Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Why doesn't nov DE make MSE /w crafting stations and sell it on bazaar
First, novice don't get crafting stations until their first box, and don't get food crafting stations (the only ones that sell) until their second. So, by the time you get crafting stations, you're already pretty far into the tree.
Second, 3k is way too cheap for a crafting station. The cheapest I've ever gone is 4k, and that was after haggling.
kaid23 wrote:
To sell a mouse with a crafting station is basically somebody telling you I want your one useful feature but I don't want to pay anything for it.
For me to sell an mse with a crafting station on the bazaar would basically cost me 15 to 20k on a sale I could get from an r5 or better droid. Not much incentive to do this the market is limited enough as is limiting it even more by doing this would be very self defeating.
I will make mice if asked but they cost the same as a r5 or I won't bother making them.
Kaid
Couldn't agree more - well said.
If I were capable of making crafting station droids the minimum price I'd sell for would be determined by a fact that its a portable crafting station NOT by what droid chassis it was placed in.
With so little value to droids currently its important to protect your markets - selling MSE's with every module and pricing them low _because_ its an MSE is just bad for your business. I sell droids with level 1 medical for 3k _regardless_ of it they are MSE, R5, WED or DZ70
Unlike the other crafters products droids costruction costs do not immediately equate to how useful they are (and advanced R2 with no modules is just as useful/less as an MSE with no modules), so while people want to pay a price determined the chassis price(hence MSE's) you need to also keep in mind the usefulness of the module as well
Here's some more post-thoughts.
First, consider this...the only people who have a need for a Portable Crafting Station are the people who are a little higher in their chosen crafting line. Usually an elite crafter. As far as I know, no schematic requires a Public Crafting Station until the upper levels of Artisan, and no schematic requires a Private Crafting Station (what our droids do) until the first or second tier of their Elite Crafter profession. So these are people who've been around the block just a little bit. They know how to make money to upgrade their Harvesters, because honestly, it's rough trying to move up without a Harvester or two even as early as the 4th tier of Artisan. So, these people have money.
Then, they come to you, a Novice Droid Engineer. They say they want the cheapest Crafting Station you can give them. The absolute cheapest is a Mouse, as you said, with the station. However, to get even one station (Weapons I think), you need to have pumped out something like 300 mouse droids. You spent all that money just for the capability of making that one station type. Then, if you want more variety (Weapons, Armor/Clothing, Food/Chem) you have to go up a couple in the other line too, no? So now you're something like 2/2/0/0 in the line, which is no cheap feat in itself. However, you're a semi-Novice Droid Engineer, you'll take money however you can get it, so you say to the customer, "Sure, I'll make you an MSE with the crafting station in it." You know it's bad continuity, and you know it's kind of a symbol of failure in the Droid Engineer profession, that a box with wheels can serve just as well as an advanced Astromech. But what the heck, you need the money, and if you don't do it someone else will, right? So you make it.
Now, later on, you're a Master Droid Engineer. You've spent hundreds of thousands of credits to get where you are, and you can make the most "advanced" Droid frames possible, fit with the greatest array of Modules conceivable. Ironically, that same customer comes up to you, and just as you predicted, they want an upgrade. Now they want a Crafting Station with a Level 6 Medical Module and Level 6 Item Storage Modulue. That's three slots, so you begin rattling off the prices of the different advanced droids you can make to hold those things, but this customer has done his/her homework, and blurts out, "Tell you what, why don't you put all of those into a General Socket Cluster, and stick them in an MSE Droid."
Ouch. They're right you know. You can save money and resources by doing that. The big cost will be in the modules, but those didn't take too many resources themselves, right? The crafting station was next to nothing, and the two Level 6 ones will make the Droid cost 5k, 10k at the most. You try to sell the customer on the coolness factor of having a more advanced model, but stapling on 10k or more to the price tag isn't in their agenda. They want function, and they don't care about anything else. In the end, you can't make the arguement that the cheap little MSE would function any less than the cool advanced droids that you spend hundreds of thousands of credits to be able to produce.
Therein comes the problem. Yes, you may get the customer every once in awhile that has the extra money to blow on a droid that looks cooler. However, the majority are looking for function; they want the best, and they'll upgrade to the best in the cheapest way possible. But is that what you leveled up to Master Droid Engineer for? To make more MSE droids that perform just as well as any Astromech or Protocol droid you could make? Many hundreds of thousands of credits, hours upon hours spend burning away resources and testing out all the different droids you could make, only to be stuck in the staple of pumping out All-Purpose MSE Mouse Droids for 10k a pop for one-time customers? It hurts the profession because it kills any reason to achieve Master Droid Engineer....it effectively neuters everything past 3/3/0/0 in the skill tree. The other ten skill boxes will become a waste of time, except for the random BH Droid order or the sissy Probot request.
That's before philosophy, mind you. Next, add in the idea that advanced Droids were "meant" to do advanced tasks, and that Droid Engineers were meant for greater horizons than to pump out boxes-with-wheels that can do everything. As for myself, I don't make them because of my own personal philosophy, but if you're the type that wants concrete reasons not to, there's plenty of those as well.
Selling an crafting station for so much less hurts the business of Architechs.. I have less crit failures with my droid then i do with my +34 private satation in my house
But there are good reasons to upgrade to a better model at a later stage. First of all, you might want some additional modules. For example not just a crafting station but a medical module and maybe storage as well (if a storage module would work like a storage module in a private crafting station it would make this feature even more useful). Second, the more advanced models is a lot cooler to run around with than a mouse droid (and looks is important in this game, why would people use the more expensive clothing and buy furniture).
When you start out as artisan you are pretty poor and can't afford paying 20k to get the benefit of a mobile crafting station. Then a cheap, sub 5k MSE would be good enough, but when economy get better you want something better and cooler. Also, it is just recently that permadeath has been removed so there was a chance that people would loose their MSE when getting jumped by mobs.
If you have sold some MSE you have a customer base you can later market directly ("Isn't it time to upgrade that MSE to our new cool looking R2 model with built in medical module"). But I shouldn't tell you how to run your business, you can probably do that yourself :-).
I think the MSE advanced model is a bigger threat to your business than the basic MSE (2 slots for modules).
I can't understand why not more people get a crafting droid. Every artisan should have one IMO. It is great, you can craft (i.e experiment) when out in the field, don't have to find the crafting station when in a new city. And if you have a medical module in your droid you can even heal wounds when running from one place to another. I just regret that I didn't get a medical and a repair module in my adv. probot. People needs to be more educated about droids.
BTW, I saw another great use for droids yesterday. Someone used a binary load lifter for advertising their shop. Had it on patrol outside the starport. That is something I would like to do as well. Just hope that we will be able to have more than one droid out at the same time.
But I don't think it is only the elite crafting professions that will have use for a crafting droid. It is not only the need for a private crafting station but to be able to craft anywhere you are even when running to your mission object or harvesters.
I think how many modules you can have and the level on the module should follow how advanced a chassi is. For example
1 module
1 module + 1 armour module
2 module
2 module +1 a armour
etc
An MSE should only be able to use one module (not the cluster) and a low level modul. It doesn't make sense to be able to put a lvl 6 module in a MSE.
I think what is wrong with DE is this and that there are a lot of chassis that doesn't make sense/don't work.
But at least as important is to make people know how useful droids are.