Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Underselling the bane of our lives
Wow, after further reading of this post I think my prices are going up from where they are - and as i said earlier my prices are no where near some of the ridiculous prices of some (12.3k for an R3?!?!?!?!? - d00d even harvesting all your own resources you are not turning a profit - remember time = money and you are not counting any of the factory maint or power required to make adv R3's) I, unlike alot of you harvest the vast majority of my own resources (I sample while hunting with guildmates or have guildmates survey for me) I also have 2 accts so I have a total of 20 lots for harvesters, factories, and storage. Plus I also co-op factory / harvester time with fellow guildmates that are crafters. (i.e. for pub 7 everyone has been running their factories for me - i pay maint and power costs as well as provide schematics and resources - but it does allow me to run 8 - 15 factories at once 
, also we co-op our harvesters so when a great resource run of ore hits we all harvest it for our resident architect - I highly recommend this to any crafters currently in guilds - it really makes everyone's life much easier and cheaper) Even with all this i average less than 20k profit per droid.Now, to non crafters this may seem like alot - but keep in mind to be a MDE it requires 91 or my 250 skill points, many hours of pointless, frustrating crafting grinding, and it cost me 2 mil creds at 2.25 cpu to purchase the required resources to grind my way to master. Hmmm, how many droids do i need to sell to make that 2mil back - minimum 100, and my DE will never be a great combat character. (Again 2 accts helps this as one can be a crafter and one can be a combat char.) But for anyone with only one acct and limited guild / friend support simply becoming a MDE is a truly monumental task.
As for fixing this, on Sunrunner if i find any of you DE's placing droids on vendors for insanely low prices, I will buy you out and make a profit on you. Hey, it saves me time anyway. BTW - whoever suggested that it is a great idea Not to mention someone should start a thread helping us standardize our prices - we are already hurting as a proffession and anything we can do to help each other is an asset, IMHO.
Khadim - Officially Disgruntled Master Droid Engineer - Sunrunner
Well, again, buying out someone who has lower prices only works if that person is lazy. I logged in for a second after lunch and discovered that a player had purchased around 100k of inexpensive droids, mostly seekers, probes, R5 units with storage and the like, between this morning and this afternoon.
While I'm actually pretty sure that they were not trying to buy me out and were probably just stocking up for themselves and guildmates, even if they are trying to buy me out it won't matter because half an hour after I log on tonight that vendor will be completely restocked.
And if they are trying to buy me out what do I care? I get my asking pricefrom them so it's no skin off my nose. In fact it works even better for me since they are gauranteed sales every single day, at which point I will just restock it again and again and collect 100k each day (actually more since if it happens every single day I will just stock it with even more droids).
jcarlson,
You don't need 2 similar GPs, meaning you can make 2 factory runs of 2 different GPs. Then put the 1998 GPs in your factory and viola you have 999 Seekers. Same can be said for the Probes, but those take 3 differenet GPs, but you can still do the 999 run of them.
Well, this certainly has been very educational. I was way underselling and wondering how people did make a go of it. I sold(please don't get me) a medical droid with a medical mod in it, along with a worshipful personality chip and two free batteries the other night for 6k. I am still relatively new to the game, but I won't make that mistake again. I have also been running a factory and harvestors, but having to run missions like crazy. I haven't run across any other DE vendors yet to compare prices with, but will keep an eye out for them.
Selling a droid for 40k makes sense now.
Voagob
DE, Naboo
Dear Caix
You do what you want to do.
meantime - what was my purpose? to make more credits? no - I have many more credits than I need thankyou.
I hope the posters in this thread have shown you that you are underselling YOURSELF. If that is what you like to continue doing-fine-your operation affects me not one jot. Believe it or not I was trying to help you, but I guess you are too cynical to see that.
I never sell in Bestine, but I do know a damned good Droid Engineer there who is selling and moving R3 units for 90k, and good luck to him, they are quality droids.
So, not that your sales matter much, but the point is you give customers the opportunity to say 'hey, Mr x is selling way lower than that'. Now your ecomomics are bad but thats up to you, and I have, myself, never heard your ridiculous price quoted, but I remain on the point I first mentioned, you are doing the DE profession no good by underselling.
Even the newbie DE would curse your price structure, and thats before the rest of the comments from those who know the business.
So, don't be annoyed, take the opportunity.
The point of the post? To remind you that you are part of a community and an economy. Your actions potentially hurt others, especially new players, and not only in droid matters. I care about everyone having fun, I don't care to make short term profits that hurt other players. If there are no other players where is my fun going to come from, or yours?
Why did I not PM you? You would never have listened. You know that too.
I dont want to discuss it with you, I doubt very much that you care much beyond your own personal well-being. If not then change. Simple really.
(this is a new-ish server everyone-just for info)
Message Edited by Shian_Tavkin on 03-23-2004 09:36 PM
Speaking of prices, this post made me recently reevaluate my seeker sales. I was selling them at break even prices! I talked to another DE last night that sells for a similar price and he agreed to raise his prices too. Dear god I never knew my prices were so low on some items. I think part of the problem is people start just selling stuff without really putting much thought into what it takes to really make em. For the example of how I was losing money, see below. Btw I was selling Seekers for 2500 credits.
Ok here goes some math! Note this isnt exact with factory times and such but it proves the point pretty well.
Each seeker takes 172 resources to make. A max factory run can only be 500 seekers due to needing 2 GP Chips and you can only get a max run of 1000 of them.
On Naritus standard prices are 3 credits per unit.
(172 per droid) x (500 droids per run) = 86,000 units needed.
86,000 x (3 cred per resource) = 258,000 resource cost to the DE
It takes about 1 day or so to make 1000 GP Chip and a factory is approx 1000 cred per day to run. Plus you need 500 Electronic Chips and the the factory run time for the 500 seekers as well as the price of power used so I added 4000 credits as an approximate cost for factory time.
258,000 + 4000 = 262,000 final price (not including any vendor costs, house maintenance etc)
Since 500 seekers come in 5 per crate, 500 / 5 = 100 crates of seeker droids.
(262,000 credit cost) / (100 crates) = 2,620 credits just to break even.
Since every crate has 50 seeker charges (5 seekers each with 10 charges)
2620 /(50 seeker charges) = 52.4 credits per droid to the BH
Now we all know BH make much more than 52.4 credits per mission.
So in summary if you dont include misc costs, maintenance for houses vendors etc, you would get the following profit for each seeker crate you sell:
At 3 cred per we are getting a break even price of 2620 credits for a crate and 52.4 per charge. Profit 0 per crate
At6 cred per we are getting a break even price of 5200 credits for a crate and104 per charge. Profit 2580 per crate
At8 cred per we are getting a break even price of 6920 credits for a crate and138.4 per charge. Profit 4300 per crate
At10 cred per we are getting a break even price of 8640 credits for a crate and172.8 per charge. Profit 6020 per crate
Now if I remember correctly, early seekers BHs could buy off a Bounty Hunter Terminalhad no charges and were 500 credits per droid which equaled 1 charge now. So if what I remember is correct, selling at 10 credits per is very reasonable as 172.8 per charge is a lot less credits than 500 so the BHs are still getting a discount from what Sony originally was charging them.
So I guess the moral of the story is that I didnt even know I was losing money for so long until I did the math. Once I presented this information to other DEs they were quick to raise their prices too. If you are having problems with some DE on your server selling too low present some facts like these and you will be more likely to convince them to raise their prices. With math behind us too we can justify our actions to our consumers. 8640 credits might make a BH run away after having a hey day with 2500 cred crates but presenting 172.8 cred per droid use and it is hard to argue that the cost is pretty insignificant considering the bounties they get.
Right! That’s it!
Now I really do have a Great Deal of Respect for both Shian and Craix, you’ve both helped me out frequently in the past and we’re all Chimaerians. I think of both of you as Mentor Chi. MDE’s but I can’t believe what I’m reading this morning.
While I was happy to see a debate about prices I can’t believe the two of you, with all of your experience, would start taking each others posts personally. Shian your original post was too barbed & Caix your reply was beneath you.
*No DON’T put pinky to key* it’s time to let this one go.
THIS THREAD IS NOW LOCKED.
I hope the posters in this thread have shown you that you are underselling YOURSELF.
That was actually one of my points. The posters in this thread are actually showing something, your originial post did not.
If that is what you like to continue doing-fine-your operation affects me not one jot. Believe it or not I was trying to help you, but I guess you are too cynical to see that.
Oh right. Help me. Hence the "don't you care about your fellow DE's?" (who are, largely as you noted, unaffected) and the "I used to respect your comments, but...". Excuse my "cynicism", but trying to appeal to my sense of community by telling me how much it hurts [the largely unaffected] other DE's, followed by a "I don't respect you anymore" is pretty much bound to get me cynical. See, your first post does not even mention the losses you suppose I'm taking (which, btw, is only losses compared to what "other people" make), only the damage I'm doing to other [who reamin largely unaffect, like yourself] people, and the lack of respect you now hold towards me.
Which part contained the help?
So, not that your sales matter much, but the point is you give customers the opportunity to say 'hey, Mr x is selling way lower than that'.
And there's a few ways to deal with that:
Tell the client that he can go buy at mr X, because the prices you see here is what you get. You do that enough times, and guess what, X will be running out sooner than he can restock, leading to higher prices. It'll cut on your sales in the meantime, but then again, every DE beyond the first cuts into someone's droid sales.
Lower your prices to conform with mr X. Which is a blatantly stupid suggestion unless your not selling any droids. But if you know you can sell droid for those prices, what kind of half-witted idea is it to say "oh sure, I'll drop my price with 50% because someone else does" if you're sure your prices are justified in a way your happy with? That, and he fact that is someone actually went to you and doesn't leg it when you inform them of the higher prices, it means X is not an option, either because he's too far away or sold out.
Unless you plan on using #2, your point is moot. You remain unaffected.
Now your ecomomics are bad but thats up to you, and I have, myself, never heard your ridiculous price quoted, but I remain on the point I first mentioned, you are doing the DE profession no good by underselling.
... I thought you were not affected one jot? What makes you think any other DE is?
Even the newbie DE would curse your price structure, and thats before the rest of the comments from those who know the business.
You know, that's a great reason why I should alter my price structure. Everyone else thinks I should!
My game, my way of playing, my droids, my shop, my prices.
Why did I not PM you? You would never have listened. You know that too.
Your putting words in my mouth, but besides that, I have to ask, do you think I'm "listening" now? (There's a difference between listening and caring, hearing and comprehending. It's a pretty important difference too.) Because quite frankly,if you can't come up with reasoning (the oneby youso far, was the one about people quoting my price and trying to hassle down yours.),I see nothing to "listen" to.
I dont want to discuss it with you, I doubt very much that you care much beyond your own personal well-being. If not then change. Simple really.
So what do you suggest I change too? Ponder I elevate my prices to how much? Keep in mind, that since I don't have a shop outsidea major traffic hub, and there's at leastonewell-stocked shop outside Theed, Coronet and Bestine, my prices will have to be lower that the ones they use. Since I don't want to spam my shop's location (and even if I did, well, I'd still have to compete with those three shops), there has to be a reason for why someone tells his/her friends to go outside mearly two klicks outside Tyrena instead of just use the Bestine-Theed-Coronet ones.
How much lower do you think I have to go?
Moving on to my personal well-being: You said my economics are bad, yet what I'm doing enhances my personal well-being? Your trying to help me because I need help, yet my own well-being is still going up? Sorry, but I'll need the help files to track that last. Since what I'm doing isn't hurting anyone else, (If I raised my prices but started spamming, I'd get more sales and I'd make more money, and I'd take more customers. That'll hurt you more.) but my own economy, in what way does conforming to another price structure (... and I'd still have to use a lower price mind you...) make things better for other people?
Community Matters, maybe not to you but to us..
If community around here comes with publically attempting to bully someone into changing their prices, what makes you think I'm interested at all? Shian, all the logical reasons for changing is still coming from other people. Your still saying I should do it for some higher good by making sure other people can continue to charge what they are, but that's as deep as your reasoning runs. And since I stillthink theycan do that, unless your going to start explanaining why you don'tagree with my view, I'm not changing. Your objections have been noted. Now convince me I'm wrong.
I'm not interested in ideas or opinions, but the facts and reasoning used to get there, because of those, I can build my own opinion.