Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Undercut by my own...
Naillar wrote:...For you formula-heads, one thing you leave out every time, your fixed asset costs, do you sample your resources or do you use a harvestor? If you use a harvestor did you buy it? What did it cost? Same with your shop, are you living on the street corner or selling out of a house? If you mass produce parts, how did you get your factory?...
Since structures don't really degrade and most people are planning for the 'long haul' you can safely lower the cost of your harvester, factory, and shop to near 0 for the purpose of calculating costs.
As an example, if if pay 110k for my harvester and I amortize its cost over 12 months with the assumption it will average a 70% production it will produce 2,575,440 units. That raises my per unit cost by .04cr/unit, and it is the largest amortized expense you need to consider. After a year it's 'paid off' but where you might be considering replacing it IRL because it's getting old and not as efficient, in SWG it is still running as well as the day you bought it and assuming there's no economic shifts (which is a big assumption, I admit) you could resell it for 110k.
but even then I charged myself for Labor.. I charged for the same labor for droids.. labor cost alot more then my resources.. now that I buy my resources they come to 50/50 (so yeah i'm selling droids for around 8cpu then again on my server t21's go for 150 cpu)
there are still people selling for 2, but they do harvest there own.. and don't mind being poor.. I don't mind them selling for that low. i don't either i prefer not to but i don't want to spend my whole time crafting. I mean untill insurance is needed again what will you do with the loads of money you make off of endor anyways?
I tried having a shop i did ok when i was near town. I do better though hanging in cantinas and selling there.. much more convient for them.. sell a couple of probots, r4 or r2's a day and i'm good people will pay higher if they are right there. Granted i am on the upper end of r2 units.. but i really hate making those advanced droid brains.. My prices will drop when issurances comes back.. but by then I'll be selling only to my guild mates.. and maybe friends of the guild.
Virtually nobody sells resources on the Bazaars for less than 3cr
To get to the point where we can make many of the droids in-demand it takes quite a lot of time, effort, and resources
Once we get there I'd hope we could charge a bit more than 3cr per for a Probot, R2, Protocol - any of the upper ones folks really want. I can see selling a Mouse for cheap, but we shouldn't have to check every day to see how much I might be able to sell my Adv probots for now
R2 Unit: any 3 lvl 4 modules with Amror 4: 14k (doesn't include data modules i don't support exploits and you can only store pets in the data modules i make, odd bug of mine)
regular Probot with Armor 4: 7300cr
Adv R4 Unit: about 7-8k depending wnats installed
Adv dz70 3-4k;
think about it stationary private crafting stations go for 2-8k depending on effectivness.. one thing undercuting droid engineers .. another thing undercutting a totally different profession
Two points:
1) Raw resources are worth more than any finished product in this game. Why? Because they are the only items in the game that can be turned into XP. Since XP is what everyone is truly after, that makes raw resources worth more than any finished product. This is simply the way the game works. In real life you don't get experienced at something cimply by consuming raw resources. In SWG, you do. Resources are worth more than gold. If you are trying to sell finished products in SWG for more than the cost of the resources on the open market, you are doing something wrong. By turning those resources into a product you have lessened their value considerably.
2) Anyone who claims to be knowledgable of "business" while advocating price fixing across an industry is a liar and a cheat. This kind of act is highly illegal in the real business world and is generally not how real businesses operate in a capitalist market. What you are proposing isvery socialistic in nature. I suggest you go take some business and economics courses. If you can't take the heat of competition, stay out of the kitchen. Your whining just goes to show how little you really know.
-Raystonn
Also now that i think of it once permdeath is taken out these people selling there droids for cheap dont relize that they'll just screw themselves everyone will buy there droid since it wont die they dont need a new one and there droid sales will be pretty much the new player base. I hear alot of these undercutters call us greedy are really greedy themselves they charge super low so everyone will come to them for a droid.
I sell Arakyds for 1000cr and the seekers for 500cr. I feel that those are very fair prices.
Hrathgar wrote:One thing regarding prices...it's possible for someone to be making a profit off of the cheap seekers if they are macro sampling over night, while at work, etc. I told my friend I needed some steel, he had over 4000 units sampled with a macro in a few hours. It's insane how much better sampling is than extractors.
Only when you are comparing something like a person sampling against a personal harvester. From my recollection of harvesting speeds (and I could very well be off) he would have been sampling for close to 7 hours or so, not 'a couple of hours'. He would max out at around 12k whick would leave him no time to ever do anything else (macrosampling close to 24 hours a day)
With 4 heavy harvesters I can pull in a bit over 28k in resources on an average day and other than an hour every few days to empty bins and transfer power I am pretty much free to run around.
Yes, there is maintainance cost on the harvesters and the generators, re-deed cost to move them every 6-8 days, and such, but in the end the cost per unit for resources winds up being about .52cr/unit. That gives you a material cost of around 87cr per seeker.
Yes, you can cut that down even further if you just macro-sample, but my real point is that you don't have to in order to make a profit.
The problem with doing this and selling the droids for 250cr a piece is that while you do make a profit, you don't make much of one, especially for the amount of work you do. As a strict percentage the return seems good (around 300%), but expressed as credits per hour of work the return is small, especially considering the skill involved.
I find these threads so amusing these days. "Undercutters" this, "undercutters" that.
Don't like people charging lower prices? Find a way to compete. Offer better service, offer deliveries, offer free batteries, offer whatever. Crying here about it will do you nothing.
Think I'll change my prices (which are not that low) because you whine and cry and then flame me?
And, I've been thinking about this for a while: if you're not harvesting your own resources and are a Master Artisan, shut up about pricing. It's your own fault that it costs you more to make droids. Imagine paying 3 to 5 credits per unit for resources, if you have to buy some at least harvest the bulk of your own. And, not a Master Artisan? Whew, don't come here complaining how some us can basically say "It's free and included with your droid".
How can this be done, you say? Easily:
- Harvest Your Own Resources
- Be a Master Artisan
That's it. It is really that easy.
Someone above was talking about how their friend managed to harvest 4000 steel for them in a few hours. Well, that's really special. My heavies harvested 25000 steel overnight for me without me having to do anything except visit and feed them from time-to-time.
I sell an advanced surgical droid with a medical VI module and a food/chemical crafting station for around 30k and am far from the cheapest on my server. I sell an R2 unit with the same features for 40k and have even sold an R3 unit for 50k.
I don't always get my sale. I will get some people who tell me they can find the same droid for 15k (I had someone tell me they could get it for 11k). I will get people who try to talk me down and buy a lower module, and if they are really insistent I will sell it to them, but to date I've only sold a single level IV medical module to someone who said they didn't to spend the money for a level VI.
The reason I get this price is because people know me. They know my work and they know that when I tell them to save for a level VI module it really is because I know they will just spend their money twice buying a level IV (since you can't upgrade a droid). A lot of times people will forget to get the money from the bank but my reputation is strong enough that they are comfortable 'bank tipping' me before we do the secure trade.
I always sit down with them after the trade when possible, have them activate the droid, check out its armor and stats, and test all its modules. I have had droids in the past where something has been wrong because of a goof in my case (on rare occasions) or a bug in the system (on more common occasions) and I've either made them a new droid or refunded part of their fee, depending upon what they want. I make sure they know not to dismiss their droid and answer any questions they might have about naming it, programming it, or otherwise using it. Then, when we are done I encourage them to contact me with any problems.
I did have one occasion where someone purchased a surgical droid, believing it would automatically heal them. They contacted me a day later and I informed them it didn't and that I would be happy to refund their money. They thought about it for a few days and in the end decided they really were happy with it anyway.
So my point to all of this is, as Michela pointed out, that there are other ways to compete. I compete by offering what I hope is extremely good service, making sure my customers are well informed and get exactly the droid they want. I don't sell things that I know to be broken or due to be nerfed. I can't count how many MSE with data modules I've turned down because I know that bug will be fixed.
In our industry we do not see a lot of repeat business, especially me. I teach people to take care of their droid, warning about dismiss and permadeath and the droids I sell tend to be the last droids many people need, but I think that those people I sell droids to tell their guildmates and friends and that brings in far more business than I would ever get with rock bottom prices and a quick 'here's your droid'.
Before I ran these destroy missions, I would accept deliver missions, which pay little, and are a pain the butt due to the distance you have to run at times.
For a non-Master DE that doesn't run destroy missions ( I have never tried the survey missions, perhaps someone else can speak of them) , life is REALLY hard. Its hard to keep your harvesters going to obtain the resources to sustain the grind. Your harvesters go into disrepair, and its very discouraging. At that point, you need to gain a profit off what you make. Its just that simple. So I understand their frustration, because I felt it.
But to pass on what I have learned. Run destroy missions, the rewards add up very quickly. Its very easy for us in our grind to master to forget the other aspects of the game, like combat. But its fun, its a great opportunity to RP, and the rewards make your grind easier because you are not scrounging to sell that one seeker droid to get funds to repair your harvesters.
I'm all about helping out our BH friends, and I want to. But you need the money to survive, I suggest not depending on DE production now to do that, but to run high paying missions. Thats my suggestion anyway. I'm not master, in anything. Except artisanship. hehe
Zeheeba
PS- This is my story of how I have changed my rold in SWG, it doesn't have to be anyone else's. So keep flames to a minimum, thanks.
