Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Have 'loot kits' affected the meat supply, or am I doing something wrong?
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PurpleWarrior
Thu Aug 05, 2004 5:39 pm
#1
Since the advent of 'loot kits'Istruggle to get enough meat. I have 6 factories constantly churning out Chef Additives (again) at the moment and one working on Tailor tissues.
I am getting through something around 200K of meat per week and it's hard work acquiring it all.
Zadokk goes out and harvests his own meat to run his factories because he's notproducing as much as I am, and I'm getting to the stage where I think it would be easier to scale back a bit and do something similar.
- Every day I log in looking for meat on tha Bazaars in Theed, Bestine and Corolag.
- I advertise in the auction channel.
- Imail anyone who is selling decent meat at reasonable prices.
- I send mails to every hunter I know asking them top get more meat for me.
- I go out hunting with my partner for a couple of hours generally to get more specialised stuff like Insect and Reptilian that doesn't get offered to me as often as Carn or Wild.
- Then I hit the Bazaars, and auction channels again.
- I also advertise on the Trade forum and hassle everyone I know to go hunt meat for me
I pay decent money, but recently it has got silly. I've had to offer 30cpu for Tat Carnivore that wasn't even that brilliant because some Chefs latched onto it and were paying that much. At that price I tend to avoid using it in BSNs because the profit magin isn't as good as I get on INNs.
Getting decent quantities of meat that is above average but nothing special is tricky. If anything resembling half-decent Avian or Herb is spawning anywhere, forget seeing any hunters that week
I just want huge quantities of Carnivore where the OQ+PE+Flav is around 2000 and I'll pay 10cpu for it, but I can't get it!
Anyone else had any luck? Am I doing something wrong? What do you pay for your meat?
Is it just Chimaera that has a bit of a lack of hunters now, or have they all dried up a bit since everyone went mad for 'loot kits'?
ArthurDentOnBria
Thu Aug 05, 2004 5:47 pm
#2
It's just not realistic. On the two servers where I play, there is always doctors and armorsmiths paying 25cpu - 200cpu for some spawn of another, so you just won't get people going out of their way to hunt you something for that price. You've either gotta get it yourself, compete with those docs and armorsmith on price, or buy what is available at the price you're willing to pay (generally dath carnivore meat). Those are your three options. And if you're in the middle of a spawn where there is really really primo avian or wooly hide, just forget about it, lol.
PurpleWarrior wrote:
I just want huge quantities of Carnivore where the OQ+PE+Flav is around 2000 and I'll pay 10cpu for it, but I can't get it!
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 08-05-2004 05:49 PM
schizoF
Thu Aug 05, 2004 7:25 pm
#3
Since I only work in a minor scale and try to keep a low profile I do the same as Zadokk, I get all rescources needed by myself.
Since there´s some peps with lots of money offering 30-50cpu´s for unlimited amounts (!) of good meat, not many would be eager to help you out for 10cpu.
You´ve done nothing wrong except not offering enough money for the meat :/
Since there´s some peps with lots of money offering 30-50cpu´s for unlimited amounts (!) of good meat, not many would be eager to help you out for 10cpu.
You´ve done nothing wrong except not offering enough money for the meat :/
PurpleWarrior
Fri Aug 06, 2004 1:17 am
#4
Well, I was paying 30cpu for the carnivore as I said, but previous to the loot kits coming out I was getting plenty of mid-range meat like Dath Carnivore and Dant Wild for 8cpu, never mind 10.
People were hunting on Dant and Dath and selling the meat they sort of acquired as a 'sideline' to me, and there was plenty of it.
If the meat supply doesn't pick up, I'll just scale back as I said and concentrate on the Tailor Tissues because I can supply myself for those. I only went back into the Chef business because my wife made a Master Chef and talked me into making the additives for sale again.
I really was getting plenty of meat before this last fortnight or so. I have about 450K of meat stored at the moment, but 300K of that is the 30cpu carnivore I've bought over the last week. The bazaar at Bestine used to have 3 or 4 pages in the 'Organic Food' category (always did have sionce I started to play)- with about 60% of it meat. Now it has 1 page and maybe 10 items on the next one.
I really do feel the meat supply, in general, isless than it was...
droid327
Fri Aug 06, 2004 1:21 am
#5
well dath carn and dant wild are two unique meats in the game - they're the meats people get from running missions while they level (rancors and quenkers/huurton, respectively) so you're very very lucky if there's a good spawn of that. Fortunately, carny meat is coded to usually have good stats in the stuff we want it to, so the odds of rancor meat being yummy at any given shift are pretty good. For any meat that hunters ARENT out harvesting anyway, you're going to have to offer enough to make it worth their time to run the missions. I'd say any offer less than 50 cpu on anything besides those two meats isnt going to garner any business.
Zadokk
Fri Aug 06, 2004 5:50 am
#6
Yes I supply my own meat but I also buy it whenever I see it advertised or I spam Anchorhead in the hope to get some noob who has 4k sitting in his inv. The way I see it: BSNs take 49 hours to run (let say 2 days) and I have 3 factories. So that means every two days I need to get at least 60k of meat or I wont be able to keep up with the demand - this is easy for me, this is about 9 hours hunting on dant. It seems a lot but sometimes I can get two sessions done in a day (one in the afternoon (3-6pm) and one in the early hours (12-3am)) and then one the day after. If the meat were to shift to dath then obviously I would just stockpile loads of it because I good easily get 30k per session hunting enraged rancs.
I actually think that keeping the business small is better for many reasons:
1) It doesnt turn into your day job. Less pressure, less deadlines.
2) Its probably more profitable because all the res is supplied for nothing and I get the mission payouts. Agreed I get weapon and armour decay as well having to shell out for food butthats easilycovered by the 24 - 30 odd missions I complete at 25k (600 - 750k). Flora is effectively 1-2cpu for harvesting it, so that means I get a profitof at least1,400,000 per BSN run.
Keepin it small only doing mail orders on additives is the way I plan to keep it.
PurpleWarrior
Fri Aug 06, 2004 9:25 am
#7
Zadokk wrote:
I actually think that keeping the business small is better for many reasons:
1) It doesnt turn into your day job. Less pressure, less deadlines.
2) Its probably more profitable because all the res is supplied for nothing and I get the mission payouts. Agreed I get weapon and armour decay as well having to shell out for food butthats easilycovered by the 24 - 30 odd missions I complete at 25k (600 - 750k). Flora is effectively 1-2cpu for harvesting it, so that means I get a profitof at least1,400,000 per BSN run.
Keepin it small only doing mail orders on additives is the way I plan to keep it.
All good points. I expanded the business because I had Chefs pestering me to produce additives for them, but the amount of meat you can get coming in is the limiting factor.
Like I said - if it starts to be a problem I'll just scale it back. I can still make money at 30cpu for the meat, but I'd probably make more money doing it your way Zad - just have to put a bit more personal effort into it *grins*
Zadokk costs: 60K flora (self harvested) = 30Kcr + 20K meat (missioned) = 0so total profit ==1.4M - 30K
Septus costs: 60K flora @ 4cpu= 240K+ 20K meat @ 30cpu= 600K and profit = 1.4M - 840K *coughs*
Now - if I sellthree timesas much as Zad, I'm doing 'better' for income - otherwise I'm wasting my time
I think I'll start ramping up on Karli's Chef work - she's been offered a nice spot in a tent in Kabar for a vendor - time to get a brandy run on.
If it starts feeling like a chore, I just cut back how much of it I'm doing like any sensible person would. As long as Doctors and Chefs and Armoursmiths are soaking up all the hunters, it's just not worth it.
Seiryuu
Fri Aug 06, 2004 9:43 am
#8
The meat had dried up for me the past few weeks, although there was nothing good and easily obtained, so I wasn't pushing for it.
I'm much more worried about the impact the combat balance and JtL will have. I have a feeling my supplies are going to dry up.
I'm much more worried about the impact the combat balance and JtL will have. I have a feeling my supplies are going to dry up.
Busukaba
Fri Aug 06, 2004 11:21 am
#9
Ya, I have noticed a distinct lack of folks out harvesting meat. Lets face it, gathering meat is kinda boring, though not as mind dulling as fishing. On my server (Intrepid) if you're not offering 30cpu, most folks won't even think of gathering for you. I did 2 full runs of BSN and one INN harvesting meat by myself before I was able to have enough money to pay for all the meats I have needed recently. I had a huge 5 factory run order to do in a week and paid 30 cpu the 70k I bought (I harvested 30k on my own YAY HARVESTING DROIDS!!!)
Of course, if a good herbivore meat or avian meat spawns, forget about getting anyone to hunt for you. Docs start their bidding wars on Intrepid at 120 cpu for avian meat and many will pay large sums for herbivore as well (40-60cpu). I think the real difficulty is that we make a lot less off of our investment than a Doctor does. A Doc can make more than we do profit wise by sitting in a starport for an hour and going through 2 sets of buffpacks. If a Doc ever got the resources together to make 6 factory runs (1000 for each stat) as long as he could get 2400 on those buffs (an easy 15k per buffset on Intrepid), at 30 charges per buff pack he would make 4.5 billion credits at a cost to him of possibly2 million credits (going at a base guess of having one set of 6 buffpacks costing 20kcredits). Kinda ridiculous if we make 6 factory runs and we get about 3.6 million in profit. Big difference from 4.3 billion to 3.6 million. My numbers might be low since I am not a Doc, but does it really matter whether or not it costs 20k in resources or 100k in resources to make a set of 6 buffs, they are still making a boatload of money. It is really hard to compete for certain resources with them because they do have so much more capital, even the crappy Doc buffs at 7 or 8k per set are making money. Me, I don't even bother if the resources that I need a Doc needs.
However, if you find a ranger or two who you can get on a good relationship with, this will work wonders for you. I am lucky enough to have become good friends with a MCH/Ranger. We often work out deals for pets for meat trades so meat gathering doesn't always dent my wallet, as long as he needs or wants to try out different special combos/resist levels/HAM levels.
Waivveen
droid327
Fri Aug 06, 2004 12:56 pm
#10
yeah you gotta remember, you're not just competing with chefs and docs and ASs for CPU, but jantas and rancors too =) If you're not paying enoughto make it worth their time they'll just go run missions instead. I know on Corbantis the current dath avian meat is going for 200 CPU to docs who have been without a good spawn for a long time, and the place is positively crawling with hunters (stealing my lairs, i might add lol)
Numen
Sat Aug 07, 2004 12:46 am
#11
I think more and more people have found better ways of making credits.
Lets say someone harvests meat for an entire buff session. I'll even take enraged rancor lairs in a group. Each lair is about 1100-1200 meat. A set of 2 can probably be done in 15 minutes I would guess. Possible less. So I'll assume 10k per hour of meat. For an entire buff session that is about 30k meat.
At 10cpu they can sell it for 300k
20cpu for 600k
30cpu for 900k
They also made 36k*24 = 864k
In that same time they could have ran Janta/Mokk missions and easily gotten 1.5 million plus all the possible loot.
I am having the same issue you are having. Usually going through 160-200k meat per week. However I never offer less than 20cpu. As a hunter I would never sell for less than 20cpu. Its just not worth my time to even bother harvesting the creatures and then find someone to sell it to. At 10cpu, 75% of my credits come from the mission payout.
With NPCs people have the chance of getting something other than credits. The chance is low, but still a chance. The odds are much worse or even nonexsistant when looting creatures. So other than credits people have no reason to kill creatures.
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