Artisan Archive

I thought getting a vendor would save me time and money (fool that I was), The way I thought it would work is that I would be able to place my items for sale on the public bazzar without leaving my shop and not having to pay that 20cr fee nor be subject to the 3000cr limit.

Boy was I ever the unquestioning innocent. Instead, it's done nothing but cost me time. The public bazzar is our only mass market and we have no access to it. Instead I'm forced to spend my time publizing my shop. Running into town to buy suplies. Forcing my customers to run out to my shop to buy the minerals and then the maintenance fees on this piece of junk are bankrupting me.

Ok - I give up. I withdrew my cr from the maintence pool on the vendor, took all my goods off the vendor and shot the poor wee beastie in the head (metaphoricly speaking although had I been able to target the ding dang thing I WOULD have shot it for real. Target practice is about the only thing its good for).

It is obvious to me that the whole area of commerce is poorly thought out by the game designers and they appear to have little desire to address the short commngs in this area.

Until they rethink the approach taken to commerce and allow us a viable way to address the mass market (see ArdenStarmarine's post on a vendor network), I advise everybody else to go out and shoot their vendors in protest.

It's you.

I'm making money hand over fist. My vendors (plural, I just put in the 5th one) generate about 1/3 of my sales, and nearly all of my big-ticket and repeat sales. I do stock the bazaar, all 25 slots, but I do that as much so I can paste an ad for my shop into the description as for any benefit from the sales.

Vendors are buggy, and annoying at times, but they are useful and profitable - if you know how to run a business, and you pay attention to the difference in maintenance cost by type of vendor, and at least have Novice Merchant. Do any of those things wrong, and you're better off selling your stuff for half price to a Master Merchant with a general store, if your city has one nearby, and letting him sell it.

I'm waiting with delight for the promised patch that will enable to me to change the clothes on my NPC vendors. (I'm a tailor, as you see below.)I'm begging, absolutely begging, for them to stop timing out sales after one week and shoving the unsold merchandise into the storeroom, because I'm spending way to much time pimp-slapping my employees into putting the merchandise back on the shelves. But Ilike my vendors overall, and think the economy works just fine.

Granted, the maintenance expense on the Bulky Terminal is through the roof. That's why you're not supposed to use it much, or if you do, not supposed to use it for very long.

The bulky merchant vendor is supposed to be the first step along the road to selling goods. You have to know your markets. There is an aspect of your business where you need to step up to owning a store. Do this before your goods are known and you are likley to go broke. I've been in some very successful shops and I've been in shops there aren't so good.

Iam doing fine with my merchants. I have vendors on 3 planets and I do have to spend time advertizing them but there are ways to do that. Just have to have a little patience.

One of the improvements I'd like to see in the merchant profession is the ability to use some sort of terminal to view all the items available in personal vendors in an everexpanding range depending on skill.

That might start getting some of the less well known or seemingly obscure vendors out in the market a bit more.

perhaps even another eventual merchant perk would be the ability to have some form of "shipping" so that he wouldn't have ot visit individual vendors.

You might want to chek out:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=artisan&message.id=13426

Interesting and lively discussion there on this topic

When the "Space" expansion comes out I expect to see the birth of a thriving "shipping" community.....still a long way off, will it be worth it!?!?!

A shipping and transportation (and smuggling too, of course)industry sounds great for when the space expansion comes out. But somehow I get the feeling that it will still be faster to simply take a shuttle than it will be to launch from a starport, wait for 'outer space' to load then fly to your destination planet then land and wait for the planet to load. Still, I can't wait to get my first starship, hehe.

Slim Vargo, Corbantis