Chef Archive
Thread: What do YOU hate about dealing with those Bio-Engineers?
Why are there so many chefs? (the few who do it out of love excluded, of course) MONEY. And that has been what most of the arguments have been about. I think selling schematics in general undermines many professions. I don't begrudge anyone making money or charging what they choose for their services. But if being a BE was so easy and lucrative, then tons would be doing it. As some have said, so many chefs demanding the services of so few BEs means that in order to remedy this it must be more finacially rewarding(Supply and Demand). So no one here should dump on anyone else for wanting a piece of the massive food/drinks profit.
I propose that if a chef wants to simply buy a schematic and the chef provides all the materials then he should pay the BE nearly what they would have paid per crate less the cost of the materials. What to charge for a crate? Let the market decide. But to make a schematic for 50K that will make the chef tons of money is at least foolish. It's not worth a BEs time frankly and he'd be better off switching to doctor or CHEF hehe where he could make that 50k in about 10 mins buffing peeps or such.
Regards,
Rilvas & Friends
HUWIPA Alliance
Chilastra
aswex wrote:
I'm not exactly sure how you're calculating your % profit. According to your example, my INNs would be marked up 275% and your Canape would be marked up 227%. My full run would net me 1.32 million credits (I actually make about half of that because I sell INNs for less than 30k). Your full run would net you 5 million credits. Percent markup and net profit should both be looked at. It takes three days to create the full run of INNs. How long does it take you to create the full run of Canape (I know you have more than one factory run required to do it)
My percent profit was the percentage of my price that is not the cost of production. I wasn't considering markup, but when you consider that, the BE in this situation is making off like a bandit. For a full run of Canape, it ought to take me about three to five days using one factory. I use two, so it's hard to calculate. Let me theorize, then: I believe that it takes 88 seconds a unit for INNs to become Heavy Additives, and it takes 24 seconds a unit for dough to become dough (as I recall Canape takes two units of dough, though, so I need two runs of that) and then I belive Canape is a 104-second food. So for 999 heavies to run through it's 24.42 hours, and then for two runs of 999 dough it's another 13.32 hours, and then for 998 canape it comes out to 28.83 hours. So all told that's 66 hours, or just a shade short of three days. Considering that I can't quite be around whenever my factories stop running, it should take three and a half to four days.
Lozareth wrote:
aswex wrote:
FreeRadical42 wrote:
Rough calculation shows me that your INNs should cost you 12k to make (based on what you say you pay for resources). So if you sell them at, say, 45k apiece, you are making 33k on the deal. 73% of that price is profit. If I make a crate of Canape (Let's say, +761 for10 min 36 filling 7 uses) which I charge 180k for on Gorath, the resources cost me 10000 a crate for berries and fruit, and assuming I bought the INNs from you, 45k per crate for enhancements. So that's a cost of 55k in total, on which I make 125k. And looking at that, we find that I have a profit margin that is 69% of my gross revenues.
I'm not exactly sure how you're calculating your % profit. According to your example, my INNs would be marked up 275% and your Canape would be marked up 227%. My full run would net me 1.32 million credits (I actually make about half of that because I sell INNs for less than 30k). Your full run would net you 5 million credits. Percent markup and net profit should both be looked at. It takes three days to create the full run of INNs. How long does it take you to create the full run of Canape (I know you have more than one factory run required to do it)
If we pay 10cpu for flora like you're saying you do for fruits and berries, our INNs cost us from 30k a crate with cheap 15cpu rancor meat to 47.5k a crate with expensive, non-rancor 50cpu meats. Our flora is has to be higher quality to hit a chef acceptable range of bonus than a chef's resources have to be to hit a player's acceptable range of bonus/duration so it's not unfair for us to also apply 10cpu to our flora, though personally I've always considered mine worth 5 when determining my prices but I do mark-up if I break down and buy stuff for 10cpu. If you harvest your own fruits and berries, the actual cost for 1000 of them is around 300 credits, give or a take some for differences in concentrations. It's why I've always considered my profits huge at 5cpu for flora, especially when I considered the 150 units of grind wheat for carbosyrup and 250 units of grind wheat for dough to also be worth 5cpu. I add a 30% mark-up on top of this and end up with prices most chefs consider low, but I know I'm getting more than double my money back. Anyone, I got a little off-topic. To simply, I guess I meant to say, to be fair, you have to consider a BE's flora to cost the same as your flora, we're buying from the same people and/or harvesting in the same ways afterall.For Aswex's replay, the heavy additives take ~24 hours to run, the carbosyrup ~6 hours, 2 runs of dough either 6 hours or 11 hours each (can't remember if dough is 24 or 40 on runtime), and I think canapes are 128 runtime so 35 hours on those.
Lozareth wrote:
When a chef asked for one, I'd point at the 400-600 crates of supplements on my vendor and he'd go "Yeah...so can you make me a schematic?" which makes me wonder why I wasted all that time creating the supplements and stocking the vendor. To put it another way, why are you wasting your time stocking your food vendor? You could be out there selling schematics, man! For me, it's not about what to charge for a schematic. The price of any product is always up to the seller and the choice to buy or move on is always up to the buyer.
FreeRadical42 wrote:
Lozareth wrote:
When a chef asked for one, I'd point at the 400-600 crates of supplements on my vendor and he'd go "Yeah...so can you make me a schematic?" which makes me wonder why I wasted all that time creating the supplements and stocking the vendor. To put it another way, why are you wasting your time stocking your food vendor? You could be out there selling schematics, man! For me, it's not about what to charge for a schematic. The price of any product is always up to the seller and the choice to buy or move on is always up to the buyer.
The fact is you can charge whatever you want for the supplements that you make. It doesn't matter if Chefs want to buy schematics. See, you're forgetting an element that is key to any capitalist economy. If no one wants something, no one will buy something. Easy to understand, and simple to plan. There's a huge reason that I don't do runs of Corellian Ale or Karkan Ribenes or any of the other crap that people don't buy- it's because people don't buy it. People buy BE schematics, and when they do, they're looking for a fair price. A lot of BEs are unwilling to supply this fair price- that's their loss. Chefs will take their business elsewhere where they'll find someone who does make what they want. If you don't want to sell supplements, fine. But don't complain about how much time you spent making them- I spent a lot of time making some of the best Havla on Gorath but then they changed how CM throw times work and now it's just for docs looking to speed up their buffs, pretty much. I'm not complaining about the time I spent making that, and neither should you about your supplements. Just find someone to sell them to at whatever price is comfortable for you.
This isn't complaining, it's giving one example of why the requests for schematics is making supplements even harder to acquire and making BEs even rarer.And if this quote isn't taken out of context, you see that I did something about it by picking up chef myself and using the pricing scheme chefs want BEs to use on supplements on foods instead. Whoo, boy, did chefs complain then.
As I pointed out in later post, using the same logic as above, why do you even make food when you could be selling the schematic for it? On top of this, the majority of chefs want free schematics and as soon as you name a price, they turn away.
Message Edited by Lozareth on 08-02-2004 02:56 PM
Message Edited by Lozareth on 08-02-2004 02:58 PM
Um, what time and effort? It takes two minutes, MAX to make a schematic. If you'd rather be doing something else, you don't need to offer to make a schematic. But 2 minutes of anyone's time isn't worth more than 100k no matter what you've got in the bank. I'd definitely make a Brandy schem for someone for even 30k.
elenea wrote:
This is quickly coming down to a numbers game. What some people still fail to realize it isn't always just about profit.
If someone asked me for a schematic I would probably tell them no for 50k. I think my time and effort are worth more than that. Noone else can decide what my time is worth. 50k is nothing to me, as is the credits that I would probably be losing by that person not buying whatever product I'm making for him from me anymore.
Credits aren't the end all of this decision. That person that offered me 50k for a schematic, IMO they are just using me if I made it for them. If 50k is nothing to me, I have to at least assume the same is true for them. Very few newbies as for schematics.
Lozareth wrote:
FreeRadical42 wrote:
Lozareth wrote:
When a chef asked for one, I'd point at the 400-600 crates of supplements on my vendor and he'd go "Yeah...so can you make me a schematic?" which makes me wonder why I wasted all that time creating the supplements and stocking the vendor. To put it another way, why are you wasting your time stocking your food vendor? You could be out there selling schematics, man! For me, it's not about what to charge for a schematic. The price of any product is always up to the seller and the choice to buy or move on is always up to the buyer.
The fact is you can charge whatever you want for the supplements that you make. It doesn't matter if Chefs want to buy schematics. See, you're forgetting an element that is key to any capitalist economy. If no one wants something, no one will buy something. Easy to understand, and simple to plan. There's a huge reason that I don't do runs of Corellian Ale or Karkan Ribenes or any of the other crap that people don't buy- it's because people don't buy it. People buy BE schematics, and when they do, they're looking for a fair price. A lot of BEs are unwilling to supply this fair price- that's their loss. Chefs will take their business elsewhere where they'll find someone who does make what they want. If you don't want to sell supplements, fine. But don't complain about how much time you spent making them- I spent a lot of time making some of the best Havla on Gorath but then they changed how CM throw times work and now it's just for docs looking to speed up their buffs, pretty much. I'm not complaining about the time I spent making that, and neither should you about your supplements. Just find someone to sell them to at whatever price is comfortable for you.
This isn't complaining, it's giving one example of why the requests for schematics is making supplements even harder to acquire and making BEs even rarer.And if this quote isn't taken out of context, you see that I did something about it by picking up chef myself and using the pricing scheme chefs want BEs to use on supplements on foods instead. Whoo, boy, did chefs complain then.
As I pointed out in later post, using the same logic as above, why do you even make food when you could be selling the schematic for it? On top of this, the majority of chefs want free schematics and as soon as you name a price, they turn away.
Message Edited by Lozareth on 08-02-2004 02:56 PM
Message Edited by Lozareth on 08-02-2004 02:58 PM
That is plainly unreasonable of them, if the majority of chefs actually want that. You'll see in an earlier post that I actually pay for runs of my stuff because it's more convenient and I still make money.
The reason I don't sell schematics is because TKAs don't come up to me asking for them. If they did I wouldn't ask for even 100k for the schem. But as it is, it doesn't sell, so no one pays to make it. You restated your question in response to this answer before, so I'm spelling it out plainly. There is a demand for BE schematics. There is no demand for Chef schematics. For this reason, Chef's don't make schematics.
FreeRadical42 wrote:
That makes sense...sell at a bad price so that you can keep one person's business instead of selling at a fair price so you can get everyone's. Well, I'm not gonna comment on your business sense, but...obviously in this case I would not give you the 300k for a schematic but would rather takemy business elsewhere, as I am sure many chefs have done after hearing your outrageous prices. Your "profit margin" should include the time that your factories spend working on this run because that's part of what is being paid for when someone orders a run of tissues. The reason the price goes up is because it's an opportunity cost. The cost of the opportunity is greater, so the payout (the opportunity itself) must be greater in accordance. The cost of making a schem is much lower for you, so the opportunity should be lower in accordance. Such is the way economics works. Any Chef offered these options will say, "Hmm, either I get a fair price on my schem from another BE, or I just have you do the full run for me for the same price. There's no way that I'm going to waste my money on this schem." So what ends up happening is you lose business or you lose time when you could have kept both and still made a profit. Farctory costs a negligible at best. To explain profit margin. If it cost me 1.2 million to make a full factory run, it will cost you 1.5 million to buy it. 300K profit for a few minutes work. If I make a schematic that costs me 0, it will cost you 300k to buy it. Again 300k profit for a few minutes work. Where's the difference? Other then I flip the switch on? Also why would I want 50 chefs banging on my door, bitching about price all the time. When I have one that gives all the bussiness I need. You want Tissues, it will cost you over what my partner gets them for. (All numbers a fictional, as final price depends on availability of resources)
See, people don't just pay for knowledge. When you get your doctorate, the government doesn't start sending you a check every month. While a gravedigger might be making less money than a person with an MBA, this is because the person with the MBA has both the knowledge and the hard work to warrant that payment. Someone who has the MBA but never goes to work won't get paid. Neither will a gravedigger if he's dirt stupid and digs round graves or some insanity. It's an equal combination of both work and intelligence that makes the world go round. If you do a little work, you get a little paid. If you do a lot of work, you get a lot of pay. Simple as that. If you've done a lot of work before and didn't get paid for it (they call this school), then you get paid more when you *do* do work. And it's the same with a BE. If you ground out BE, your wares are worth more than what you could do when you just had Scout or Medic or whatever. But if you're going to do twominutes of work, you're not going to get the same payment as three days of work. If you expect that you will, then you've wasted all the time learning your skills, because in the end, you're a gravedigger anyway- digging your own.The convoluted logic of this entire statement is interesting but still wrong. Your knowledge dictates your payrate, your work ethic dictates your longevity. An MBA won't make anything working outside his field, but he will inside it. So it still comes right back to paying for knowledge not labor. Labors cheep, knowledge isn't.
And I don't say this from the point of view of a Chef who makes a ton of his stuff, either. I charge a reasonable amount that most players would call an "incredible deal." I've gotten numerous compliments about how I'm one of the few vehicle dealers on Gorath who keeps his vendor stocked and doesn't charge 35k for a swoop (my highest Swoop price is 24k). My chef foods are marked down to what I'd sell them for if someone bought them to re-sell. I don't gouge, and you shouldn't either. Not a scolding- just sound business advice. Cost is like putting a heavy weight on each of your crates. The lighter the weight, the more units you can move in a day. That's all there is to it. But if the weight is so light that you're taking food out of the crate- well, in that case, you're just eating costs. But you'd do well to lighten the load on your customer. My prices aren't much more then any other BE on my server, but for my partner (A steady stream of bussiness) they are lower then the average costs. Chefs need to get prospective on this issue, not the BE's. BE's don't run the huge profit margins Chefs do. I know, as I'm also a chef and run anywhere from 70% to 100% profit all the time and am considered cheep at my prices. I can sell a full factory run of Bandy for 4 million at 100K a crate. So 1.5 mill for additives and another 500k of the Chef items (Massively over priced on these, but I'm making a point) that 2 million out of pocket with 2 million in profit, Thats 100% profit, and thats for decent brandy with good amount and duration. So is it as a BE you make 25% profit or 100% profit as a Chef. You decide (Numbers rounded for clarity) Greed is whats driving this arguement, and from what I've read,Chefs are a very GREEDY lot.
Here are a couple examples to show you what I'm talking about.
You have a broken TV that needs repaired. You worked on it for days trying to figure it out and just can't get it to work. You call the repairmen to come and fix you set. His price is $75.00 to make the house call and 50/hour after the 1st hour. He arrives, and fixes your TV in 30 seconds. Now are you going to refuse to pay the $75.00 you owe him, becuase you think he didn't work long enough on the problem before fixing it?
You're car isn't running right and you can't figure it out. You take it to the mechanic to get it fixed. Just to hook it up on the machine and run a dio on it will cost $100.00 dollors plus another $40 an hour for the mechanic. Well it takes him all of 3 minutes to run the dio and replace the bad oxigen sensor. You still owe $140.00 plus the cost of the new part. Are you going to refuse to pay becuase you did get the amount of labor you thought you should have for the job performed?
You get paid for what you know, not what you do. If you think thats wrong, tough. The only thing someone has to offer is their knowledge. Otherwise all you are is labor and their a dime a dozen.