Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Does anyone have any pointers on going to a mostly Custom Order Droid Business ?
I'm planning on going this route and basically only stock basic armored probots on my vendor.
Crates of advanced droid brains.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, advanced droid brains in crates would be it. The long term benefits of having tons of these things readily on hand has been proved by DE's everywhere, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your pre-nerf probot; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until it has lost all its vitality. But trust me, in 2 weeks, you’ll look back at screenshots of your probot and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how fun that thing was and how much ass it really kicked. You’re not asgimped as you imagine.
Don’t worry about the bugs; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to fight a Krayt with a CDEF. The real gamebreakers are apt to be things that never got mentioned on the forums; the kind that make your shop disappear every Tuedsay at 4:03 PM exactly.
Do one thing every logonthat scares you .
Tip.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s droids, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Experiment.
Don’t waste your time on whining; sometimes things work, sometimes they don't…the game can be fun, and in the end you know that DE will rock.
Remember the good customers, /ignore the idiots; if you succeed in doing this, send me your list.
Keep your old modules, throw away your old schematics.
Grind.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what a data module is good for…the most successful DE's I know never sold a one.
Get plenty of steel and fiberplast.
Hoard extrusive ore, you’ll missit whenit's gone.
Maybe you’ll get rich, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll get patched, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll be stuck making MSE's, maybe you’ll be cranking out droidekas by the factory lot…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berateSOE either – you might be the flavor of the month one day, and get nerfed 5 minutes later. Enjoy your skills, use them every way you can.
Dance…even if you don't have novice entertainer - people love dancing engineers.
Read the FAQs, even if you don't believe the answers.
Do NOT read the creature handler forums, they will only make you feel useless.
Get to know your fellow DE's, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.
Be nice to Bio Engineers; they are the one other crafting class we can look at and say "Thank god I didn't go that route."
Live inAnchorhead once, but leave before it makes you insane; live in Theed once, but leave before it makes you forget that some shuttles have waits.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths, dupes will happen, devs will overpromise, you too will become bitter and cynical, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were a newbie, duped didn't happen, the devs did what they said, and l33t sp34k3rz were rare.
Don't sp34k l33t.
Don’t expect everyone else to help you. Maybe you have a 70% ore spot, maybe you have a great guild; but you never know when either one might disappear.
But trust me on the droid brains...
Ah, the power of insomnia+boredom.
Wow. Heh, Jinx hit a lot of things on the head there....alot of them....
However, if I were you, I'd make a very organized Factory out of your home. Don't waste slots for frivolties like a Chair or a Light. Make a backpack with every component you'll need, including every level of Module. Some backpacks will be used up faster than others, sure.....but as a custom designer only, you can expect to get flooded with e-mails for orders. Thus, you'll want to actually make the droid as fast as possible to get through the orders quickly. Having all the modules/components at your hand will do this, as you can just determine what they want, grab all the components, and then throw the droid together, and Boom.....within 5-10 minutes, their droid is complete.
To get it to them, I'd suggest putting up a Vendor and naming each droid for the person...such as "Jane's Droid" or "Liam's Droid". Then, put the agreed-upon price, and then the person can come pick up their custom order. Now, if you have a problem with some jerk buying a droid that wasn't made for them....well, just make another of those droids and give the original person a discount. At least you still made the profit, right?
/rofl
Darn you, now I have that stupid song in my head and it won't stop. Other than that, I'd have to agree with most what you wrote there. /clap
If you don't have crates of advanced droid brains, at least have 10-20 crates if GP and EM chips at all times. Those bad boys take a long time to make a few crates of and are used in a lot of our products. If you can afford it, resource wise, make 2-5 crates of each droid chassis. I'd also suggest having a factory make clusted modules with Medical/Chem station, Weapon station/storage, Clothing station/Storage. 1-2 creats of each of these will help to make your day so much easier.
Get to at least x,x,x,4 and set your title to Droid Designer. I usually get several tells whilst playing. Be prepared to explain things in depth as most people are leary of buying droids and above all set a fair price and then stick to it.
Also, keep your vendor stocked with crates of batteries and display droids. I sell more display units that I do droids right now, naming the advanced frames creatively helps to since R2D2 sells more than "An ADV R2 Frame".
Make factory runs of the common modules that you sell (Medical VI, Food/Chem Crafting, Armor, for me). Don't make modules lower than your maximum ability (except perhaps armor). You will probably never have a customer say a module is too good. You may have customers who say they can't afford a certain configuration, but changing the frame usually has a more significant impact on the price.
Make factory runs of Seeker droids, Probe droids, and batteries. I get lots of requests for these and its annoying to have to take time out of my schedule to make them. They don't typically make large profits but they do make some so having them about is good, even if it only to help make a sale and establish you in the mind of future clients.
Keep a crate of GP modules and EMM modules. You will need those to construct personality chips.
Leave yourself some room to haggle over prices but don't cut your throat when you drop your pricing. When you haggle, be fair and firm. Don't insult the customer. Don't rise if they insult you.
Remember that the world changes. What was worth 20k a month ago might only be worth 15k today. If sales really seem to be slacking off you might need to reduce prices, especially if you are getting lots of tells who back out because of the price. However, also remember that things come in starts and stops. I've had weeks where I sold next to nothing followed by days where I sold over 200k in droids. How long until you drop your prices is a balancing act, and a tricky one.
Always keep your MDE or Droid Designer tag up. Always answer questions courteously and don't be afraid to offer advice.
Have at least two crafting kits and have a droid with a Weapon/Droid/General crafting module.
Ok, those are all things I suggest and that I do. Things I don't do but that you might at least want to consider:
Have one or two crates of the most commonly used personality chips (Geeky and Sarcastic seem good bets).
Have a crate or two of Advanced Chassis for a droid type you sell a lot of (R2 and Surgical).
When I craft a droid for a client I usually quote them 5 minutes. Most of the time I really finish in around 3. A minute or so to load up the components for a personality chip and experiment, a minute for the crafting kit to build it. While it is building I spend another minute to load up the remaining components for the droid, drop the chip in when it is done, experiment it up and wait one more minute while the kit crafts the final droid.
This is especially helpful in cases where I get two or three customers backing up to ask for droids, because instead of 10 minutes a droid as I build everything from scratch making the third guy wait 30 minutes (and usually killing that sale) he winds up waiting about 10 minutes, which is almost never a problem for someone getting a custom droid.
Dont do it! i used to only stock a specific selection and make order by custom...it was just as time consuming as my current method and less profitable. make 1 of everything, with the best med/stor mods you have, i stock 6 different r4's, r5's, dz's, r2's, protocol's, so on so all crafting station types and the repair mod are available in all models of adv droids (except the protocol, not MDE yet....) anyways getting all the stock made takes a while at first but know i am reaping in the rewards, i still sell more probots and r2's than others, but i also sell a lot of r4's too. and at least 5 dz/MSE/treadwells/r5's a week. also stock 1 of each type of chassis just named "R2" ect ect, people will email you if they want custom chassis's. i also stock droid storage comps in crates of 25 and those sell too (6k per, at 90%+ quality). the more thats available on your vendor the more that sells, the more that sells........
oh the adv droid brain thing is too true, make a 500 batch of mem's and gps and make 125 adv droid brains youll thank yourself later.
A couple of notes:
1) Almost all my sales come through my vendor.
2) If you make ALL the components in a factory, and keep all the chassis in stock, then you can make a droid very quickly, since all you have to do is pick up the crates of components, the fiberplast, and voila, an R2!