Chef Archive

I've been following the "buffs vs. stacks" pricing discussions for quite a while, and have seen quite a few interesting ideas come up, but most of them either don't account for buffs, don't account for stack number, or required a college degree to figure out .

Sitting around tonight I started thinking about WHAT determines buffs and stack numbers, and it comes down to 2 main things: resource quality and experimentation (assembly success type also does, but for the sake of discussion, I am assuming that chefs only sell items that have great successes as a baseline).

First, resources: due to the vast number of different types of resources we need, with few exceptions, chefs gather their resources through a combination of their own harvesters, and buying resources from the bazaar/resource vendors. Since personal harvs (i.e. ones the character has access to) end up costing VERY little per unit, I take that value as zero; vendors usually charge much more for the quality (non-junk) resources we have to buy (meats, etc), I took an average of that as 10cr per unit, and then averaged both to come up with a total of 5cr per unit.

For a base example, everybody's favorite, Wastril Bread, uses 45 total resources, at 5cr per unit, for a total of 225cr. This is per stack, not charge.

Then, experimentation: for my personal use, and for the sake of this concept, I take 1 experimentation point (artisan or chef) to add 10% to the value of the base cost of the resources. This will allow for the lesser experienced chefs to sell items at a comparable value to those that experiment more, and also allow for those that have over 100 experimentation, thorough tapes and such *grrrrrr* to go up to 120% of base value.

Let's take the Wastril Bread above: a master chef experiments on it, putting points where they like, and assuming great successes, uses all 10 experiment points. The resulting value of the experimented bread will now be 100% ABOVE the base value, or 450cr a stack.

Components: when making an item that uses components, you first come up with the final value of the component, then take THAT value and add it to the BASE value of the pre-experimented final item, then add in the experimentation modifier for the final value.

My example will be the favorite Breath of Heaven: before you make the final drink, you need to make 2 sets of three identical alcohols. In this case, I go with the best, the Aludium pu-36. 40 units of resources times the 5cr per unit equals 200cr for one. After experimentation with 10 points (and great or better successes) one unit of pu-36 costs 400cr.

To make the Breath of Heaven, you need 30 units of rice/oats total, for 150cr, and 6 pu-36 for 2400cr, for a total of 2550cr, unexperimented. With 10 more points of great successes, your final stack cost should be 5100cr, or 127,500cr with no crate discount.

Now, say you wanted to make some BoH Lite, using Sullustan Gin instead of pu-36: 20 units at 5cr each is 100, experimented is 200cr. Six of these will be 1200cr, added to the 150cr of the base resources is 1350cr. Experiment on the final product and the final cost is 2700cr a stack, or 67500cr a crate.

The only exceptions to the component rules are Starshine Surprise and Vegehash: since experimenting on these items makes no difference in the Tattooine Sunburns and Vegeparsines they are going into, you can use the base, unexperimented cost of these for the final product.

The increase in price for experimentation will also allow for factory time, since the more you experiment on a component, the longer it takes to make.

Here are some of the results I got for some of the big sellers using this concept, allowing for 11 artisan exp points (I'm a human), 10 chef exp points, pu-36 as alcohol component and great or better successes:

Breath of Heaven: 5100cr
Angerian Fishak Surprise: 2126cr
Glazed Glucose Pate: 1378cr
Corellian Fried Ice Cream: 826cr
Ryshcate: 1226cr
Bivoli: 1026cr

Any questions/comments?

Oh, Biological Components: take the price you paid for the component and add it to the base cost of the item you are making. If cognitive enhancer cost you 500cr for one (yeah, right), and you put it in Soypro, then expriment, the final Soypro will cost 1200cr. Add it to the Corellian Fried Ice Cream (60 for carbosyrup, 150 for other resources) then experiment with 10 points, and final stack cost will be 2820cr.

Ignore that last post, it's what I get for never using BE comps. Bio comps add to the final product, and experimentation doesn't change what they add to the product, so instead of adding to the base component cost, add the BE comp price to the final product price.