Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: DE merchant pricing guide
any help would be much appreciated
MIggl wrote:
Here's the formula I use:
Price = [Base Resource Unit Cost] * ([Skill Level + 1) * [Number of Resources Units needed] * [Item Quality]
Price - what you would charge for this item
Base Unit Resource Cost - how much the average resource costs in your galaxy, I use 4, some people use 5
Skill Level - Skill level in skill tree (beginning with Novice = 0, Blueprints 1 = 1, blueprints 2 = 2, master = 5) in which you gain the ability to craft this item.
Number of Resources needed - Total number of resources required, including resources for components and sub components.
Item Quality - Experimentation level of end product.
As an example (fictional, not based on any schematic):
6402 = 4 * (5+1) * 275 * .97
I have all this in an excel spreadsheet as well. Pallida, how does this compare to your formula?
CrafterLevel of 1.0 indicates MASTER (Higher numbers indicate lower spots on the SkillTree)
ResourceUnits*(UnitResourceCost+(SchematicComplexity/CrafterLevel))
(This value is raised by 33% if a SPECIFIC resource (i.e.: Lidium Extrusive Ore) is required)
Retail market price =
Message Edited by Pallida on 04-07-2004 01:49 PM
Bah.
Set a price how much you think your work is worth.
If they sell too quickly, up your price; if they don't sell, perhaps lower it.
All these cpu schemes and complex calculations are great for making sure you aren't ripping yourself off, but to use them to price your droids is a mistake.
The biggest mistake people make with droids is underselling themseleves because they don't understand that people indeed do want droids, they just don't know where to get them and what exactly they do most of the time.
So you can either make ends meet and be happy with that by doing cpu schemes, or you could be filthy rich like me - I've made just under 30 million since Publish 7. I did it by setting my prices for what I felt my work was worth, and people are begging for more.
In a game where weapons that take less than 150-200 units of resources goes for 100K, or a suit of composite that doesn't take much more (I was flabbergasted when a friend sent me the ingredients list of composite - it's not very much) for 500K, there is no reason to roll over and sell for nothing just to get sales. While they need many named resources (though not THAT many - one BER-10 harvester on a good spot for a few days could keep a WS going for months or longer), there is still no reason for us to not price accordingly.
Serious DE's price by the market and for function - for instance, how many hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of credits do you think a doctor is going to make because he can sit outside of a Starport and sell his buffs and not have to sit in a medical center?
It's personal choice to be sure, but if making a large amount of money is yourgoal, cpu schemes are only going to keep you down. Then again, if youhave no interest in making money, you should at least use one to make sure you aren't LOSING money. Unless you don't care about credits at all, in which case more power to you - I just hope you don't kick yourself some day around the Space Expansion because you can't buy a ship or afford any of the other new toys. 
AO
Oh well.. like I said earlier about "most folks..."
ssssssssssssssSSS(:-<
Pallida wrote:
Oh well.. like I said earlier about "most folks..."
ssssssssssssssSSS(:-<
LOL.
That's a rather myopic attitude.
"Most folks" don't care to get it "right"?
Because only your way is "right"?
I visted your page - it's very nicely coded, btw. However, a Probot chassis and a R3 chassis do not cost the same amount - yet you start your base prices on them the same.
That's fine, for you, but it's not for everyone. I have used pricing schemes like you before; I had a detailed in-game catalog that worked EXACTLY like your webpage does - base chassis price followed by individual costs for modules, chips, armor.
Again, that is GREAT for making sure you aren't getting ripped off yourself - but to price based upon it is to bow to the cult of CPU which was invented by people that don't craft.
Your page said your company was closed for business- and I have made just under 30 million in the past three weeks.
If that makes your way "right" and my way "wrong", then let me be the first to say I love being totally wrong...
AO
I'm with Audio on this one. Second best thing to do is talk to your customers.
AudioOrgana wrote:
Bah.
Set a price how much you think your work is worth.
If they sell too quickly, up your price; if they don't sell, perhaps lower it.
Pallida wrote:
AudioOrgana wrote:
I visted your page - it's very nicely coded, btw. However, a Probot chassis and a R3 chassis do not cost the same amount - yet you start your base prices on them the same.
First off.. that is not my page. I suggest that you re-read my original post.
My apologies. I misread - totally my fault. I was just taken by the "my way is the right way!" - I guess my mind just freakishly assumed that if your way was the "right" way you were sharing it with us. I should not have read so quickly.
Second, I have been in the IT industry for over 30 years... the past 15 of which have been devoted to Business Process Requirements Analysis, Application GUI design and Application Oracle RDBMS design/analysis and administration. I tend to see everything as "data-driven. Show me a something that has numbers, percentages and related data and I'll reduce it to it's elemental components and build something that doesnt require any subjective considerations and gives a consistent result with minimal effort. Given that everything can be (pretty much) quantified and treated in this manner, by anyone with the desire to see it like that, I'll have to believe that "my way is the right way."
Again, as I said, a very myopic point of view.Oh, and thanks for the resume - I make my living creatively, therefore I price the way I do. You make your living with numbers (or "data") you price the way you do.
However, your real-world profession doesn't make you "right".
Since you haven't shared any of the details of your "right way" I guess there isn't much else to comment on it - while the ideals of your thinking are (somewhat) noble to someone that only sees the world as numbers and figures, I price for my effort and demand more than materials, because the materials are so cheaply available.
What is rather amusing is that you still insist there is a "right" way - if anything invalidates the claim it's that very proclaimation.
So yeah... slam dunk all you want... Matters not to me. Keep doing it your way... I'll keep doing it mine. If I dont get rich... so what?I refuse to gouge my customers.
sssssssssssssSSS(:-<
Hehe...so now anyone that doesn't price like you is a gouger? Perhaps I just sell many more droids than you do. You have no idea what my prices are, nor do I know yours since you have posted several times about your "right" system, yet haven't given any details. I know more about your personal life at this point than about your method of calculation.
I think I'll take your route - it doesn't matter to me if you make money or not - but forgive me for finding it odd that you insist that your way is the only "right" way, when a) you won't share details of it, and b) my financial status automatically sends your mind to the word "gouge".
Yup, just like the real world - all rich people must have lied and cheated and taken advantage of people to get rich - I mean, hard work and knowing how to market and having the reputation of constructing quality products can't have anything to do with that, right?
There is nothing wrong with pricing via any scheme or method - unless you insist that yours is the "right" way or you are not happy with your financial progress. I think if more DE's priced the way I do, you would find much happier people in the profession - that's just my opinion. I get to tend factories for a week or so, make a ton of consistently high qualitydroids, and get to go out and enjoy all the other things the game has to offer for 2-3 weeks while I watch them sell and the money roll in until I do it again.
In either case, my point remains - if this is the definition of "wrong", I'll wear the title ever so proudly. Out of the several hundred droids I have sold post-patch, I have gotten ONE complaint that wasn't a bug - the other day someone emailed me and said "hey, you said it had level six armor but it says 'none'." I explained to them that the armor rating is different than the armor level/resists (and how it was nerfed), and with a smile they said, "Thank you!" and that was it. They just wanted to make sure I had put armor in - they thought "none" meant, well, none. If I was "gouging" people, I wouldn't see some of the same people return to buy more, or to bring their friends along, or be treated like royalty when I run across a group of people with 4-5 of my droids out hunting on Endor.
Making money is a priority for me, because it's one of the only "goals" in the game after a certain point. Trying to work hard enough to reach certain milestone amounts is actually fun for me. Will I ever spend it? Probably not until I leave the game, when I tip a million credits to every person I see until I'm at 0.
Would take me awhile to find that many live, non-afk people
....
Regardless, my way isn't the only "right" way, and neither is yours - it may be the "right" way for me, and yours the "right" way for you - that is the distinction you begin to learnwhen you begin to develop a world view.
AO
bah! C'mon guys....
Either way is the right way, as both of you have stated variuos times in your posts. I'll refrain from telling you all the REAL right way (my way! muahaha). j/k ;-)
All that matters is that we sell our stuff and can make a living doing so, and have fun doing it1
AudioOrgana wrote:
Pallida wrote:
AudioOrgana wrote:
I visted your page - it's very nicely coded, btw. However, a Probot chassis and a R3 chassis do not cost the same amount - yet you start your base prices on them the same.
I think I'll take your route - it doesn't matter to me if you make money or not - but forgive me for finding it odd that you insist that your way is the only "right" way, when a) you won't share details of it, and b) my financial status automatically sends your mind to the word "gouge".
Pallida wrote:
Audio, I never accused you of "gouging".You inferred that all by yourself. (Some phychologists might imply that it indicates a "guilty conscience".. however, I do not)
"Keep doing it your way... I'll keep doing it mine. If I dont get rich... so what?I refuse to gouge my customers." Hmm, that sounds like an accusation to me. Your sentence structure indicates a direct correlation between you doing it your way and not getting rich, and saying it doesn't matter ("so what?") followed by a proclaimation - was the proclaimation just totally unrelated and a product of bad paragraph structure?
As to the details of how I price... scroll up. My mechanism is there in grey and black.
Again, shame on me. Now that I have read it completely, I find that my opinion has gotten stronger. It's all based on cpu in one way or another. I outlined above the reasons I feel that that sort of pricing isn't optimal for making a living as a crafter.
The point still remains as it did before - your assertion that your way is the "right" way is narrow minded, exclusionary, and a localized view of life.
You continue to price your way, I'll continue to price mine. If I don't price by cpu, so what? I refuse to have themonochrome lifeview of bean counter.
AO