Artisan Archive
Thread: Vehicle pricing in the short run enviornment
For those of you who have missed the post, it has now been stated by Thunderheart that the skill for making vehicles will be moved from EngIV to Master Artisan. To that effect, let me expound on how I see the change and the result in the economy shaping up.
economics time:
Forgive the lecturous tone of this post, but I feel the need to make my degree in economics feel useful, to me at least.
On Scylla, the standard price for all items is a minimum of 3cpu. On the average these items take 1250 in materials to make. So a price of 3 * 1250 = 3750 is the absolute minimum any person should sell a vehicle for. Anything less and you are not clearing materials cost.
The next costs areLabor and overhead. Labor is the price for a person to create it. We will designate overhead as the cost this person incurred in getting to Master Artisan in the first place.
I need to feel that I am doing something that will be at least what a miner's activity will be worth. that means I would tack on another 4cpu to the price of the item for Labor costs.
For overhead, as a master artisan there were thousand's of units of material wasted in the grind up the tree. I got nothing from this grind other than the ability to make small things at the time, but now also I can make these vehicles. To ignore the cost of the materials to get to the MA box is to ignore a large portion of the cost that must flow into the cost of the items I can make from having achieved MA. Going along with this is the opportunity cost having devoted the points to MA. I could have gone commando and be selling holocrons, for instance. These are at least worth another 3 cpu to the price of a vehicle.
To sell vehicles for less then 10 cpu is to ignore what it really 'costs' the MA to make the item.
One last concept I would talk about is market layring. Everyone has their price. The term for one who grabs the latest and greatest technology or what have you is called an Early Adopter(ea). These early adopters care little about what price something is going for. The only thing they want is the item as soon as they can get it. That means they are willing to offer/pay more than someone who is content to keep what they have for the moment or wait for the price to go down. All major companies will take advantage of an ea in the beginnnig to recoup the cost of brining an item to market. As the demand begins to wain at the higher price, the company will drop the price and take the next level of consumer, then the next, then the next.
I will bet most anythign the price for vehicles will be bid up to at least 25-50K on the first day. To ignore the price that people are willing to buy an item for is to turn down profit. It is inefficent in an economy. Slowly the price will drop to the point where you see people brining it down to 12.5K or so, but not for most of a week or two.
Thanks for your time and please post anyother thoughts you have on this impending change,
Lazurk
Well said!
I will NOT run around shouting sales of speeders in coronet for 100k or more like so many mch's did... BUT, I will let it be known that I am selling x numbers of bikes. As the number I have left grows smaller each day, in the first few days of the patch, the OFFERS will go up to sometimes insane amounts. I am not one to deny a zillionaire his/her wish to be first kid on the block withTHE new toy.
On mount patch day, my mch on chilastra sold one ready-to-go mount for 50k when no further offers came in within a minute of the 50k bid. Five minutes later, another one was quickly bid at 500k. Again....who am I to refuse such an offer.
SOLD!
