Chef Archive
Thread: Pricing discussion let's get some posts this time! :)
wynlyndd wrote:
I use bofas for pet food. Unfortunately, pet food doesn't sell on our server. I guess our pets aren't hungry.
I usually have no problems selling crates of 'pet food' but it depends on the city. I've had crates go unbought, and I've had crate after crate sell on the Naboo bazaar. One thing to keep in mind is a lot of people don't check the factory crates section, so whenever I hit a new market I always put a few singles for sale and make a note in the description to check my factory crates.
As for the first post, well, I started off with my own formula; but I've pretty much fallen into just using the 'standard' per-charge pricing guide, becuase it's easier to sell that way rather than trying to do a per-buff type formula. Of course, I'm also not doing a lot of crate sales at the moment (besides the pet food) so I'm sure I'll come up with a per-crate charge at some point.
Earlier someone questioned how I raised Chef. I ground my way thru, getting full experimentation first, then mix 2, then all the rest as fast as i could. Not much sold at first, primarily due to location. Then a friend asked if I could place a vendor in his house, where weapons and armor sold. I did so, and all the singles began selling. At this time I had only 1 factory, so crate sales were basically impossible.
Those first sales allowed me to buy additional factories, and upgrade to heavy (rate7) harvesters. (yeah, im that old). I joined a player city, set up the cantina, placed 2 vendors there... food and drink, added a crate only vendor in our town Mall, and still have the single vendor in my friends house. I currently have 3 factorys, access to 6 more, 2 accounts, 14 lots avail for harvesters, and access to 20 more lots upon request. I also have gone into the business of hiring newbies to harvest for me, supplying harvesters, power and maint fees, providing waypoints and or a list of needs. I pay up to 5 cr per unit on all items offered on my vendor, and the credits roll from sales at almost 3million per week.
This pricing guide works.. on my server. What you can do is use it as a guide, adjusting higher or lower per customer base. I knew some items I was selling werecosting me money, I had no idea how much until I compiled the entire pricelist.
May the force be with you,
Mokia O'tannia, Master Chef (by choice and loving it)
Bria Server, Arch Mesa, Tatooine.
Kalos - I sell BoH at 90k per crate...Ive heard of people selling it for more. I just didnt feel right about charging over 90k for it tho. This is really the only item in my store that has a per crate price. And what it really is is a ceiling. If I make a run with not a lot of charges, it would be less. I basically capped it at 4k a stack/90k a crate. However, due to the reasons mentioned above, Im not really comfortable having it at 90k irregardless of charges (unless they are really low) so Im thinking about lowering the per charge rate to something that knocks the crate average more into line with what Im already charging for it. I just havent taken the time to figure it out. My fishaks are 60-80k depending on the run and sell them quickly also. I might have more customers if I lowered my prices but that means more sales to equal the same amount of profit and much more work. As it is, I have a difficult time keeping up. Im permanently bound to my factories. If my prices were lowered, I think having stock would require loss of sleep 
Dont underestimate the value of what you do 
The person talking about sunburns...did you mean you make them and it costs 10k to make or did you mean you sell them at 10k to make? If you plug it all into a the calculator at swgcraft.com...cost to make per crate is 7811 and takes 3.1 hrs per crate. This is pricing resources at 3cpu and power at 1 cpu.
I would suggest anyone that is having a hard time figuring prices, run over to that calculator and plug stuff in to see what the real cost to make is. It helps to give you a better perspective of whats actually happening.
Fishak and BoH are much more popular though, but the buff/duration doesn't match up to the sunburns (my first crate would've been at just over 8k under this stucture). So I'm experimenting with a sliding scale in the formula. Currently the 2 in the formula is replaced with (Average Duration / 100 - 2)*2.6666666 with a minimum being 1.5. Seems to be working so far, but I've only had master for about a week.
Nikii_Nightstrider wrote:
The person talking about sunburns...did you mean you make them and it costs 10k to make or did you mean you sell them at 10k to make? If you plug it all into a the calculator at swgcraft.com...cost to make per crate is 7811 and takes 3.1 hrs per crate. This is pricing resources at 3cpu and power at 1 cpu.
I would suggest anyone that is having a hard time figuring prices, run over to that calculator and plug stuff in to see what the real cost to make is. It helps to give you a better perspective of whats actually happening.
The calculator is OK, but since I rarely buy resources I developed a spreadsheet to figure out what it costs me to make an item. Depending on where I pull power from and the amount of resource I'm pulling in, a resource will be between .3 and .6 cpu to harvest. Once factory costs are figured in it takes about 1000 credits to make a crate of sunburns. So, 10K a crate is a respectable profit.
I personally hate the resource cost method of pricing even though it seems most fair to the seller as it assures a profit. Instead I look at it from the customer standpoint-- who cares how many resources, how much buffage do I get?
I also want a quick and easy method. The following works for me, although you can tweak your own prices to adjust for crazy resource costs (or not sell those items):
total up buffs
divide by three
multiply by number in the stack
This is my vendor price--if sold in a bazaar, multiply by 1.2, if sold to guildies, multiply by 0.8
I sell a ton of everything and I don't need a table or involved equations to calculate. It benefits masters and those who use highest quality resources. My exception is Tat Sunburns as these are a flat 350 per charge in the bazaar, 325 in my vendor, and to some extent BoH as I have trouble getting 500 per charge despite the awesome buffs. Of course big minus foods (ie Ithorian Mist) would have a minus to them. For these, you can vary the formula to only subtract half of the negative buff from the total, but then again, some would argue that you would have to pay them to drink Ithorian Mist anyway, and I see it as a grind drink, not a selling drink.
Anyone like the simplicity of this formula? I would be interested in seeing how my prices compare to more elaborate formulas-- if anyone would like to do the math I would love to see the comparison.
Factory maintenance alone is 622 credits per crate and uses 622 units of power per crate.
Each crate uses 2500 resources. I believe cost to harvest yourself works out to be just over .5 cpu which means 1250 resources+ 622 maint+ 622 power. (cant check for certain but I think thats right swgcraft is down atm). So even harvesting yourself, you are still looking at easily 2k in costs.
So you have still quite largely underestimated your costs. In addition to that,whether you harvest your resources or not, they are still worth 3 cpu. Personally, Id just not waste my skill points and time if I was going to sell for what I could get for the resources. But I digress, that is everyones own option and one can do what they choose. I personally could be out running 20+k in missions per hour if I had to work for that cheap and just harvesting and resource selling on the side. Bottom line is, how much do you value yourself and your time.
6creditsper resource unitexcept for specific animal ingredients (i.e. bristley hide, carnivore meat), those are 10 cpu. Plus 50 cr for "labor" (gee, it's really hard work to make a schematic and start a factory), plus 30 cr for each use. I give a 30% bulk discount for buying by the crate.
It costs me something like .2 cpu to harvest ingredients, and I harvest most of my meat and hide myself. In fact, I even MAKE money doing that since I generally run missions for critters that drop the appropriate goodies.
Tsintil wrote:
I also want a quick and easy method. The following works for me, although you can tweak your own prices to adjust for crazy resource costs (or not sell those items):
total up buffs
divide by three
multiply by number in the stack
Lets see if I got this right. My last batch of BoH was +598s, 589q, 589f, 477s, 11u. When we plug this into your equation
totalbuff =1776, 1776/3=592, 592*11=6512 per stack, 162800 per crate?
I know a full run of aludiums takes a factoryabout 3-4 days, and another day or 2 to get 6 crates, but I have a hard time putting BoH up for 80k. Just seems like that is awfully high. How could that buff pay for itself? Granted when my customerbase builds up and I have people begging me for BoHmy supply/demand issues will force me to adjust that thinking. Right now though, I just dont see why that drink is so popular and why people pay 80-100k for it.
Hmm I started to break this down further to drive that point home, but I am sort of rethinking that thought now. When I looked at cost per drink being only 592 it doesnt sound that expensive anymore. 1 drink = finish 1(maybe 2)mission faster at 5k or better payout = negligablecost impact on mission for using buff benifits....... oh I am confused now I better go back to my shop and stopthinking about cost just go with the flow
Denoby
I price using the per use guide as well. Its served me to this point.
Now on Intrepid there are a couple of chefs that deal in custom orders only or that use whatever resources are right next to their houses and charge outrageously low prices for stuff (like 45k for crates of BOH),
But my endevor to keep a wide variety and amount of food and drink on my vendors at all times combined with the use of only quality resources has kept my business going fine when i charge 150k fora 400 use crate of +538 BOH and the guy down the street charges 45k for a 250 use crate of +430 BOH they still come to me.
I freaked a bit when I saw a chef selling boh crates at 45k hehe. Come to find out, they were making them with plain alcohol not alu.. I experienced the same, people still buy from me but the other chefs arent in the same city as me so that could have something to do with it too