Architect Archive
Thread: Price guide: Appendix to 'Underpricing Archs' thread
If you sell a house for COST, you have merely sold the resource, and created the house for free. Prior to becoming an architect, I have bought houses for approximately 60% of COST.
Given the amount of money that gets spent elsewhere, these prices are NOT unobtainable. Last night with my 2/2/2/4 Smuggler - Novice Commando, I generated a net gain of 120k from 3hrs and 15min of game play, exclusively running faction missions. If I'd gone to Yavin for money missions, I probably could have tripled this amount. Even at this rate... does it seem unreasonable for me to spend 90 minutes of my time to make enough money for my small house? I don't think so.
It would be nice to charge 50k for a small house. Sure. I'd like to make 45k for 2 minutes work. But since right now people can find them on the bazaar for 5-6k I just don't see anyone paying that much.
wjkerr wrote:
The main problem I have with these prices is the assumption that cost is 3 cpu. I mine my own resources, it doesn't cost anywhere near that. So saying cost is 10k for a small house only applies to someone who buys all their resources at 3 cpu.
I"m going to agree with you and disagree with you.
Disagree: " I mine my own resources, it doesn't cost anywhere near that"
Don't look at how much it costs you to mine those resources in order to determine your base cost. Rather than call it "cost" think of it as "value". Look at how much you could sell the raw resources for. If you could sell your ore for 2 cpu then you shouldn't take that ore, build it into a house and then value it at 0.5 cpu. Its value is 2 cpu because you could sell it for that and save the time and effort of building the house. When making a pricing decision you also have to look at what else you could be doing with your time and resources. Its an economic principle called "opportunity cost". Base the cost of your finished goods on the value of the raw materials then add a profit.
Agree: 3cpu is not necessarily always acorect assumption on material value. I can buy ore for 2 cpu or less and metals for 1-2 cpu.
Yes.. just because you mine your own resources .. doesnt set the true market costs for resources,.. 3 may still be a little high .. I think 2 cpu would be more realistic.. because I think 2 cpu is accross the board the average of what you could potentially get someone to sell grind resources..
You mining your own resources saves you some money .. but this is not meant to be the norm..
Dvnce wrote:
Yes.. just because you mine your own resources .. doesnt set the true market costs for resources,.. 3 may still be a little high .. I think 2 cpu would be more realistic.. because I think 2 cpu is accross the board the average of what you could potentially get someone to sell grind resources..
You mining your own resources saves you some money .. but this is not meant to be the norm..
There's where most people seem to be confused to me. Cost is how much I have to spend to obtain the resources, via mining or purchasing off a vendor. That is actually a different consideration tahn the market value of resources (which is what you seem to be calling costs).
I have already decided I am going to be an Architect and make those items to sell. Therefore I don't look at what I can get for the raw materials and try to use that to represent my costs. My costs are the credits spent to obtain those resources via harvestor maintenance, energy harvesting, and initial costs for equipment amortized over time. If I purchased all my resources, my costs would be what I paid to get them.
For the most part I don't spend too much time on my Architect, alot of it is on auto-pilot. I log in and restock my vendor (takes less than an hour daily) and move my harvestors when I need to. So there isn't really much of a time investment to add to my 'costs' either. I feel for the ammount of effort I've put in, I've been very successful though.
I am surprised people think mining your own resources isn't meant to be the norm though. Maybe it's because I don't do massive factory runs, using multiple factories. I make factory runs of components when I need them, and make everything else by hand as I need them. I guess I'm just a more casual crafter, but that hasn't stopped my bank account from gathering millions of credits...
Now if they'd just give me something to spend those credits on...
wjkerr wrote:
There's where most people seem to be confused to me. Cost is how much I have to spend to obtain the resources, via mining or purchasing off a vendor. That is actually a different consideration tahn the market value of resources (which is what you seem to be calling costs).
when you go to get your car fixed, a you need new brake pads, you don't just pay for the costs of the parts, correct? you pay for labor as well........
you can mine your own resources or buy it to save yourself some time
"cost" is how much you could get for selling those resources instead of using them to build a house- how much it cost you to purchase the resources is "cost",
but how much it cost you to mine it up yourself also includes "labor" in the "cost"
god i hope that makes sense 
Kevie wrote:
wjkerr wrote:
There's where most people seem to be confused to me. Cost is how much I have to spend to obtain the resources, via mining or purchasing off a vendor. That is actually a different consideration tahn the market value of resources (which is what you seem to be calling costs).
when you go to get your car fixed, a you need new brake pads, you don't just pay for the costs of the parts, correct? you pay for labor as well........
you can mine your own resources or buy it to save yourself some time
"cost" is how much you could get for selling those resources instead of using them to build a house- how much it cost you to purchase the resources is "cost",
but how much it cost you to mine it up yourself also includes "labor" in the "cost"
god i hope that makes sense
I do consider my time when I price my stuff. However, like I said, I don't really have a huge time investment to run my shop.Architect doesn't requre much specific resource hunting (good steel and ore for high BERharvestors,some specialty stuff for master furniture), so it really takes very little time to gather resources. The game makes it very easy, put harvestor down, pay maintenance, put in energy, check it every so often. And it got even easier when vehicles were introduced. WhatI was disagreeing with is the notion that what I can get for the resources on the market is what it costs me to get the resources, since I don't go that route.
Understand that I actually charge more than most Architects on my server, I'm not the one who is underpricing here. I don't even have a set cpu cost to my stuff, it's all been priced on what makes it sell at a rate I'm happy with. And that has been determined over time, based on the purchasing habits on my server (Tempest). I think I can get away with charging more than most because of location and that my vendor is usually well stocked.
On a slight tangent, I think small houses are a bad choice to use for comparison, since I think of lower pricing on them as helpful to the new players just starting out. I remember when I first started looking for a house (for a non-Architect), and was very thankful to be able to find one cheap. (Of course this was before hologrinding and all that...)
wjkerr wrote:
Dvnce wrote:
Yes.. just because you mine your own resources .. doesnt set the true market costs for resources,.. 3 may still be a little high .. I think 2 cpu would be more realistic.. because I think 2 cpu is accross the board the average of what you could potentially get someone to sell grind resources..
You mining your own resources saves you some money .. but this is not meant to be the norm..
There's where most people seem to be confused to me. Cost is how much I have to spend to obtain the resources, via mining or purchasing off a vendor. That is actually a different consideration tahn the market value of resources (which is what you seem to be calling costs).
I have already decided I am going to be an Architect and make those items to sell. Therefore I don't look at what I can get for the raw materials and try to use that to represent my costs. My costs are the credits spent to obtain those resources via harvestor maintenance, energy harvesting, and initial costs for equipment amortized over time. If I purchased all my resources, my costs would be what I paid to get them.
For the most part I don't spend too much time on my Architect, alot of it is on auto-pilot. I log in and restock my vendor (takes less than an hour daily) and move my harvestors when I need to. So there isn't really much of a time investment to add to my 'costs' either. I feel for the ammount of effort I've put in, I've been very successful though.
I am surprised people think mining your own resources isn't meant to be the norm though. Maybe it's because I don't do massive factory runs, using multiple factories. I make factory runs of components when I need them, and make everything else by hand as I need them. I guess I'm just a more casual crafter, but that hasn't stopped my bank account from gathering millions of credits...
Now if they'd just give me something to spend those credits on...
Dvnce wrote:
wjkerr wrote:
Dvnce wrote:
Yes.. just because you mine your own resources .. doesnt set the true market costs for resources,.. 3 may still be a little high .. I think 2 cpu would be more realistic.. because I think 2 cpu is accross the board the average of what you could potentially get someone to sell grind resources..
You mining your own resources saves you some money .. but this is not meant to be the norm..
There's where most people seem to be confused to me. Cost is how much I have to spend to obtain the resources, via mining or purchasing off a vendor. That is actually a different consideration tahn the market value of resources (which is what you seem to be calling costs).
I have already decided I am going to be an Architect and make those items to sell. Therefore I don't look at what I can get for the raw materials and try to use that to represent my costs. My costs are the credits spent to obtain those resources via harvestor maintenance, energy harvesting, and initial costs for equipment amortized over time. If I purchased all my resources, my costs would be what I paid to get them.
For the most part I don't spend too much time on my Architect, alot of it is on auto-pilot. I log in and restock my vendor (takes less than an hour daily) and move my harvestors when I need to. So there isn't really much of a time investment to add to my 'costs' either. I feel for the ammount of effort I've put in, I've been very successful though.
I am surprised people think mining your own resources isn't meant to be the norm though. Maybe it's because I don't do massive factory runs, using multiple factories. I make factory runs of components when I need them, and make everything else by hand as I need them. I guess I'm just a more casual crafter, but that hasn't stopped my bank account from gathering millions of credits...
Now if they'd just give me something to spend those credits on...
I think that your missing the point... Zen just made a nice post on the thread that this is an offshoot of I would suggest going to read it.. I agree 100% its not about the price.. its about the value.. I also suggest you go read This Thread.. though this is my own evaluations as a player .. they are touched with info that I have been able to see.. ( from Correspondent position..)
I don't think I'm missing the point. All I did was question how the cost was determined, and that it is different for those who buy resources and those who mine their own. I pointed this out to show a reason why people might be charging less than what the original poster would consider cost, because they are charging above their cost, and providing a profit to them.
I made no comments about pricing, since I myself price based on what makes the product flow at a rate I am happy with. To say that my costs include anything other that what I lay out for materials, makes very little sense to me. A cost must be spent, not implied. However my prices need to reflect my time (ie the labor argument). I treat my Architect business as a small business, meaning I don't take a salary, but I get all the profit. So my time is paid for based on the profit from my business. I don't consider my time to be part of the costs, however I price so that my time is compensated for appropriately.
Like I said, I'm a casual crafter. I'm not here to make millions and millions of credits (although I have). I'm here to make structures, furniture and harvestors for anyone who wants to buy them. That's why I feel the argument of what I can get for selling the resources irrelavant (to me), because I chose to be an Architect, not a resource miner.
I'm sure I've rambled a bit, it's pretty late right now. 
PS Your link links to your thread, not the base thread for this that Zen posted to...