Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Someone asked me a question that made me pause...
Ive been a MDE since I started (in Dec04) and Ive pretty much stuck with the prof throughout. Someone asked me the other day,
"Hey, what skills do I need to make BH droids?". At first I answered, "I believe you need Master DE.". However, when I checked the skill sheet, you only need DE 0003 to make both arakyd's and seekers.
With 99.999999999999% of all my sales coming from those two droids, I must ask myself, why not dump to DE 0003?
Now I know there are pursist out there that will call me a heretic, but seriously, for me the drive to produce droids is definitely a function of my sales. And nothing by BH droids and the occasional JTL computer/astromech are selling, in fact, I dont make droids anymore because Im already well stocked and nothing is moving. Lowering prices to the point of unprofitability is not an option because then what's the point?
Anyway, Im just curious if anyone is thinking along the same lines...
-kaz
PS Hi Straker!
I have to say, if money is the only issue, BH droidsare where it's at for most people. However... I tend to make more off regular droid sales than seekers and arakyds. Since the crate count went up, I have sold4 crates of 25. For some reason BH don't shop at my vendor. Maybe it's because I am selling at 100k for arakyds and 87.5k for seekers. If I checked the vendor search I am sure I would see the reason. Somebody is probably selling them cheap. I sold lots of them on the bazaarat 20k for a crate of 5. They just won't buy them in quantities off the vendor. This really doesn't bother me though. I don't play this game just to go to work. I don't like spending all my playtime doing factory runs and stocking vendors. Let the hardcore players do that. I love building droids but I don't want it to become a job. Personally if I never sell another one I will still stay MDE. I can't help it! lol If I want to do anything else I will play another toon. I have 3 good ones I flip between. If you love droids, keep MDE, if you only want to make what people are buying, drop to 0003. If you want to do something else, start another toon. There is a endless list of possibilities and everybody has there own expectations of what they want to do when they get online. It's really a personal choice!
Hmm, well I seem to sell pretty much anything I make .. eventually. BH Sales and Astromechs make up a large percentage of sales but individually prices are coming from my other droid sales and tools.
Seekers & Arakyds - 30k or so each, 150k pack of 5, 300k pack of 10 and 600k pack of 25 (I only store 1 of these at a time)
Astromechs - 11k to 20k each for R5 Advanced with a storage module or the equivalent computer
Other Droid Sales - anything from 2k for baby mouse droids to 100k+ for a combat medic droid.
Most of my sales seem to occur over the weekend with some during the week. Im not worried though as it gives me some time to work on my other crafting characters.
As the original posters question .. nope, never crossed my mind to drop skills in DE. Even kept the respec around for weeks/months *just in case* but all I did was shift some merchant over so I could master Architect too as we lost an architect or two from our guild 
)
If you can honestly say that 90% of your sales come from BH Droids then it may well be worth your while dropping to the required skills. However, if you also sell alot of astromechs .. you might want to reconsider those boxes too .. maybe not to the higher levels but to cover what seems to be your regular sellers (in my case this seems to be level 4).
Our Mayor picked up 0 0 0 3 DE, just to make Arakyds and Seekers. Seemed a little extreme. I hate making them and only make them after my vendor is filled with regular droids. Usually one afternoon of heavy crafting lasts me a couple of weeks.
Of course getting into Merchant would allow you to put up vendors all over. Especially just outside Kaadara.
I'm in DE for the same reasons as most of the other DE's here: Crafting unique models of droids is fun, and I achieve a certain level of satisfaction when I can custom-make a droid for someone and they are happy with it.
I am a DE I have never sold a single BH droid, I like the droids, I make my money selling furniture, I hate architect as a profession but the furniture just plain sells uses no resources and takes no time to craft. DE is the proffession I do for the love of creating droids, What crazy combo can I put into this R3 adv? I love it when I see a medic, pilot lvl 6, merchant droid sell
One of my toons is a MBH and the droids are WAY Underpriced, a master bounty hunter with current loot rates, in 250 missions will be making a minimum of 70 million if hes selling on the forums. Of course they have their armour etc to pay for at the same time, but seriously MBH at the moment are living the life, the missions pay well, but the loot is out of this world because of overinflated value of ca's aa's etc etc.
MBH's complain about the smuggler loots they get 25k a shot guaranteed drop every mission!
My sales are spread between Seekers, Arakyds and the rest, and custom orders....and I've never considered dropping MDE ! The very thought
/shudder
lol
Hey Lien, Have any lidium extrusive ore you could sell me? lol i can't find that stuff anywhere! I failed to do a custom order because i couldn't make any lvl 6 storage mods. I convinced the customer to change droids so i could stack the lvl 4s but i wish i could have made exactly what she wanted.
LienDanone wrote:
Hi Neel Nub here MDE from Corbantis server. Although the volume of droid sales are in BH droids I still think the best feeling of acheivement comes from completing a special order for a customer. It's amazing that there is a large number of customers out there that still arn't fully aware of what is available.
I went MDE mainly to craft Jet Packs but I have gradually become more involved with the rest of the DE profession, which I have alongside Master Artisan and Master Doc, I don't think i'll be dropping MDE
Neel.
Message Edited by Skizzik- on 09-07-2005 01:59 PM