Droid Engineer Archive

Daive, how do you sell 25 Seekers at a time? Factory crates for Seekers only contain 5.

I usually end up selling 100 at a time - 50 seekers and 50 arakys.. I grind em all out (make the GPs in my factories) and then stuff them in backpacks and just hand em over to the customer! Works like a charm!

Mr. Moo

My priceing system is based on Location

My Guild currently has 3 stores

Mos Epsa, Tatooine& Kaadara, Naboo Store and in all Bzr Terminals:

Seekers 1000 credits

Probe Droids 2000 credis

Nym's Stronghold, Lok store:

Seekers 1800 credits

Probe Droids 3600 credirs

Iam selling at 1500/2000

Just hit Master Artisan so whipped up some Seekers.

I put them on the bazaar in Kaadara, Naboofor 1500. Sold one after a day so far.

Haven't made probes yet, but plan on selling for 2k.

Jelan Voors
Droid Engineer - 0/0/0/3, Master Artisan
Wanderhome

Gah, forgot to mention that my prices are for the new 10-charge and 5-charge droids.

Mine are going for 1k per seeker and 2k per probe only in crates. I don't make singles of these and what BH wants to load up their inventory with individual droids anyway. I can't make enough of them.

Kiom

Kor Vella, Corellia, Tempest

Seeker Droid Schematic: 172 resources

http://www.swgcenter.com/info/schematic.asp?id=618

Personally, I sell Seeker Droids for 750 credits on Starsider. I Sell Arakyd's for 1250.

I see a lot of people attacking Mr. Moo for selling Seekers for less than they cost to make. Those attacking him have decided how much it costs to make, and generally agreeing a seeker costs around 500 credits for a resource cost. That's a 2.9 credit per resource multiplier. Using that data works, if that's what your overhead is. Personally, I use a 2.0 credit multiplier, as I won't buyresources from a supplier for more than that, unless I'm in some great need. So I figure, minimum cost at a 2.0 multipler for a Seeker, in resources, is 344 credits. Mr. Moo is already earning 16 1/4 % profit, just by comparing his resource cost to a 2.0 credit/resource unit calculation. He's already stated that he gets most of his resources from PA members of his, and that leads me to believe that his resource cost is 0.0, or something insignificant. That means that he's in the 90-100% profit margin, no matter what he sells seekers for.

Does that mean all Droid Engineers should start selling Seekers for 400 credits? No. You should price your droids based on your overhead, and demand for the product on your server. Mr. Moo is underselling the cheaper droids a MDE can make, and gaining a client-base out of it, and selling them the higher cost droids at a reasonable price. He quoted selling Advanced R3's for 30,000 credits. I liked someone's analogy of Mr. Moo as a walmart as that's similar to what he's doing. Is there anything wrong with it? No. It's simply business. He has no overhead, and can afford to sell seekers cheaper than the rest of the community, in bulk, so he's cornered the market.

One thing I noticed about this community, when it looks at pricing issues for droids, it only looks at the Droid Engineer & profession for factoring in costs. Master Artisan takes 63 skill points. Master Droid Engineer takes 77. Total, that's 140 points, leaving 110 left over for other professions. Personally, I do missions while I let my lots work for me. My harvesters are pulling up what I need, and my factory is crafting components I'll need, and I'm earning credits (& faction points) while all this is going on, in a Non-DE capacity. I earn more doing missions than it costs to maintain 10 lots worth of equipment. So again, I don't feel a need to factor in harvester costs into the pricing of my droids. I personally still try & stay reasonable, and make a profit for myself without undercutting other DE's, but I don't get mad when someone else sells things cheaper than I do, nor find anything wrong with them doing it. If they're going to sell cheaper than me, then they need to be spendingmore time crafting droids & filling orders, just to try & make a reasonable profit margin. I'm not willing to spend all day making droids. There's tons of stuff I want to do in this game, crafting droids is just one of them.

it just erks me a little bit to see some one running around sellinf seeker droids for 650cr each. Everyone complains that the devs are nerfing DE's they finially give ussomething that people are willing to buy, maybe make a little credits off of. Yeah sure it does not take many resources to make them but its like you are getting 10 droids! And the droids that are the resource monsters are not really selling, why not charge more for the seekers, at the most 2k each (like has been pointed out before, 200cr a charge) and to make up for the other droids dont quite sell as well.

My prices are on par with a lot of others. You should just stop complaining. Novices can't even make arakyds anyway off the bat so what do you care. It's a free market my man! And I won't go broke, as I manage my money and resources well!

Regards!

Mr. Moo!

**********Does that mean all Droid Engineers should start selling Seekers for 400 credits? No. You should price your droids based on your overhead, and demand for the product on your server. Mr. Moo is underselling the cheaper droids a MDE can make, and gaining a client-base out of it, and selling them the higher cost droids at a reasonable price. He quoted selling Advanced R3's for 30,000 credits. I liked someone's analogy of Mr. Moo as a walmart as that's similar to what he's doing. Is there anything wrong with it? No. It's simply business. He has no overhead, and can afford to sell seekers cheaper than the rest of the community, in bulk, so he's cornered the market.**********

Exactly. I have real low overhead for a lot of my resources (I also mine my own too). It's smart business being in a guild, sharing resources and having people help you. Also, I have small repeat customer base - so what's the difference if I have 5-6 BH coming to me exclusively for their droids. I reward my customers for coming back to me. There are a gazillion BHs out there - go out, be creative and get your own customer base. Hey, if you can sell your seekers for more go for it - more power to ya. I don't think I'm single handedly bringing down the economy for droid engineers.

And for those out there trying tocompare the SWG economywith the real world do you realize what a funny statement that is? This is fantasy folks, come on now....

Best regards!

Mr. Moo!

What MR_Moo is doing is what many other people do in the real world.
What he is doing is having his parent company finance him so they can corner the market.

The fact of the matter is he is losing money on the droids.
But this is letting him corner the market, if they do this with the other professions (Im sure they do) then they will be a huge drain on local resources.

However I am also betting they do a huge amount of their own harvesting, and at the same time buy up resources from others.

In the end what happens is they will drive down the price on resources as they and others like them are the largest consumers and producers of the resources.

Resource prices will (And are) drop, I don't know about your servers but in the last month or so I have seen the average price for good resources go from 5c-6c down to 3c.

It could be stopped and in the long run will be stopped by people getting bored and quiting the artisan paths.

You see there is a hidden cost in resources. It is true that for most resources it only costs me what 0.75c? If that. However the cost that is never included is the time it takes me to get them.

I have to search planets to find them, then when I find them I have to place harvesters. Then go out every day or two to collect resources, repower or just as often take them down.

Now in the hours I have spent doing all this, if I was another class I could have been doing missions. Now combat classes can do 2 1k(ish) missions in 20min. So that is 3k a hour.

Now assume 3 hours a day resource finding, placing, maintaning, moving. And we see we are spending 9k a day in time.

If you are still young and not using Medium and Large harvesters you are getting about 1.5k each (Assuming no resource change happened). If you have a shop and a factory you can only have 7 harvesters. 2 should be power. That leaves 5 to get resources.
So for 7k Resources you spend 9k in time.
1.28c
Break even is 2c(or so)

Now add in the time it takes to make the droids.... Oh and lets not forget all the time and resources we spent getting to the level to make them.

3c a resource is a break even to me. 4c per resource is a ok profit.


To finish up, what we are seeing is a reduction in the average income of the working man
So if you want to play, join a PA or get out.


Me I'll stick to giving good customer service to keep customers until the prices get driven so low I quit.

Oh one more thing, in order to make a true player economy there needs to be a set amount of money in the world.

Make mission money come from a pool of money that is fed by money spent on maintenance.

Until then, the economy will be messed up. (Kinda like this game as a whole)