Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Hello All DE
Welcome to the Jungle....
/hands CaptVonbek the requisite allotment of DE Bitters (tm)
"Welcome to the Hellmouth..." 
Seriously, welcome to the profession. It's a long hard road (and one that personally I'm starting tofeel I'm coming to the end of), but the pride in watching someone use a droid you made for the first time can be wonderful. The other day I found a crafter who wasn't especially new who was unaware that they didn't have to sit in their house next to a crafting machine all day and could use a droid instead - and now I see him everywhere crafting away next to the droid I made in the bright sunshine (or murky rain), happy as a Corellian Clam they aren't tied down to their house anymore.
As to the Master Artisan parts - yes, it's a huge problem. It's not insurmountable, but it's not fun. It has been acknowledged by the Dev team that we are more dependent on another class than any other profession - all of our advanced droids require large amounts of mostly identical factory-produced parts. They have said they will either INCREASE the interdependence on other professions, or reduce it for ours. I'd be happy if they just moved the EMM's and EGP's over to DE - but we haven't heard the status of this in awhile.
Some suggestions :
- Specialize. There are lots of new DE's these days and the market is changing. I'd even suggest teaming up with one of them - "I make the Probots and LE's, you make Protocols, and all R units". DE's need to support each other, not try to run each other out of business.
- I'm not sure of your current living situation (Player City, etc.) but I've found it very effective to find out where the holes in the market are and filling them. For instance, check the planetary map (ctrl-V) under vendors on Tattoine, Corellia, and Naboo and see where there are droid vendors and where there aren't and check out the ones that are there. There is nothing wrong with checking out the competition - though you may want to put on your Master Artisan hat and not your DE hat when you do. I find that it rotates - for example, a few months ago on my server there were over a dozen DE vendors on Naboo, more than 20 on Tattoine, and only 4 on Corellia. Of those 4, only one was stocked - and they didn't sell the droids I specialize in. I put up a vendor and sold more droids in a week than I had in the last two months. Later, this situation changed, and Corellia was over-filled with Droid Vendors, and Tattoine was empty, so I packed up shop and repeated the process. Managing vendors on multiple planets can be daunting if you also stock your home base with them, but it is quite rewarding.
- Don't undercut yourself. This is the dirty little secret of DE : our profession has a LOT of issues, but being profitable is NOT one of them. I'm not suggesting you gouge people, but get an idea of what people are paying on your server for the droids that you produce. Droids are invaluable to medics and crafters, and while that shouldn't be exploited it should be recognized. A Master Doctor or a Weaponsmith isn't hurting for cash these days - theywill get paid VERY wellfor the work they do using your droid, and so should you.The trick is finding the thresholdon your server of where prices canfall. Oh,and don't get caught up in "CPU" prices, unless you buy your resources - and only then to make sure you are getting a decent return on your investment. Droids take time and energy and sometimes seemingly endless subcomponents and can be a lot of work - again, you deserve to get paid for it.
- That said, don't be afraid to gift droids to noobs - I have had many a new player whom I've given a basic droid to help them grind who have returned a few weeks later with tons of goodwill and newlyappropriated credits who have become very loyal and consistent customers. (Quick story-let :There was a wookie whowas a novice medic whom I gave a med droidto and hebecame very rich very quickly as a Master Doctor. Two weeks later, he came back and bought two R3 units (my most expensive droid). The next day he bought two more. The third day he bought FOUR more.This went on for about a week, and I finally asked him what in the world he was doing with them all - he said, "Just giving them to friends and people who needthem...") It's not only a nice thing to do to help out a noobie, it can be quite profitable in the long run as well.
- Don't be afraid of competition. Most people who sell for ridiculously low prices are new themselves, and likely won't be able to keep it up. If they do, plan accordingly - but rest assured that if you keep awell-stocked vendor with quality droids and are a reliable source of DE info they will come back to you again and again, even if they find the same product elsewhere for less. People like knowing who is making their items, and are willing to pay a premium for what they know to be consistent quality. The word of mouth is astounding - I haven't advertised anywhere but the planetary map since I became a Master and I get more orders than I can fill most days.
- Learn how to use a factory effectively early on, and run off crates of your common components. Even if you really enjoy the crafting process, the thrill of making Droid Sensor Packages gets lost around the 1000th one you make. You can still hand-craft your droids to order, but having crates of the "staples" is just as satisfying (if not more so) in the final assemble. Using a factory is absolutely required if you are making your own Master Artisan parts (as I said above, the EGP and EMM's *must* be made in a factory for Adv Droid Brains which are in every decent droid we have, save the Probot), and makes on-demand orders so much smoother when you aren't scrambling to make all the components while explaining things to your customer.
- E-mail - use it to your advantage. I often request that even on-demand orders be e-mailed to me simply so I don't screw up part way through the process, and can have the email open while I craft. This becomes ESPECIALLY important when you are making droids with socket module clusters and one can tend to forget which part went into which cluster. Also, many DE's prepare "stock" emails about naming/powering/repairing droids, current bugs, module descriptions, and your catalog (I also have seperate ones for Personality Chips and Armor). Using Hex codes, you can make a very attractive catalog and people really appriciate it - and you will too. Repeating the same dozen answers, or haggling over prices ("You sold it to so-and-so for less!") is not fun - and this eliminates it. I generally list the frames I make (with a base price), and then list the modules I offer (with a price for each one) so there are no questions. It may seem a bit impersonal at first, but it comes across as very professional to most people and as long as you offer to answer any additional questions they have (and follow through) it can do nothing but boost your business.
Good luck - hope you get a bit of help from this.
Audio
Audio, that is a heck of a good post 
Good luck with DE, Capt. Always nice to see someone enthusiastic about the profession nowadays.
Balaam23 wrote:
Audio, that is a heck of a good post
Good luck with DE, Capt. Always nice to see someone enthusiastic about the profession nowadays.
Thank you.
You can consider this a response to your question in http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=62590where you asked why people thought it was relevant that someone had been playing DE since beta or not.
Audio
, I'm glad to have ya back!
Aeneus wrote:
Welcome to droid engineers...
suggested personality traits... mentally tough, hard headed, selective hearing (great to have to ignore other professions wo complain everytime we get something good), oh yes and should I forget being able to forgive (great to have when the devs tell you something month after month and it never happens)
AudioOrgana wrote:
Aeneus wrote:
Welcome to droid engineers...
suggested personality traits... mentally tough, hard headed, selective hearing (great to have to ignore other professions wo complain everytime we get something good), oh yes and should I forget being able to forgive (great to have when the devs tell you something month after month and it never happens)
Hey, when did we get something good for them to complain about?
Oh yeah, I forgot - they fixed item and data storage last summer after we went live. I guess we should be greatful.
"Thank you sir, may I have another?"
Audio
Yeah, they "fixed" it again later on so no one even wants one anymore. Schematics only in the data module. WooHooo! Lots of good that does the 90% population of combat types in the game.
The only GOOD things we have gotten in game have been fixes to bugs introduced from patches. Those and the droid colorizer that only last for 20 pulls out of inventory. Oh! And making the DZ70 go from 45 HAM to 180 HAM so he makes a viable combat droid (LOL!!!).
I honestly can't think of any "good" things we have gotten besides fixes to bugs that should have never been introduced in the first place. Only the nerfs. Look at the bug introduced with this latest patch.....armor 4 modules no longer stack until they fix it. When they do, will we count that as a good thing or something that should never have been in the first place (if it is even a bug and not a stealth nerf)?
We will see what these next couple of patches brings, but I am certainly not holding my breath.