Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: What It Takes To Make Master DE
Ok people, I put the DE skill tree to the calculator and here are the results. For those that have made Master DE, Wow!!! and Congrats!!!!! For those like me who have not made it yet, sympathy goes out in abundance for you.
These figures are based on making Droid Armor Modules 1 until you can make the Advanced Droid Frames. This does not take into consideration grinding through Novice Droid Engineer.
First 2 tiers with Droid Armor Modules 1:
Xps per item in practice mode: 90
Metal needed per item: 35
Gas needed per item: 8
Total Xps needed: 115,200
Total number of items that need to be made: 1,276
Total metal needed: 44,651
Total gas needed: 10,206
Cost at 4 Credits per item on the Bazaar: 219,429
Cost to obtain at .5 Credits with Harvesters (not including initial cost of the harvester): 27,429
Missions need to complete at bazaar prices 176
Missions need to complete at harvester prices: 27
Now comes the nasty part.
Grinding the remainder of the DE tree with Advanced Droid Frames.
Xps per item in practice mode: 462
Metal needed per item: 150
Gas needed per item: 70
Total Xps needed: 1,113,600
Total number of items that need to be made: 2,114
Total metal needed: 317,170
Total fiberplast needed: 148,013
Cost at 4 Credits per item on the Bazaar: 1,860,730
Cost to obtain at .5 Credits with Harvesters (not including initial cost of the harvester): 232,591
Missions need to complete at bazaar prices 1,861
Missions need to complete at harvester prices: 233
Totals (with a 10% addition for Critical Failures).
Total Xps needed: 1,228,600
Total number of items that need to be made: 3,729
Total metal needed: 398,003
Total fiberplast needed: 162,814
Total gas needed: 112,266
Cost at 4 Credits per item on the Bazaar: 2,288,174
Cost to obtain at .5 Credits with Harvesters (not including initial cost of the harvester): 336,541
Missions (@ 1,015 credits per) need to complete at bazaar prices 2,254
Missions need to complete at harvester prices: 331
Now you know why you are soooo tired.
Goss
I got to Novice DE buy grinding installations...
Sounds like I wont be able to continue this process to get to master de? I guess that makes sence, but it sure sucks!
And answering qustions like "WHat does you droids customization fades slightly more mean?" 40 minutes a night...
ANd in the mean time i can become a smuggler,
I'm starting to understand why so many DE's charge such high, outlandish prices;
they're trying to recoup the loss they took upon themselves by grinding.
That doesn't seem very fair to push the cost of you wanting to grind onto a customer.
Well in fairness I must take issue with this. I don't particularly blame the lawyer for charging more per hour to help cover his costs of going to school because he is providing a service that requires alot of work, Doctors and other RL professions are similar. I do not "push" my costs of skilling up on my customers, but I am sure as heck not going to charge 3x resource cost for something I made.
I do not speak for anyone else on this but I feel my time in game is valuable. On the issue of costs, I seem to spend alot of it running around loading up harvesters with fuel and money just to see a resource shift the next day. This added to the opportunity cost of running simple missions and making 20-40k per hour depending on mission and skill makes droids at least minimally costly to make.
Though I enjoy making droids, and I don't object to making stuff simply to skill up, I would rather destroy my product by using the practice key or simply destroy it outright instead of selling it for less than I think it is worth. I have told people and I continue to tell the agressive hagglers, "you don't have to buy from me, there are plenty of other DE that charge less, go find one".
Resources * Resource Cost (5) * Profit Margin (2)
For some droids I factor in that they need factory parts, or other items. I have created a spreadsheet that I use to track this. While my formula makes my prices seem high, consider this example:
Adv Probot 960 Resources * 5 * 2 = 9600c
I'm not exactly sure of the price, but you get the general idea. I'll add for armor or other modules, but I use the same general formula.
GRIND HOOOO!
I think I was the 2nd MDE on Tempest, maybe the 3rd. I sold bone armor and pet storage droids to pay for my grinding. I'm not recouping anything. But shouldn't a company recoup startup costs.
ArlanTH wrote:
It's possible to make master without ever grinding. I'm getting close to master and have not wasted any resources to grind with. I'm starting to understand why so many DE's charge such high, outlandishprices; they're trying to recoup the loss they took upon themselves by grinding. That doesn't seem very fair to push the cost of you wanting to grind onto a customer.