Droid Engineer Archive

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deltabob00 wrote:

I was selling for 10 cpu. I had to cover the cost of the resources my partner fronted me for the vehicle rush. Even though many on Sunrunner were selling for far lower prices, I did make enough money to cover the resource costs, so now, I can be comfortable lowering my costs to about 7 cpu. I have put many deeds on my vendor, as stated above, if they sell - great, if not, oh well.

I have been enjoying the heady experience of actually selling something that people want.

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Exactly what I'm doing. Put up a bunch, sold a fair amount - they will sell at some point or they won't - but I've already made back more than I put in. The rest is pure profit.

In a few days, when the noobs run out of metal, and people start to understand that quality matters, prices will go up for "high end" vehicles.

That said, I too have been enjoying selling something people want. In fact, I've been giving them away. I only had 1-2 total crit fails, but I had 5-6 that I crit failed on the experimentation that I drove around giving to random noobs (still in their novice clothes LOL).

It's good Karma. Give to the poor, sell to those who can afford it.

Leyah

Yesterday was almost 2 funny ...

Oh I play on Corbantis ...

Servers come up and I start hearing people asking 100k for the swoops... Ok no big rush to get to Theed as I want to make myself one and go ride around a little. So I am off to Theed after making a few for friends and a few to sell... on the way I hear a guldmate say he just got one for 50k as people started laughing at the guy trying to get 100k out of them. Ok I am now at theed and thought I should watch the market and see what people were selling at. It was the worse case of cut throat I have ever seen ... Prices keep falling and falling they seemed to bottom out at about 30k for any bike 91-97%... then it started going lower and got to 15k for any bike/vehicle...

Beeing the Wookiee I am this did not make any sense to me, so I jumped on my swoop and headed out to /sample macro resourses. About 3 hours later I hear a guildmate ask anyone know were I can get a bike for under 65k ... My ears perk up ... after explaining a guild only vendor had been set up at discounted rates, I set up camp and jumped on my swoop and was off to Theed. I get to Theed and say "Selling 1 x34 and 1 speeder send tell with offer. Wow I had to do this 3 times and get a tell 100k for both. My response "SOLD" I am wookiee in white robe to the right of the starport as you are coming out of it.

Well all them idiots out there should be out of resourses now ... So IMHO getting 7 to 12 cpu for 95% ish durability is about right

again just my 2 credtis worth ... lol

Laaba - Wookiee

Master DE and Artisian

PS to answer another question in this thread ... On the deed you do not see the HAM ... pull out your vehicle and target it, then move your cursor over the vehicle icon showing its health and wait a sec you will then get a little pop up window showing its HAM. One other thing once the deed is used you do not see the objects creator.

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BugEyed wrote:

Alacrity, I guess you gave this the one star, thanks to those who bumped it up, I feel that this is a perfectly sound place for a vehicle discussion, did you read my thread and the reason I put it here?

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Sorry, wasn't me who gave you a 1-star. I just gave you 5 to offset it though.

Oh, and I'm currently selling vehicles at 5cr/unit (Dantooine/Chilastra), and have made nearly 500,000 credits so far... (the price will be going up, but if I'm going to sell anything while supply and demand are high, they need to be cheap). I've more than made up for my investment in new high-BER harvesters (and all the maintenance it's taken to run them the past two weeks).

I havent sold any vehicle apart from what my guildmates preordered me just because there was a guy in Bestine selling them for 20k each type, that's less of 3cpu. Bah. I have put some in my vendor at 5cpu. If I sell them, great. If not, more deeds for me, these things decay very very fast!

Regarding the experimentation: yes, it affects the final points, but its not a very impressive impact. My 60% (more or less) durability bike has 2218 hit points while my brother's, 86% durability, has 2420.

As mentioned earlier I went to Dantooine. Before heading there I noticed an artisan in Theed running out of resources. I traveled through Lok and tatt looking for a population center and good market, checking the market price on the way. I had a captive market on Dant for nearly 5 hours. Knowing the galaxy market pretty well I aimed for 7 cpu. At first I started out with 'make an offer'. I got offers of 100k at 5pm est. I knew word of absurdly prices elsewhere would spread so I kept my prices at 55k, 45k, 35k. I held this steady until around 10. I accepted EVERY counter offer (2 of them LOL). No one haggles in this game. I started with 300k of steel and about 200k non-ferrous. So I pretty much held the 7 cpu line. I might get more for droids but then again with such a hot market the time to make that in droids is 20 days. I ended up with ~1.8 million. I am no longer in the vehicle business.

A shame that so many undercut so badly, yet predictable. Anyone been watching structure prices lately. Grinders are selling for ~60% of original Architect pricing structure. I guess a lot of the elite grinders cashed in yesterday. Too bad they lacked the market knowledge to properly value such a fine product. 15k for the fastest vehicle in the game? I paid that for my first FWG5 pistol. Yes a pistol is more valuable in this game but I'd be real surprised not to see mission nerfs in the future due to excessively short travel times to the missions. Someone is gonna figure out a way to use a vehicle to make absurd amounts of money on missions. I wonder what the old artisan survey missions can turn in an hour minus vehicle repair?

I started out at 5 CPU yesterday on Ahazi and sold at a fair clip. Volume died down toward evening, so this morning I lowered my prices to 4 CPU. Dunno how they're selling at that price yet.

"Undercutting" is relative. Just because someone else wants to charge more does not make me an undercutter. From my point of view they're trying to overcharge for their wares.

I mine my own resources and power. 4 CPU is a tidy profit for me and with a million or so resources in reserve and 14 harvesters bringing in more I'm not going to be running out any time soon.

The point that we are missing as a collective trade is that we shouldnt sell relative to what it costs. We should sell relative to what the market will bare. If the market won't support profit then we get out and that is when we are concerned with cost to produce. Do you think General Motors or Toyota sell their products based on the cost to produce? And don't give me the I'm an artisan not a merchant line. You want to be an Artisan fine, come to Naboo and I'll put you to work for 75 credits an hour.

No, the point that is being missed is that new players have very little hope of purchasing equipment that is priced to what the l33t gamers can afford.

Vehicles should have had a quality component that actually mattered - that way high quality vehicles could have been priced for the high-end gamer, while lower quality (but still entirely functional) vehicles could have been priced for newer/poorer players. But we weren't given that option because experimentation has such a small effect on the durability of a vehicle.

I get virtually everything I need or want at reduced cost (if not flat-out free). People remember me as the nice Wookiee who helped them out when they were new. By pricing my wares based on cost and desired profit margin, I'm able to do a very good business and make a lot of people happy at the same time.

BTW has anyone else noticed that vehicles aren't ever going to wear out? Unless the owner does something silly, a vehicle can be repaired and re-used forever. So much for repeat business. Or have I just not used mine enough to notice that it's "fully healed" state is actually degrading?

First of all how long did you hoof it? Pricing for a noob is very noble.

So a vehicle that won't ever be replaced should be priced within the reach of every player? Right.

BTW excellent point on quality and what not. I understand that future patches will allow more customization and that they just got the vehicles in for now.

Well, I'm operating under the admittedly optimistic assumption that they're going to do something to make vehicles a little more likely to need replacing. One would hope that they could put in a degradation system like what weapons use - sure you can repair it, but each time you do its maximum HAM goes down a little bit and eventually you'd have to replace the vehicle.

It took me about a month to make Master Droid Engineer and Master Artisan. I'm not really a power gamer, but I admit that I play as efficiently as I can in the limited amount of time I have each day. I received a lot of friendly help along the way from people I had never met, and so now I like to try to pass that same experience along to others. Attempting to ensure that everyone can get a reasonably priced vehicle is just one of the ways that I try to do that.

Vehicles are just a way to avoid annoyance in the game. They don't help you "win" like weapons and armor do - they simply make the drudge part of the game less boring (or shorter). That's why I think that everyone should be able to have one - to reduce the drudgery that the Devs have deliberately put into the game.

Weapons and armor help you in the mission and vehicles help you ge there faster. I bet someone is making mad cash using a vehicle on some missions till devs catch up.

All I can sayis an Artisan Terminals in Anchorhead, a waypoint with 3-4 resources at 70% that is 1.1k out of town,Pistols 4, and a speederbike.

Two hours and I've paid for my harvies for the next few days