Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droid Engineers need more business, take seekers / arakyds and move them to Master box
In order for me to make any money from these droids I need to sell them at stupidly low prices. What the BH's get for their money is extremely good value for money; one seeker unit: 20 uses for ~1k?!
I tried to raise my prices the other day and well I think I lost a few customers. I don't mind a small profit margin but the price of these droids is much too cheap; these things are practically our only source of income and to only make ~500 credits of profit per unit (12.5k profit for a crate of 25?!) takes the biscuit.
Couple this with the fact the BH's get the best loot and practically make the most money from missions and loot. From what I hear the number of players being BHs has dropped.
Resource quality should matter, experimentation should effect tracking speed and quality. And yes move the schematics to the master box. These things should be going for 100k+ for a crate of 25. Everyone else has stupid profit margins
When I read the title I thought, "how in the hell will that make more business...". Then I read the OP's post. It makes sense now. I can dig it. Move those suckers up.
And for the experimenting, how about putting a timer on the droids like ISD's have? That would make being a 12pt DE worth it when you could make a Seeker/Arakyd with max charges and a faster turn-around time.
i started out as a bh on bria and droids was around 120k or so and i made friends with a DE so i got some good deals since i brought alot of bussiness to him, so when i came to shadowfire i almost fainted when i saw the prices, and makes me think that there should be a price cap on things. i mean think about the new bounty hunter grinding invesgation, at invesgation 1, 9 out of 10 droids fail so a new bh don't have that kinda money to fork over. do people assume that once a person makes novice bh they are instantly rich?? well we're not, by the time we fork over 500k for a decent set of armor and then another few 100k for a decent weapon we're left pulling lent out of our pockets, and then someone expects me to pay 800k for droids, pff dream on.
i'm not meaning ot flame anyone here in these forums and in fact the only reason i was in here was to see if there was a reason why droid prices on my server are so high. so when i saw this post i had to give a bh's point of view to the argument. i've always respected most crafters, i've even tried crafting myself but it's not for me. so i know how much time it takes to get anything done, but still yet prices should be fair and for something as common as bh droids the super rich shouldn't be the only one's able to afford them.
i know my statments are not excatly on topic for that i'm sorry, it just buggs me at how people can be so greedy. so on topic, for the reason stated above i think that if the bh wants to spend his skill points to make his own droids then i see nothing worng that all i mean it's not like he's going to do much good against jedi since he's surrending those skill points that would go into CM for heals. his skill points his decision. im my eyes he's helping the encomney.
Use the vendor search and see if anyone is selling them any cheaper and if they're not I suggest you go make a DE character, make a million of these things and sell them for half the price everyone else is.
They cost like 450 credits per unit (thats including EGPs and EMMs) to make and resource quailty doesn't matter in the slightest.
Use the vendor search and see if anyone is selling them any cheaper and if they're not I suggest you go make a DE character, make a million of these things and sell them for half the price everyone else is.
They cost like 450 credits per unit (thats including EGPs and EMMs) to make and resource quailty doesn't matter in the slightest.
Message Edited by Sandsifter on 09-15-2005 01:30 PM
i'm sorry but i have to take the side of the bounty hunters. being a bounty hunter myself and seeing the insane prices of these droids on shadowfire, i'm talking 600k to 800k per crate which is just stuiped and greedy. i can understand chargeing a 100k or so per crate thats completly fair, but to charge some one almost a million credits for something that is REQUIRED to complete their mission and then have half of it wasted just blows my mind. i know it's kinda harsh that this BH is selling left overs for 20k but atleast on shadowfire something like this needs to happen to deflate the insanely high prices.
That is of course insanely overpriced. I suspect its because you are on a very small server though. Even on eclipse we dont have very many DE (I can count them one two hands the number that are active) and we are much bigger than your server. Competition is obviously needed on your server but allowing our best droids to be so easily made is NOT the answer.
i started out as a bh on bria and droids was around 120k or so and i made friends with a DE so i got some good deals since i brought alot of bussiness to him, so when i came to shadowfire i almost fainted when i saw the prices, and makes me think that there should be a price cap on things. i mean think about the new bounty hunter grinding invesgation, at invesgation 1, 9 out of 10 droids fail so a new bh don't have that kinda money to fork over. do people assume that once a person makes novice bh they are instantly rich?? well we're not, by the time we fork over 500k for a decent set of armor and then another few 100k for a decent weapon we're left pulling lent out of our pockets, and then someone expects me to pay 800k for droids, pff dream on.
I sell mine for 100k for 25 crate (seekers) and 150k for a crate 25 of arakyds. I feel my prices are very fair, but tell that to a kid who sees crates going for 20-25k bleh
i'm not meaning ot flame anyone here in these forums and in fact the only reason i was in here was to see if there was a reason why droid prices on my server are so high. so when i saw this post i had to give a bh's point of view to the argument. i've always respected most crafters, i've even tried crafting myself but it's not for me. so i know how much time it takes to get anything done, but still yet prices should be fair and for something as common as bh droids the super rich shouldn't be the only one's able to afford them.
i know my statments are not excatly on topic for that i'm sorry, it just buggs me at how people can be so greedy. so on topic, for the reason stated above i think that if the bh wants to spend his skill points to make his own droids then i see nothing worng that all i mean it's not like he's going to do much good against jedi since he's surrending those skill points that would go into CM for heals. his skill points his decision. im my eyes he's helping the encomney.
The problem is this is our main product. Our other droids just dont decay really so I might make a good impression and please a customer with my products but guess what.....I'll never see him again. That protocol droid with merchant barker and clothing / armor crafting station will never ever decay. His probot he loves so much will only need batteries and the occasional pet vitality pack to keep running. No matter how good I do my job, how reasonable my prices are, how nicely decorated my shop is, how well stocked my vendors are, how many times i respond to his email with questions on using his droid, it will never change the fact that I will probably never see him again.
Seekers and arakyds are our bread and butter business. We simply cant have dabblers making our stuff as easily as we do with minimal skills used. Like I said before, imagine a xxx3 weaponsmith crafting perfect T21 rifles. What BH would ever pay 1 million for one when he can just drop a few chems and mineral harvies down, grind to xxx3 real quick and blow out some rifles without effort folks. Weaponsmiths would scream and rightly so as no BH would need their products.
Our profession is the most complex crafting profession out there. Don't look on the bizarre and beat the lowest price, match the highest. Because believe me, that high-priced DE knows what she can get for those things. The DEs on the low end have no idea what they're doing and they're going to burn out on DEing in no time thinking it's a ton of work with no money in return.
Message Edited by HesDeadJim on 09-15-2005 10:35 AM
/sigh
Lets err conservatively on how many missions you can run with these droids.
1 Arakyd and 1 Seeker =8 NPC missions = 240k payout (plus loot)
25 Arakyd and Seekers = 200 NPC missions = 48,000,000 credits (plus loot)
1 crate of Arakyds for 225k + 1 crate of Seekers for 200k = 425k
48,000,000-425k = 47,575,000
Net Profit for BH after buying a full crate of each... 47 MILLION credits
GnomeAd wrote:
The old non-lamented NPC droid vendors used to sell Arakyds for 1k/charge and the seekers for 250cr/charge. Current charges and crate sizes would mean that a crate of 25 probes should go for 500k and a crate of 25 seekers should be 125k. Seeing as how even NPC missions are paying 30k, is 1250-1500cr/mission too much of a hardship?
No it isn't. However, the issue seems to shifting from the OP's thought: That DE's Bread nd Butter income (basically the income that allows us to get the funky resources to make more exotic droids) is being eaten away by dabblers. My personal preference would be this:
SEEKER & ARAKYD CHANGES
Change the EMM/EGPM requirement for seekers and Arakyds to a new "Life Form Tracking Module" that would be available in levels 1 - 6 1 is granted at novice, 2 at Intermediate Production etc etc up to 6 at Master DE. This would control the number of "uses/charges" each droid takes. ie at level 1 the seeker would have 4 charges, level 2 8 etc, up to level 6 with 25 uses/charge. The Seeker Chassis would continue to be in Blueprints 3.
This would give full time DE's two options for making money from seekers. Firstly, make the seekers yourself and sell them. Secondly, manufacture the "Life Form Tracking Module" and sell them as a seperate unit for dabblers to use. Note that dabblers can still make seekers but with reduced usage rate (eg a dabbler with DE 0003 will be able to make seekers with 4 uses each).
In summary, the seeker schematic would look like this:
40 Polymer (can't remember exact numbers)
60 Metal (again, can't remember exact numbers)
1 Lifeform Tracking module
The LifeForm Tracking Module would look like:
10 Polymer (Module Casing)
8 Copper (Module Data Retention Unit)
4 Silicastic Ore (Module Frame)
4 Inert Gas (Module Life Form Suspension Unit)
Please forgive the names on the components here - its just some bollocks I came up with
As the levels rise, the requirements could be more specific (ie Bilal inert gas, Polysteel copper, etc)
I firmly believe that this wouldn't be hard to code, and would definitely not be game breaking. The only downside I can see is that I'd be spending more time making seekers and arakyds than I already do
Any thoughts, and would this be better in a new thread?
Ugh! Not another 6-level set of stuff! lol I wish they would drop ALL our 6-level sets and make the level dependant strictly on the resource quality and experimentation! Seriously, who uses level 1 item-friggin-storage!!!
But I still would love for them to make some adjustments. I would welcome a new component also. Actually, I think it would be cool to have to get some kind of Shipwright component for the Arakyd. After all, it flies through hyperspace, right?
) get a better end product, ie more charges on the droids.