CUEmu - Thread Posts

Jjiaah

Tue Oct 19, 2004 2:36 pm

Rhysen wrote:

Howdy yall. After looking over the crafting professions, I decided on Droid Engineering because of the complexity involved. But I'd appreciate any tips to help me along (and help me to cut down on the daily survey mission runs for creds). Here's what I have so far:

Intermediate Droid Production

Intermediate Droid Blueprints

2x 10 BER Mineral Harvesters, one on cheap steel and one on extrusive ore (for manipulator arm package building materials)

1x 4 BER Mineral Harvester on copper (dunno why but figure I'll need it one day)

1x 4 BER Chemical Harvester on fiberplast

1x Small Tatooine house + 3 vendors (for Merchant XP to work my way up to Advertising 3 for my shop eventually)

.9x Equipment Factory (still earning the creds for it but will finish shortly)

Can anyone think of anything I might be missing? Or have some suggestions on starting to supplement my income from the DE profession, instead of relying on Surveying 4 and a waypoint made 3 days ago? I'm currently on Tatooine as I'mmost comfortable having started here. But looking at the droid market via the Bazaar can get depressing (people selling several +110 medical r2 droids for 6k and such).

Tip 1) As I'm sure you have already done, read the stickies for everything that you will need. This is obviously the first tip any new DE will receive.

Tip 2) Get your hands on some (if even just a handful) of all of the resources listed in here: One Sticky to Rule them all: Everything resource-wise a DE needs . The "named" list of specialized resources will be rare and hard to come buy, but the sooner you start looking for spawns, the easier your life will be down the road. What you've started digging up already is an excellent start. Unfortunately, there is little way around the daily surveying and harv moving short of buying the resources from someone else.

Tip 3) You will probably want (if you can afford it) a second factory and more BER10-13 (14 for power)harvs. I understand that may take you a while because of cost, but it's a worthy goal. The 2nd factory will be a HUGE help to you, and if you're going to be pulling up resources, may as well get as much as possible... you're going to need it anyways. Fortunately, factories don't burn power while they're not running so you don't have as much worry about that.

Tip 4) Once you have your factory(s) up, start making runs of EGP's and EMM's (assuming you're a Master Artisan... if you're NOT a Master Artisan I'd advise you BE MASTER ARTISAN... sure you can get schematics from other people, but being MA is far and away easier and more ecconomical) as you will be needing a TON of them later. Droid batteries are another good thing to start running. You'll need those as well, and people will buy them by the crate, andthe bazaar is an excellent place to sell them. If you're able to make higher end ones (at least 4 charges) you could likely sell them for 4-6k (I sell my crates for less, but I stay off the bazaar). People not wanting to hunt for a DE vendor search the bazaar first, so even at 6k a crate you will still be likely to get buyers.

Tip 5) Ignore other peoples selling habits, unless you are just doing a survey for to range your own prices. An R2 with 110 Med for 6k is seriously undercutting the rest of the DE industry on Scylla. I don't know about the economy on your server, but I'd be willing to wager that's likely the same. Concentrate on getting to MDE and if you desire selling what you CAN make for a reasonable price. You may even concider sitting at a busy starport and selling droids on the spot, like MSE's as silly pets. Let people know in your advertisement that you're working hard to earn Master and trying to break even on expenses. Heck, before I was DE I purchased 3 MSE's from someone who was doing exactly that (for 500c each)... and they had no modules.

And finally, the most important tip....

Tip 6) HAVE FUN with this. If you're not having fun and start sweating stuff this early on, DEwill likelyend up feeling more like a burdon than a blessing. DE imho, is the most awesome of the Elite artisan-based crafting professions because we are the only one that gets to watch our creations come to life! Enjoy that! Once you're a MDE and have a booming business, then you can sweat not having a resource or two. In the meantime, know that you are well on the way to mastering one of the hardest... and most rewarding... professions the game has to offer. Enjoy yourself.

Rhysen

Tue Oct 19, 2004 3:09 pm

#2

Question: Why the 2nd factory? I'm semi-attempting to plan ahead but can't really see the cause for a 2nd factory yet.

Also, I was planning to go Master Smuggler, which would kill the Master Artisan idea. I'm already hittinga brick wall on control units for Droid Customization Kits and figure the EGPs will be worse. But from grinding through Engineering and getting those first two boxes of DE skills, I know if I don't shoot something on occasion I'll end up shooting myself. Going full fledge tradeskiller would drive me insane.

How bad is it without Master Artisan?

duncje

Tue Oct 19, 2004 4:00 pm

#3

If you're not going to master artisan, make REAL good friends with one. You may be able to find one on your server who is willing to make you factory schematics for all the EMMs, EGPs, etc. that you will need.

You don't have to go full-time crafter to master artisan and DE, but you may have to give up on the smuggler idea. You have the skill points to master artisan, DE, and an elite combat prof (Pistoleer, TKA, etc.) but smuggler eats too many skill points because of the 2-novice requirement.

Beebo
Master Droid Engineer | Shipwright | Master Artisan
Crazy Beebo's Discount Droids & Ships {-1075 -2924} Bestine, Tatooine

snoman321

Tue Oct 19, 2004 4:16 pm

#4

Hey there.

Without Master Artisan, you will probably find things pretty annoying. The parts are essential to making even half-ways decent droids. If you don't mind the cost, you can likely find a Master to produce them for you, but you'll eventually need quite a few parts. And you'll need factory runs too, especiallyof EGPs & EMMs.

I too have the need to kill stuff but just went the route of a single ranged tree as it doesn't use up as many skill points. I may not be the biggest man on campus when it comes to combat, but I can fight most anywhere with quite a few points invested in pistoleer. You couldn't pay meto give up Master Artisan though (plus selling vehicles is such a great source of income as well).

A few tips I might offer on resources: If you want to accelerate your grind, make sure you have an abundance of steel and fiberplast. Things speed up nicely when you are making Adv Droid Frame Units, but they consume a lot of those 2 resources (especially steel). Once you become a 2204 DE, you can make a lot of droids that are useful & don't require experimentation (storage, crafting, med, barker, entertainer). It was at this point that I started really selling droids & could make the money I needed to run heavy harvesters.

When you do reach this point, you should have a good supply of (from need-the-most-of to need-the-least-of): steel,fiberplast, copper,polymer, inert gas, extrusive ore, intrusive ore, and crystallinegemstones (fellow DEs am I missing anything?). None of these need to be of quality. You'll be able to make sellable droids that go for 10-50k depending on what you're making. That should fund the necessary grinding that you'll need to Master the profession and start making the quality modules that go for the big bucks (bomb droids, harvesters, droids with high level modules, combat & tank droids, etc.).

Best of luck!!

Omab Espeonugik

Bloodfin

Rhysen

Tue Oct 19, 2004 5:01 pm

#5

Hrm...maybe I'll take Master Artisan while working on Smuggler. I've already got Engineering, Business and Surveying 4 along with 350 AP. I just don't have any interest in Dom Arts.

Is building a stockpile of the MA components a possibility? Like running a couple thousand EMMs, EGPs and Control Units off to sit on for a while?

JavelinCatcher

Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:25 pm

#6

Rhysen wrote:

Hrm...maybe I'll take Master Artisan while working on Smuggler. I've already got Engineering, Business and Surveying 4 along with 350 AP. I just don't have any interest in Dom Arts.

Is building a stockpile of the MA components a possibility? Like running a couple thousand EMMs, EGPs and Control Units off to sit on for a while?

In the short run, yes. In the long run, no.

Oh, I should mention that my Gorath character has the middle two trees of Smuggler and Master Artisan. A pretty rewarding combination if you ask me.

Message Edited by JavelinCatcher on 10-19-2004 11:28 PM

----Nolhta Fyoen----Master Rifleman/Master Smugger----StarStrider
----Nolhta Fyoen----Master Droid Engineer----TestCenter
----Accoubacca----TKA/Commando---TestCenter
----Nolhta Fyoen----Master Droid Engineer----Gorath

CUAlpha: Team Droid Engineer

Jjiaah

Tue Oct 19, 2004 10:11 pm

#7

Rhysen wrote:

Question: Why the 2nd factory? I'm semi-attempting to plan ahead but can't really see the cause for a 2nd factory yet.

It's a HUGE time-saver... I'm sure any DE on here would second that. To put it into perspective...

An R3 Advanced chassis takes 2 identical Advanced Droid Brains (ADBs)from a factory crate. EachADB consists of 4 EGP's and 4 EMM's from a factory crate. To have enough to make 49 R3 Adv droid chassis(which are the biggest seller) you need 98 ADBs. To make only 99ADB's (100 minus 1 for making the schematic), you need 25 Crates of EGP's and EMM's each... and those EGP's and EMM's all have to be identical to each other, so each takes a factory run of 625 EMM's and EGP's (so they're all identical).

A run of this many of, say, just the EMM's is going to take several hours. Then you have to do EGP's. Then you have to do the ADB's which take even longer. This doesn't include Control Units, regular Droid Brains, Advanced Motive Systems (which must be crated for BLL's). Sure, most of them you could craft by hand as you need them. I do that frequently when I run out of crated items. But the time saved when putting everything together is enormous. You will use these things often enough that having them available in a crate will feel like a godsend after a while. I personally have 2 factories going 24/7, and 2 more I have access to when things are urgent.

The above example doesn't even brush on accessories like DroidRepair Kitsfor example. Those take 3 subcomponents. You are going to want those in bulk as people with combat droids will buy them with frequency. For 100 Droid Repair Kits, you need 101 of each of the 3 components. That's 3 factory runs. For 999 of them.... that's a full 1000 factory run of each of the 3 subcomponent.

I'm sure you are seeing at this point how a second factory cuts your work time in half.

Now, this boils down to personal preference of course.While to be able to make all DE items including the top-end R3 Adv a single factory is required, asecond factory is by no means an absolute. But you will be very thankful to have it. If you don't want to put down a second one, ask a friend for admin on theirs if they don't use it frequently. This is more friendly advice from someone who is doing this every day than law.

Rhysen

Wed Oct 20, 2004 12:46 am

#8

Howdy yall. After looking over the crafting professions, I decided on Droid Engineering because of the complexity involved. But I'd appreciate any tips to help me along (and help me to cut down on the daily survey mission runs for creds). Here's what I have so far:

Intermediate Droid Production

Intermediate Droid Blueprints

2x 10 BER Mineral Harvesters, one on cheap steel and one on extrusive ore (for manipulator arm package building materials)

1x 4 BER Mineral Harvester on copper (dunno why but figure I'll need it one day)

1x 4 BER Chemical Harvester on fiberplast

1x Small Tatooine house + 3 vendors (for Merchant XP to work my way up to Advertising 3 for my shop eventually)

.9x Equipment Factory (still earning the creds for it but will finish shortly)

Can anyone think of anything I might be missing? Or have some suggestions on starting to supplement my income from the DE profession, instead of relying on Surveying 4 and a waypoint made 3 days ago? I'm currently on Tatooine as I'mmost comfortable having started here. But looking at the droid market via the Bazaar can get depressing (people selling several +110 medical r2 droids for 6k and such).

Batleh

Wed Oct 20, 2004 1:40 pm

#9

Another point on the Master Artisan bit - For things like Control Units and some of the other MA parts you could probably make a few thousand of these and be okay for a good while (but who want's to store all those crates?). However, for EMM and EGP modules, think of this:

One of my big constant sellers are the Bounty Hunter droids. A seeker take s 2 EGP and 1 EMM, and a Probe takes 3 EGP and 1 EMM. I usually do a factory run of 1000 EGP's and 400 EMM's to give myself 199 of each, and I'm usually doing this about every 10 days or so.

As for the 2nd factory - a run of 1000 EGP's takes about 40 hours depending on where the factory is and how much you tinkered with them... I even have a 3rd factory that I leave in my back pocket so to speak that I can plant when I need something while my other 2 factories are busy, and factories are awesome storage units as well. (upto 200 per lot).

Baelor -
Master Droid Engineer
Master Artisan
Master Shipwrite
Proud resident of Bloodfin

Rhysen

Wed Oct 20, 2004 8:14 pm

#10

Well so far, I'm hating the resource relocation as my extrusive ore source vanished from Tatooine. Luckily I had just finished grinding out Advanced Droid Blueprints and can now make Advanced Droid Chassis for DE xp till the next resource shift brings some back.

The factory surprisingly has already generated a sale. Sold 4 crates of droid batteries for 4k each on the bazaar. I'll have the factory churn out some more and see if the trend continues. If so, then I guess it'll start paying for itself shortly. Which is more than the mineral extractors are doing atm. I almost wish for a brand new server where with a fresh start, some of what's now junk might actually be worth something. At least until a bunch of people ground out MDE.

Something I wish someone had told me before: grouping with your droid also boosts mission payout on survey missions. They become slightly more difficult, requiring more specific resource types. But it's doubling the payout and I'm still driving to the same waypoints I used before to do survey missions: my own harvesters. I just have to push 'Refresh' a little more often

On the Master Artisan issue, it looks like I'll prolly have to give up on being Master Smuggler/Droid Engineer. It seems like Master Artisans see my Novice Droid Engineer tag and start running before I can ask them for a schematic or crates of EGPs/EMMs. I won't bother to mention what it's like trying to find a Dual Wave Synthesizer.

And the undercutter with the 110 MCR R2 Advanceddroids...well a mail just told me I can ignore him. A 85 MCR R5 Advanced droid I put on the bazaar just sold at the same price he's selling the R2 units at. All in all, it's been a good day

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