Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: 2000 per survey droid seems *about* right, reasoning inside...
Whew! I am glad yer not on my server.
I'll charge 9kCr+ for a multi-charge survey droid. The Vertex Crystaline Gemstone requirement will guarantee that price on my vendors. If I dont sell any, too bad... so sad... I am pretty much supporting a "3-way closed partnership", where I provide all droid requirements (to my partners) on-request... and for free.
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Yes and No.
JediMasterCarlito wrote:
Are these droids reporting back with the resource name and it's stats? If so I'd charge the 9k mentioned above.
Kollos wrote:
Yes and No.
JediMasterCarlito wrote:
Are these droids reporting back with the resource name and it's stats? If so I'd charge the 9k mentioned above.
Not having the stats to these resources on the return info makes them essentialy worthless to some classes. Its too bad we cant send the droid out to say sample a specific resource on a planet. I dont need an entire list from Lok, but knowing if the wheat is good would be worth the 9k to me.
We crafters, you know, those guys who make stuff... need to know what resources spawn because we need to know where we can get rare resources. I know Rori usually has everything, but the other day, I needed to pick up more junk Extrusive, and there wasn't any on rori. A friend said there was some on Tatooine... the droid coulda told me that, with a simple command and a used survey tool.
2k would be about right if it was a single use Droid. That is about what a one way ticket may cost to some planets. So your saving time.
So you figure an 8 charge droid is saving 8 trips, meaning 8 tickets + time. Then you figure how expensive planets like Dath are to travel to. This isn't even looking at what it takes to make them. Yes it may only "cost" about 2k to make them, but you wont profit much. You could sell them for about 7-10k and still do business.
In anticipation of this Publish I ran off 1K Elec GP mods and 1K Elec Mem Mods. The GP mods are gone, after having to come up with a bunch of Advanced Droid Brains, so I could only make 38 of the Survey Droids to start with.
This means another factory run of GP Mods now, and a new schematic for it, and new materials, etc., etc., etc.
Plus, we are going to have to come up with a LOT of Survey Tools! I'm experimenting the Count up on my Survey Droids, and have gotten high of 12 so far (not using the best materials in my box). So each of these Droids is going to be using 12 Survey Tools of various types (there are 7 different types). I've got 4 factories going now making just the tools.
Given the rarity of the Vertex Crystalline Gemstone (I was VERY lucky and found some from a guildmate for a "fair" price), the need for 3 Elec GP's per droid, and the time involved, I seriously believe 2K per *charge* is a fair price. Reasoning: (and I know you "put all reasoning aside in your post :-> ) It costs me and all others X amount of credits to travel to all the different planets that I need to visit. I figure an averageof 2K per planet, and many times I am looking for just one thing on that planet. Granted, the Flora is always there, Berry Fruit on Dantooine, Wild Wheat on Lok, etc., but sometimes there is no Tolium Reactive Gas *anywhere*, or better yet, Vertex Crystalline Gemstone *anywhere*, or what if I want to know which plantet has Class 1 Radioactive, or Classes 2 and 4 Liquid Petro Fuel, or Eleton Reactive Gas, etc., RIGHT NOW? That's a lot of trips, that could be saved by sending out only one Mineral Surveying Droid, and one Chemical Surveying Droid per planet. Savings? Besides the money, a LOT of time! 45 minutes waiting on an email is tons better than missing every shuttle by a minute or two all the way around the Galaxy!
No, my Survey Droids will be 2K per charge, and that's only after someone already offered me 4 times that for the first few that I made. I turned him down, coming to the boards first to get a feeling for what really is fair.
But that's just my opinion, and Hey! I could be wrong! :->
Straker_Atrella wrote:2k would be about right if it was a single use Droid. That is about what a one way ticket may cost to some planets. So your saving time.
So you figure an 8 charge droid is saving 8 trips, meaning 8 tickets + time. Then you figure how expensive planets like Dath are to travel to. This isn't even looking at what it takes to make them. Yes it may only "cost" about 2k to make them, but you wont profit much. You could sell them for about 7-10k and still do business.
Your "value" equation quickly falls on its face if the person buying these needs to look for multiple resource types on one planet. If you're a DE looking for Vertex gems and tolium gas somewhere that's 2 charges per planet cutting your value in half. Not to mention if you were doing this by shuttle you could "stop" once you hit a planet with the resource you're looking for and it is likely with the built in delay of the droids that you may be sending out more droids then you need to bother with.
That't not to say 7-10k is expensive or 2k is cheap. A lot will depend on the availability of the vertex (which I know bria has had a pile of in the last 2 months) and how much these actually end up changing people's (like me) habbits once they have some time with them.
Your right, insome cases like that, it would be cheaper to go there and sample, for example, I doubt many people will be sending these to Correlia, simply because people pass through there all the time.
Something else that nobody has mentioned is that these e-mails can easily be forwarded to friends, something just opening your tool will not easily allow you to do. I would expect many groups/guilds to use a system to just send out one to each planet a day then forward the results.
However, for normal use, I would expect, people will still travel around and "look" as normal, especially if you need different resources types. Yet if they want to look on Dath or other far out planets, they send a droid.
The more I think about it, and from reading this post, it appears that maybe 1k per charge may be a good price. Plus some money can be made selling survey tools in crates.
Message Edited by BriaArtisan on 04-27-2004 12:57 PM