Droid Engineer Archive

As all of us are, I'm really down about how sorry the profession is. However, yesterday I made it to Probots and was excited about being able to make something useful. Next thing you know, I get a tell asking me how much I charge for Mouse Droids because he wants a lot of them. "Why didn't this guy ask me yesterday when I grinded 600 of them?" So I tell him 200 a pop, he says he'll take 10 of them. I ask him why he wants them. Reply :"Expendable Advertising". Yes my friends, the Droid Engineer has just stooped to being the lowest of the Artisans: The Master Billboard Designer. At that moment, I was utterly depressed, resigned to making 2k off of pathetic MSE droids. Yet, I try to pick my head up and start selling some more Probots. The next tell I get, some guy wants a Droid Chassis. I ask him what does he want to do with it. He says it would look cool in his house. Ouch! Not only am I low, now I'm a junk vendor, like Spencers, where you buy cool looking junk for your bedroom. I am soooo close to dropping the "profession" altogether. The next day I did alright, sold a couple probots and whatnot. However I just have to say to the next guy who steps on my feet :

I AM NOT A FURNITURE DESIGNER, I AM NOT INTERESTED IN HELPING YOU ADVERTISE. I BUILD DROIDS. YOU WANT SOMETHING FROM ME? YOU PAY FULL PRICE BUDDY.

I have a friend who has purchased several droids from me, just for advertising purposes. His latest is an R2 with, get this, NO modules in it. However, it DOES manage to patrol all the way between Coronet and his shop a kilometer away, which is all he wanted it for.

Do I feel 'dirty' or degraded for doing this? Not at all! I figure that droids are machine made for utility work, and if someone's choice of utility work is putting a placard on his robot and making it endlessly march, well, that's their choice.

As for furniture pieces, I've made a bunch for my shop of course, and so far I have built one for a friend, who asked for a protocol chassis with particular wording for the item name. However, I was quite sure to advise him that the chassis could be made into a complete droid in the future, if that so suited his needs.

I've sold lots of chassises for decorative purposes and made good money on it too. If people want them, I'll sell it to them. I still get xp and money for making them and they get a cool piece of furniture. Everybody wins!

I charge enough money so I don't care what they do with them.

You want a mouse droid? Basic no modules is 1500, because it's not worth my time otherwise.

You want a 3P0 chassis for your house? 25,000 credits because it requires rare resources.

R3 chassis? 20,000 because it requires 2 identical factory brains that are a pain to get.

R2 chassis? 15,000

See? You want it? I'll make it. For a price.

That was precisely my point. I WILL make the "furniture" becuase,quite frankly, I gotta make cash somehow. The point is that I am going to charge as much as the completed droid. And as for advertising droids..."But the Binary Load Lifter is SOOOOO much more visible, everyone ignores those mouse droids." If I'm going to make billboards, they're gonna be fricken huge.

I don't have any problem selling droids for furniture. Hey if they are willing to pay the price for it I have no problems selling them. Heck they do look cool and add alot of starwars flavor to shops and homes.

Many doctors LOVE LOVE LOVE surgical droid chasis for their hospital areas and in our PA's hospital equiped with one I get compliments on it all the time. Heck a 3p0 chasis is probably MORE useful as a chasis than a completed project which is kinda embarassing but hey.

Kaid

Why are you complaining about how people want to use your products? Just make them and sell them to us! I manage a mall on Naboo. I bought a big lifter from Toll who is great to work with! She sold me a a big lifter which is now what I call my "AdDroid" and a C3PO look-alikeand a R2D2 look-alike for furniture. She dud bit charge the price of a fully operational droid which really impressed me and ensured her alotof future business from me and my friends. Having them these look-a-likes in my store is truly one of the first things that has really made me feel that I was actually in the Star Wars universe. She was shocked when she told me the price for the big lifter and I told her that I didn't that was too much for advertising. She said most people immediately back off when she tells them the price. Up to this point no most have spent only a few credits on promotion. The cost of a big lifter is nothing compared to the exposure it has given me in the last few days.

So, I set my "AdDroid" named "SpaceWaysIndTadpoole, up in Theed, programmed an 8 point route for it,set it offand went about my business. An hour later while on Tatooine, Toll gave me a tell and said that my "baby" had just walked past her while she was doing business in Theed. That was pretty cool. It ended up running through out Theed most of the weekend. I intend to take it to other cities and let it walk around for a day or two at a time. So what tangible affect do I think it has had on my business? Well, since becoming a Master Architect, I have never sold more than one house a day. This past Sunday I sold 5 large houses. I had orders for two more that I could have delivered, butsimply I ran out of ore for the day. Do I think the increased business was due in some part to my "AdDroid"? I sure do.

I intend to buy one thesefor each of my store owners as well. I think they are great! So if your customers want you to be a furniture designer or an advertising agent and itmakes money, thenplease, make the darn money! Don't argue with us. You have to think about the intangibles. Who knows what other business you may get from people that we tell about you simply because you happily gaveus exactly whatwe wanted whenwe wanted it. So Droid Engineers have a new sideline business and you didn't even have to promote it! Now if you could just figure out how to produce those big lifters different colors for us..... And what about a revolving light on the top.....

I debated whether to post the above statement in your forum. Why invite the competition? But what could be more StarWars than droids moving around in a city? One thing we discovered is that you can't make the name very long, not like you can on the furniture droids. So you will have to carefully plan out the name that you give your "AdDroid". So SpaceWaysIndTadpoole is walking around through the cities all by itself.Lets see some companions out there with him.

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Burnham wrote:
As all of us are, I'm really down about how sorry the profession is. However, yesterday I made it to Probots and was excited about being able to make something useful. Next thing you know, I get a tell asking me how much I charge for Mouse Droids because he wants a lot of them. "Why didn't this guy ask me yesterday when I grinded 600 of them?" So I tell him 200 a pop, he says he'll take 10 of them. I ask him why he wants them. Reply :"Expendable Advertising". Yes my friends, the Droid Engineer has just stooped to being the lowest of the Artisans: The Master Billboard Designer. At that moment, I was utterly depressed, resigned to making 2k off of pathetic MSE droids. Yet, I try to pick my head up and start selling some more Probots. The next tell I get, some guy wants a Droid Chassis. I ask him what does he want to do with it. He says it would look cool in his house. Ouch! Not only am I low, now I'm a junk vendor, like Spencers, where you buy cool looking junk for your bedroom. I am soooo close to dropping the "profession" altogether. The next day I did alright, sold a couple probots and whatnot. However I just have to say to the next guy who steps on my feet :

I AM NOT A FURNITURE DESIGNER, I AM NOT INTERESTED IN HELPING YOU ADVERTISE. I BUILD DROIDS. YOU WANT SOMETHING FROM ME? YOU PAY FULL PRICE BUDDY.

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this thread rules

I get stupid requests all the time. I sold 10 seeker droids to someone yesterday, he wasn'ta BH. He wanted the names of the droids in red coloring named: SECURITY CAMERA it's funny.

I wish that ALL the droids had dropable chassis. I have a shop set up with samples of all those that will drop for customers to view. Kind of like a showroom...I have medical models, craftperson models, combat (if you could call it that) models, etc. Also, I use my own droids to do some advertising. In other words, why don't you use them the same way your customers did. Droids are made to serve...thats what they do.

Not to start trouble or anything, but how are people using droids as advertisements?