Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: BE Pricing? Can we just discuss it sensibly among ourselves a minute please?
Scolding others for not playing the game the way you play is as illogical as others screaming at you for not playing the way they play.
It would be more beneficial to the community if we chose to respect eachother's points of view without making jabs.
Someone just posted a bartel quotent message in BE. I said the same thing. But I do understand teh Achiever mentality. My best friend is like 80% Achiever (We go back and forth) and he's the kind of guy who sets a goal and doesn't stop until he accomplishes it no matter what gets in his way. I tend to wonder about some of the goals sometimes just because they have no real value. Personally I value the smileI get from someone whenI stop and help them change their flat tire more then I value getting to where I was going on time.
Well I probably would anyway. Oriana, here is some food for thought:
No doubt you are using primo flora right? 800 average or better? If you were to store that away, and sell it a month later after the spawn was gone, that kind of stuff usually fetches like 5cpu on the bazaar or on a vendor. Even current spawn grind quality flora (on Bria at least) fetches 3cpu on the bazaar.
Also keep in mind, that you are valuing flora at 2cpu, but the chef who is using your additive is valuing flora at over 10cpu(!).
See the problem?
OrianaM wrote:
However I was pricing my Flora resources at 2cpu which is far more than what it really costs me to harvest them on my own.
Actually the problem I'm seeing is that the Chef is overcharging.
I charge 2cpu because it is over 10x what it costs me to harvest said flora. This is factoring how much it costs me to harvest the power (including maintenance for the fusion reactor), maintenance on the flora farm, extraction rate, and resource density. Those are all easily factored in. Yes, I'm using as "primo flora" as it doesn't make sense to harvest anything else.
The hard part for me is quantifying the worth of my time harvesting meat. I don't see a 1-3 cpu difference in flora being a huge deal, but a 15-20cpu difference in the meat should be a far bigger issue. Especially since I have extreme amounts of flora, and meat seems to be my limiting factor for tissue production.
Case in point, it takes me 3 hours to gather 15k of good quality meat if I'm hunting alone (Which is all too frequent unfortunately.) In that same time, my four flora harvesters sitting on say an 80 resource has gathered roughly half that, but I didn't have to use up my time for that. I take a break for 3 hours to do something else. My flora resources have caught up with my creature resources already. I log and get some sleep (Yeah, I know between work and this, who actually sleeps right?) and my harvesters have left me in the dust.
I think rather than trying to overvalue my flora resource I need to stop under valuing my creature resouces. But either way, the bottom line is that I'm trying to raise the prices of my tissues closer to that of my peers.
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
Oriana, here is some food for thought:
No doubt you are using primo flora right? 800 average or better? If you were to store that away, and sell it a month later after the spawn was gone, that kind of stuff usually fetches like 5cpu on the bazaar or on a vendor. Even current spawn grind quality flora (on Bria at least) fetches 3cpu on the bazaar.
Also keep in mind, that you are valuing flora at 2cpu, but the chef who is using your additive is valuing flora at over 10cpu(!).
See the problem?
OrianaM wrote:
However I was pricing my Flora resources at 2cpu which is far more than what it really costs me to harvest them on my own.
Albion_DeCrappa wrote:But, basically, you scratch my back I scratch yours. I give my BSN to a chef. That Chef in turn gets his Armorsmith alt to make me a suit of armor. I inturn give the Armorsmith's Tailor friend some tailor tissues. See... big cycle, no cash involved. But then again, I am the kind of guy who walks into Coronet Starport and asks if anyone wants a Nightsister Lance and give it to the first person who doesn't ask "How much?" Why have millions and millions of credits if there's nothing to spend them on? What... so you can have a fancy dancy AV-21 or 10 million credit carpet for your house? So you can have bragging rights? Are those things really necessary to survive in the game and have fun?Message Edited by Albion_DeCrappa on 06-24-2004 01:14 PM
Sorry to break it to you bud, but you giving your chef friend nutrients is worth more than a couple suits of armor here or there.
Centurion wrote:
I created a spreadsheet to track how many resources of what type were needed for Chef tissues (I can email people it if they'd like or post it to one of my websites).
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 06-25-2004 09:00 AM
Ahhh... now there is a major difference. For my time has value beyond belief. I cannot stop it and so I make every minute count and expect as much from every minute I can get.
Well except when I am wasting my time, as in now... 
Albion_DeCrappa wrote:
Sorry to break it to you bud, but you giving your chef friend nutrients is worth more than a couple suits of armor here or there.
So what? To me it's worth one suit of armor, and tomorrow it may be worth a crate of Brandy or a Doc Buff. Stop putting monitary value on everything you look at. And anyway, all I need is one suit of armor, if I need another one they'd gladly give it to me, but I don't. Why trade my BSNs for 3 suits of armor when they'll just sit in a pack somewhere taking up 10 storage each? You will never understand the way I do things, because you require getting paidwhat you consider a fair ammount for everything including your time. Me I don't look at life that way, my time is worth 0. I can't save it, I can't stop it, it will pass whether I get paid for it or not, so way waste my time trying to figure out how to get a better SUV then my neighbor?
Albion_DeCrappa wrote:So what? To me it's worth one suit of armor, and tomorrow it may be worth a crate of Brandy or a Doc Buff. Stop putting monitary value on everything you look at. And anyway, all I need is one suit of armor, if I need another one they'd gladly give it to me, but I don't. Why trade my BSNs for 3 suits of armor when they'll just sit in a pack somewhere taking up 10 storage each? You will never understand the way I do things, because you require getting paidwhat you consider a fair ammount for everything including your time. Me I don't look at life that way, my time is worth 0. I can't save it, I can't stop it, it will pass whether I get paid for it or not, so way waste my time trying to figure out how to get a better SUV then my neighbor?
Albion, I have a great respect and reverence for an outlook on life such as this, and I too view my time the same way. But this is SWG, man! The reason we play is to avoid real life!
I guess that post came out of some frustration I've had with chefs lately. The begrudgingly pay my asking price for full factory runs of BSN, stating how over-priced tissues are, only to go use these tissues in even more over-priced vasarian brandy. When I crunch the numbers for them in reply, most of them relent.
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:I guess the thing to me is that it be on a level playing field. So lets' take chef prices and work backwards. 250k/crate - price of BE additive (let's say 40k) = 210kAnd the materials needed: 1.5k flora + 375 water + 3.75k gemstone + 1.25k chemicalsSo that's 6875 materials which works out to be 30cpu. And that's all for things that are 100% harvestable from a harvester.So let's apply those same numbers to BE additives.That would put us at 37k / 60k / 82kAnd of course that includes a large portion of meat which is not machine harvested.Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 06-25-2004 09:00 AM
Arthur, can I quote this is my food post on the trade forum? All I did for my prices, which they say are far too low, is apply what chefs expect BEs to charge for supplements to food. It seems to me that the best thing that could happen to BEs would be a drop in chef prices. It would increase demand for supplements as chefs move more food. I moved 400 crates of food today, the first day after my first advertisement. People can't believe I'd sell it so cheap, but, hell, us BEs have been doing it all along.