Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: I give up, I misjudged the market on surveyors by about 400% shoot me :(
My guild's MDE is selling 12-use packs of surveyors for 6k each, no crates. He's selling exploding mice (jeez, that sounds like a bad gag from Spenser's Gifts, doesn't it?) for, I think, 2k each, though I'm not certain on that price.
Remember, there's a HUGE markup on everything that comes out new. I remember people selling the first round of Kasshyyk Ceremonial armor for 150+k when it came out with stats equal to Advanced Ubese (about 80K for a suit). Prices have adjusted now that the initial demand has trailed off some.
Yep, sounds like a resale to me as well. Happened alot with my BER 4 Harvesters I sell as well. I sell them for 1.5k as its mostly newbies that use them, and it gives me a little profit but notmuch. I had someone give me a order for 40 of em, and when I checked his vendor he had them on sale for 30K!!!!
I find the best way to stop resale is to change the names of the items when you craft them. eg My vendor is called DNDTech Droids, so all my droids are called for example 'DNDTech R3 'Cyclops' -Combat Droid'. I find this reduces the amount of resale of my droids for silly prices. As they can't be renamed it means the person trying to resell on their vendor has my 'company' name written all the items for sale.
I'm charging 6k for Survey (11-use, soon to be 13-use) and 10k for Toaster Bombs.
Both of those contain 2400 credits worth of rare resources, so it makes no sense at all to sell them for 3k on Ahazi. It's that whole opportunity cost thing again - why go to a large amount of effort to make a Survey Droid (which takes 3 factory runs - one for EMM, one for EGPM, and one for the Droid itself) that uses 2400 credits of Vertex and then turn around and sell it for only 3k? 600 credits for all that effort? No thanks.
Toaster Bomb/Murder Mouseis the same way... 2 detonation modules is 4800 credits worth of Tolium alone, at least for the stuff I'm using. No freakin' way I'm selling that for 6k, let alone 3k which is less than cost. I realize that 10k for a single use droid is a lot of credits, but that's the market we're forced into because SOE is forcing us to compete with Combat Medics for a rare resource.
Kollos wrote:
I'm charging 6k for Survey (11-use, soon to be 13-use) and 10k for Toaster Bombs.
Both of those contain 2400 credits worth of rare resources, so it makes no sense at all to sell them for 3k on Ahazi. It's that whole opportunity cost thing again - why go to a large amount of effort to make a Survey Droid (which takes 3 factory runs - one for EMM, one for EGPM, and one for the Droid itself) that uses 2400 credits of Vertex and then turn around and sell it for only 3k? 600 credits for all that effort? No thanks.
Toaster Bomb/Murder Mouseis the same way... 2 detonation modules is 4800 credits worth of Tolium alone, at least for the stuff I'm using. No freakin' way I'm selling that for 6k, let alone 3k which is less than cost. I realize that 10k for a single use droid is a lot of credits, but that's the market we're forced into because SOE is forcing us to compete with Combat Medics for a rare resource.
The man speaks truely.
When, oh when, will some people understand the economics of DE? You cant just take 3cpu and multiply it up, its nonsense to try. Rare resources, factory time (especially for electronics) not to mention customer demand. I just dont understand people underpricing their own products, then happily paying for weapons and armour, the producers of which have no scruples whatsoever about market principles.
Ahh well, each to their own I suppose, but fair pricing is not price gouging..I wish people would remember that.
Cheers
Ragnaat wrote:
As a first day customer of Neols (1 crate of survey droids, a few test mouse bombs) let me just add a few things...
(1) I thought you were a bit cheap on the survey droids especially so on patch day... I would regularly pay maybe double, but 100k is just silly. I may be an odd case in that when I've used them so far I've sent 4 droids out to a planet - both for my own information but also to double check on swgcraft status, so if they get too much more per charge it just isn't worth it at all for those purposes and I'd fall back on using one or 2 charges a week just to check that offworld harvesters still have something to dig up. [i still will be only using about one droid a week]
(2) As a smuggler I'm going to have a hard time justifying the regular use of the bomb droids regardless of price... although 10k would certainly cause me not even to think about it. I only tested the two out but the whole process seemed like a bit of a pain for a one time not very surprise detonation doing 500 or 1000 damage to a buffed player. I mean, I've gotta have it already out and trained so I don't have to change targets 8 times in the middle of battle or pull it out and use the radial menu and all that mess, not to mention have to have a droid slot open to use them. Just not my cup of tea i guess. The only place they seem like they will really have value is if there are multiple people in a group using them at once... But like the survey droids 1k seemed on the low side for a patch day product, but there's no way in hell its worth 10k.
[edit: also, as far as resources go bria had (still has?) an active tolium spawn on patch day and vertex has been plentiful in the last 2 months, although I'm not sure if the last shift was still active when the first news that DEs wouuld need it it... but its not a server you will have to pay 40 or 50cpu to get]
Message Edited by Ragnaat on 04-29-2004 03:33 PM
I think you are mistaken it the use of these. They will generate from the deed in combat, so generate them when you need them, as often as you like.
Also, there is no programming involved..it comes with an inbuilt CHASE command, and /detonatedroid is also a standard command..so it really is pull them and go for it.
Used on the group of Gurks around a Gurk Lair for testing purposes 6.5k damage is fairly easily achievable with a MSE Adv..if you want to use them in PvP thats up to you..but I dont think I would bother..I dunno.
As to the cost..well thats up to any DE, but all I know is they are never going to be cheap using all high quality resourses (as they must) to be effective.
So..if you dont want to use them thats fine, but I know for a fact that plenty others do.
Message Edited by Shian_Tavkin on 04-29-2004 08:44 PM