Merchant Archive

Merchants are a vital and rewarding profession in SWG, but most of their benefits are either passive boons like fee reductions, or abilities that get used only once or very infrequently. Unless you regularly move, dress, and re-stock your vendors, you really aren't using three branches of the profession more than once in a blue moon. Here are some ideas to give merchants some more active benefits that hopefully also add to the enjoyment of the game and make them even more viable as a PRIMARY profession.

Advertising:

Keep all existing benefits as they are, but add the ability to make advertising items on a Structure/Furniture crafting tool. Advertising items are indoor/outdoor furniture (like statues) that can have their names changed like backpacks, to serve as good advertising for your services. Though this would be fun for merchants, other players probably don't want to see ads all over the place.

Advertising I: Poster - A schematic using organic components that stands out as an ad. There could be a few variants (like how Architect Statues and Lampposts work), but the poster catches peoples' attention better than a backpack or an armor segment.

Advertising II: Billboard - A schematic using organic and mineral components and is quite large. Though it may go in a large house, it is intended for outdoor use. Like statues, there may be few different configurations.

Advertising III:Music Module - A schematic requiring an electronic component (from Master Artisan), and stands alone inside a house or added as an optional component into other ad schematics. This module plays the "merchant music" (from city guild halls with merchants). (A variety of modules with different tunes would be even better...)

Advertising IV: Hologram - A complex schematic requiring electronics components (from Master Artisan), and optional Music Module. This makes a 3D holographic display roughly the size of a person. Like statues, there could be multiple configurations.

Bazaar Visibility - The ability to make your vendor's items visible on the Galactic Bazaar. This would be even more expensive than registering the vendor on the map, but gives you great visibility to people who use the bazaar.

Master Merchant:Giant Holo - A complex schematic requiring electronics components in factory crates, and optional Music Module. This makes a 3D holographic display as big as a large statue. As alway, multiple configurations would be nice.

Reduced Bazaar Visibility Fees - Reduces the cost of Bazaar Visibilty.

Related Concepts/Options:

* Having the ad item's name "always on" would ensure that people see your ad text.

* Allowing merchants with Advertising III to register their poster on the galactic map would ensure wider visibility.

* Allowing mayors to tax ads in their player cities separately from building taxes would justify "paying for the ad".

* Outdoor ads should either take 1 lot (yuck) or 0 lots and have some other restriction like maintenance or a maximum number based on Advertising skill.

* Allow ad items to have "details" text attached to them that shows up when you examine the item. Merchants could use this detail text to provide waypoints to all their locations, or to explain prices and custom ordering, etc.

Efficiency:

I wouldn't change much except perhaps to add finer gradients to the benefits. For example, a 10% vendor maintenance reduction per level, rather than 20% reduction here and there.

Perhaps also add an "Increased Bazaar Price Cap". For example, 5,000 credits for bazaar items at Efficiency II, up to 10,000 credits at Master Merchant.

Hiring:

This is a bit more radical of a change... Currently, merchants select their vendor from a house control panel and depending on their Hiring skill get more options to choose from. Unfortunately, with the exception of terminal and droid vendors all the bonuses really just reduce how many times a person has to pick a random NPC vendor to get something they like. My idea is for hiring merchants to "harvest" NPCs - then "craft" them into vendors, player city trainers, or house/shop decoration. Examples follow (rough, meant to give ideas not dictate):

Novice Merchant:

Hire - This is a skill that merchants can use to recruit an NPC from a town. The option appears on their radial menu to hire them, and they will name a (high) price required to take them over. They then become an item in your inventory that you can trade, sell, or place in your home. Obviously, quest NPCs, trainers, and other "fixed" NPCs are not hirable.

NPC Vendor - This is a schematic that requires 1 hired NPC. This turns your NPC into a vendor that you can use, trade away, or sell.

Hiring I:

Reduced Hiring Costs - This lowers the cost of hiring NPCs.

Recruit I - This lets you summon a particular PC race/gender NPC to your location - it in effect generates a person which you can then attempt to hire. This should have a big Mind cost and/or slow refresh time so you can't clutter your location with unhired recruits. Recruits have random clothing like vendors do, and their hiring costs are higher than NPCs found by looking around towns. They last for a short amount of time (10 minutes), then vanish if they are not hired.

NPC Porter - This schematic requires 1 hired NPC and 1 backpack. This turns your NPC into a "pet" that holds items like a droid with storage (only perhaps more than 10 items). Usual pet rules apply.

Hiring II:

Reduced Hiring Costs

Recruit II - This lets you summon any race/gender.

NPC Employee - This schematic requires 1 hired NPC, and optional clothing items (up to 6 items). All it does is dress the NPC differently and offer you the chance to change it's name as per crafting items. The NPC Employee doesn't do anything, and is not a vendor, but still counts as an NPC and may then be put into the NPC Vendor/Porter/Trainer schematics.

Hiring III:

Reduced Hiring Costs

Recruit III - This lets you summon a particular skill category (i.e. "a bounty hunter"), useful for NPC Trainers and Mercenaries.

NPC Trainer - This schematic requires 1 NPC and 1 data terminal (as made by architects). The end result is an NPC trainer that a mayor with the right skills can place in her player city. An NPC trainer in a house is just furniture and doesn't actually train (otherwise it would cheapen the Politician's value). Politicians could still recruit random trainers as they do now, but this allows the merchant to hire a trainer with a particular look.

Hiring IV:

Reduced Hiring Costs

Recruit IV - This lets you summon a particular faction, useful for NPC mercenaries and to create vendors that are faction-specific.

Uniforms - Allows the merchant to place clothing on a vendor they own at any time. (The NPC Employee allows the merchant to sell "uniformed" NPCs to other people, but only the Hiring IV Merchant can change his uniforms regularly.)

NPC Mercenary - This schematic requires 1 hired NPC and optional weapon and/or armor. This NPC becomes a "pet" that fights. Usual pet rules apply. Use of the Uniforms ability allows changing weapons and/or armor later.

Master Merchant:

Reduced Hiring Costs

Roving NPC Vendor - Schematic uses 1 hired NPC and makes this person into a pet that acts as a vendor. Basically it combines the pet rules with the vendor rules. When the Roving NPC Vendor is in the datapad, nobody can get at its contents. The merchant must call the vendor out to let people buy.

Roving Droid Vendor - Like Roving NPC vendor but made from a droid chassis instead of an NPC.

Related Concepts/Options:

* Allow Image Designers to change the look of NPCs they own.

* Change how terminal and droid vendors are created. Artisan Business III gets a schematic to create a terminal vendor, using a vending machine created by artisan or architect (the different terminal types become new furniture schematics). Business IV gets a schematic to create a droid vendor, using a droid chassis created by an artisan or droid engineer (add the droid chassis types as new schematics).

* Maybe allow NPC Trainer placed in a house to train those with admin in the house, or with some other restrictions that do not undercut the politician's benefit but still provide value to the merchant who creates it.

* Add NPC Mission Giver schematics that act like the random NPC mission-givers in town.

Management:

It's always been troublesome that people can buy up management skill, put down vendors, then drop the skill. Unless you move your vendors regularly, there is no benefit to keeping high Management skill. The current solution proposed is to destroy vendors or increase their maintenance costs if a person has too many. This will cause people to accidentally lose items or money, which is not desirable.

Also, there are many non-artisan professions that craft yet have no way to sell their crafts above 3000 credits. They must invest 24 skill points in Artisan + Business just to get one bulky terminal. Bleh. Smugglers, Doctors, and Bio-Engineers should have easier ways to sell their wares. Here's an alternate use of the Management tree that rewards those who keep the skill, yet still allows non-artisans to maintain a vendor without exploiting the skill tree.

NEW RULE (suggested): Anyone can have any number of vendors. Vendors count as items in a house just like furniture. People WITHOUT MERCHANT SKILLS can only have 25 items in vendors (not 25 per vendor, 25 items total, just like the bazaar), and can only charge a maximum of 10,000 credits per item. Merchants can have larger stocks. If someone drops the skill down, their items do not vanish but they cannot list more items until they go below their limit. (Note, vendors are now made with schematics, as described with the Hiring skill ideas above. They can be traded or sold like baseball players.)

Business I: max price 20,000 cr.

Business II: max price 30,000 cr

Business III: 40 items total, max price 40,000 cr.

Business IV: 50 items total, max price 50,000 cr.

Novice Merchant: 100 items total, max price 100,000 cr.

Management I: 200 items total, max price 250,000 cr.

Management II: 500 items total, max price 500,000 cr.

Management III: 1000 items total, max price 1,000,000 cr.

Management IV: 1000 items per vendor, max price 2,000,000 cr.

Master Merchant: no item limit, no price cap

Related Concepts/Options:

* It might be reasonable to adjust vendor maintenance costs from this skill tree instead of Efficiency, or possibly even influenced by both. For example a non-artisan pays 40 credits per hour per vendor, while a Master Merchant pays just 10 credits per hour per vendor.

* Note that this new rule allows people to establish a vendor on EVERY PLANET, rather than always being limited to 6 vendors.

* The management tree would also be a great place to open up some of the better "customer control" ideas discussed in other threats: faction-based pricing, sales visible only to specific people, etc.

Closing Summary:

I realize that these suggestions are not perfect, and are probably too far from the current system to ever be implemented. Their purpose is to inspire new ideas for merchants, perhaps add to our wish-list, and to provide ways for merchants to have day-to-day play elements that more closely resemble their crafting counterparts. In addition, these ideas provide incentives for keeping high skill levels and providing more day-to-day benefits in every skill box.

Please feel free to reject or modify my suggestions, or even better to just add more ideas to the list!