Droid Engineer Archive

Cost of resources are kinda irrelevant. Price is determined by demand, and the combat classes are so rich they're willing to pay reasonable prices for our droids. What is reasonable? Enough to let us share the wealth that the combat classes earn.

Somebody sells probots for 3k? That's barely more than you can make by selling the resources on the bazaar. That idiot is just trying to make a little cash to cover the cost of grinding xp, but when he's through, he'll find that he's driven prices so low he can't make a profit.

Selling in volume to make a return? Fine, if there's unlimited demand. The problem is, this game is a failure (note the need to close the forums to people who haven't paid for the game already) so there aren't that many newbs coming into the game. I've just started a new character on Starsider (where prices are half of my other server) and can't get apprentice points because there aren't many new players. Since nobody needs more than one or two droids, once this originial demand is filled, we're toast. Selling cheap in volume will only bring that day closer.

Band together with other DEs, raise your prices, and make what you can now.

I didn't get that either - the resources listed are enough to make 10 ADV Probots. 35K is already charging over 30cr per resource unit, much less 45K. Maybe I'm missing something... =)

Oh, I agree, just wanted to point out that there are always at least two ways to profit. My character takes the Walmart approach - bulk produced droids and sticking them on vendors at cheap prices. I'll do custom crafted droids as well, but my main profit strategy is to go for mass-market of common options and cheap prices. For example, at any one time I have between 50 and 100 crates of BH droids on the vendor and 30 odd stock adv probots with armour only for the combat types. With that, I can push the prices down quite cheap relative to others on my planet/server.

You ARE missing something

I can clearly see no one here is actually in a "crafting" profession in real life.

There is no such thing, in real life, as buying the exact amount of "resources" you need to make something. This is simply because most "resources" are not sold seperately, but are instead sold as bulk.

For instance, if you was building a house and needed 2000 red bricks and 100 yellow bricks, you wouldn't buy those exact numbers ... you'd find the best price for a bulk order. For instance, 1000 yellow bricks for 200 credits ... 3000 red bricks for 500 credits. You would then add that charge to the cost of the house. You *WOULDN'T* add the charge for each individual brick.

Even if you had 1000 red bricks to start with, you would still purchase more bricks and charge that 500 credits, because that is how abusiness makes business!!

Also, its good practice to set a standard price for your droid.

Sure, there may be occasions where you only need 200 resources to build a droid... but what if you've completly run out of resources and get an order for a new droid? Youneed to purchase those resources quickly from a bazaar, but low-and-behold the bazaare is only selling them in 1000 packs. Do you then ask the customer to pay more than his friend did yesterday? Thats bad business.. inconsistant pricing will you kill your market.Do you then charge the same price, but wind up losing money because you've based your price on the EXACT resources it costs to build? What if you then get critical failures on half the components and the final droid? You will end up needing twice the resources. Will you up the price then too?

You see, the pont is ... your price needs to cover every eventuality. It needs to cover the posibility of having to purchase new resources ... it needs to cover the posibility of the whole craft going supernova and having to craft again ... it needs to cover resource availibility and therefore changing prices (which is why i set all the resources to the average of 3k) and needs to cover the possibility of the market becoming reduced.

This, my friends, is how a business works. This is why I added "Droid Merchant" into the title of this thread.

Why don't you start mining for your own resources m8?

This is the correct way to price droids.

Work out the cost of resources on the market. This is the floor to your pricing formula. If you are mining you will be making droids for less than this cost any how.

Determine the mark-up for your time.

Determine how much profit you want to make.

Check what your competitors are sell their products for.

Check what buyers are willing to pay.

Mining for resources is STILL missing the entire point.

You cannot garuntee that you will always be able to mine each and every resource you need for a droid. You cannot garuntee that while building a droid you will not need to run to a bizaare to purchase extra resources.

Infact, I would find itvery surprising if ANYONE is able to mine each and every resource needed to build their droids. I expect almost ALL of you fellow DE's buy atleast one resource type from a bazaar. Such as fiberplast, copper or extrusive ore. Simply because its easier.

Also, some of us have large houses for our shops. That leaves us with 4 lots. several of which may need to go to factories ... which only leaves us 2 lots for 2 harvesters ... thats 2 resource types of (in the case of the advanced probot) 11.

It makes more sense to set your prices on an already set market. Resource prices are already set throughout each server ... miners have already seen to that. On Starsider, the average price for resources is 2.5k .. therefore the "ideal" price you would use in pricing is 3k, since it should cover every resource type cost (i've yet to see a resource cost over 3,000 credits for 1k).

Therefore, it is better business sense to price your droids on the price it is "LIKELY" to cost .. not the actual price.

Do you really think it costs intel £240 to build a P4 2.8ghz chipset? No. They base their price on "AVERAGE" costs of the resources need to build the chipset, the cost for paying the people that run the machines, the cost for maintenance of the machines and, of course, the all-important profit margin.

People have said "the real conn his Vamp's thread is the resources" ... no! The REAL CON in my thread is the PROFIT MARGIN. Its the Profit Margin that you should be arguing about .. that is the value that should depend on the server and how you sell a droid. I placed my profit margin at 10k in my example because thats currently what I'm able to sell droids for on Starsider ... that price will no doubt continue to shift up and down throughout my time as DE.

I sorta understand what you're saying, but using your Intel example, if Intel charged everyone what it costs to make ONE processor, no one would have computers. If you factored all the costs into making just one chip they'd cost millions. They make lots of lots of them and spread their costs out.=)

When factoring costs, most people go by their current server's resource market and base the base cost on the exact number of resources required to make a droid. You don't buy 1000 of a resource, use 12 of it on a Probot and then delete the other 988 units. You use it on the next Probot. When I got into a restaurant and buy a steak I don't expect to pay for the whole cow. =)

Once you have that bare bones "cost" you mark up from there to get your profit. And if you mine all your resources your costs are less than 1cr per resource unit.

If your server economy supports 45K Probots, more power to you and I wish I played there, hehe.

But most don't, and most probably won't continue like that. As the game gets older there's more and more masterseach day, even in less popular professions like DE. If "Bob" can mine his own resources and sell the same Probot for 10K and *still* make a profit, he's not stupid or ruining the profession, he's smart. =)

This is a free market economy, and the price fixing schemes set up by the small number of masters early in the game couldn't last. As I said, if 3000% markup on a Probot is reasonable to you and people on your server support it, more power to you, but you'd be out of business fast on most other servers. =)

You really don't get this do you?

I have no problem getting all the materials by mining and in vast quantitiies. The only item i don't have is a rare type of extrusive ore - which I have only found out that I need. When it pops next on my server I will mine it to death.

Good job you aren't on Eclipse, I know at least 3 DEs who would drive you out of business.

I totally agree with Vampire!!! You people that are selling your droids for less is killing us Droid Engineers!!!! Thanks for the tutorial Vamp, I printed it out and for know on, Whoever wants a droid has to go by my pricing or go somewere else. It took me a month or so of heavy playing to get to DE and I am not going to settle for chump change..

I take pride in my crafting!

How can we compete? My friend bought a protocol droid on the bazaar for 3k... (and a surgical as well...)

amazing! Those people should be backballed..... The Devs need to fix this virus!

Charge whatever you like for your droids, but at those prices everyone else will just undercut you.

Junko wrote:
"if Intel charged everyone what it costs to make ONE processor, no one would have computers. If you factored all the costs into making just one chip they'd cost millions"

How much do music CD's cost? On average about £12-16 for an albumn .. around $8-$16 in the US for an albumn. How much did it cost them to make that CD? In England, it costs 2p (equivelant is under 1 scent) to make a CD.. 2p! And that includes the price, per-CD, of the rent for the factory, maintenant of parts, wages to employee's etc etc. That means on average, that company is making about 98% profit on that one item. You see, that is how things really work.

when you buy a stake at a resaurant, the price you are paying for that stake isn't the price it cost the restaurant to buy that one stake. Its the price is cost the restaurant to buy several of them. Why? For one thing, because any business that wishes to succeed has to make a profit on EVERY item/component/nut/screw/globule of glew that goes into making the overal product they sell.

"most people go by their current server's resource market and base the base cost on the exact number of resources required to make a droid. You don't buy 1000 of a resource, use 12 of it on a Probot and then delete the other 988 units"

You are misunderstanding me with the 1000 resources. It doesn't matter how much you actually use to build the droid. My point is, you cannot sit there and say it will only cost you 12 units on the probot because you have no idea on how many critical failures are going to hapen during the production of that probot. Therefore, you need to realisticaly buy enough resources in case of a failure. Maybe 1000 units is too much for some resources, but you can generaly find most resources in crates of 500 too. My example was just simplified to 1000 units because that is the norm.

"Once you have that bare bones "cost" you mark up from there to get your profit. And if you mine all your resources your costs are less than 1cr per resource unit"

No. Again you are missing the point. How much building something is going to cost you, in a business sense, is never the ACTUAL cost. It's an ESTIMATED cost. In anESTIMATION you have got to include the liklyness of something going wrong. In the case of crafting, you have good to assume that you will get alteast one critical failure. If you set your prices based on the EXACT cost of resources, one critical failure will result in you losing profit and, more than likely, losing money as a whole. Considering how many components are used in the advanced droids, and many resources are used in each component, and how often critical failures occur on complex crafting,a critical failure on one of the modules, or even on the final attempt to construct the droid, could result in you losing twice as much money as you could otherwise be making.

"If "Bob" can mine his own resources and sell the same Probot for 10K and *still* make a profit, he's not stupid or ruining the profession, he's smart. =)"

Actually, Bob would be a fool. Not only would he be ruining any chance he had of selling droids, but he would ruining everyone elses. The fact is, NO ONE can continue to mine their own resources. Because of resource shifts, there will ALWAYS be a time when you are unable to mine your own resources and will have to buy from a bazaar. When that time comes, Bob would be forced to continue selling his cheap probots but would have to buy all the resources for it and wind up losing more money than he made previously ... if the resource shift doesn't favour him next time round, he will become broke and out of business.

"As the game gets older there's more and more masterseach day"

Yes, thats true. But on the other hand, each day there are more and more newby players that arnt aware of current market prices and could well purchase a more expensive droid.

ranaki wrote:
"You really don't get this do you?
I have no problem getting all the materials by mining and in vast quantitiies. The only item i don't have is a rare type of extrusive ore - which I have only found out that I need. When it pops next on my server I will mine it to death.
Good job you aren't on Eclipse, I know at least 3 DEs who would drive you out of business"

I get it 100%. I can't say the same for you. It has nothing to do with being able to mine your own resources. My guide was to show how things are priced in the REAL world, and then show howthings can be priced in Star Wars Galaxies in sucha way that you could earn a profit, even with several critical failures. As for DEs driving me out of business. It simply can't happen. Why? Because I know I can make atleast one sale a week, and with my profit margin at a minimum of 10k I know I am making more profit than those 3 DEs in just one sail. Who's better off? The guy that sells one and makes twice as much money or the guy that sells 20 and barely makes enough to buy a ticket to his house?

rockmusicnerd wrote:
"How can we compete? My friend bought a protocol droid on the bazaar for 3k... (and a surgical as well...) "

You just have to grin and bare it. If you don't make a profit selling higher priced droids right now, then don't give up and start selling them cheap ... just get your money from else where. As soon as the DE profession is fixed, those that are selling them for stupidly low prices will suddenly find they've lost their market because they realise people would be willing to pay more... especialy when combat droids come into the game. Imagine how much people will be willing to pay for droideka's? Now imagine someone that is known to sell probots for 10k try and sell anyone a droid for more than 15.

The thing is, I'm not telling anyone how to play. I'm nottelling anyone what their prices should be. I'm making a suggestion and (intentionaly) giving others some tips on how to make money out of this profession. The prices I used in my guide are irrelivent ... what IS relevant is knowing how to read a market, and how to best price your items in relation. There is no harm in overpricing ONE droid you build and see if it sells. If it does, try and sell another one. Maybe even raise the price. If it doesnt, try lowering the price a little. Just don't assume that because no one else can sell a droid for 20k, you can't either. Half the success in making a sale is the seller being able to convince the buyer ... not the selling price.

I bought myself a T21 rifle over the weekend from a weaponsmith. It cost me 26k. I love my new weapon.. I have only died once since I've bought it (as aposed to ATLEAST once every day). But how much did it cost the Weaponsmith to build? I doubt it even cost him 1/4 of that price. Thats 26k for an item that only has one purpose... shoot. So is it not pheasable to assume that an item thathas MANY purposes, one of which (medical module) is the ONLY item in SWG that can do it, should be priced equaly (if not higher) than a gun?