Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Very happy with seeker and arakyd charges!
Shaladin, pre-patch Seekers and Probes were only good for a single use - post patch Seekers have 10 uses and Probes have 5
The 'problem' is that DE's couldnt make the droid as cheaply as the BH droid vedor was selling them, so the vendor was removed - then the BH's pointed out that their mission payouts didnt basically make them profitable given the (new) droid prices, so the droid were given multiple 'charges'.
Unfortunately a combination of low pricing by DE's (to give the BH'sa 'helping hand') and the fact that the droids are now 5 or 10 times better than they were previously (so all things being equal worth 5 or 10 times more) has resulted in a price rise for the post-patch droids.
Unfortunately if you accept that the pre-patch droids were too expensive for the BH's when sold at acost price (for example)you cannot increase the price by 5 or 10 times without duplicating the problem, however I think it is fair to say that they are worth more than the pre-patch droids because the BH is getting _at least_ twice as much value out of them
For example pre-patch seekers went (at the cheap end) for 500cr for one use, a post patch sold at 500cr is giving the BH a saving of 4500cr (against 10 pre-patch droids at 500cr) even at the original BH vendor price of 200cr (which the BH's claimed was acceptable) the BH is still saving 1500cr for 10 seekers. Thus even if you doubled our examplepost-patchpriceto 1000crthe BH would still be 500cr better off.
Arakyds, 2.5k. That is 500 Cr per charge. Which is less than HALF of what the terminal charged.
If that's overcharging, then I really don't know.
Kaid
Laslo_ wrote:
Whenever I tried to make schematics, I noticed the number of uses was capped at 100. If I entered a number bigger, like 200, it reverted to 100. However, I entered 1000 and my schematic said it had 1000 charges. I didn't use it though to see if it actually worked for more than 100 units. If it does, you can probably just add zeros (i.e. 1000, 10000, etc.) and get as many uses as you want out of a single schematic. This has got to be an exploit, but...
This is not an exploit. If you enter a value above 1000, you will recieve a system message stating that you need to select a value between 1-1000.
CR x Resources + 10% per skill tree level. That is how I price all my droids, and that is how I will price the BH droids as well.
I sold at 400 and 900 pre patch... after the patch, I cut the remaining stock to 75 and 500... luckily I didn't have many seekers left in the first place.
Post patch I am selling for 1500 and 3500 (untill old stock is gone) then I might drop probes to 3000 or even 2500... not quite sure yet.
Okay, let me revise my earlier statement...
In my humble opinion, there is a reasonable price increase, and there is a wild price increase. As someone pointed out, if you can actually get people to pay the wildly high prices some would like to set (6k for a Seeker??), so be it. But as for myself, I will simply tack on the base resource cost plus profit for time spent. That's just me.
We got a solution that works wonderfully for both our professions. I don't want to screw it up by trying to muscle more money out of the Bounty Hunters than is reasonable. I admit, all the "we are losing money to gain experience" arguements from them falls on deaf ears, because we wrote the book on losing money to gain skill. Nontheless, there's no sense bleeding them for way too much and thus creating a nasty relationship between us.
That's my current price. It's hardly set in stone. If I wind up spending 18 hours a day making droids for Bounty Hunters I will probably raise the price a bit to 'cool down' my market and give me time to play.
I think ASHRID summed up the history of the issue rather nicely.
I really like Bendar's pricing scheme. 200cr / charge for Seekers (2000cr) and 500cr / charge for Arakyds (2500cr) is a better deal than what the NPC vendors were offering before and the new BH droids take up less precious inventory. This is a win - win price structure for our Bounty Hunter friends as well as us Droid Engineers.
Currently my vendor pricing is still 500cr for the Seekers and 1500cr for the Arakyds, but I plan on gradually raising those prices to the levels that Bendar has suggested. That price is very reasonable.
I won't make seekers and probes in my factory until I'm master... they are just too good exp to waste in there. I mean, a seeker alone is 4 exp per unit of resources... and that's only counting the final combine resources (not the resources needed for the GPs and MMs). Probes are like 4.2 or 4.1. much better ratio then making frames while stuck on practice... AND I can make money on it.
Repeat business is good. And if my prices are right, and I can keep the vendor stocked, I won't even notice my progression through the tree... it will be almost natural. Besides, I send out an email to the... oh I think it's it's close to 30 BH's that I've come across, stating prices and asking for feedback. I have yet get a complaint about prices, and I'm always low on stock when I log on.
Of course the charges will slow down purchasing, and in effect slow down my progression. But it's still repeat business. I can always make sub components in my spare time (not grind on practice, essentially wasting resources) to have the parts ready to slap a custom order together.
Does anyone know if, at Master bounty hunter, they still need seeker and probes?
Something I wanna stress for Droid Engineers....
They changed the amount of uses the droid can have. They did NOT change the resources required to make them. So when you do pricing, look at it this way: we're doing the exact same amount of work as before. Only this time, they're worth the price of the resources, and we can tack on a reasonable profit margin to pay for the time it takes to pump these things out.
Charging too much for them is uncalled for and just greedy. Before, I was selling them at 800 and 1200, just to cover costs. Now, I can comfortably charge 1000/1500 and 2000/2500 for them. It's a reasonable charge for the time invested, and it isn't breaking the BH's down.