium chem/flora? The resource is also true, you can actually make 7 medium minerals for the resources required to build one heavy mineral. Suppose I can sell those medium minerals for 40K but I can't sell a heavy mineral for 280K. Well then some architects are gonna chose not to make heavy mineral harvesters. But if the demand for heavy mineral harvs exceeds that for medium mineral harvs then they may have to. All I am saying is that the resource costs factor somewhat into what an architect choses to build as well as demand. Unfortunately customers have some price in mind without knowing anything about the resource costs. I am confounded why someone is willing to pay 150K for a BER 13 heavy chem/flora but not willing to pay 75K for a medium chem/flora with BER 10.

No edit . Meant to say 'the reverse is also true' instead of 'the resource is also true' lol.

The Customer is always right, as they say.

Personally speaking, as soon as I can make them, I'll be putting out the full set of Heavies and efficiency be damned. Quantity is what matters to me, and I only have6 harvester-lots, once a House and power generation is taken up. Rightly said: 6 Heavies are better than 6 Mediums.

Lot-leasing is all very well, but when you want those harvesters moved *now*, and your friend decides to take a few days off SWG, you lose out; either having to mine 27% of something useless for X days, or leaving them off, and even more useless.

Managed to sella Medium Vaporator that I bungled the experiementation on quite badly; ended up BER 4. A Personal Vaporator would do just as well, but the customer didn't mind/care. He was more interested in hopper size anyway. BER isn't neccessarily the be-all and end-all of harvesters, andNO craftsman should be telling their customers what they want to make for them...that's just daft. Advise them, by all means, but dicating what they may or may not buy from you is bound to annoy and send them elsewhere.

I mean no disrespect to you Volsted, but I had to laugh when I read that you don't want to network with friends to get multiple harvestors going.

As you're now well aware, you have a max of 10 lots. I feel that as an Architect I should be able to enjoy the fruits of my labours therefore I would like at least a large house (6 lots). Then at least 1 factory is needed (2 lots) which then leavesme with 2 lots. If I were to use only my 2 remaining lots I would want one for power (1 lot),which then leaves me with a grand total of 1 lot to place a mineral harvestor.

The sad reality of the game is that its necessary to network with your friends in order to get what you want and need.

I appologize if this sounds like a rant but I am just venting my frustration over my lack of lots.

....and I'm rather tired today, I was up late crafting BER 10 medium harvestors. I can't keep them in stock

Great rant.

As people have said, give the customer what they want - I cannot believe someone is not doing that, the idea is to keep customers right? I think part of the problem is that most people buy a home or a harvester once and keep it forever (or a long time at least, unless something goes wrong) so some Masters could care less about a returning customer, since it probably won't happen.

There is also a glut of architect stuff (from what I hear, on all servers) because of the holocron Mastering, and people selling all their stuff for really cheap.

Doesn't matter to me much, I like making people happy by selling my stuff - I have a fair amount of money, so am not out to gouge, and would rather make a potential friend and network contact, than give someone hassles. I'm sure all this will die down in the future.

Joeble

Let those architect that won't make heavies keep to their mediums, that's just more heavy sales for me

I must say in reality that a customer is just about never right. If they were always right everything would be free. The trick is to get them to walk away from a sale feeling like they were right.