Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Pricing for Droids
Honestly it's not those of us who are charging too much that are hurting the economy, it's those of you who are charging too little. You accuse me of assigning an "arbitrary value" to my time, while you assign an "arbitrary value" to resources. What's the difference?
This game is attempting to create a "market driven" economy. That means that if money is easy to come by things cost alot, because people are WILLING to pay for it. As money gets harder to come by, crafters should be FORCED to drop their prices because the market won't accept the price. I myself have been forced to lower my Probot prices from 35k to 25k and expect to be FORCED to go to 20k. The Devs are making money harder to come by, and thus I must sell for what the market will accept.
Those of you who set "arbitrarily" low prices do more harm than good. You are creating Millionaires rather than redistributing the wealth! If you charged what the market would hold, you would get all that cash out of the hands of the few who have it and redistribute it to the crafters, miners and entertainers. However by selling your Droid for FAR too little, you leave the millionaire his money.
Don't just defend your position, listen to my words. If you live in a Galaxy where the average person make 60k per hour then get your 60k per hour. If/when the economy crumbles and the average wage drops to 20k per hour then accept that. Dont' just set and arbitrary number based on your own set of morals. You actually do more harm than good.
A wind generator costs 1440 creds a day.. 3000 to reeded. assume you redded once a week. so it averages out to 430 credits a day reeded costs. and average best concentration for wind i been find is 55% that equates to 3960 power units a day or about .5 creds per power unit
so 720 (maitiance) + 215 (reed spread out over a week) + 300 (power) is 1235 a day.
average concentration i find is about 69% or 1987 resources a day.
That comes out to .62 a per resource in just maince costs. I upp to .65 to give me some leway and is a rounder number.
now assume i can get to 5 harvestors in ahour at a fair price of labr at 10K an hour and i do that every other day.. and takes me 2 hours a week to redeed and find new resources.
thats about 8K a day in labor with 10K in resources thats an aditional .8 in costs rounded up to 1 for a saftey margin
for a grand total cost of 1.65 creds a resource. Labor is less as i increase to larger installions.. but i keep the price the same to pay for the inital cost of the harvestor.. thats the only arbitray thing i have is cost of amortorization of the harvestor..
now imagine if none of the exploits were in and people only have a 20% profit margin 2 credits per resource on average.. and people only made 10K an hour average. things will be low enough for new causual players do not need to play much to be on par with power gamers and those who had a bennefit of exploits.
In the begining laser rifles on a server were costing 50k.. only the exploits could have had that much money by the time you could use a laser rifle. A causal gamer without exploits would not beable to make 50K in the 4 hours it takes to level up rifle to where you can use a laser rifle.
the exploits broke the ecomony.. I'm operating as if there were no exploits so when the exploits are fixed and somesort of money rationalization occured.. I'm still in the good and I'll start to have real competion.
As other said where will the fun be for me if i were rich in 3 months?
there is a parallel in real life.. the dot coms.. an over valuation of what something was worth cause a short spike in rise.. when most of it was nothing.
my idea is this will go the same way... i might be wrong and worse off but i'm good hearted and side on the error of helping others. My customers.
So far your time value is arbitrary, and that is the part that as you yourself pointed out, will lower as the economy cannot support it.
When and if that will happen remains to be seen, but it makes more sense to price on a real value than an inflated one in a system which will presumably near a break point.
I still find it interesting just how much the original poster has set his time value at.
I think over time pricing this way will not work, but of course if the economy continues the way it is, and combat characters can run missions at 10 times the amount of payout that we can... perhaps it will be supported. I do not know, but I do appreciate everyone's input.
This thread is particularly helpful in pointing out economy based assumptions and what I believe to be the two predominant pricing approaches present in SWG at this time.
One is of course resource cost + % markup
The other is resource based + time value (perceived)
It's very interesting indeed.
I'm just getting to the point where pricing becomes more complicated - I got Advanced Droid Construction today, so I could put food/chem stations and repair units in droids. Up to this point, the prices I've used have basically been what's sounds good. Everything is made by hand for me, since I don't have a factory...
1. R5s with med 1 module - I sold a lot of these for 2750. I have seen people in Anchorhead selling R5s with med 2 for 1k... sheesh...
2. R4s with either med 2 module or WDG station - 6000 creds
3. R4s with repair unit - I put it on my vendor for 7k before I came to work today, so I don't know if it sold. 
I bumped it up 1k over my other R4s because is it just me, or is the repair module bugged in some way? Even with the highest quality Erco steel, it took 3 tries to get one 24/12 for percentages...
4. Today, I made my first R5A with both level 2 med module and food/chem station, plus a level 3 armor module. Now this droid I hope will sell really well to up and coming medics, so I don't think the 12k I'm asking would be out of line. Or was it 10... I can't remember. Someone want to go into my house and check? 
I probably should put some kind of pricing plan in place preparing properly for pending personalized polymer pets.... uh, to make custom orders easier if I ever get any.
Feedback, please?
Slythetove wrote: "This thread is particularly helpful in pointing out economy based assumptions and what I believe to be the two predominant pricing approaches present in SWG at this time.
One is of course resource cost + % markup
The other is resource based + time value (perceived)"
Actually... the time-based approach is the only one which exists. In the first one, you mention 'resource cost'... this value itself is entirely arbitrary and is ultimately established by those who havethe resources and islargely based on the value they place upon their time in harvesting those resources. Sure... there is one standard cost (harvester maintenance) but it becomesminor when rolled into a standard 3cr/resource valuation. A dedicated miner can easily extract 40000 resource units per day which has an arbitrary valuation of 120k at a cost of about 20k... or 16%. Leaving the balace of 100k ... or 84% entirely the valuation of what the miner feels is adequate compensation for his time.
I totally agree with you Jabetha, an 'end-all be-all' advanced R2 for $50000 is in no way out of the question. And if you tack onexperimentation on each part (wellthe ones thatmatter) for an even better product I'd say thismay even betoo low.
For all of the droid engineers who are underselling themselves for reasons of 'establishing a customer base with low prices' or 'they feel cheap cause they are kind of useless :/' you really need to think about what you are doing.
Droids require avery largevariety of specific resourcescoupled witha muchgreater hands-on amount of assembly timein comparison toany other profession. To not base the pricing on thevariety ofresource gathering and huge droid build time is absolutely absurd. Credits/Resource shouldn't beyourprimary thought on pricing in your mind unless you are building a MSE with a Medical 1.
IMHO how much do DE charge for a droid is not primarily a cost problem, it is how much people are willing to pay for it. Simply saying, if charging a price that nobody is willing to buy, and lowering the price does not cover the cost, the DE will not make it. For instance, seeker droids.
If bakers making bread cost nothing, will theygive the breadaway for free? Definitely not. This is not a morality problem, it is called Economic.
1.65 cpu on resources i mine my self
4 for resources i don't mine myself.
round that up to the next 100 (people like nice even numbers)
for each component assembly step needed I charge 100 for blueprints 1, 200 for blueprints 2 etc.. (I don't factor in asembly of modules thats additional cost by function)
thats the base cost.. then I add
for each module i multply its level by 200,
for each crafting station its 800
so for the same R2 Unit My price is 14,900 or a rush order(where i'll have to buy it may go as high as 25K
With perma death I may only charge 200 per assembly for probots which puts those at 3,500cr at 300 its 4,600cr, not there yet haven't decided.
Seekers and Probes is a different story as they are one shot uses and they are bugged.. and i able to reduce labor costs by automation..
Odwyn, your pricing and method seems much more in line with mine, and what I expect the market will actually support.
People selling these things for 50k I congratulate you, but I doubt that the long term is there for your price in the market.
It seems that many people began crafting objects in this game and just used a nice round big number without much consideration for costs, and with a ton of inflation for time requirements. I don't think the customer base will tolerate this in any area long term. As of now:
1. Very few people understand what it actually takes to make items.
2. Many people have far too much money
3. Resource duplication has flooded the market
As these factors come under control I don't see these theoretical prices lasting.
Good luck.
"As these factors come under control I don't see these theoretical prices lasting."
Sorry... these aren't 'theoretical' prices... I actually have a fairly thriving shop and have made well over 2 Mil credits in just Droid sales... about half from Probots and half from others. I rarely get complaints about my prices from other players, and those that do I just suggest they find a lower level DE who may be willing to help them (they usually come back to me anyways). What it all comes down to is one simple questions... "What is your time worth?"
If you factor in all the effort required in filling a standard custom order droid... my pricing scheme is definitely well within reason. I am quite confident that anyone charging significantly less will most likely find themselves sorely disappointed with the fruits of their labor.
I think you misread my post. I didn't say your prices were unreasonable, just that they are only viable given the current set of conditions on the economy. As those factors change your prices become theoretical, because the market cannot support them.
I could be wrong of course, I'm just here trying to learn and pontificate the what ifs.
"1. Very few people understand what it actually takes to make items."
This would support the current pricing... and if this changes I actually think that people with a 'better' understanding of what it actually takes to make droids will be more understanding and willing to pay the higher prices.
2. Many people have far too much money
Not sure how much 'far too much' is... but I still don't think the vast majority of players have more than 100k or so at their disposal. There is definitely not enough ways for money to leave the system... and I feel this willbe addressed by the game developers soon. If it's not... we'll all be gazillionaires ultimately!
3. Resource duplication has flooded the market"
If anything... this should have a net effect of actually 'lowering' the cost of goods in the marketplace. Therefore, once this has gotten under control (if ever) prices would go nowhere but higher. 