Architect Archive
Thread: help!! novice architect pulling his hair out
Lol..sorry couldn't help myself. It's just that you're in for a rude awakening. Arch's are the MOST resource intensive profession there is.
Couple of tips:
1st: Set up a web cam recording you 24/7 while you are starting up the arch tree.
2nd: When you get your first BIG crit (a wall module will prob be big to you at this point)..go back later and look at your face....this is the face you will be seeing a lot of in your carreer and it gets worse. Just wait till the first time you crit on a heavy harv which takes 27k+ resources...all poof..gone. Worse yet wait till you do 2 or 3 in a row that way..or worse yet wait till you do a PA hall that way.
Not trying to scare you, just warrning you ahead of time that it's a tough profession with cut thorat competition (people willing to sell their wares for 1-2 cr per finished product without even figuring in all the criticals). If you're in this profession for the money then go back and be a WS or something. However, if you are in this profession because you love to build stuff and really enjoy the profession then let me be the first to say Congratulations and Welcome to our little community.
To answer your orignial question NO, you are reading it wrong...(assuming you are looking at a small house) need 10 Structural Modules (not walls) which will take 2,000 ore (assuming no crits).
Now for some real tips:
1: You will need LOTs and LOTs of resources so work your way up the harvester tree first.
2: DON'T try to sell small houses to make a living...at your level you can't even break even that way. Find a friendly Master Arch on your server and sell them Wall modules (these give great exp, and every Master needs them). I buy them for 8-9k each (depending on how bad I need them) and most others will buy for that price too. This way you can sell a couple walls a day to pay for your harvester maintenance...get more exp...go up in levels..have someone who you can get free training from....then make bigger harvesters...pull more resources..make more wall modules...sell more modules to pay maintenance on bigger harvs...make heavy harvs....then sell some more walls until you have a little extra stored up.
At this point you can go semi on your own selling stuff to the general public and make a little extra (if you do it right) And (most important) Gain a good Rep as a Arch. As you go up your Master will continue to train you and buy walls. Eventually, you will be a master yourself. (just don't try to rush it too much).
3: STICK TO YOUR GUNS when it comes to pricing. Yes there are people that sell dirt cheap and I've known several of these people. They figure once they get to master that they will be rich. This is just not true if you don't build a good base rep. If you start out cheap people will always take advantage of you. (It's like my 2nd grade teacher used to say, It's easier to be rough on students at the start of the year then slowly be nicer as time passes). In other words, It's easier to give an occasional discount when you fell like it than be constantly worrying about how you are going to pay your harvester maintence tomorrow. Many of the people that sell cheap wind up burned out and discouraged.
4: Don't go around Shouting "Selling xxx House for xxx credits". The only thing this leads to is people cursing and shouting at you in obsene language about how you are gouging them (It's not their fault really, If I wasn't an arch and didn't know what was involved then I would think 200k is a lot of money for a fusion too). Just put your title up, go about your business and you will get tells asking for stuff. If someone says that you are too high just politely explain to them that's your price. If you know someone who is selling cheaper than you, point them toward the other arch (I know this sounds crazy but trust me). Eventually you will build a good customer base who don't complain about paying a fair price for all the work you do and you won't have to listen to people whining about your prices.
5: Make some of the more popular items up and keep them on your person (ie. Solar Generators, Medium harvs, Heavy harvs, Fusions..etc but not houses). When you get a tell asking for a price make sure to mention that you have one on you right now. People are more willing to pay a fair price if they don't have to wait 3 days for you to make it.
6: Be nice to people, if someone you know doesn't really have enough then cut them a break...Just make VERY sure THEY know you cut them a break. Just make sure you are still making a little bit of a profit though..giving stuff away just decreases your effectivness as a Arch (unless you just really have a lot of resources/money and it's a friend).
Welcome to our little club Gokamo, May you NEVER have a Crit
There are many items that require over 20k resources to make.
My advice: find friends who need items you can make (harvesters mostly), and offer to make them anything you can make for free: they provide the materials, they take the risk of crits.
I flew up the Arch ladder doing this. Free stuff for my friends, and got me around 1/3 of the xp I needed to make master (that is, the free stuff got me around half a million xp!).
One of the things I've been doing in order to build stock of resources is to trade items for large blocks of the same materials. If someone wants a factory I offer to either sell the factory for 45k (about 3.5 cpu) or I'll trade them a factory for 15k ore or steel (3cpu is the low end mass market price for resources on my server). This gives them a .5 cpu discount on the factoryand gives me a good base of a resource to use for the next batch of items I'm making. If I find that a lot of people are taking the steel route (normally they do) then that allows me to switch my steel harvesters to ore and collect more ore than I normally would because I don't necessarily need steel. Depending upon the resource shifts (if Shadowfire ever gets one) I'll be trading around what resources I'll accept in trade.
I prefer this method rather than giving the customer that wants to make a deal a long list of resources to collect and chanceing some heavy crits during thier construction and take a loose out of my own stock. . By doing this in the past 3 days I've accumulated a back stock of 45k steel and been able to switch 2 of my medium harvesters from steel to ore. Since I'm not yet a Master, and I really don't want to buy many resources on the market, it's letting me make more items in a given time frame than I normally could by harvesting all of my own and gain experience faster
I'd suggest a similar payment plan. I charge 6 cpu for all structures, but I also offer a resource/cash plan also which many people have gone for.
The price for a building is 110% of the resources required in ore ONLY (I used to do mostly ore with some metal), I also charge credits in the amount of 200% of whatever the item requires for resources.
Example: Someone wants a medium house (21k resources). My cash price is 130k credits (yes I round up...this is, after all, a product which lasts forever). If they want to go cheap, it's 25k ore ONLY, plus 42k credits. They pay me 21k credits when they transfer the resources. IF the build is a success, they pay me the other 21k for the deed and the deal is finished. IF the build is a failure, I take a screen shot of the critical failure message and email it to them at their request, and they keep the other 21k.
Many people have tried this plan with me and I've never failed a build with this ever. However, not a single person has ever gone this route with me again. It seems people outside the profession don't much care for risk of the assemble button...this is just fine by me though.