Chef Archive

So, I'm in general agreement here with the people who say food should be priced by its stats and uses, not by resources. I believe we should be rewarded for extra work findingquality ingredients,leveling up cooking , and experimenting. I also don't think the customer should have to pay the same price if the food doesn't comeout as well or doesn't have as many uses.

Since factory crates have made it easier to produce food with consistent stats, I thought I'd play with a new pricing scheme.

I have a spreadsheet of all the foods I can make (entrees IV, mix III, desserts II, cooking IV), and the best stats I've achieved to date on each. My spreadsheet has a column where I attempt to judge the value of the food by assigned a number to it from these stats. The formula is (H + A) + 2*(Con + Str + Stam + Q + Mind) + 3*(Wp + Foc). In this formula each of the stats is multiplied by its duration in minutes. I think this works out pretty well, my only problem with it is it doesn't takeinto account filling.. like vegeparsine looks pretty good until yourealize you can only just eat one.

If you're curious, here are my top 12 foods and their values by this formula:

• Sunburn: 37,255


• Vegeparsine: 4,929


• Zermaauc: 4,717


• Bivoli: 3,836


• Fire Stew: 2,884


• Durindfire: 2,724


• Ormachek: 2,696


• Veghash: 2,670


• Jawa beer: 2,56


• Teltier Noodles: 2,452


• Caf: 2,443

(Note the last 3 are artisan foods)

In practice, my sales patterns don't match this list exactly. For instance, Durindfire is nice for the mind but so is Bivoli, and Bivoli lasts a lot longer. Caf seems like a worse food than Ormachek, but it lasts longer and you can drink 4 at a time, so I push it for people needing focus. However, I pretty much only sell items in the top 12, anything below that seems to be attractive only for roleplay purposes.

Anyway, I thought an obvious pricing method would be to divide this number by some scale factor to get a per-serving price. Choosing 20 gets Ormachek to $130 per serving, which seems pretty fair (I actually sell at $150 per serving currently). With this scale, then, my per-serving prices become:

• Sunburn: $1,860


• Vegeparsine $250


• Zermaauc: $240


• Bivoli: $190


• Fire Stew: $140


• Durindfire: $140


• Ormachek: $130


• Veghash: $130


• Jawa Beer: $130


• Teltier Noodles: $120


• Caf: $120

Hmm, well the prices seem reasonably good for me in terms of profit, Vegeparsine selling more than I sell it for currently, but Ormachek for less. But Sunburn at $1860!! Obviously this will not work!

So goes this little experiment. I'm still contemplating if I go ahead and do this pricing scheme. I might just raise the scale factor (lowering the prices across the board)and cap the whole thing at $300 a serving, not sure. Just thought this was a good indication of balance problems in the chef tree.

The only problem with trying to derive a universal stat-based formula is that you have to assign arbitrary weightings to things.

Let's say 33% of my customers may place a factor of 10 on Con/Stam/Will or Str/Qui/Foc and a factor of 0-1 on other stuff while another third are heavily into Quickness and another third heavily into Focus/Will. Thus, customers will pay a bodacious amount for food that covers their specific need and won't buy the other stuff regardless of where I price it. They don't need it.

The Doc that's stocking up on Foc/Will food for a group trip to Endor also has a different price sensitivity than the master combatant looking to max out their soloability.

Market segmentation. Know thy market.