Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Recycling as a source of income? *Longish*
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Lancesod
Thu Feb 24, 2005 12:23 am
#1
We start to see the recyclers emerge in galaxies and after having gone through the grueling experience to get all parts to a creature recycler I startet thinking the financial aspect of the matter.
First of all, it took me 6 buff periods to find all but one of the parts andfor the benefit of those who have not checked a creature recycler requires the following looted components: Recycler Schematic, Agitator Motor Schematic, 2x Red Wiring, Cheap Copper Battery, Feeder Tube, 4x Pulverizer Part and 4x Spinner Blade. I tried for a couple of buffs to get that feeder tube from Tuskens, but no luck and I ended up buying one. (So 8 buff periods in all) Hardest parts were the tube and spinners. Hidden Daggers dropped me 4 spinners in 2.5 buff periods andthat killing spreewas a major bore. All in all this task was harder than the Hero of Tat quest set if that helps the estimations.
It even seems I was a bit lucky, I have read some stories of 11 buff periods and on the other end 4 buff periods. To put it mildly, pretty much effort is needed to get a recycler. My main is a Ranger and I do some planet checking and thought that a recycler might come in handy. After a couple of buffs it became an obsession and at the end of fourth I realized: I will never make back the lost credits for this item. Return on investment is going to be very low. This leads to high prices for recyclers. In my galaxy the metal ones have gone for 4.5-8mil and I have only seen one creature recycler sold and it went for 8mil.
I was wondering which crafting professions could possibly imagine to get that kind of money back by combining scrap into low quality heaps.Sure a recycler is a wonderful thing, but it either takes a lot of effort or a bunch of credits to get one - are there professions for whom this is clearly a good investment. Also I can't understandwhich recylers could be the ones that are more desirable than others.
Lets assume someone gets all of them and starts a service, where the business would consist of recycling materials for customers. There are many ways to implement this - one could be that the customers drop containers filled with recycled materials to a vendor - they would be combined and then either dropped to the customers vendor or placed on vendor for sale, but this has the regular problems of custom orders. What if someone else buys someone else's stuff, how to sort which pack was coming from whom.
Pricing is another issue. Nobody would obiviously buy this kind of service if it is more cost efficient just to destroy the scraps and forget about it. Also the pricing should be such that for certain group of gamers it would be more cost efficient to use the recycling service rather than invest 4-8mil. It might be a chunk price for a container, for example 20k or it could be based on units like 0.1-0,5cpu. A combination might be possible, 10k flat as basic entry fee and then 0.2 cpu for the resources handled.
Summary: I would like to hear any and all thoughts you have on this. I would like to hear from crafters how beneficial and interesting this kind of business service would be from your point of view? I have never been a crafter so I have no idea if a few millions is a big investment and it remains to be seen if these recyclers remain rare or is everyone going to have one, what do you think? Under what kind of terms would you be willing to buy this kind of service and how do you see this could be charged? How much would it be feasible for you to pay if you would need this?What would be the most convenient way to get this service - switching packs on vendors, a recycler that comes to meet you like for example a slicer does? Is it a lameconsept as a whole?
It is doubtful that I would myself do this, but I am curious if there were buyers.
BR/~~L
gera
Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:37 am
#2
Grinding resources is a big income I can tell...
Because there are a lot of 20- 148- 674 or odd number of resources left where we can not use sometimes schematics wanting (2K of metal eg. Shipwright) then we can use those to turn all of them into a crappy metal and sell for cheaper for those who are not master crafters yet.
Which will be both good for them since most of resources are expensive to buy or at least expensive to harvest (takes long time) for new players, and another income for us from materials that we dont actually use.
MeciniaLua
Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:33 am
#3
You could use it to produce low quality resources to resell as the previous poster stated.
I like your idea of a recycler company. My guild has put together one of each of the recyclers for guild use. It took a lot of effort to collect all the necessary pieces. Still many of the crafters are planning to work on their own as time passes.
Tailors don't need quality resources for most of their products as they can't experiment ( except on wookie padding )
Chefs don't need quality resources for their components like soypro, bantha butter, alcohol and the like.
So I could see such a service as being beneficial.
Tinkergirl
Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:26 am
#4
Someone has already mentioned that tailors do not require high quality for most of their items - here's some other thoughts:
Tailors: They'll want hides the most. As you can't 'mine' hides, averaging them out to factory run sized piles will be invaluable. Especially wooly, I'd imagine.
Architects: They'll also want hides (wooly) for chairs and beds. Also, they require LARGE numbers of resourses which may not be quality dependant for things like hard to find ores.
Smugglers: I've heard that quality is less important to spices, so possibly they could find use in large amounts of average materials for factory runs.
Also, if a wise crafter has a blueprint for a non-quality dependant item (say, Paintings) then they can use 'averaged' materials to make it, and never have to worry about keeping exactly the right materials to make it later - as they can just recycle their own.
As for money making methods with these, you could, I'd imagine go all the way from small scale - buying small amounts of cheap resourses from bazaars (wooly hide) to average over time, to large scale - allying yourself with a guild or city to create a stockpile service where you buy in any old dirt the other players throw your way (for a flat rate) and sell it recycled in large lumps for a slight markup.
(It would be nice to let 'newbies' know that you accept what they can give, it would be a nice little guaranteed earner for them in their formative months).
Either way, this is not a get rich quick device, but it could be of use to canny crafters.
Tailors: They'll want hides the most. As you can't 'mine' hides, averaging them out to factory run sized piles will be invaluable. Especially wooly, I'd imagine.
Architects: They'll also want hides (wooly) for chairs and beds. Also, they require LARGE numbers of resourses which may not be quality dependant for things like hard to find ores.
Smugglers: I've heard that quality is less important to spices, so possibly they could find use in large amounts of average materials for factory runs.
Also, if a wise crafter has a blueprint for a non-quality dependant item (say, Paintings) then they can use 'averaged' materials to make it, and never have to worry about keeping exactly the right materials to make it later - as they can just recycle their own.
As for money making methods with these, you could, I'd imagine go all the way from small scale - buying small amounts of cheap resourses from bazaars (wooly hide) to average over time, to large scale - allying yourself with a guild or city to create a stockpile service where you buy in any old dirt the other players throw your way (for a flat rate) and sell it recycled in large lumps for a slight markup.
(It would be nice to let 'newbies' know that you accept what they can give, it would be a nice little guaranteed earner for them in their formative months).
Either way, this is not a get rich quick device, but it could be of use to canny crafters.
Nick231
Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:15 am
#5
I gathered all the parts over numerous buff sessions. The last part I needed, the feed tube, I gave up on after hitting 400K in credits from fort tusken (~6 buff sessions) and just bought one.
Lancesod
Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:12 am
#6
First of all, agreed, this is not a get rich quick scheme by no means. One problem and one bonus I can already see. The problem is that for example a creature recycler only produces generic stuff. When I chug wooly, scaley and leathery there out comes just plain 'hide'. It is pretty certain that this can not be used as a 'wooly' type component in schematics. The bonus is that the milk that comes out is 'homogenized milk' and I would guess that most scematics requiring milk do not specify the wild/domesticated and even less the planet it was harvested from. Milk on my server goes for 50cpu min and it can be of any quality. Also Chef subcomponent crafting can take any stat resources, since I think I read somewhere that they are not taken into the final calculation.
Now that I have thought more about this I would have to agree to several posters comments that probably the best way to get income would be to get resources, recycle and sell them as grind quality resources for something like 1-1.5c. (Not milk, of course)The 'delivery' type of service just probably does not get enough volume from single crafters for it to be worth the time of either party. A new channel to obtain resources to be recycled would need to be created so that those with scraps would take their stuff along, drop it on a vendor and buy ready made stacks from the vendor back, thereby making the cost of the purchase less.
Definitely a guild/city could make this kind of recycling work and benefit several inhabitants or , either for getting resources for own crafters or selling grind resources to cover city maintenance provided that there are enough hunters in the guild. I am unguilded/towned unfortunately. Hmmmm, well it is by choise actually.
This is an expensiveluxury item for a Ranger, not a necessity - nevertheless I am happy I assembled it.
BR/~~L
P.S. I ended up buying the feeder for the exact same price as you Nick231.Damn Tuskens getting all stingy with their tubes - it is not like they have any use for them anyway. 
Drecki
Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:22 am
#7
Tinkergirl wrote:
Someone has already mentioned that tailors do not require high quality for most of their items - here's some other thoughts:
Tailors: They'll want hides the most. As you can't 'mine' hides, averaging them out to factory run sized piles will be invaluable. Especially wooly, I'd imagine.
Architects: They'll also want hides (wooly) for chairs and beds. Also, they require LARGE numbers of resourses which may not be quality dependant for things like hard to find ores.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think you might not get "Wooly Hide" back, if you put it into the recycler, but some kind of "Generic Hide". So it wouldn't be usable as such. Of course, as Tailor for most items I don't require specific hide, just any hide will do. For these items it would be lovely to have one pile of Hide instead of 20 small piles.
Sturngard_Blastshield
Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:36 am
#8
There are not worth the time to put together.
There is no usefulness.
There is no usefulness.
Message Edited by Sturngard_Blastshield on 02-24-2005 05:37 AM
Rere
Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:50 am
#9
The Creature Recycler it's actually quite usefulfor Chefs and BEs. All the item these 2 professions makes that require Milk doesn't specify a certain type of it, so the "Homogenized Milk"does the trick. The Recyclers can be used to combine all sorts of stack of Milk to make Bantha Buther (used to make Pikatta Pie and Terrata), Duration Additives and even Blue Milk.
It's true thatby combining stacks all the stats drop to 200 but then stats on the Milk doesn't matter for Bantha Butter and as for the other 2 as long as the Chefsuse really high quality resources to combinewith the Milk the final result it's quite satisfying still.
X a r g a 
jahlad
Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:56 am
#11
i was thinking they would be useful to the static miners
for example if i had 100 static harcvesters i just switch em all to the highest concentration of any metal in shift then throw the whole lot together and sell it as gindning metal
ditto with ore......
....im getting ideas now 
Happymob
Thu Feb 24, 2005 7:32 am
#12
The critter recycler is merely ok. With it, I can produce generic, low quality:
Milk
Meat
Seafood
Hides
Horns
Bones
I may be forgetting one, but it specifically cannot be used to get generic eggs (these are meats). These are the only things you can get. So you can't throw in 3 different wooly hides and expect to get generic wooly hide back - you just get hides.
I've run a butcher business over the year, buying all quantities and qualities of animal resources for 3 cpu. I turn around and sell the good stuff at a nice profit (when I get good stuff - only about 5% of what I get sells for any sort of premium) and the bad stuff at 4 to 5 cpu. In the past, the very small stacks just rotted on the vendor until they expired and the profit from the larger stacks covered this loss. The critter recycler has made my business a bit more efficient as I am now able to turn the small stacks into useful product. I'm currently pricing the generic stacks at 4 cpu for grinders and there has been some demand at that price. Someone bought over 100K of generic meat last weekend, for example.
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