Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Prices
There has already been so much said but I must.....
Low pricing on architectural items by newbies, grinders and undercutters is ruiningthe profit potential for ALL those practicing the craft. PERIOD. Not a difficult concept.
Sure I could move to weaponsmithing where they aresmarter and making the market work FOR them. Experimentationalso helpsprotect the price base; unfortunately architects all spin out the same stuff.Understanding as a group that profit isour life's bloodandpreservingvaluein the product we manufacture would be a virtue for all architects to practice. On the other hand, pricing our houses and other items such that profit/value ratio is well below other craft's marketable itemsskewers oureconomy and makesbeing an architect for unrewarding for the majority and nearly futile. And that is just a shame.
Furthermore, whoever keeps using Sam Walton as an example should wake up and note that in real life,we are all slowly, but most assuredly,becoming slaves to corporate America and THAT is the bottom line. Sam may have gotten rich, but this faceless and unaccountable corporate structure that has become modern business is making themajority ofthe citizens in our countrynothing but expendable, uncreative, unfulfilled andpoverty stricken robots. Small businesses and family apprenticeships are dying as those with no social conscience continue to rule the day. Quality of life for the majority suffers aswe go about our mindless and repetitive corporate jobs.
So don't tell THIS player it's smart business like Sam Walton. HA. It's no more smart in this game than it is in real life. The fabric of society should always be considered when making business decisions. Why? Because it is the right thing to do.
If you want to take the high horse with regards to being competitive in business, thats fine. But there is a point when being overly competitive is just a fancy word for being f***ing stupid, and many architects have crossed that line. We are to the point were we make the least per unit on our products compared to EVERY OTHER crafting profession and guess what? People keep driving down prices even more in the name of "being competitive." Like I said before, we are just ruining this profession for ourselves, and would be better served doing something like selling materials rather than 1) having to take the time to build a structure 2) lose materials in critical failures 3) have customers back out of a deal because "Joe Architect" down the street is selling so low he's barely breaking even.
I only sell furniture and harvestors myself since the housing industry is not worthwhile for me personnally. Anyhow, I sell heavy harvs/fusions at 125k; med mineral/solars at 15k; med chemical/gas; 60k ... those are the main ones I sell along those lines. I will also take any resource as exchange for 3c/resource rate. So for a heavy harv they pay close to 42k in resources.
Seems to work out well unless I get an idioit that feels his resource is worth 5c/resource and is not going to "pay" 210k for a harvestor. If he can get 5c/resource for that, he's more than welcome to pay in credits instead.
It really doesn't matter to me what other people charge these days. I'm comfortable with my pricing system and I don't mind recommending people to others if they think my pricing is out of their comfort range. I usually have between 10k-150k in credits on me at any given time so I'm not rich or anything. I do a lot of fun decorating jobs and spend hours I'm sure I could technically make a lot more making harvestors.. but you know what, I don't get the kind of appreciation I get from that as I do making a house into a home. I feel bad that I've put off poor Bitro though... not sure if he broke down and bought furniture yet or not... when i stall for too long I start feeling guilty about contacting them to see if they still need me. I need to allow myself at least 3 days for large houses it seems. Especially when I become inspired.
I have a full listing of furniture prices too... I'd have to just email you the spreadsheet though since I don't have any website up for that right now.
There's a niche for everyone though. No one person can handle an entire market.
For me I don’t need XP, I’m a master Architect now. XP has nothing to do with my prices.
What I am trying to do is remain in a profitable business in a drastically declining market, the only way I can do that is to attract more of the fewer customers left then you ( or whoever else is on my planet ). I don’t believe in the 3cr per resource price selling directly thing, as that is about to dry up, if you cant sell a house or a structure, who is it that is going to buy your bulk stuff? That 3 cr per unit thing is architects selling to other architects, think about it.
Besides I want to work as an architect, I like providing customers with a product at a savings. I am having fun and will continue to do so.
Secondly, the people that constantly argue with me will try to tell you i am selling at 2cr per, I don’t, I just defend people that do sell for 2cr per unit, they have every right too. My prices are probably pretty close to yours.
I sell small houses currently for 9k ( although I have sold for 8.5 )
Medium houses for 55k
Large ones for 120k
I am not a drastic under cutter, I just sell for a little less than the going rate. Could I make as much or more selling resources, possibly, but I am not interested in that.
Yes corporations do interfere with Democracy, morally I would agree with you and I think Sam Walton was a jerk. I think the corporate lobby in DC is one of the most evil forces in our government. The current administration is a total slave to that lobby. ( the argument begins again )
But I am going to laugh at people that think Sam Walton knew nothing about business, obviously he knew more than most everyone on this thread that says selling for less is stupid. People that sell for less are trying to get a business advantage, and succeeding, and that is what is annoying people that are used to higher profit margins.
I don’t know where they get their resources, but mine cost me less than 1 cr per unit, a lot less.
LOCOLeaderX wrote:
Heres the pricesI came up with is it to low to high? canI get more?
large harvesters 3 C,per needs factory made parts
Deed for High Capacity Flora Farm 70k
Deed for Heavy Natural Gas Processor 60k
Deed for Heavy Min. Mining Installation 80k
Deed for Deep Crust Chemical Extractor 70k
Deed for Fusion Power Generator 80k
med harvesters 2.5 C,per
Deed for Automated Flora Farm 50k
Deed for High Eff. Moisture Vaparator 25k
Deed for Mineral Mining Installation 9k
Deed for Solar Power Generator 11k
Deed for Natural Gas Processor 30k
Deed for Chemical Extractor 30k
simplyfied
large harvesters (80k)
med: Flora (50k)
med: Gas, Chemical and Moisture (30K)
med: Mineral and solar (10k)
Pa hall 300k
large house 100K
med house 50k
small 10k
Well, I charge (basic):
PA Hall 1.75 million (2 million generic)
Large House 200k (250k generic)
Medium House 80k (90k generic)
Small House 15k (any)
Heavy Harvester 200k
Medium Harvester 30k Solar and Mineral, 60k forothers (may go up)
Personal Harvester 2k
Factories 80k
Prices vary of course, but these are the straight up prices that I tell people or that you'll find on my vendor. I think that the price fair and reasonable. Your prices are pretty low I think, but to each his own.
As far as people selling at low prices, it doesn't really bother me or affect my business. I'm a Master Architect now, so I don't have to sell anything to sustain my advancement (although I still make sales :smileywink
Just a quick response to this:
"To establish the value of a lot, assume that you are a not-very-smart miner, running a heavy harvester for commodity-grade steel on an 80% spot."
I am currently running five heavy harvesters on a 60% spot, and only last night did I decide to post my first sale of resources (low grade ore) on what is likely the least inhabited "main" planet (Talus) on my server (Corbantis). In other words, I don't necessarily expect or even need a lot of business.
So... by your definition, I wouldn't even qualify for the "not-very-smart" moniker.
The reason I'm responding is to point out that not all of us have the same priorities you do. Maximizing production and revenue for my architect/weaponsmith is not my #1 priority. What IS my #1 is maximizing my playing time with my other character (a swordsman/marksman). The second account, with the architect/weaponsmith, was purchased from a friend to make weapons for my primary, and as a result, I don't spend anywhere near the kind of time in researching the profession that I might otherwise. Likewise, if I can spend 10-20 minutes a night placing harvesters near a known, central location that I have as a waypoint, and only occasionally move them around to other resource concentrations that are near that waypoint (where we have a house as a central storage facility), that means I save a significant amount of TIME in doing so. Likewise, some of us just don't play well with others and get really bugged by people saying "gimme, gimme, gimme" all the time - thus, no PA's. In other words, I'm pretty much an independent operator, without a significant amount of time to spend and no real support beyond a couple other friends who only help to pay maintenance.
Heck, there have been several instances where I've left a number of medium or heavy harvesters on a 40% concentration when I knew full well of another concentration in the 70% range, simply because I didn't want to spend the time to move them.
However, I will state that your post raises a few good ideas, and for someone who reads between the lines of your post to figure that a 90% concentration isn't god-awful hard to find, but actually expected (or maybe not?), AND since I'm effectively done with Cries of Alderaan, maybe I'll consider some of your points and start looking for higher concentrations.
Dalyn is, I believe, making a non-economic choice: If I understand the numbers correctly, he could make more money by selling his resources in bulk than by crafting. Dalyn may disagree, but lets postulate that this is true.
This may indicate one of two things. The first (more likely) is non-economic decision making. Dalyn's goal may be to maximize how much stuff he builds without losing money, not how much money he makes. He is completely free to play the game that way. It is also possible he believes he makes more money operating in this fashion than he would by selling raw resources, but I think it more likely that he is not maximizing his profits.
Now, for the remaining architects: the same question applies to you: Are you maximizing profits or are you maximizing something else? Because you really can't have it both ways.
If your goal is to maximize profits, then mine stuff or switch to a profession that is more lucrative. If your goal is to be an architect, then you may have a dilemma. If you mine your own resources, then the price of being an architect is making less money than you would by being a miner. If you buy your resources from a miner, then you may be out of business.
Personally, I'm making a decent living right now as an architect. Prices for finished architectural goods on Gorath are about 4 credits per resource, and they seem to be rising rather than falling. If the price of architectural goods falls to 3 credits per unit, I'll become a miner. If the price of raw materlais then falls to 2, I'll go back to architecture.
I could make a profit at a price-point of about 1.5 credits per unit of finished goods. The fact that prices are hovering around 4 credits per unit is, from my point of view, pretty sweet.
I think that the reason people are unhappy with 'undercutting' is because they're confused about whether they're maximizing profits or maximizing the amount of architecting they get to do.
I'm glad we could actually agree on this, and I suppose thatin the end, we are all just victims of a flounderingprofession. I would probably feel a lot better if I knew that there would be some resolution to the problem in the foreseeable future. The developers seem to be so thinly streched right now that the last correspondent response seemed to indicate that they weren't even previouslyaware of the issues with our end of the economy. As much as I would love to see the critical fail problems fixed, I honestly think that adding a structure sink is more important, because by the time something gets implemented, the architect field is going to be completely useless. I wish we at least had a correspondent to talk to that could convey the direness of fixing this situation before it gets far worse. I am betting,based onthe response from the devs, that it will be at least two more months until something is done to fix thisproblem. I'm sure plenty of us will make money at mining or other professions, but it will be a real hardship for architects who had hoped todo this professionfull-time.
I may not agree with the businesspractices of people who sell extremely low, but I don't mind nearly as much when extremely low still means a markup that is worth fooling with for someone who want to make some money in the field. Honestly, if people sell a small house for 8-9k or a medium for 55-60k to be competative, I would be fine with that. And if there was still a decent demand for structures, that would work out fine. But when a small house goes for 6k or less and a medium goes for 50k or lessin order to be able toselldecently largequantities, the profession becomes of little worth to any but the most dedicated architect. If people were selling at 8-9k or 55-60k,they could provide lower prices to people who were willing to wait or tobuy fromsomeone who dealt with more orders and couldn't give them as much individual attention, but they could still make enough moneyto be worthwhile to many people.If structure quality ever makes a difference, that couldprovide different niches in the market, as well. And then those of us who wanted to sell in smaller quanities at higher prices could provide more premium products andservices.Between this and implementingadvanced classes for each field, we could have some real variety in what we offer to our customers, and architects could be segmentedinto smaller groups instead of making huge numbers of identical masterscompete for the exact same market.
I would also like to see something be done about people selling smaller structuresat next to nothingwhen they build several ofthemto get XP. I can honestly say that I would have prefered to have recieved only half or evena third ofthe structure XP for a non-practice build, which would keep all of the cheap grinding-houses off the market. That way it would be a little harder to get to master, because you would probably have to make a few regular builds to get income along the way.
Oh andin response tooddessy's comment about us being slaves to corperate america, all I can say is that you are preaching to the choir with me. The sad thing is that virtually everything we are exposed to from day-to-dayis coming from some self-servingcorporation, so most people don't have a clue of the level of corruption that exists in our society, or how to get decent representation to fix it. But the FCC seems to think that35% market share (or whatever they call it for broadcastmedia)is not enough for one media outlet to be allowed tohold. And if anyone honestly thinks that corporations don't interfere with democracy, they should check to see how many billions of dollars are paid on corporatelobbying each year. I'm going to stop here before this becomes a huge debate that I have no desire to get into.
One thing that is at the core of the arguement here is that by selling lower than others, and continuing to sell lower, that people are "driving me or someone else out of business". That there is a winner and a loser. That at some point if I quit building and selling a product at whatever the current prices are, that I am "driven out of the market".
That idea only works in RL. Not this game.
You see, in real life, being driven out of business is most often truely, out of business. Capital, and assets cannot sit unused. They will be reabsorbed and reused elsewhere.
If I run a store, that fails. I cannot let that building sit. I cannot let the products on the shelves sit. They all have value and will be reabsorbed and channelled into something else. I need to pay creditors, the bank, my mortgage, my bills. The value of that failed business can not just sit there. The building will be sold, or reused in another venture, the products will be liquidated. Business is liqudated. Stockholders and creditors paid. I am doing something else because I need to eat and have a roof over my head.
Therefore, I am "out of business". I cannot a week from now decide to re-enter the market, because my capicity to do that particular business has gone away.
That is where that arguement ends. It holds no water in this game. I am never "driven from the market" or out of business.
Say I have a house, 8 heavy harvestors of every type, and a skill tree with Master Artisan. I am not selling structures because of the so called "good businessmen" that are going to "drive me out of business" because the sell lower for than what I do.
What happens if I stop selling? Nothing. Do I have the option of re-entering the market at any time with absolutely minimal cost? Yeah. Do my archtitect boxes get removed when someone makes a sale and I do not? No.
What happens when I am so called run out of business, along with most other architects? Supply and demand. Fewer archtects, price will go higher. What happens when the price goes up to what I will work for? I dust off the harvesors, make structures and I am back in the market.
So the analogy of being run out of business is a very false one. You can never destroy my capacity to do business. At any time, I can enter the market and sell for what the going rate is.
If kmart goes out of business, the buildings are sold, investors and creditors are paid, capital is reinvested elsewhere, and gone from the kmart entity.
If I go out of business, I still have my house, my harvestors, my game account, my architect skill. I do not have to sell any of it to pay creditors, investors, or pay my bills. It can all sit there nicely for my use at any time in the future.
The only business you are putting me out of is the low ball business. You can have all that you want. If anyone thinks that by continually selling lower than me is going to get rid of me, and set the lowballers up for some future exlusive future market grab, you lowballers have another thing coming. If the price goes back up, I fire up my harvestors and crafting station again, and It will take me all of an hour or less.
Weeks or months of lowballing to put me out of business, just to take an hour of my time. Poor trade IMO.
Crank away those lower than resource price structures. I will still be here.
Just a follow up to the earlier post:
Thanks to finally getting the eight heavy and eight medium mineral harvesters up and running, I've now hit master artisan, master weaponsmith, and have everything I need for master architect (4/4/4/4) except for the apprenticeship points.
At this point, I've sold a grand total of NOTHING to any other character in the game, other than resources (lots of that). Yes, it wasblindingly obvious that my customers were archtects - so what? I don't see your point to "think about it."
I've made 11 two-handed curved swords to this point (two would rate as "excellent," IMO, but I'm going to check on the weaponsmith board to see, with one additional "really good."). All are sliced.
Other than the one small house, one equipment factory, one wearables factory, and the various harvesters I and my friends have used and a few personal harvesters I sold when I started, I haven't built anything else.
Don't know how that "fits" into the ongoing economics argument we're having here... Am I interfering, contributing, or completely outside the system in that regard?
At this point, I've sold a grand total of NOTHING to any other character in the game, other than resources (lots of that).
Sorry, typo... should have read "other than resources (lots of that) and a few personal harvesters when I first started.
MIGHT start selling weapons (possibly JUST swords), though, and I'm definitely going to continue selling resources. I've found that searching all over the galaxy for that 999 UT Dolovite Iron is a touch time consuming. I'd prefer to just look on the bazaar, spend 12 credits per unit, and spend 95% of my game time finally playing my swordsman again, after two months.
Sheesh - it was quite embarassing a couple days ago - I've been playing since day 4, yet was accused of being a noob when I forgot to stop shooting a lair while trying to "pop" it. I took so much time off to level the master weaponsmith (my alternate character) that I've gotten out of practice in playing the primary.