Droid Engineer Archive

I'm sorry guys, but this is just wrong:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Chilastra&message.id=31008

65k for an R2 unit? That's a little over 31 credits per unit of resource....

I'm not going to post there because I don't want to look like I'm messing with his business, and I'm not posting here because I'm envyous of the money or even that I dislike the guy or his business. I just think it's bad for us ALL for other crafting professions to see that we're charging this much! I mean, a medium mining installation takes almost 50% MORE resources than this loaded R2 droid, yet it's selling for less than 3 credits a resource unit on the same server on average.

I mean, think of it this way, why will the devs spend any time "fixing" our class if they notice that we're making more money than any of the other crafting classes? I think that any dev will think "what's wrong with a class where all the masters are multi millionaires?"

Flame me I guess....it won't be anything new, but I'm sincerely not trying to be an ass, I'm just thinking that this kind of thing is bad for our profession as a whole.

harvesters are a necessary item in day to day operations of almost any artisan.

droids are a luxury item.

It's a disservice to DEs to charge low prices and allow everyone and their monkey to have a droid on day 1. In under 1 hour I can take a brand new character and make 50k credits...1 hour and I should be able to afford a fully tricked out droid? I think not. As I stated droids are not a requirement and thus are granted the ability to be a higher price. It was even stated by Sony in the recent interview (it's in the discussion thread) that prices were well below what they expected and thought they should be.

It still doesn't change what I'm saying though in that Droid Engineers, at these prices, will be the most wealthy of all crafters before long simply because we don't require that many components. I just know that if I were a dev, my thought would be "what's to fix? they're rich as hell and making more money everyday".

That's my point, more than anything else. I think he's overpriced, sure, but that's neither here nor there; however, I also think that this type of advertising affects our entire profession for the reasons I've already outlined: if we can already make money, wha'ts there to fix?

Honestly, I'm not flaming and didn't intend this to be a flame. We disagree, but that's a part of life. I did feel though that it was worth a discussion because of the impact that public announcement of prices can have on devs.

If everyone else here thinks it's kosher to charge 31 credits a resource on droids, then so be it and I'll go with the flow...but, I think it's a bad idea to be TOO successful when we want things to be changed/fixed ..hehe

I didn't think you were flaming, but I did feel that I should give my take on it as well.

As a side not, DE are nowhere close to being the wealthiest crafting class...I sold/sell at those prices and have always had a TON of business on Chilastra, but there are at least 12 weaponsmiths that I know personally that have a minimum of five times the credits I do.

It's all about keeping things in perspective though.

I can buy that response

Can you explain to me how one can get 50k credits in an hour as a new character? I think if I saw this in action, I'd feel a lot less guilty charging a lot for droids... I have novice carbineer so surely I could do it ..hehe

Sure -- I'll even break down the steps for ya (if this is an "exploit" or whatever, then making it public will get it fixed faster, but I don't think it is)

1) Get Novice Artisan skill
2) Find an Artisan Mission Terminal and waypoint it
3) Look through "Survey" missions and locate the most common requests
a) This appears to be different for each planet/city -- Keren, Naboo: Inert Gas, Radioactives, Ores
4) Pick a direction and walk 512m that way -- survey all the resources to find one that is 70%+ of one of the common types
5) Waypoint the spot 512m away at 70%+
6) Return to mission terminal and pick up 2 missions for the type that was 70%+
7) Walk out, sample, walk back -- repeat

Doing this you can get 1600 credits for walking 1024m and surveying one time. Don't even have to open your tool, just make a hotbutton for /survey and hit it once you hit the 512m range from the terminal.

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Aelorean wrote:

I'm sorry guys, but this is just wrong:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Chilastra&message.id=31008

65k for an R2 unit? That's a little over 31 credits per unit of resource....

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You should be THRILLED to see people charge that much. I hope they're charging that much on Kauri when I'm making my droids (any day now I'll be starting to make them). I'm not planning on charging 65K for mine, but, if everyone else is, then when I sell mine for 50K or 40K or 30K, it'll look like my prices are a steal and I'll attract business from all over the galaxy!

Read and add your commentary to this fairly lengthy thread which discusses in detail the pricing methodologies used by various Droid Engineers:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=droid_engineer&message.id=15029

31 credits per unit?

That doesn't bother me. If we were selling the raw RESOURCES at 31 credits a unit I could see a complaint.

The simple fact is, crafting takes time and care, and this is reflected in prices.

While I am a droid engineer, my main business is weapon powerups. People buy multiple units, sometimes entire factory crates, and I get lots of repeat business. My current best seller is a unit that improves maximum damage by over 33%, minimum damage by over 16%, and sells (individually) for 600 credits each. That's SIXTY credits per unit. I charge fifty credits per for crates, and forty credits per to my friends.

The cost of items is not only related to the cost of the raw materials.

I sell my r2s for about 15-18k, i wish I could get that much for them. Espcially since right now i believe i can put two IV mods to equal one lvl 6.

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JonasBlackmore wrote:

Sure -- I'll even break down the steps for ya (if this is an "exploit" or whatever, then making it public will get it fixed faster, but I don't think it is)

1) Get Novice Artisan skill
2) Find an Artisan Mission Terminal and waypoint it
3) Look through "Survey" missions and locate the most common requests
a) This appears to be different for each planet/city -- Keren, Naboo: Inert Gas, Radioactives, Ores
4) Pick a direction and walk 512m that way -- survey all the resources to find one that is 70%+ of one of the common types
5) Waypoint the spot 512m away at 70%+
6) Return to mission terminal and pick up 2 missions for the type that was 70%+
7) Walk out, sample, walk back -- repeat

Doing this you can get 1600 credits for walking 1024m and surveying one time. Don't even have to open your tool, just make a hotbutton for /survey and hit it once you hit the 512m range from the terminal.

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Try un equiping your best weapon.. then request a survey mission... Its an bug.. based on difcullty of combat missions code. at best you should only be gettin 700 for a survey mission. And soon the devs will fix that..

Alright then -- 1400cr for walking 1024m...even if they drop it down to 500cr per mission...it's still 60k/hr

Its not wrong, consider this, as novice weaponsmiths and armorsmiths were raising thier skills they had a market for all of their items as people were always upgrading thier gear. They made money and XP from crafting, as they skilled up they made better gear and people gladly paid 20K for armor upgrades and weapon upgrades. Droid Engineers can't sell anything until they to expert blueprints and can make at least medical crafting stations and armor module 2. So we grind away for XP making no money, spend hundreds of thousands of credits mining and searching for extrusive ore that is rare and if we are lucky pick up a few sales on low end Droids simply because there a few new players that can only afford low end Droids. Most players will not spend 5k on a low end droid when they can spend 10-15K on a high end Probot with lvl 6 Armor. Now 65K for a medical droid is a bit over-the-top but 30K for a Top line Probot or Surgical Droid is a fair and resonable price for our time and resources spent getting there. If people don't want to pay the price fine, soon only Droid Engineers will posses High End Probots and thats fine by me, I like the idea of having and endless supply of expendable combat droids. Lets just get the Developers to allow the use of gernade or rocket launchers on droids and then people will pay any price.