Droid Engineer Archive

As everyone knows, there is a lot of debate over what is the "right" price to charge. We know that some Artisans greatly overcharge while others greatly undercharge. The ones overcharging hurt little, except for the fool's purse. The ones greatly undercharging are bringing the average price now, thus hurting everyone.

For months I've been working on a formula based off of experience and other Artisans' input that gives a price that is fair to the customer but also gives the Artisan a small profit. While the Armorsmiths and Architects are richer than rich, Droid Engineers and Artisans in general struggle to stay afloat.Well take a look at what I use. The formula is pretty simple:

Price = # of resources x ( "5" + Difficulty of item / 10 )

Let's break it down.

# of resources - this is the total number of resources, including the resources used in subcomponents. It is important to include the resources, not the price, of the subcomponent. If you do it the other way around you're pretty much cheating yourself.

"5" - this number can go up or down. It is pretty much just a "credit per unit" number, but increased to cover other costs. Broken down my way, I charge a base 3 cpu. The other 2 cpu helps cover maintenance of your extractors and store and vendors. Believe me, that 5 cpu is hardly enough to cover it completely, but it helps. Depending on the rarity of the materials, or supply and demand, this number could be much higher, like for example 15.

Difficulty of item/10 - This is your profit, and isn't much at that. This is called markup in the real world. When you buy something in real life, you pay for their cost to buy the item, their shipping costs, maintenance costs, storage costs, and a little extra that goes to them as profit. There really does not need to be a cap on this number, since the hardest things are a difficulty of 50. That gives you a profit of 5cpu. It may sound like a lot, but it isn't. Most things give you a profit more along the lines of 2 cpu.

Example: Let's take a simple R2 unit ( since I am a DE ). Off the top of my head, I believe they take a total of 1200 resources and a difficulty of 40). Plugging the numbers in, 1200 x (5+4), you get a cost of 10,800. This does not include modules. Just a bare-boned Droid. Now, 6,000 of that will probably go to your extractors, vendors, store, and travel. That leaves you with a profit of 4,800. Realistically 10,800 isn't alot. I ran across a spreadsheet that I printed out and kept, designed by a few of the beta testers way back. Their "agreed" price for the same Droid is 34,300. Quite a difference. Mine's 1/3 of the price.( and rightfully so since no one is going to pay 34k for one right now )

Experimentation

Now, if you're charging nothing for experimentation, you are really cheating yourself. You are selling a quality product at a "standard" price. Again, what do you charge? This is a harder one, so my method is pretty simple. This I'm still working on. It works, but could be better and any feedback is welcome.

Simply put: Price = base price + (base price x % of experiment bonus) Example: Taking the same R2 Droid, let's say I experiment him up to 85%. (10,800+(10,800 x 85%) = 19,980) He would then cost 19,980. There are so many variables with experimentation however, that a formula would be hard to come up with. But this is my start. Of course one can charge more or less.

Let's look at vehicles. I think I saw someone post that they charge 15,000 for a Speederbike. That's 2.5 cpu. That isn't even enough to cover your maintenance and trouble. Mine would run more around 54,000 (although I only charge 35,000 because of supply...a mere 5.8 cpu) People don't really realize what it takes to craft this stuff and sell this stuff. If you added up the expenses, it's alot. I think I spend about 150,000 a month on operating costs. I'm sure I spend more, but that is a guess. Now what is 2.5 cpu gonna give me in profit when I'm probably not even covering my bills? Just something to think about.

Well there you have it. Constructive feedback is always welcome.

Message Edited by Puck_Starfire on 02-10-2004 01:41 PM

I like my pricing formula better:

(x resources * 7.5) + (y named resources* 27.5) + (# of required sub-components * 300) + (# of required factory sub-components * 500) + (tech level of droid * 1000)

I just went with what I thought the market would be willing to pay for. Forumulas are great in theory, but in practice some things are moredesired than others for intangable reasons and therefore canbe priced higher than the forumulas suggest. here's my old brochure

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=54815#M54815

You can probably add 5k onto everything on there and it'll still be valid.

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Puck_Starfire wrote:

So, again, this is purely informational. While you did offer criticism, which I accept because you can only better yourself if you know what needs changing, you never did offer your method of pricing goods.

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Puck_Starfire wrote:
I understand how you may have perceived it as an argument for Price Fixing, but believe me it's not. The fact I added the quote "Because no one can agree on a good pricing method.", I can see how that mis-wording would lead one to believe my argument was for price-fixing. I assure you it is not. Funny how one sentence canchange the way someone views something. Truthfully, I blame our "poverty" on the fact that our Droids are useless at the moment. Yeh, I'm not much for the "bargain sellers", but the overall reason is that no one wants something they really can't use.

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heh. actually, the part that really cemented that you were advocating price fixing to better the profession in my mind was when you said "artisans are rich...architects are rich...droid enginereer are not. Why? because nobody can agree on a pricing method." I paraphrase somewhat. But that was the argument that threw me. (that argument's still wrong btw, :-b).

Anyway, I actually make a good profit on my droids. I'm a 4/3/1/4 engineer. maybe that helps me. I don't spend huge amounts of rare resources on the Level 6 modules to make my droids. I use level 4 modules almost exclusively, though for special orders, I'll use a level 5 medical module to make room for an extra crafting station. Somy droidsare cheaper than the ones that do use the Level 6 modules. and my droids sell amazingly well. I advertise my shop aggressively though, which helps a lot.

I agree that there are serious problems with the profession, but the droids aren't completely useless. A couple modules are useless, but the others work. The problem as I see it is that there just aren't enough modules. Thereis a serious lack of content in the profession, which is why I can easily compete with a Master Droid engineer in terms of the services I can provide to a customer even though I am 4/3/1/4.