Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendors and their associated costs
what about making droid/machine vendors a flat rate and NPC vendors a much lower rate but add a "commission" to there paycheck.
Lets say 20 maintenance on Mr. Bulky, 15 on Mr. Droid Bartender and as low as 5 (depending on eff level) for NPC's. But on NPC's add a "commission" percentage on SALES. So if the NPC never sells it, they dont get there comission.
My base issue with this is how it would impact the starting player.
A player who is advancing through artisan can only sell relatively low end things. Giving them the highest vendor cost seems kind of a kick in the jimmies. Not only do they only have under 200cr items to sell, they have to pay a huge fee to do so.
A master merchant (or a master weaponcrafter, etc) isnt going to care about themaintenance costs at all.
I think one thing we could do is to grant 0 lot stores that can hold vendors as you advance merchant. This would give the merchants a decided advantage by being able to open stores on multiple planets without having to tax new artisans.
Regards,
Artuk
Instead of making an escrow account (would love to see the bugs with that lol) why not just take it off the money that gets put in your bank on the sale?
Heh maybe even make the email you get that says "Auction successful, item sold for x amount. Minus tax ofy amount,z amount has been placed in your account."
And we all know it wont be any lower than 5% if they go this route. The devs seem to like the number 5 and multiples thereof.
What would be cool is to have each planet with a different tax rate and have it fluxuate depending on the number of vendors in the area. Only one in the area, make it lower to encourage more people to set up shop and as it starts to get over populated, make it more expensive. I'm thinking a range of 2% to 10%. This would encourage people to set up shop in less populated areas to encourage growth in those areas. Ohh maybe have the option to have a slicer "pay off officials" to get a lower tax rate (aka slice vendors for you). They should also add this sales tax to bazaar transactions as well.
Lots of things to make it more like a real business.
The efficency rating just lowers your base maintenance.
Someone else mentioned in another thread to have the efficiency line give you options to how you want to pay maintence fees. I think that's a great compromise. Some people may prefer the variable rate, based on merchandise (the current non-bugged way) while another option could be small flat fee, small variable rate. The last option can be large flat fee, no variable rate. Each one would have plusesand minuses (well in a perfect world). I liked that idea equally as well.
Also to add my support... Move vendors out of business III.
I believe it should be per hour basis not per cost also. I don't care if it is 2,000 per day and lowers as you go up the efficiency line.
You have to rent the equipment, if I have 1 item I sell for 20 credits I should not have a vendor. But if I have 500k worth of items I shouldn't have to pay 30k credits (not sure the exact amount)
Doing by percentage is insane, that isn't how business is run. You pay for the overhead of the shop and you pay the person a set hourly rate to be a cashier/warehouse handler.
It should be a percentage on sales done because. I sale Stimpack. I cans sales to one or 2 customers per days.
Some days i will sell 5 stimpack A at 100 credit eacth
and some other day i will sell5 Stimpack B at 200 Credit each
To be sure not to be out of stock not to loose sales i have to put at least 8 items of eatch.
Those % per days based on the stock is rediculus I will loose credit and it wont make my little operation profitable.
Right now i have only the vendor machine, but one this weekend i will try to get my Merchand skills so i can be more efficient and it looks better too but if it cost too mutch i will just forget about it and sell on bazzar only!
That really suck!
I like the sales tax idea alot actually. And then moving the vendor rate to a flat rate on top of the sales tax. I would say a standard vendor rate between 5 and 15 would be fair with a 5% sales tax. (I also liked the idea of having different rates on different planets).
I still do worry about vendors with lower rates making it even easier for the non-merchants to have vendors and then reduce the overall need of merchants entirely. Not that we are even needed as it is for the most part. This to me is the biggest concern with reducing cost of vendors. I agree that vendors as they stand cost too much, but I would mostly say that vendors that merchants own cost too much, I am fine with the vendors from Biz3 costing too much as I think they should given the ease players have access to them.
As a side note, given that Lok, Endor, and Yavin are no longer going to be able to have houses built on them, I guess ya won't have to worry about travel costs to your shops there=P
I would prefer fees to be based as a percentage of sales. Efficiency could lower the percentage.
I would very very much not want to see the payment added to the retail cost. I'd rather see it taken out ofa maintenance pool. If someone tells me they have 500 credits in the bank, i don't want ot have to sit with a calculator figuring out how to make it come out to 500. I want my items to appear with the prices I give them.
I would do it just like the real world.
We hirer a person for example Minium Wage Teenager (yes I think we should be able to hire Teenagers int he game) at what $5.15/hr... They work for 8 hours and we have to pay them what $41.50.. Now part of that should be cut like 10% of that money we pay to the vendor should be sent to the governing system to be distributed throughout the city we work in... Like maybe the Doctors/Medics get a small cut of that 10%... but that is a differant story and will never happen.
We need a 6cr/hour Maintance fee to pay vendor.
We also need a way to set a Sales Tax into the vendor (WE ASSIGN) on how much sales tax we wish to charge the customer.
Then there is a Hard Sales Tax which is set by the system. This is the percentage that the umm Planet gets from each sale. It knows how much we sell and how much we owe. Now we can charge a 0% sales tax but we have to pay the planet tax from our sales which decreases our profit. Or we can set sales tax to be exact amount to pay planet tax or we can price gauge our clients and make more money then we owe to the planet tax.
Just my 2cr's worth...
Starshine Surprise - 150.00 cr
Sales Tax - 3.75 cr ( 2.5 % ) ( round up to 4cr )
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Sale - 153.75 ( 154 ) credits... That is how much is charged to the customer.
Now on that sale say our planet tax is 5 % so the planet government is going to expect to get 7.5 credits ( 8 ) from that sale. So the planet takes their 5 % and 146 credits is deposited into our account. Now say we sell only that 1 thing in an house our profit is actually 140 credits... Cause 6 credits went to the pimpled wookie for his hourly rate...
That is how I wish the system was....
Ohh yeah these percentages are from how much we sell an item for... Say I sell:
Starshine Surprise - 150.00cr
Sales Tax - 3.75 cr ( 2.5 % ) ( round up to 4cr )
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Sale- 153.75 ( 154 ) credits... That is how much is charged to the customer.
Now on that sale say our planet tax is 5 % so the planet government is going to expect to get 7.5 credits ( 8 ) from that sale. So the planet takes their 5 % and 146 credits is deposited into our account. Now say we sell only that 1 thing in an house our profit is actually 140 credits... Cause 6 credits went to the pimpled wookie for his hourly rate...
That is how I wish the system was....
Grrr **edit** system 