Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Arakyd Probe Droids and Seekers
You'd be better off selling your resources directly on the bazaar - saves you the hassle of running a factory or crafting those darn electronics by hand (the first costs credits, the latter time- if your time isn't worth anything to you... your choice 
).
Selling Seekers for 1500 per item and 7500 per crate of 5 (I am open for haggling)
Arakdys go for 3000
In fact I simply adopted the prices at www.undeadfish.com as I had no idea how much I should charge It turned out to be the usual price for Seekers on FarStar from what I see and the BHs are happy, too. Running harvesters is a pain in the butt at times (instead of hunting like my PA mates I run kilometers on end avoiding reds as good as I can - and I want it to freaking pay a bit.
Actually for me, it is not a hassle at all, I want to make droids, plain and simple. I really don't care about making alot of money, as long as I can pay for my harvesters and my house, I am a happy droid engineer.
Most of these prices are in line with what I have seen on the servers I play on.
Seekers about 1K
Probes about 2K
What I don't understand is why everyone shorts themselves selling crated items.
I know you save time using a factory, but it still costs the same amount of resources and you don't get XP from factories.
As a matter of fact, crated itemstake less inventory space, so not only are you saving inventory space for them (already a bonus which many people would pay for) but you're giving them a price break on top of that.
Someone tried to argue that they wanted a 'bulk discount' for buying a crate of items.
It all takes the same amount of resources.
You buy 10 crates and then we'll talk......
To be honest, I've recently raised my prices just a little bit, to 11K for a crate of probes and 4500 for a crate of seekers. Wouldn't you know it, someone bought out nearly my entire stock last night.
Maybe I'll increase it again, I had been holding prices steady for a long time since the charges were added to the droids.
I have sold my Seekers for 1000 per and in crates I sell them for 4k.
I sell my Arakyd probe droids for 2000 per and in crates I sell them for 8k.
Ialways keep my vendors stocked. Always.
In my factory I build 200 seekers and 100 Prode droids per week and I sell them all.
I quit selling them on the Bazaar because they were not moving well and taking up too much of my time to keep track of.
My business is booming. While the BH's come to buy my BH droids I notice that they pick up my probots and batteries and crafting droids while they are shopping. As I said, business is booming.
I sell my seekers for 500 cred per and arakyds for 700 per.
How can I do this you may ask? Well it is a lot like Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo selling their game systems below the cost it takes to make them, because they know they will get more business once they sell the initial system. I will continue to lose money even by having repeat businesshowever I keep my vendor stocked with lots of other things these bounty hunters see. If they come to me regularly they will be more likely to tell others (BHs and Non-BHs)about my shop and vendors. I make back my money onseekers and arakyds cheap by having BHs reference me to these others who need droids. Thus I make my money on my other Non-BH sales and those sales more than make up for the credits I lose for BH droids.
Cameo - Master DE
I have been hiding but am going to get in some more trouble here now. 
1) yes, it does take a ton of resources to master MDE, but why should other people have to pay for someone just grinding their way to MDE? At Blueprints I, a DE can make seekers and bounty hunters will buy them, and at Blueprints III, the Arakyd can be made for bounty hunters too. Yes, this would take much longer, but would remove the 2 million credit "debt" that people would "owe" the MDE. And harvesting your own materials lowers the cost to the DE to about 0.5 to 1.0 cpu, selling based on 2-3 cpu is still a 100% to 500% markup, which is not bad.
2) If the factory is mainly used for the MA components that a DE needs, the factory can make about a crate an hour, so 25 items for 50 credits and 50 power, even at 3 cpu for power that is 200 credits for 25 items, or 8 credits per item, not much at all.
3) As far as mamging resources, it can be a pain, but we have to deal with it, but I don't know why people should have to pay extra for something just because we have to spend time managing our supplies.
4) I can't speak for anyone else, but time is not a factor for me, since I am the worst person in combat (anything over a kreetle is a major challenge for me, even with good armor), I don't have much else to spend my time on, but as a DE I made the decision to not be able to do many combat missions, even though my guildmates take me out hunting with them sometimes, and I often think they are just trying to kill me off. 
5) As for other people have the money, I agree with other people that the hyperinflation in the game is a problem. Since I think this, I can do one of two things, charge a ton of money like other people, and contribute to what I view as a problem, or I can charge a reasonable rate, and be happy that I am doing something that I think is right. And I think you have stated very well why this is happening, people grinding, either for holocron reasons, or just want to be a master as fast as possible.I also do not fault anyone that wants to grind, just that to make other people pay for it does not seem "right" to me. As far as DE being broken, it is, but I want to make droids, even if most people consider them to be totally useless.
Some people complain that SWG is not very "star warsy" when it comes to droids, and I agree that we do need more droid types and such, but our prices are not very "star warsy" either, I doubt Uncle Owen paid the jawa's anything close to what we would have charged him.
Disclaimer: The above is merely my opinion.
Just my opinion:
1) To make others pay for someone's choice to grind to MDE is just wrong. There are other ways to get there, just take longer.
2) Factory costs are very litte, for MA items it only adds 2-8 credits per item and even on droids that take 5 of these items, that is only 10-40 credits.
3) Personally, I wouldn't charge people for the fact that I need to keep resources stocked.
4) I play a DE because I find making droids enjoyable, much more enjoyable than combat to be honest, so I would not charge people for this.
5) I feel the same as some others do, the hyperinflation on SWG is absurd. If a BH needs X credits worth of droids to do somemissions, he is going to only take the missions that he needs to, same for all the classes actually, and as they make more money and pass it along, so do we, and now even more money has been thrown into the game, I choose to set my prices more in line with what I think would be closer to star wars economy, I don't think Uncle Owen could have afforded a mouse droid made by one if us much less R2-D2 and C-3PO.
Broken? I am a droid engineer, I make droids, that is not exactly "broken" to me. Underutilized? Absolutley. Not as we should be? Absolutely. But we are hardly broken.
You're missing one cost in your equation, Cereus - the cost of maintaining and running the factory. Otherwise I'm doing the same computation you are and arriving at basically the same result. Cost on either type of BH Droid is basically 600-650 credits.
Since my last post I have raised my Seeker price to 600 each because I re-calculated and discovered that at some point in the past the number of resources required to make them changed and I never noticed. (Either that or I added it up wrong several times, which could also be possible.) I now sell Seekers for 600 credits each and Arakyds for 1000 each.
Basically, Seekers aren't there to make money for me. They're there to ensure a dedicated Bounty Hunter customer. I make a small profit marginoff of the Arakyds.
To the person who asked why we're "undercutting" the old BH Terminals: Bounty Hunter missions have been nerfed and no longer pay as well as they used to. With their nerfed missions, Bounty Hunters would not be able to make any moneyof their ownif we charged the old rates - 2000 per 10-charge Seeker and 5000 per 5-charge Arakyd.
I will admit I have not used my factory for running droids for a bit (just got done a big move), but for arguments sake (since I looked at the numbers recently) we will look at everyone's favorite: Electronics GP Modules. 
It takes 120 seconds for a factory to make one, for 1000 of these is33.33 hours (35 is a better number to use). If you buy your power at 3cpu, your cost to run the factory is: 50*35 (maint) + 55*30*3 (energy) + 3000 (redeed)= 10,000 credits for the run, divide that by the 1000 units you just made, and that is an increased cost of 10 credits. Between the two modules for these droids, it adds 39 credits per Arakyd and 29 credits per Seeker, not alot of credits. Personally, I just add up the resource costs using whatever cpu I am using, then add 25% to that to cover the factory costs, not the most exact method, but it works for me.
I sell seekers for 2k and probes for 5k. I have had 3 requests for them in the months ive been a DE. My largest sale was 10 of them and im not sure why they wanted them.
People who make the cpu argument really need to look at the bigger picture. 1) Becoming an MDE take 650,000 resource which you figure 3 cpu put you in "debt" to start to a tune of close to 2 mil credits. 2)Factories need to be run, and our profession requires a factory. Thats an additional expense, and while it saves time, it also requires lots of time. At least a good week plus for aperson who doesnt play 8 hrs a day to set up production to make the parts. Otherwise you can do them quickly by hand but not make any real quantity of droids. 3) The diversity in ores. Just maintaining enough of each **edit** resource is a pain in the ass. Add more time for harvesting or buying resources at 2-10 cpu. Not to mention stuff that disappears for weeks. 4)Time to build. If im crated up its like 2 minutes, if im not, and i have to build each piece, a med droid or a probot takes 20-30 minutes. At least for me. 5)Lastly, people have the money. I have never had anyone tell me my droids cost too much except for newbs who just started playing and are fresh with their novice scout title and have no money, or for probots which are useless anyway and are directly compared to a CH pet. Its not a question of how much something costs to make, its a question of what people are willing to pay. But its silly to think you dont deserve to charge more money because it cost you 1000 credits in material. If people want to pay less they can grind 600 MSE droids,2500 ADF frames, and55+ skill points(not includingMaster Artisan) and play a broken profession. If your servers pricessuck, you should gather all the DE's which cant be more than 50 or so, and form a guild and set a standard for your server.
Lonkley
Ahazi - Master Droid Engineer, Pistoleer, Slave to Harvestors