Droid Engineer Archive

"LOL, 16.25% profit margin?!?! Try running a business with a margin like that in the real world and you'll be out QUICK!!!"

I was illustrating that he was operating at a profit, not a loss. He's got 750,000 credits somehow, do you?

"If an item costs you 2000 credits to make, a decent business would sell it for 4000 credits. Profit margins should be AT LEAST 50%, even more on higher quality items."

That's totally your opinion. Personally, I don't want to make droids to be rich, I want to do cool things with them, and make them for my PA. If something cost me 2000 credits to make, I'd sell it for 3000 credits to strangers, and 2000 credits to friends/PA members.

"Look at it like this: A guy cuts down a tree and carves an elegant statue from the wood. Just because he didn't pay anything for the wood, does that mean he should sell the statue for $1?"

You are trying to infer artistic value on the statue. The value of a piece of art is based on personal judgement. If you're getting a free piece of wood & making a wagon out of it, why would you include the cost someone else might pay for the wood into the price-tag of the wagon? You got the wood for free. Mr. Moo gets his resources for free.

"DE's have to either juggle a fleet of harvestors, or buy the resources to make the droids. They must then spend time combining the resources into working droids. Then you have to factor in critical failures (currently a horrible system). On top of that there's the countless hours he had to grind out MSE's and frames to get to the level to make the droids."

I maintain a medium generic house, vendor, equipment factory, 2 large mineral harvesters, 2 medium mineral harvesters, 1 medium chemical harvester, 1 solar generator, & 1 personal gas extractor. I pay for 90% of the maintenance of these harvesters from the credits earned doing faction destroy missions. Oh yeah, and I didn't level up thru novice droid engineer on MSE's. That was far too slow. I power-crafted Armor Modules, because they only required 1 resource, and I did it before practice-mode was enabled, so I manually destroyed them all. 90 xp per armor module, 5 crafters going at once; didn't take me long to get to blueprints 1 once I figured out this method. Advanced Frame Units are the same principle, but it requires Steel & Fiberplast. With practice mode, you earn 462 xp for 150 steel & 70 fiberplast. Get 5 crafters going on these at once and you're gaining 2000+ xp per minute of powercrafting (lag providing ).

"You are probably a BH that doesn't want to pay a reasonable price for the droids, so you come here saying you sell low to get others to do the same. If you are a DE, you are indeed the reason player economies are doomed to failure as was stated previously..."

I am not a BH, I just support friends who are. Even with the old NPC droid vendors, they barely make enough money to keep going thru the xp. BH's missions are bugged horribly, and they're losing droids, travel expenses & time chasing targets that are bugged when they finally find them. The entire reason Seeker droids have 10 charges now is because Bounty Hunters were getting screwed! So you you feel it is our duty, as supportive Droid Engineers, so mark-up our droids now that they are more effective, and gouge the Bounty-Hunters out of as much money as possible. I'm sorry, I don't operate that way. I guess the player economy is doomed to failure for you, because you can't get insanely rich.

Oh, and to wear my prices on my sleeve, since I'm now the poster-boy for why player economies are doomed:

Adv MSE 500, Seeker 750, Arakyd 1250, Adv DZ70 3k, Adv R5 3k, Adv R4 5-7k, Adv R2 10-12k, Adv Surgical 12k, Repair, Power & Binary droids made only for specific orders, and most of those orders paid me in resources, not credits.

"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) "

Totally agree with this statement. With money constantly coming from a never-ending wellspring, balancing the economy is completely impossible. The only thing possibly keeping it in check is people cancelling their accounts & taking their earned money with them

Mr. Trusty McGee (nice name by the way!)... you mention that I've cornered the market - hardly. As I said in an earlier post I have about 6-8 dedicated BH customers who come to me for their droids. I reward them for doing so. I don't think that 6-8 people is really cornering the market. I think it's funny that a couple people on here think I'm like the devil and the downfall for the Droid Engineer Profession - I don't know...who knows,maybe I am satan in disguise..

You make a lot of good points in your post. Keep up the articulate thinking... refreshing to read well written things on here.

Regards!

Mr. Moo

LOL, 16.25% profit margin?!?! Try running a business with a margin like that in the real world and you'll be out QUICK!!!

If an item costs you 2000 credits to make, a decent business would sell it for 4000 credits. Profit margins should be AT LEAST 50%, even more on higher quality items.

Look at it like this: A guy cuts down a tree and carves an elegant statue from the wood. Just because he didn't pay anything for the wood, does that mean he should sell the statue for $1?

DE's have to either juggle a fleet of harvestors, or buy the resources to make the droids. They must then spend time combining the resources into working droids. Then you have to factor in critical failures (currently a horrible system). On top of that there's the countless hours he had to grind out MSE's and frames to get to the level to make the droids.

You are probably a BH that doesn't want to pay a reasonable price for the droids, so you come here saying you sell low to get others to do the same. If you are a DE, you are indeed the reason player economies are doomed to failure as was stated previously...

I get tells from some people that say well so and so is selling them for XX and you're selling for more. They then proceed totell why dont I lower my prices and I say no thanks. Then they get mad and say well then I will get them from that person, I say you should thats a great price.

They usually say this because its either not true or this other person is out.

Ok I'm only a novice so I make these 1 at a time rather than in a factory. I have been experimenting with my prices on the Bazaar over the last few days with the following results :

Price / Sold

2000 / 0

1500 / 0

1200 / 2 (1 buyer)

1000 / 13 (2 buyers)

I can only conclude so far that 1000 is probabally on the cheaper side, one of my 2 buyers bought 10 seekers in 1 go, so I will try 1100 next. As for selling at a lower price, this is a free marketand ultimately the buyer detemines the value of an object and the price. Someone selling at a loss is simply harming themselves and personally if I see people selling them for 500 on the bazaar, it's easy to buy them and sell for 1000 which is 480 profit for me, for littleeffort and no resources.

Bloodfin here...

i'm selling seekers for 1k and going to sell arakyds for 2k...

i have 2-3 customers, and they buy like from 5 to 10 pieces at time.

i have 2 personal harvesters and 1 wind power generator...

they don't give me enought materials to craft all the required objects so i buy resources at the bazaar too...

usually around 2-3 credits per unit.

in these conditions i have only from 10k to 40k in my bank account... constantly spending for resources and maintenance costs of the shop, of the vendor and of the harvesters...

IMO people can charge whatever they want.

Icharge (single/crate) 800c/4000c for a Seeker and2000c/10000c for Arakyds

I have a fair share of costumers, and should I have a slow day, I'll just go do a few artisan missions.

Regards
Erinys