Bio Engineer Archive

I had someone ask me how much I would charge for creating schematics. Seeing a post on the board about roughly the same thing, I thought I would start a discussion.

What do you think is a fair price for schematics?
What is your expertise worth to you?

My opinion (and the price I quoted this person) is 10-20% the price of the finished product.

For example, a schematic of 100 sunburns (which could net me 150k) would go for 15-30k

The customer would provide a sample of the materials, and I give them a schematic with the requested amount of finished items.

This would of course include schematics for required components, if they require my expertise.

Ezran Shisme, Master Chef, Valcyn

As a general rule, I wont sell a schematic.
Why would I sell something that could mean I lose business ?

I have only today said I would make a schematic, and that is only because someones offering 25k for a sunburn schematic

Unless I needed help with my production and I needed to subcontract component generation to an up-and-coming chef, then selling schematics for me is out of the question. Not even sunburn schematics, because they can go and sell the product, I'm pretty sure it would have my name on it, and I wouldn't like that situation at all. I'm sure that there are many people on every server (mixII/cookIV) that can make a good schematic, and I'm sure that dealing for higher end players will start soon.

As the player offering to buy a schematic on this board, I'll post a few thoughts. You can see my position. Maybe you care, maybe not.

I am a master artisan and have been for some time. I underwent a serious career crissis as to where to go from tehre. I ended up going for chef for a while. Dropped some harvs and now I haveall the resources I need. Now I'm mix 2 and I love the sunburns, but my career crisis has taken me elsewhere and I need the skill points back. Now, my original plan was to just rent a food factory, make my own schematic, and churn out a hunk of sunburns for my personal use before I lost the skills to do that. Once I started the underttaking, though, I decided I'd offer to buy a schematic from someone with more experimentation points than I had, so as to get more quantity. I made an assurance in my offer that I am not looking to sell any of these, but if you don't want to trust me, I can understand that. You don't know me from anyone else, right?

Either way, it's just like I said - $25k for a few minutes work. I'm not putting any master chefs out of business with 100 sunburns. I'm also fronting all the resources, the factoryand those attendant costs. Am I getting a good deal? I'm happy. Is the chef getting a good deal? I think so, and here's why:

You should look at me as a new type of market.I'm not going to buy 100 sunburns with 9 charges each, paying 500 creds per charge for a sunburn.You're not losing any market by selling this schematic to me. I'm also not going to reposition my character's entire role and pastime on this server trying toresell these things all over the galaxies. You're not losing any other buyers by selling this to me. I just dont want to have to worry about my supply for a while, I'm willing to gather my own resources, and I'm willing to pay experienced chefs for their time.

If your product is flying off the shelves so fast at your prices that you can't keep up, then you're not losing anything here - You're already running at maximum capacity and either (1) couldn't accomodate my order or (2) could, but you'd just be turning away business for the day it takes to run my order. EIther way, you're getting $25k that you wouldn't otherwise be getting. If you're having a slow time selling, then (1) you're probably less likely to scoff at $25k, (2) you realize that finding buyers is often just as difficult, if not moreso, thancreating an item, (3) you're facingissues about vendor maintenance and monitoringthat point out the darker sid eof running a busines (I know - I did it and lost my hat - razzafrazzin' item deletion). and (4) youare runnign a business and don'tturn down free money. Remember, in that same time, thischef (or any of you) could still be makingYOUR product and selling it just as you would any other day - still making just as much money. You getyour "standard" profitplus my $25k. Gravy.

Just to add my "big picture thoughts," let me say this:

I think it'sunfortunate that artisans feel compelled to be their own product developers, resource gatherers, manufacturers, retailers and advertisers. The most common complaint I hear about specialized artisans is that their character has become a second job to tend to. I went down this same path and got bored really quickly.

As time goes by and people realize that playing that way can be pretty boring, I think the merchant will come into its own.People will be less inclined to travel three planets over to go to your food shop, when someone opens a general store with everything not far away. The merchant buys one of each factory (well, maybe architect is a little too cumbersome, but whatever) and just buys a few schematics from different artisans. The chef is paid handsomely, but of course not for the retail value of all the items that will be made from the schematic. On the other hand, the chef makes his money (albeit less) in 10 minutes instead of a day or two. He logs in, delivers a few schematics, maybe (but not even necessarily) the resources required as well, andfrees upan abundance of time toplay the game, pursue anothercareer, finally pull some of those points out of business and merchant and do something else. Sure, he doesn't make as much money, but hismaximum operating capacity just went through the roof. A single chef can service as many retailers as he wants, in a fraction of the time needed otherwise.He can still run his shopand make profit that way if he wants.

Perrish, I tend to agree with you. Artisans should not feel obligated to sell there product. That's exactly why I proposed this topic.

My situation goes as follows:
I had someone mention my name to help a novice chef. That person asked if I would be willing to sell schematics to them at a discounted price, if they provide the factory time and resources. That way they could save the skill points. After some thought, I came up with 25% of my total price. My name would be on the schematics, I would get a cut of the profits, but I wouldn't require the time and money for resources. Unfortunately, they thought my prices were outrageous, and they wouldn't even charge 25% for the final product. I offered to train them, and wished them luck. Go figure.

The value I gave by no means covers the total profits of my product; Nor does it mean I'm going out of business because of someone else's sales. I, ultimately would have control over the amount of product sold, since I have control of the input. The only thing that can't be controlled is someone undercutting your prices. That I combat with personal knowledge, and customer service (I love it when a merchant will drop something off in my vendor for me).

Perhaps a contractual deal that defines the selling price would help. You set the price for the schematics you create.

I guess it would be a matter personal opinion. Let me know yours.

Ezran

Ok, I do understand the point brought forth for selling schematics, however, I don't believe I would go into that practice. I'm not saying that I would never do such a thing (there are always special circumstances), but I would really hate it if there was an open market for finished goods schematics.

Now, for components, that's a different story. These objects are never ever going to see the open market once sold, because they are going into other products. I can understand a master doctor selling advanced components to combat medics, master slicers selling to novice smugglers, or master artisans selling to droid engineers/weaponsmiths. At the same time I might be in a bind and require the purchase of bio-component schematics (someday!) if a BE doesn't want the trouble of production.

In all of this, you will always find someone on the server willing to sell schematics (especially sunburns) simply because there are multitudes of poeple that can produce them, and someone might not care if you take thier name/creation and produce it on your own.

Considering that you dont have to get the materials, andhave a factory running,I think 15k is a fair price for a schematic of tatooine sunburn. I just bought a schematic of muon gold for 5k, a huge deal the guy didn't even want the money I had to tip him. Trading schematics is fun. I'm still using neutron pixies and power ups (from friends factory) all made with bought schematics.

I refuse on principal to sell schematics. Unless of course they want to pay me what my profit for the actual items would have been.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but I re-rolled my original character because I got bored with her race, and passed on my belongings to my new character (including several crates of factory food and drink, both pre and post fix) and none of the items have my former character's name on them.

The line for Object Creator is blank. So your schematic may or may not produce items bearing your name.

Ezran, I tend to agree with you. There is always a chance the schematic purchaser will try to undercut your prices. Agreeing on pricing would be a good start, but hard to enforce - there's no forum to settle your dispute in teh game. In the absence of such a method, I think your approach is the best way to ensure minimal undercutting - charge a respectable, fair price for the schematic. This essentially forces the purchaser (who will also have the investment of time/resources/power/factory, etc) to charge a fair price or just lose money.

Unless they're just trying to grief you, I think a person buying schematics is actually less likely to undercut prices. Off the bat, they have a higher overhead than you do, because you didn't have any immediate cred costs involved with creating that schematic. Bottom line is, you get that schematic for free because of the time you invested to learn those skills. I'm not disregarding the time it takes to learn them, but for purposes of your potential price war with your schematic purchaser, you start from equal footing.I'm also assuming they got their resources the same way you did - harvesters. I'm sure chefs purchase some of their ingredients (especially meats and such) at market rates, but anyone looking to maximize profit probably has a few harvesters running. In the case of sunburns, every ingredient is harvestable. So your resource costs are equal, your factory maintenance and power costs are equal.Unless they decide to lose money on the whole transaction, their "floor" for pricing, just to break even is higher than yours by exactly the price of the schematic.

As to a practical solution, I think agreeing on a price is fair. If you don't want to just sell schematics from a vendor (i.e. you want to control and keep an eye on the people who buy your schematics), I'd recommend a scaled-in approach. Don't sell someone a schematic for 100 9-charge sunburns if you don't know them. Tell them they're on "probation" and limited to single or double crate schematics for their first 3 purchases. With that kind of quantity, they're not going to sink your business - especially with your name on the goods (haven't verified that, but these posts say so). I'd think that the additional timesink will weed out someone just trying to grief you.

All good points. Thanks for the input.

When I said names I meant I put (ES) in the name of all of my food. Call it my mark

I would never put schematics up on a vendor, nor sell them to strangers. I mine as well put a knife to my own throat. However, I sell to a few resellers. Give them a discount on the food, they keep me busy. Those people tend to sell at the same prices you do (since they're rarely sure what price to charge). If I can help them out, while reducing my order load, that's all good for me.