Architect Archive
Thread: Attention Architects : Great Idea follows
I just opened my last holo(#4), and it said master Architect. After reading through many posts on this forum, I went looking for the required resources to grind through it. Well, it seems that to get all the required resources, it would have cost nearly 3 million credits at the minimum, and 5+ at the high end. After grinding through 3 other professions, I was nearly down to my last million credits. Now the great idea part.
I went and talked to a resource company on my server. The person I ran across just happened to be a master architect, Ackehakke. Afterinforming me thathe hasn't been able to keep ore in stock for about a week as so many people were buying it out, he came up with aplan that would help both of us out.
He invited me to 'work' for him to master architect. What my job would be is to make him walls=) He supplied me with the resources, thefactory to drop off the walls at, and the tools and station to do the crafting. I am getting to master architect for free, and he is getting 226 walls without having to grind them himself. Works out great for both of us.
Just thought I would share this idea to all of you as a way to not only help out the hologrinders, but get a bunch of walls made without you having to grind them yourselves. =) Good idea or not?
I actually brought that idea up in another post also as a good way to take on 'Apprentice' Architects. The only problem that comes into play with this setup is that the Walls aren't crated and that the people involved would have to work out their schedule to determine what works for them.
As a Master Architect I run the Walls I use right now in my factory which works very well for me because by doing that I can easily start them up when I go to sleep at night and have 100 walls waiting for me in 10 nice crates the next day when I come home from work.
So if it works for the people involved, more power to them but there are some logistics to work out. The idea I came up with was to actually farm out the making of houses to an 'Apprentice' who obviously would have to go up the Houses line first. By doing this, the Master can focus on making High BER Harvesters while their apprentice can make them things that do not need experimentation (i.e. Walls, Houses, etc....).
It would be nice to see this work out for most.
It takes about 700K of resources to grind from Novice to Master. On the open market, as you've found, that takes 2.1-3.0M credits to buy (3-4 cpu).
You can mine that for about 350K credits (0.50 cpu). Perhaps an alternate way to operate is to have a Master point you at a place to put harvesters and loan you some harvesters for 1-2 weeks. You do the work to place and service the harvesters. You spend your money to feed maintainance into them. You use those resources to grind walls. By the end of your grind you give the walls and harvesters back to the Master. The Master pays you your operating costs back, with perhaps some addition.
I know that we are talking 1-2 weeks to grind through this rather than the sought-after 3 hours, but you come out of it with neutral or even positive cash flow. You've learned something about using harvesters (which can be a great source of income no matter what your profession).
Just about any cooperative venture between Master and holo-grinder will require some give and take on both sides, and a degree of trust that may not come easily.
I will appologize ahead of time for my pissed off attitude....the low pricing for 5 months has taken its toll and I AM OUT OF HERE.
Seems to me that if somebody can't afford to become a Master Architect in mere hours then they should do it like the rest of us REAL Architects did it,harvest the resources and sell deeds.
Sorry again, just the 2 cents of a pissed off Architect that lost his non-CH pet too.....
TAfirehawk wrote:
I will appologize ahead of time for my pissed off attitude....the low pricing for 5 months has taken its toll and I AM OUT OF HERE.
Seems to me that if somebody can't afford to become a Master Architect in mere hours then they should do it like the rest of us REAL Architects did it,harvest the resources and sell deeds.
Sorry again, just the 2 cents of a pissed off Architect that lost his non-CH pet too.....
Wow... thanks for warning! =) As I said above, this was a way for the 'real' architects, as you put it, to not only help out those people who were grinding through architect, but to help themselves. Instead of the grinders buying up all the resources you personally need, and then either deleting the 200 gungan head statues they just made or underselling you because all they needed was XP, and who cares if the price for structures goes down, you get walls made in the same amount of time as a factory, no resource lost, and still get to sell your structures at the same time.
This is actually a way to help out the architect community as a whole, as otherwise as more people start 'grinding' through professions, the price of items are going to drop alot more then they have.
RobertTamburo wrote:
no chance of critical fail in a factory though
At the moment, we have no chance of a critical failure doing things by hand either.
I would love to have something set up like this.
But the deal goes two ways, If I put my stuff in the factory I know it will be ready in a certain amount of time.
I tried thsi with several people and no one was reliable enough to consistently provide me with walls.
If I want to make my factory run of harvs, I need the walls in hand, and with a factory I know they will be there.
My offer to buy walls will always stand but I am not relying one anyone on this.
So far the method I have been using is a three party system. The mayor of my city has many harvesters pulling ore. He is gathering about 80,000 units a day. Now, he is not a crafter but a business man. He sells the ore to master architects for 3cpu. The master architects turn around and turn these into walls I'm sure.
Now, I have some lower level harvesters running. Rather than pulling ore, (which seems to be what we need the most of) I'm pulling metal. (Either steel or aluminum. Whatever I can find the best densities of) I don't pull nearly as much steel as my supplier does ore, but you don't need nearly as much to make the walls.
Now here's the math. Rather than a master architect buying ore from my supplier at 3cpu, I have my supplier give me the ore. I make a wall and sell the wall to the master architect for 8k. 8k is about 2.6cpu for a wall. So the master architect is getting a better deal if they typically buy 3cpu materials or higher. I turn around and pay my supplier the 8k I recieved per wall which means that he is recieving 3.6cpu for the ore. He is recieving MORE money this way. This is the incentive for your supplier. The only kicker so far is that I am supplying my own steel/aluminum and eating the price on it.
My best suggestion for this is to slowly accumulate some ore on the side so that you may turn in an order of walls on your own from time to time netting you the full 8k per wall on those. That should provide you with some money to pay for your harvesters and travel expenses. Basically I am workin my ass off to get to master and recieving little money in return. But isn't that's how it's supposed to go?
If you have the suppliers, the way I grinded to Architect that allowed me to make money anyways was to build Structural Modules which I then turned into Walls which I then turned into Houses and then sold.
I sold a whole bunch of Medium Houses during my grind for 55K apiece and that is a nice bonus to the fact that I got all the Structure XP for building that house to begin with.
It all depends on how someone wants to do it but if you are resourceful anyone can find a way to pay for or even make some money while doing the Architect grind. And the cash is GREAT once you get to the top of Architect. I am thinking about stopping Weaponsmith for a bit to just concentrate on Harvesters (sold an order of 16 Heavy Mins last night for 2.4 Million in one transaction.... gotta love that).
Apprenticing new architects and hologrinders is something I have been doing for a while now on Radiant. Each arrangement usually varies slightly depending on what I am in need of for sales. But the general concept is similar: I provide the resources (and macro for blocks)and the apprentice makes the walls. I'll take a few lines here and give some feedback as to my experiences doing this so that others may not run into trouble trying to do the same things. First the factors in why I even bother:
Arguments forNOT bothering:
1) Factories make perfect use of resources (except the one loss of resources making the schematic), and novices lose resources t ocrit failures and produce lower quality product due to lower experimentation points.
2) You are trusting an apprentice with a large amount of assets. And novices are not usually people you have grown up with.
3) It is just easier to dump the resources in the factory and not worry about scheduling times to meet with apprentices to dole out resources (in order to prevent a ding-and-dash by your apprenticewith your resources). This also cuts into my hunting time.
4) Walls are not stacked neatly into crates for me to use them in constructing large items like PA Halls, city structures or those freakin, wall-hungry gardens.
5) Gungan head statues will get you to Master Architect way faster than making walls.
there may be others, but let's proceed...
Reasons why I DO bother: (corrolaries to the reasons above and solutions to those problems)
1) Loss of resources issue: I have my apprentices mine for me while they are under my apprenticeship. If they do not have harvesters, I have loaners. I will supply maint and power if they do not have it. After the apprenticeship, they have the option of returning the harvesters, or continue mining for me. Many continue mining as it provides them with a good regular income stream and I get an increased source of resources beyond my own lots. It is a win-win situation for the both of us. And NO I don't pay 3cpu for the resources... there is already a ridiculously low profit margin on structures as it is. Paying 3cpu for resources makes it hard to break even with current prices. I do not plan on making someone a rich resource miner profiting 2.5 cpu or more when I profit .5 cpu and do all the work. But I will make them a good income. Lower quality issue: They train in Construction and Furniture FIRST. I set their training schedules.
2) Trust: Just handing over 200-300k in resources to someone that comes up and says I want to be an apprentice is not a bright idea. Most all of my apprentices have been very honest, some I have had to keep an eye on... Trouble is you don't knowwho is whostarting out. So I require a deposit. If the person has plenty of cash, they can have more resources at a time. People starting out with nada will just take a little longer to accomplish the task as they have to travel more or wait longer due to more grinding sessions. Work this one out between the two of you.
3) Cutting into my personal time. RULE #1:YOU are helping THEM, you areNOT a slave to THEM. They should be required and have no issues coming to you for resources if you are off planet hunting. Tell them when you are getting online in general and that if they want to use your resources, they will accomodate YOU, not the other way around. In other words, publish your office hours.
4) Lack of Factory Crates: Solution: have them offer their finished walls to you via your vendor in sacks of 10 or 20. WARNING: you cannot leave them on your vendor like this indefinately. However, I have not had a problem burning up walls in filling orders. Using 100 walls in an evening is around par for the course.
5) Gungan Grind: "Will you buy gungan head statues like you do the walls?" The answer is the same as 'Is there a market for gungan head statues?' NO!!!
more reasons why I bother:
6) Factories can only produce at a fixed rate... And they take up 2 lots, So I use my one factory to make storage, mining and generator units. Walls no not have to be identical and from a factory. The others do for the larger items. Apprentices can make walls MUCH faster than factories. Blocks take 64secs each, making it about 11 minutes to produce one wall's worth of blocks, then add time to produce the walls. (Most of you prolly don't remember having to manually load 90 blocks into the factory for a 9-wall run...) Also consider filling an order when you need 5 or 6 walls, and you do not want to shut down the factory to steal blocks or just wait till the big runs are done.
7) Having others provide you with whatever ore and metal they can get for makin blocks frees up your harvesters to focus on the top quality resources needed for crafting the highly efficient harvesters. This has increased my quality of product immensely.
8) You might actually make a new friend this way. Ever been sitting around wonder where you can go hunt for good xp or tried to pick up a group somewhere just to find yourself at the cloning facility again and again cause the group it too ad hoc? Not me,my apprentices are almost always happy to have me along on hunting trips. I get plenty of invites to do lots of things in the game that I would otherwise probably not do cause I was cloistered up on my house making blocks since th first week of SWG.
This is just how I have been hadnling things and it seems to work for me. Will it work for you? Dunno. That is between you and your apprentice. If one of these things doesn't work for you, sorry. I am not posting to tell you how it MUST be done, just offering food for thought for those considering doing this. Can it be done other ways? ABSOLUTELY, find what works for you and go with it. I really don't care and don't want to read follow up posts from whiners telling why something is a bad idea. These forums have plenty of that already across the board. (But ifyou would like me to offer a suggstion or solution to your situation, then I'd be happy to help you out.) I have been an architect from the opening days of SWG and did it the HARD way.... making each block by hand untilI got master. I had a number of friends that helped me out then, so I am happy to help others out now. But those wanting a one-click-to-master solutionshould seek help elsewhere. They are going to be the ones that ruin the tools we have now via abuse and make legitimate architects and crafters everywhere have a much harder time doing what we do in game for a living.
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OK, now ya got me on a roll and I am on the soapbox..... next topic: Price Undercutting and extremely low price expectations for structures.
Factors I have seen:
1) There is little to no profit in architecture given the expected prices of structures and the going rate for resources.
2)Structures take the largest amounts of resources on average of any of the crafting professions.
3) Going rate for resources is driven by the WS and other crafting professions that have a MUCH higher profitability on their items and can justify that price for resources. (Around 3cpu on Radiant). I am seeing highquality resources go for over 10cpu now. Ridiculous... but there are market forces that drive that and we must deal with it.
4) You only make reasonable amounts of profit on what you make and sell from your own resource production, or on how you buy your resources (thanks Wallmart).
5) Someone is always willing to undercut you on price and make you out to look like a price-gouger even with the minimal profit we are already dealing with. Case in point: One dayI was asked by a casual passer-by if I could make him a medium house. Another architect came upon our conversation and overheard me explaining how houses worked and some of the differences between sizes and models. So the other architect sends the client as tell saying he'll build the house for 1k less than my lowest offer, thus directly trying to steal my sale but undercutting. The client informs me of this, which he didn't have to do. So, my options: a) tell the other architect to butt out, b) State that my offer was 100c and my word was as good as the other architect's (hehe, almost did that), or c) since I knew what it cost and resources required were, I made the client a deal... have him ask for a 10% discount if he bought 3 houses. The other architect was hungry for the sale, so that was an easy negotiation. Then I I supplied the client with the cash for the other two houses... ( you see what's coming next, don't ya). Then I announced a price that was very low, but not outrageous and terfore still doable. Then add in the 10% discount and I had 2 houses to resell at cheaper than I could buy the resources for. Now, that was to illustrate a point, not to boast a slick resolution to an ugly situation. The point is: to make money as a crafter, you must be BOTH a crafter and a businessman(/woman). At times it is hard to keep a vendor fully stocked with a full supply of harvesters and buildings. Therefore that would indicate I should charge a higher price. (But the first step across that line is a STEEP one.... your sales will go from uber to nothing in a span of 5%). So I try to just keep up with production and keep stable prices. When I get the tell from a customer... 'Hey, X has this one type of item from X amount less than you are selling it', if the difference is nothing to speak of, I just ignore them. If the other architect is really selling unusually low. I just go buy all his stock. This relieves production demand for me on those items for a while.... heck we only make a minimal profit on sales anyway. I am happy with the slight profit I make off his items. So this usually gets me a tell or email from the architect tellign me that I should have asked him/her before the purchase, I could have got a volume discount. So I end up telling him/her that I am a MA and am reselling their stuff cause I was low, and inquire if they would be interested in outsourcing some production for me.... This generally upsets them. It should not since they just moved ALL their product at the non-discounted price! Pride plays a factor more than business sense. Regardless, this helps restrict falling prices and undercutting, thus preserving what profit is left in architecture. Oh, and most importantly, it helps keeps a fully stocked vendor. People remember a well stocked vendor and return to it. So don't waste your breath debating with other architects about their prices and tell them to raise them for the good of everyone. Does this solve the problem? NO.There are too many out of whack factors driving the resource market and other aspects to this game that price fixing will never be able to out weigh. Just make a business decision and act.
Ok, think I am done here.
Now you see why I don't post that often....
Just trying to shed a little light based on my experiences and observations. Hope this was an amusing and insighfullread and that it helped someone out there out a little. Oh yeah... have fun. IT IS A GAME!
Be safe,
-Joska
To me, helping novices, it makes a difference on if they are going for Architect to stay with it or (because of a holo) to get it and drop it. I don't have anything against holo grinders, but they typically have different time-scales and operating styles than people intending on keeping the trade.
As a solo practitioner, I only have so many resouces flowing into my business. So I can help out Novice architects by getting them into the resource gathering business - they really need to learn how to manage harvesters and resources. They typically know this and are willing to learn and take the steps to get spun up.
As you say, even holo grinders can benifit in the long run by learning how to be miners. And if they see that then I can work with them to get them spun up. But if they just want the quick grind and don't want to gather resources to support the grind, I frankly don't have enough to make it worth my while sending it through them. My primary business is high-rated heavy harvesters, so holo grinders selling statues or small houses doesn't impact me at all.