Business And Economy Archive

Somewhere along the way Droid Engineers got screwed out of making decent money in thier professions. Too many times have I come across a vendor where they are selling 110 Medical Droids with 10 Item Storage for 10,000 Credits. I have seen Combat Droids with 600 Combat Rating with 4500 HAM bars selling at 15,000 credits. I propose to ALL Droid Engineers EVERYWHERE in SWG, that we come together and form a union of sorts. Doing this, we can come up with a uniform price for droids and not get screwed out of money.

People are paying 250K - 300K for sets of Composite Armor knowing that they will eventually have to replace that armor a few times, where as you are going to buy a decent droid for Medical Droid, Combat Droid, Power Droid... etc.. for 15K - 30K and have it till you tire of it or destroy it. Droid Engineers have reached the end of thier rope... no one wants to grind a profession that they aren't going to make money in.I sell a 110 Med Droid with a personality chip and10 item storage for 67,000 Credits.

Broken down, it looks like this:

1 Surgical Droid Chassis:

25,000 Cr.

1 Level 6 Droid Item Storage Module

12,000 Cr.

1 Worshipful Droid Personality Chip

5,000 Cr.

1 Advanced Surgical Droid Deed:

25,000 Cr.

There is no shame in asking that amount for a well made and lifetime lasting droid. The problem is this; when the game was new, someone go the bright idea that they could sell 100 droids at 20K and make a crap load of money, but they never thought about the future. Now that everyone had a cheap droid, no more were needed and thus started the decline of the Droid Engineer profession. We need to band together and see what we can do to FIX this mockery of a profession that we have. Let's see what we can do guys!!!

Kiar'ra Lehpurra - Radiant
Vanta Shilah - Chimaera
Seraphym - Intrepid

To be fair, at the beginning of the game, no one ever figured that the economy would spiral out of control the way it did. When Probots were all the rage, I remember paying 20k for one. It took me a few days to get that money. I remember that guy not selling them anymore and my friend having to buy one for 30k which seemed like an outrageous fortune back then.

The problem was the game progressed and 20k wasn't that much money any more. Not only that, but unlike armor, droids got <i>worse</i> over time. Composite has had a progression on every server from the 36% original sets to 80% in multiple catagories.

If you raise your prices, it won't help until a droid's worth is increased in the minds of players. When new droids are introduced (like with the ranger droid), then you can try to raise the prices to match the worth of these new droids.

If you raise your prices to 75k on medical droids while everyone else is still selling them for 30k, you're the one who loses.

I sympathise, I really do. You'd think that with the lack of Droid Engineers kicking about that the situation would right itself through normal rules of supply & demand. However, as you have already pointed out, droids pretty much last forever - p'raps if they decayed over time then there would be more demand for them and DEs would have a better market.

However, as we have to deal with what we have, I suggest making the best you can of it - one way may be to refer your customers tothe droid configurator at www.undeadfish.com/droids.php It isn't my site, but it is a site I use for my pricing and refer prospective customers to. I know a lot of DEs use this site and prices tend to gravitate around the prices published there.

I sell Adv R2 M*A*S*H droids with 110 medical, food/crafting station, L6 Data and L6 item storage for 34k, Adv R3 600 rated combat droids I sell for a little more (70K) and they sell ok - don't get me wrong I'm not a multimillionaire or anything, but this covers my costs and gives me extra to play with.

However, I have recently switched my alt to a Master Doc and even when I buy in buffpacks I make way more money than my MDE It is getting to the point where my MDE may consider joining the ranks of the pure combat player (already dropped most of merchant to pick up TKM so I can go out and have fun/make money after finishing factory runs/stocking vendors).

As a Master DE I made a run of about 80 Adv. R3's with 6 Combat Modules and about 4.4k HAM. It took a long time and I was very proud. I sold them for about 70k each. The first day I sold about 11, with a barker droid in Coronet all day. After that my advertising slowed down, and so too did my sales. I was always selling batteries or customization kits, but the droid sales slowed a bit. Eventually I sold about 30 before I stopped playing for a few weeks and ended up losing the other 50 or so when my vendor ate them up. The real problem is that the Adv. R3 as I made it (6 combat, 2 armor modules) is about as tough as these droids get. Unfortunately this type of droid isn't the kind of thing you pull out on an NS elder, or a Giant Dune Kimo for example. What we need are droids capable of holding their own without being unbalanced. Even a CH rancor has 10k + HAM and can stand his ground fairly well against some higher end MOBs. As the movies have shown us, an army Trade Federation droids apparently has the power to stand up against an army of Jedi Knights, so we know droids at least are formidable. Why can't we craft Droideka's? BE's, unless I'm mistaken, can engineer almost any animal in the game, or at least any animal that's worth it, as well as several that no one really cares about. DE's should be able to create damn near any droid in the game, and certainly any in the movies including Trade Federation type droids. Anyway, this is a little long winded, but my main point is that the best battle droid we can make is not all that tough if you're going against something that poses any kind of challenge to a Master Combat profession.

Paubocca
Master Droid Engineer PBC Droids
Master Artisan
Master Merchant

One small comment, I do change droids more than armour since the droidsstats degrade when they lose vitality and there doesn't seem to be a way to repair the vitality. (Asked on the DE boards.)