Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: My night in Coronet trying to sell droids
OK, so today I decided to make and try to sell some Adv Protocol droids. I made 4, each one had one of the different crafting stations in it at 53% or higher, all had medical 6 mods, armor 6, item storage 6, data storage 4 and worshipful personalities. Selling price 20,000 credits, not too unreasonable I feel.
Arrived at Coronet at 8pm est. Starport was crowded as always. I set up a nice selling macro that descibed the droids very well. For 3 hours I hit the sell macro every 5 mins. Total sales? 3 BH probes and 2 BH seekers, and 1 order for a Probot with all the features the aforementioned Protocols had (minus the personality of course)
Three hours of spamming my sales and thats what i had to show for it 
In the meantime, I saw 16 different sales of CH pets in the same area completed.)
Now the reason I did this. My shop, although it is on Talus near Dearic, is in a high traffic area, with numerous players constantly passing by. In my vendor I keep 8 different mouse droids with different configurations, from just a medical 6 mod, to med 6, crafting stations and 7 item storage, all for 2k to 3k each. In addition I have 8 probots, 2 of each that have 1 ofeach crafting station mods at 50%+, Medical 6, 10 item storage, repair mod, and armor 6, for 17500 apiece. These droids have been in my vendor since last friday, with only 1 sale (a mouse droid) and 8 batteries.
This it seems is the life of a DE
To put this in perspective, the same character is also a Master Weaponsmith. I try to keep 1 of each type of weapon in the vendor at all times. I say I try because vendor is constantly running out of weapons. Everyday I have to make at least 5 weapons to replace my stock. At least 3 times a week I get a special order from someone who has obtained some Krytt (sp) Dragon tissue that they want a weapon made out of.
If it were not for my Weapon business, I could not afford to have a Droid business without running at least 15 missions a day just to pay for harvesters/house/vendor maintenance.
At this point, the only thing I can say about the DE profession is that it is broken. Our business does not seem to be able to provide the cashflow to pay for our expenses. Put 10 droids in a vendor, and all the sudden the maintenance costs soar to over 120 credits per hour. Put more droids in the vendor? And the maintenance costs just skyrocket higher. Its a catch 22. You have to have variety in your vendor if you hope to sell, but the more you put in, the higher the maintenance costs.
What can solve this? We need to be able to sell droids that people actually want. We need REPEAT BUSINESS. We need more and better droids to sell. In general, we just need HELP.
Im not sure how all you other MDEs survive without the income I can generate with my weapons sales.
Sorry to rant, but 3 hours in one of the most populated areas in the game, and only 2 sales makes me a bit grumpy about the whole DE profession.
I've been there....
I have a positive story though, Sunday night I was just hanging out in front of the Theed Starport, not barking or anything, just had my DE tag above my head, didn't even have a droid out. I must have made 6 or 7 sales that night, had people coming to me, strangest thing I'veexperienced thus far as a DE. Always have your DE title up, and keep your char searchable. This has done more for my sales than any Advertising has ever done.
Are you kidding me??? What server are you on???
In the last two nights I have made over 500k creds sitting on the bench across from the Coronet Starport. Most folks buy an Adv Probo fully stocked (L6 med mod, craft, repair, L6data and item storage, and aL6 armor seg). I sell em for 35-40k each. I've never been more happy in all my SWG life, really.
Hope this helps a bit.
Same for me. I'm not even master and I get tells fairly consistently for droids with crafting stations and adv. probots. Gets to the point that I turn off the title just so I can craft since I'm not master yet and can't make everything people ask for.
I think you just had a bad run of luck.
Exactly Darksmyth, the only reason I sold even 1 droid is becuase someone liked the modules I had on the protocols, but wanted them in a Probot. The lack of variety and uniqueness of our droids makes selling more than one to any customer a hard sell indeed.
The reason I did my experiment with Protocols was, they are cool looking, but do the same thing any other droid can do (actually less, I prefer to use repair mods instead of the totally useless data mods, but repair mods dont work on ANY of the talking droids, including the REPAIR DROIDS d'oh)
Without a larger variety of droids, and more usefull functions DE is just a dead end road. I myself use only probots to hunt with and have never owned a CH pet. But I am in a small minority, if not alone in this fact.
And no one even mentioned anything about the fact that while I, the lone DE at Coronet, could only sell 1 droid in 3 hours, the 3 CHs there managed to sell 16!!!! pets. These numbers are totally reversed in a game that is supposed to be set in the Star Wars universe.
We need more variety, not just a little, but ALOT. Tell me, when was the last time you had an order for BLL?? I have to guess never. I along with probably every other DE made 1 count em 1 BLL, saw that it was less than useless, and never made another. How about LE Repair droids? When was your last order for one of these? Or Medic drods? Making alot of them are you??
Face it, DEs have 4 items we can sell. Mouse droid with a crafting station for cheap or poor players. Probes and Seekers for BHs, and Probots with thier amazing damage output of 50 per shot.
Oh sure we occasionally get an order for an R2 from someone who wants to feel Star Warsy, otherwise, all other models are USELESS.
As I stated before, I am also a Master WS. I sell EVERY type of weapon, repeatedly. Pistols,Carbines,Rifles,Vibo-blades/Knuckles, you name it. And not just one type of each, but everything from Tusken Rifles to T21s, and every type in between. I currently have 25 types of weapons on my vendor, do you have more than 2 types of droids on your vendor?
I said it before and I will repeat it DEs ARE BROKEN. Its that simple. We have a product that no one wants, or if they do want our product, we sell 1 to a customer, and never see them again. Without the repeat business that EVERY other artisan class enjoys, DE is a dead end road.
It's all in your presentation. I can easily make 100,000c a day in droid sales. There are4 secrets to doing this.
1. Location- If your in the boon docks of your city, or based around a large city, you aren't going to sell many droids. High Traffic areas draw attention. People don't like long runs.
2. Advertising- Both on your server boards, and on the bazaar via a deed title with "Droid shop in X(City) at Y,Z(Coords). Put it up once a day. I'll see sales following each time I post my advertisement on my boards.
3. Selection- MSE's are all well and good, but only the Min-Maxers are looking for those. Most people want more advanced models. I kept in stock Surgicals, Probots, and Protocols. I didn't even deal in R series unless specially requested. Further, you must recognize that many players don't realize that Surgicals aren't the only Med droids, and they will only buy Surgicals. To sell Protocols, I built them with Item 6, Med 6, Data 6, Armor 6, and a Crafting station. There were many days I couldn't keep vendors stocked, and a couple days where I'd run out of resources.
4. Customer Service- Keep your inventory filled with crates to fill impulse orders. Be ready to deliver if you have time. Ask the customer exactly what he's looking for in a Droid, and be ready to help him select the best droid for him if he's unsure. Offer to paint it, give away batteries, answer questions. On one notable occasion, I made an impulse sale at Coronets bazaar while grinding Slicing 4 to someone who wanted a Probot with Med 6 & Food/Chem crafting. I made it on the spot, and painted it and answered questions. I've gotten dozens of customers refered to me from him, because he was so pleased with me.
Unfortunately, I'm temporarily retired, because the infighting here and lack of development in the profession has soured me on Crafting Droids
Therearentan, My shop is as close to Dearic as you can build, next to an armorshop, and in front of a medic shop, both have vendors that are always stocked (i check everyday just to make sure I can feed off their customers) both of these shops are advertised on the large map.
I have an R4 named DroidShopAtFourHundred-NegFourKorFollowMe(or something along those lines)that patrols from my house to Dearic Cantina to Dearic starport to Dearic Med center and back to my house. I noticed that my gun sales went way up once I started using this droid, and reset him everyday. But I have yet to see an upswing in droid business.
I have tried every trick I can think of to drum up business. And in fact if I put a few mouse droids with crafting station in the city vendor that have crafting stations, these will usually sell out before the 7 days runs out, but not always. But the 3k price limit in these vendors means all I can sell there and still make a profit is mouse droids with just 1 mod, a crafting station.
And at least on my server, all the players are aware that any droid can have any module so selling a medical droid just wont happen (had one on vendor for 14 days fully loaded for 17.5kbefore I gave up and removed it to reduce maint on vendor).
I have to agree with Gatt. Your approach is all wrong.
Here's some things I've learned.
1. Everyone loves R2-D2
I keep at least 5 R2 110 med w/ food/chem craft stocked at all times. 26k. I sell at least 5 a week. Every time someone wants me to color an R2 guess what color they want? White with blue stripes. All the colors we have available and they all want white with blue stripes. People like R2-D2. Don't fight it. Use it.
2. 3P0 just doesn't sell very often and even less often for what it's worth.
I keep a couple stocked in the above config for 50k. I sell one every couple weeks. That's fine with me.
3. Don't put modules in probots. I will repeat. Don't put modules in probots.
I sell 10+ probots a week. Adv 2 LVL 4 armor Medium 40%. That's it. 18k I will put modules in probots for special requests, but the price goes to minimum of 30k.
4. I have advertising 3 and a very nicely decorated medium tatooine house.
People like to visit nice shops, and even though I have to reset the ad every day it makes all the difference in the world.
I would go insane trying to make custom droids all the time. Forget that. Get a vendor. make factory runs of everything you use. Stock your vendor. People like to see a well stocked droid vendor. I'm giving away secrets for free here so listen up. I'm telling you. DEs make the "I'll do it custom" mistake more than anyone. People like to shop and they like to buy. They don't like to wait. Keep your vendor stocked. Stock follows....
Build medical (110 Med and food/chemcraft)droids in R2, Surgical, Le Repair, MSE I sell them all for 26k.You buy function not chassis in medical. Stock 5 times as many R2s as anything else.
Put at least two different types of droids R4 / R5 / MSE / LE Repair / Surgical that have each type of crafting station only. I sell these for 9k to 15k depending on the chassis.
Do not put modules in probots. You are shooting yourself in the foot. You turn two potential droid sales into one sale here if you put modules in probots. Don't do it unless they pin you down and specifically ask for it. Never never never stock it.
I hope this helps.
Forgot to add:
I have never once barked a droid sales ad in a town ever. Never. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but it isn't necessary.
I have made 700k in a week though.
I own 4 medium houses (2 are placed currently), 2 small houses, 2 factories, several heavy harvesters, medium harvesters, am grinding up the chef tree, and sit on about 1.2 million credits constantly even while I'm spending to grind up chef.
It ain't weaponsmith money, but it's plenty for me.
Do not put modules in probots. You are shooting yourself in the foot. You turn two potential droid sales into one sale here if you put modules in probots. Don't do it unless they pin you down and specifically ask for it. Never never never stock it.
That's all fine and good, but EVERYONE ASKS FOR IT! And I'm all about giving folks what they want, especially when they want to buy it, from me! 35-40k a pop for a fully stocked Adv Probot. Cha-ching!