Bio Engineer Archive

The BE calculator is a good tool because it can be adjusted some feel it comes in on the low side for pet prices and others think it charges more than it should. Me I bumped up a few things in it as I was one that though it came in on the low side for pets.

Message Edited by Joilhath on 04-20-2004 05:06 PM

Good question, it's something I've wondered myself)

I don't really feel qualified to answer, cause I wrote it, but I did try to write it in a way so people had options on how they wanted to price things, so there are a lot of things you can tweak (pretty well every part of the creature is "tweakable"). I'm also open to suggestions if there is something enough people think might be better with more "tweakability", though I'm a little worried that the options available are confusing enough as it is for "newbies", without adding more.

I've had comments about the default prices being too dear from some people, and too cheap from others, so I guess it's fairly median "all round" pricewise, though the data file I use personally is a little lower than the standard file (I'd be happy to send it to you if you send me a PM).

There are other pet pricing systems out there, but I feel pricing via BECalc is probably one of the fairest, as all the aspects of the creature are taken into acount, resists as well as vulnerabilities, level of all the HAM pools, attacks, attack speed etc. Systems based on CL alone can be very skewed as the invalid pet issues will show, so I'm fairly comfortable with using it. It can also be surprising how a pet turns out pricewise, as one that seems good can have a flaw that really drops the price down, and one that looks crappy can actually be fairly good...

Version 2.0 is just about to come outwhich will include Tissues, so keep an eye out for it in the next week or so.

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Incapacitated wrote:

Hi im just about ready to start my Bio-Pet store but am wondering if the BE calculator is a good way to price pets. I don't want to be unfair and am having a hard time determing how much i should sell my pets for? Does anyone use it or can anyone recommend a fair way to sell pets?

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Personally I use the BE Calc all the time, the one exception being non-CH pets which I sell at a standard price of 30k

I had a request the other day from a CH to make him a Lvl50 Razor Cat. The buyer told me the type of pet that he wanted, and then asked me for the rough price. I put it through the BECalc using estimated HAM, Damage etc, and it came out as 120k. When I told him the price his response was "Wow, you're joking right?? Another BE quoted me 60-65k"

Now he may have just been trying it on, I don't know. However, what occurred to me while we were haggling was how little people expect to pay for pets. A large house on Starsider generally sells for 150k, but a Master Architect can fire up his factory and produce 10 of those with very little effort. None of those will 'critical fail' and all he needs to do to create them is buy the appropriate resources which can also be harvested. To create a high level pet, we need the DNA, we need the resources, we have double the chance of critical failures (once when creating the template, once when creating the creature), and at the end of it all we can create something that can't be used because it's too high a level. How many architects make houses that can't be used because they're too big?

Another customer complained about paying 30k for a non-CH mount..."I can buy a speeder for that". My reply was "Yes, but the speeder won't go toe to toe with a Rancor while you're blowing it away with your Rifle".

So yes, in my opinion, the BE Calc is a very good tool, and the more people use it, the easier it will be on us all to charge a fair and standardprice.

Asp

I think Meroc came pretty close in the defaults he put into BE Calv v1.3 and the only thing I've changed is my non-CH bonus (dropping it from 35k to 15k, which I'm now considering raising in an effort to not spend all my time making non-CH pets). I think some factor per point of HAM as well as per point of resist with a bonus for specials, ranged and armor works well. What those factors are depends greatly on your server's economy.

I'd say poke around some of the others stores and see how frequently they're sold out (low prices) or how frequently you see the same pets there forever (high prices) then hit in the middle.

I use the unmodified price values in BE Calc, and have only ever gotten one complaint about pricing. Which should be ignored incidentally, the complainer turned out to be 12 years old and was yelling because the good non-CH pets on my vendor weren't selling for 6k like the assorted 'yard trash' compiled pets on the bazaar *laughs*.