Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: All DE's please help! Droid prices!
ArdenStarmariner wrote:
R5 with a crafting module - 3K
Probot - 3K
Surgical Droid with 75% medical rating - 3K
Protocol Droid - 3K
I don't bother building ADV versions of any droids anymore.
Why 3K? Cause that's what the bazaar limits me to. And frankly, any other method I've tried to sell these pieces of crap just bleeds me to death. Don't give me the "your underselling the market" balony. There is little to no market for droids.
Ok then, how about "you're just not trying very hard. I would just say why the hell would anyone in their right mind go through the drudgery that is DE skillup only to sell for such a low price? I really can't see how that can be worth it. There is plenty of market for droids. I'm guessing that, like many,you just can't come to terms with the fact that it's not in the combat arena.
I hope you at least demand dinner and a movie before selling a droid that cheap. 
Let me know what you think of that :
Droid Type, Price without modules (adv model)
MSE Mouse : 500 (+200)
DZ70 : 1000 (+500)
R5 : 1500 (+500)
Seeker (10) : 1000
Power Droid : 5000 (+1000)
R4 : 2000 (+2000)
R2 : 5000 (+2000)
Probot : 10000 (+4000)
Arakyd : 2500
Surgical : 3000 (+2000)
LE Repair : 3000 (+2000)
R3 : 6000 (+5000)
Protocol : 6000 (+5000)
Binary Lifter : 6000 (+5000)
Modules (per level, add to Droid price) :
Medical : 100 / 300 / 500 / 800 / 1200 / 3000
Store/Data : free / 200 / 400 / 600 / 800 / 2000
Crafting Station : Weapon-Droid: 300 / Food-Chemical: 500 / Clothing-Armor: 800 / Structure: 1000
Armor (per level, add to Droid price) : 200 / 500 / 1000 / 2000 / 3000 / 5000
I'm far from being Master yet, in fact I just reached 1-1-0-3. I put this to have a feedback from real Masters. Please let me know if you see something really wrong here...
Well, I'll give my Flurry prices, since it's not like anyone can't check them out at any of my vendors
I currently only sell seen models of droids. All are made entirely in factories. I almost never take custom orders and when I do I charge higher than normal prices and use off the shelf components if at all possible. My biggest time-sinks at this pointare travelling to each of my vendors once a day to reset the stupid (to put it mildly) planetary map bug and making the schematics for factory runs twice a day.
MISH- (Mobile Imperial Surgical Hospital): Adv. LE Repair Droid with 110 medical rating and med craft station- 14k
IMAP (Imperial Mobile Assault Platform): Probot with L4 armor (which will be replaced with L6 armor if link-steel aluminum ever spawns again on Flurry)- 14k
AIMAP (Advanced Imperial Mobile Assault Platform): Adv. Probot with medium armor with 40% resists (max available on a probot)- 18k
AIMAP-M (Advanced Imperial Mobile Assault Platform, medical): Adv. Probot with medium armor with 40% resists, 110 medical rating (for that ever-so-slight boost to stim use in the field)- 20k
AIMAP-MC (Advanced Imperial Mobile Assault Platform, medical crafting): Adv. Probot with medium armor with 40% resists, 110 medical rating and medical crafting station- 22k
Seeker- case of 5 ten-charge droids for 5k
Arakyd- case of 5 five-charge droids for 10k
Droid batteries- case of 25 four-charge batteries for 5k
I typically sell 5-10 droids per day at these prices. I'm vaguely thinking of raising them by 1-2k, but with my factory-made droids, keeping up with the current demand is easy. I've also heard of some DE's charging up to 55k for an R2 unit with basically the same features. I have a feeling if I tried charging those kinds of prices my customers would laugh at me. Which is exactly what one of my customers did to him shortly before coming to me...)
In the end, charge what you think the market will bear. In truth, I could sell my droids for twice the price I do now, and probably sell more that 1/2 of the ones i do now to make more money. But I dont. I have figured out my resource costs are between 2.3 and 3.2 per unit depending on how efficient my power plant is operating, and how high the resource density is im mining.
With wind power on a 48-50% area, and mining an ore at ~80% my cost per unit, even after having to run it through a factory is only 2.6 credits per unit. Multiply that by the roughly 12-1500 materials used in an average droid, and the cost to you to make the droid is around 5000.
So even my lowest cost droid is over 100% profit, but not by much. I have yet to have anyone complain about the prices I charge, and I seem to get alot of referals from customers. Someone above posted that they went the Merchent route, and did full advertisement. But I find word of mouth is your best form of advertsement. And I have a 3 button macro combo I use whenever I hit town to advertise shop and wares in vendor.
But, if you want to be successful, you have to have a large selection in your vendor at all times, this causes high maintenence, but in the end its worth it. Think of yourself as a Car Dealer. You dont sell alot in a day. And the only way you are going to sell one is if you have a wide enough selection so that people can find what they want. Even if they cant afford it, as long as that same type of droid is always in the shop, once they have the cash, they will buy it.
My shop is on Talus, not a very crowded planet, but then again I have few competitors. And I built as close to Dearic as I could, so that people headed out on missions might pass by and stop in. And I make sure that any model/style that is sold is replaced on vendor as soon as I log back on.
I enjoy readin gthee price discussions. They're inevitably futile though. You can't generalize prices across servers. DE market penetration, resource cots, server popualtion an dprofession make-up.... just a few things that vary greatly from server to server and directly affect prices and market. I've made millions selling droids. How? I've never used a vendor and I don't use the bazaar. I walk around with my Master Droid Engineer title and get hit by /tells. I know. I am very fortunate and I'm not belittling anyone who can't manage to sell a droid. I was fortunate enough to hit Master before most people, and I've cultivated a loyal customer base.Droids are a tough sell, even more so in what has become a very Master driven economy.
It does sadden me to see people debasing themselves and our profession my undercutting. 3K for a protocol droid and 6K for a BLL are signs of desperation. I can understand though. Those harvesters and factories don't pay for themselves. You have to pay for them somehow to keep yourself in grinding steel and fiberplast.
Here are a few suggestions that worked for me:
1) set your prices and be firm. I turn down sales all the time from people who say that Joe-Schmo DE up the street sells droid x for 5K less than I do. My reply is variably: "Then why are you wasting your time talking to me? Go buy from him. That's a great deal." It's simple economics. You sell low, another DE has to lower prices to compete, and so on and so forth until you have people selling r5s with med module 3 for 500 credits (true story, I saw a vendor full of them just the other day)
2) take survey missions (2 at a time) when you go on your harvester rounds. Take missions for whatever you are currently mining. There's no reason not to do this. It's free money people.
3) make the sacrifice of setting aside a few thousand of your steel and place it on the bazaar at a reasonable price each day. If you are particularly intelligent, you'll devote 1 or 2 lots to low grade ore and just sell it all. Architects snap that stuff up in huge quantities. Reasonable on my server is 2-3cpu. Check around and see what it is on yours and list accordingly. This will alleviate some of the money crunch. You grinding will slow a bit, but you'll feel less strapped for money
4) make the nicest droid you can and have it follow you around anytime you're in a city. I don't know how many sales I've generated just by people inquiring after the droid I have out.
5) if you have master artisan (and you all really should), sell MA parts. I never did this personally, but there are times when I just don't feel like hassling with making micro-sensor suites and I will buy them from time to time. There is a strong market for MA electronics on my server. Check around and see if there is one on yours. List on your server specific forums if you are making and selling these.
6) When you make a sale, take the time to explain how to program the droid. I know its bothersome, but trust me, your custmers will appreciate it and they will remember you for it. I get repeat business and referrals just because I take the time to answer questions and explain how droids work. I have my programming lectures set up on hotkeys on my toolbar.
7) just because something doesn't have a use (BLL, protocol, etc) does not mean its worthless. If you flood the market with 6K BLLs, when the patch hits and they actually do something, you'll be sorry. Besides, both of these droids take named resources and factory parts. Why would you not want to reimbursed for your time and those resources?
8) read these forums religiously and make yourself aware of known bugs and upcoming fixes so you can advise your customers accordingly. People appreciate someone who knows what they're selling-- what it does and does not do. Be honest. If it doesn't work, tell them up front. Resist the urge to score a big sale on a droid you know is going to be nerfed on the next patch. You will invariably hear from that person again when their droid stops working.
9) if at any time you hate what you're doing, by all means drop DE and move on to something you'll actually like. some of us like building our gimp droids and try to earn a living by doing it. Selling your droids for next to nothing tells your custmers that you don't respect yourself or your profession. It says that your time and your skill is worth very little.
Hope this helps guys.
I have to agree with IsaacPalinander in that the discussions are futile--largely for the reasons he states. However, DEs just getting started need to be educated (as opposed to spurned) so that they don't make the mistake of flooding the market with any kind of droid (as Isaac also pointed out) without understanding the impact it has.
I had this exact same question when I was starting out. The truth of the matter is that it is always difficult to be a starting DE as your products are either so low end that almost no one (except a sheer role-player type) will want them, or there are DEs around that are of greater skill than you that make the same level of products but with higher quality and/or higher-level components. It's frustrating. Having a price list, while perhaps not accurate, would at least provide beginning DEs a place to start with in understanding their place in the galaxy.
If you're the only DE on the server/planet then you're in demand no matter what and you're ok. But how often is that the case? I think Nelsonox's attempt at a semi-generalized pricing structure makes tremendous sense. Some of the higher-end droid values are low, but the concept has strong validity regardless. As Isaac pointed out, however, economies across servers are just not as similar as we'd like, making price schedules like Nelsonox's vary wildly from server to server. But I do believe (very strongly) that having ANY starting point is better than no point at all.
I'm not a master either, but I'm getting there (4/3/0/4). When I was 1/1/0/3 like Nelsonox and browsing this forum reading statement after statement of "...people WILL pay $$,$$$ for droid x" I used to think "Those guys are on crack! No way anyone would pay that much for one of those on MY planet." Guess what, Nelsonox? They are now! (Yes, taking away droid permadeath went a long way towards making that a reality). Are my prices going down? Yes, slowly. Grinders in the DE profession are starting to show up. There is a new DE at the local bazaar every week..sometimes even two. Competition does drive prices down, no question. Additionally, you don't want to go around quoting unreasonable prices. People will write you off if you are way out of the ballpark. And customers never want to tell you the ballpark first!
So enough rambling. Actual feedback on Nelsonox's list?
1) Never underestimate your efforts or sell your time short. Even if your resource costs are only 2cpu or 3cpu...your time to craft them is valuable. Does that make the price go up to 4-5cpu? At the 1/1/0/3 stage, perhaps not. At the 4/3/0/4 stage, you bet it does. You also need to factor in failures regardless of whether you pass that cost along directly to the customer "Had to rebuild this due to failure so it's an extra 500cr" or indirectly "Cost of droid is 10k, I sell for 11k". Yes, you may have paid 2cpu for that copper, but if you had to use 1.5x the amount of copper to get1.0x product (one failure), your cost is now 3cpu. Keep this in mind as you price ANYTHING. As your DE skill rises, so should the percentage that you charge for your labor. As your ability to experiment successfully rises, so should the percentage that you charge for your quality products.
2) As the quality of your resources used rises, so should the price that you charge for your products. As your resource requirements get more and more detailed, the price that you charge for your products should go up as well. For example, if something calls for just mineral or metal or "any aluminum" or "any ore", that's 0 extra. If something calls for a rare resource (such as Extrusive ore), that's some % higher (maybe 5% or 8% at the most). If it calls for a specific Extrusive ore (such as Phokolite Extrusive ore), that's an even higher % (maybe 10% to 15%). Use your judgment, but you should get the idea.
3) In general, the numbers on the droids are ok at the low end and need to be raised a bit on the mid-range and above (starting at R5 or R4).
4) I would also say that ANY droid that can take one or more modules should havea price that is higher than a droid that cannot. Period. That means adjusting upwards every droid that can take a module. Remember that once you get the General Droid Module Socket Cluster, even a single-socket droid becomes a multi-socket droid. This means the droid has intrinsic value. Without the GDMSC, you should still add a little extra because even one socket (with the right module in it) can be very worthwhile for the prospective owner.
5) Any droid that can fight should also get a price increase. Yes, the DZ-70 is worthless as a fighter, so make it a teeny tiny increase. But the probot can become a formidable tool--not a gurreck, mind you, but with the right armor it can be quite comparable to some of the mid-range and high-end non-ch pets! And if the devs are to be believed (which I am not certain they are), more battle droids are on the way...eventually.
6) Armor prices are low for the whole range. I'd bump them up a touch. Not double, but not 25% either.
7) Crafting station module prices are also low. Very resource-hungry and labor intensive. Also keep in mind that they take time to craft as well. See point #1.
8) Data/Item/Med module prices are also a bit low. A small boost here.
As Isaac also pointed out, customer service goes a LONG way towards building and keepinga customer base. Offering help on droid programming (even if it IS in the manual), being honest about the difference between an advanced mouse droid with 27 nested GDMSCs and an R3 with the same, and just being patient and available really does help sway customers. First time discounts, referral discounts/bonuses, etc., all are very helpful to stand out in the market place.
That's what I have to say about that!
IRL 'standard' markup on something retail is around 100% (so a book store pays about 50% of what they sell a book for). Obviously this varies all over the place and is lower for more expensive items. While 100% markup seems like a lot it goes to your advertising, shop space, salaries, etc. and get's eaten up pretty quickly.
So, what I do is figure an average cost per unit for resources. Right now on Starsider that's about 3cr/unit. So in theory a droid using 100 units of resources would sell for 600 credits (I could sell the raw resources for 300, markup for the work is 100%, so 600).
That's the quick and dirty method. However, what happens is that you never simply dump 100 resources into a droid. Instead you have to build things like a brain first. So a brain needs 39 units of resources. Using my formula I could sell the brain for 234cr. Since I am installing it in something else I then mark it up again, so now it is 468cr, plus whatever else has to be put into the droid.
Second wrinkle, sometime you are required to put in factory identical components, as in an advanced droid brain. Because of the extra complications involved I charge an additional 50%. So for example an Advanced droid brain needs 57 units of resources + 4 identical Electronic Memory Modules + 4 identical GP Modules. The cost for a standard EMM is 120, so 4 factory modules 'cost' 720cr. The cost for a standard GP module is 156cr, so 4 factory modules 'cost' 936cr. 171cr (57 units x 3) + 720cr + 936cr=1827cr. This is just the cost to make the unit (granted, I'm charging myself), so I sell an Advanced droid brain for 3654cr (uninstalled). By the time I install the brain into a surgical droid the cost has risen to a 7308cr (plus the other costs of the droid).
Ok, the bad news is that this is a heck of a lot of work. I end up using a spreadsheet in my PDA to calculate everything for me. The other bad news is I need to fiddle numbers a little for the advanced models. They wind up being over twice as expensive (because they have the entire frame as a component) as a general rule, so I am thinking of using the factory charge for the markup on the Advanced Chassis. Still deciding on that.
The good news is that the prices seem to work out pretty nicely to scale, other than the issue with Advanced models. Since I've got everything listed in a spreadsheet I've been able to tweak the numbers a little (I think I actually charge 110% for the regular markup instead of 100% and 55% instead of 50% for factory charges) and things seem to lay out in a fairly nice order. It does a good job of increasing price for the more complicated items which tend to need more resources, more sub-components, and more factory runs.
So right now the pricing of just a few droids I sell:
Surgical Droid: Geeky Personality Chip, Medical VI, Chemical crafting station - 20k
Probot: 8500cr + cost for armor (usually around 1-1.5k)
R3 Droid: 30k + Modules
Advanced R3: 50k + Modules
R5 - 10k
R4 - 15k
R2 - 20k
Surgical/LErepair - 20k
R3 - 25k
Protocol - 25k
ADV Protocol - 50k
Advanced Versions +5k
1 lvl 6 medical module +5k
(2 lvl 4s free)
I don't even bother selling probots, they arent worth anything 
Nelsonox wrote:
Let me know what you think of that :
Droid Type, Price without modules (adv model)
MSE Mouse : 500 (+200)
DZ70 : 1000 (+500)
R5 : 1500 (+500)
Seeker (10) : 1000
Power Droid : 5000 (+1000)
R4 : 2000 (+2000)
R2 : 5000 (+2000)
Probot : 10000 (+4000)
Arakyd : 2500
Surgical : 3000 (+2000)
LE Repair : 3000 (+2000)
R3 : 6000 (+5000)
Protocol : 6000 (+5000)
Binary Lifter : 6000 (+5000)
Modules (per level, add to Droid price) :
Medical : 100 / 300 / 500 / 800 / 1200 / 3000
Store/Data : free / 200 / 400 / 600 / 800 / 2000
Crafting Station : Weapon-Droid: 300 / Food-Chemical: 500 / Clothing-Armor: 800 / Structure: 1000
Armor (per level, add to Droid price) : 200 / 500 / 1000 / 2000 / 3000 / 5000
I'm far from being Master yet, in fact I just reached 1-1-0-3. I put this to have a feedback from real Masters. Please let me know if you see something really wrong here...
Feedback:You're Way underselling on Intrepid, go to Fu'Bar's shop or Chubbs or Reza of G-units for ideas on the priceranges. I can't say visit my shop since I'm movingand rebuilding inventory. Fubar is in Mos Eisley, Reza is in Coronet, Chubbs is in Theed. Do a post search, their shop coords are in their signatures, look for Zarina for Reza, he's in the Correlian Mafia store.
If you want to calculate profit/loss calculations for certain droids and module configurations, you can use this:
http://perfectweb.org/displayDroid.php
That will let you configure the droid how you want and determine how much you make or lose on the sale (for whatever price you put in) or enter a markup percentage and find out what sale price that would be.
Someday I plan to pretty it up to make it more user friendly, but I don't have the time right now
IsaacPalinander wrote:
6) When you make a sale, take the time to explain how to program the droid. I know its bothersome, but trust me, your custmers will appreciate it and they will remember you for it. I get repeat business and referrals just because I take the time to answer questions and explain how droids work. I have my programming lectures set up on hotkeys on my toolbar.
What I do for this is I have a mail that I forward people when they buy a droid. It explains how to heal, repair, etc. them. I also let people know that I have a repair droid and power droid and that I'll heal their droids for free if they come to me. I usually get tips AND customers. Basically, be nice and helpful.
SPANKEYTOOLZ AIN'T FOR FOOLZ
who cares what type of chassis... my time used to create any droid starts at 10k... want an mse? 10k, adv R4, 10k...
adv repair droids, basic surgical, basic probot 15k
adv surgicals 20k
adv probot 22.5k
r2 start at 25k
adv protocol 30k
r3 30k
adv r3 35k
load lifter 50k on sale special... no better droid in game to advertise with LOL
Thanks Marc, Nailliar and Jonas for your answers...
Basically I put up this list with our Skill tree in mind, as I stated I'm only at 1.1.0.3 and I didn't even examined ressources needed for Adv Models (Master Artisan parts, rare ore/steel...).
I started by fixing a base price for each Blueprint from Novice to Master (like 500 for Novice, 1000 for Blueprints 1, etc...). Then I added a sort of "tech" tax and a "coolness" tax(1st one being the number of Modules/Armor/Fonction for the Droid, 2nd for the usefullness and the -Sacred Cow I've got my own ArtooDeetoo !- factor ;-) . Everyone will have its own theory on how a Droid looksKEWL, some finds MSE Mice are cute with their Crafting stations inside, others willprobably pay much more for the same Crafting Station inside a R5, R4 or R2...
Also when thinking of a price for each Droids I looked for 2 markets : the Bazaar and the Shops. For me, using only the "instant" sales, prices stops at 3000 on Bazaar.After reading I now thinkwe should only find Novice/Lv1 Skills Droids on Bazaar (that is MSE Mouse / R5 / DZ70 / Seeker, and Arakyd Probe being an exception at 2k/3k for our beloved Bounty Hunters :-).
Droid Type, Price without modules (adv model)
MSE Mouse : 500 (+200)
DZ70 : 1000 (+500)
R5 : 1500 (+500)
Seeker (10) : 1000
Power Droid : 5000 (+1000)
R4 : 2000 (+2000)
R2 : 5000 (+2000)
Probot : 10000 (+4000)
Arakyd (5) : 2000
Surgical : 3000 (+2000)
LE Repair : 3000 (+2000)
R3 : 6000 (+5000)
Protocol : 6000 (+5000)
Binary Lifter : 6000 (+5000)
Modules (per level, add to Droid price) :
Medical : 100 / 300 / 500 / 800 / 1200 / 3000
Store/Data : free / 200 / 400 / 600 / 800 / 2000
Crafting Station : Weapon-Droid: 300 / Food-Chemical: 500 / Clothing-Armor: 800 / Structure: 1000
Armor (per level, add to Droid price) : 200 / 500 / 1000 / 2000 / 3000 / 5000