Merchant Archive

Thread: Let's talk ship pricing! Storage

DocSavag
Sat Oct 23, 2004 10:04 pm
#1

There are other aspects about the Ships and Components that are going to be intersting to see how they shake out. The loot system relies on components that you get as loot that are good but can be made better by a shipwright. But this is more and more difficult the higher the component is. Basically for each level you have to have that number of the same general type of component to reverse engineer them into a better component.

If you have 4 Level 4 Engines you can combine them in an analysis tool (if you are a shipwright) and the result will be one level 4 engine that takes the best stats of the four tools and combines them into the finished product.

This means there will be a market for looted components to be bought by shipwrights and reverse engineered. What the charge on those will be is anyone's guess at this point because there was no real way to test the value of those in beta because there isn't a real economy the way there is on live.



----------------------------------
Chataka Windae
Rifleman/Combat Medic
CEO, Windae Enterprises
Mesric Sanctuary Founder



LadyIllyria
Sat Oct 23, 2004 11:59 pm
#2






Jaer_Allanon wrote:

I have a couple of questions...


1.) Can any of these components be sliced?


2.) Are there any hands down popular winners that people will buy. (ie. Composite Armor, stun weaponry, etc..)


3.) Do ships come with certification requirements for the pilots?


4.) Do you guys really know what is going to make a great starship? Or are you just guessing what is going to be popular and make the padded leather seats and cup holders because everyone loves them?






1) No.


2) I learned the hard way that shields are a must have. But with eight to ten lines of items you can experiment on, there is no one thing that wins hands down. Each component is individualized, each component even has a number of sub-components that can go into it. With my limited experience I did in Shipwright, I worked mostly on less mass for components, faster recharge rates, faster firing rates, but I sacrificed damage and some manuveribility to do so. There is just too many variables to give one thing that will sell. It's going to take anyone doing shipwright/pilot a few months to test out even half the variables (a quarter?).


3) Yes. Pilots must be certified not only in the type of starship they can fly, but in the level of components they can have in their ship.


4) I would think that anyone that tried out shipwright in Beta has an idea of what type of market they want to fill. I do not think that any one shipwright will be able to produce everything available and have it stocked regularly. I tried doing that just with ship chassis on Betatest and after going through a few million resources (just in metals) in under an hour, and not even getting one of each made, maybe about half... I quickly saw that this would not be an approach I was willing to take.


Remember though, that even after they buy the ship chassis off the shipwright, it's just a blueprint. They still have to take the blueprint and pay even more credits to have it turned into a ship. I think that pricing will have to take this into effect. Not perhaps for those doing shipwright to lower their prices, but boy are the customers going to scream bloody murder when they find out that after we charge them fair market value, they still have to pay more credits before they can fly.


As for me, I will likely do custom orders only. I have a strong customer base and they are already asking if we will have a shipwright on staff at our business house. It's definitely going to take a consultation to get a ship and it's components matched to the pilot. I will also probably only do Imperial ships, at least at first. There is simply just too much that goes into making a ship. I would bothlove it and hate it if the other crafting professions had this level of complexity in it. I can't wait until I get my copy of JTL (the day after it goes live most likely), and can start working on it.



Mistress Kyphi Makarha


Dimear
Sun Oct 24, 2004 3:47 pm
#3

I personally think there's still lots of money to be made at first as a shipwright. In the beta, there were a million people (in the reb city) screaming for Y-wing chassis. I imagine the beginning of the beta will be the same way. Everyone starts with the noob ship, then after 1/2 hour of playing, they want the level 2 ships. I envision shipwrights in popular merchant cities standing near their vendors, restocking as fast as they can to keep up with demand. I doubt price will be an issue at first. 250k for a Y-wing chassis? No problem.


And I think that at the beginning, the chassis, reactor, and engine will be all that you need to worry about. In the beta, looting all of the other components was easy, and they were high quality (for low level pilots). As a new JTL player, I doubt I'd spend much time shopping around for a better turbo when I just looted 5 of them. But everyone will need the chassis asap, and I think demand will be much higher than supply for the first few days. I could be surprised though.


For the high end ships, you're talking about using a LOT of very good resources. On Shadowfire, some of the best resources sell for 30 cpu or so. And they're pretty rare. So I imagine a shipwright selling a ship made with the best resources for 20-30 million or so. I personally doubt a ship made with the best resources will be worth that much, but people with too much cash like to know that they're spending it on the best. So I imagine that the best shipwrights (possibly with the FS crafting skill), using the best resources, will be able to charge an incredible amount for the best ships.


As for components, I imagine that after a while, the bazaar will be flooded with them (unless DocSavage is right and the shipwrights keep buying them all). So I don't see a lot of profit in them unless you are one of the best on the server for a particular type of item (like weaponsmiths now).





Thus sayeth Dimear

mynutsman
Sun Oct 24, 2004 3:55 pm
#4

I think Elioi has a good idea here. For shipwrights like myself who aren't aligned with any guilds, it makes a lot of sense rather than covering the whole spectrum to just focus on a few. I will probably only make chassis, engines, and capacitors. I will leave it up to the resource barons to craft weapons and the like.




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lisasdarren
Sun Oct 24, 2004 5:25 pm
#5






DocSavag wrote:
A lot of shipwrights won't bother to try to sell the Tier 0 chassis they make. They have this impression that those chassis aren't worth anything. They are wrong of course becasue no one in their right mind wants to use the n00b ship without hyperspace any longer than they absolutely have to.





But since gaining tier 1 chassis means less than an hour in flight with the starter ship buying a tier 0 chassis will not be necesary for most.




Trax Treort - Rifleman, Fencer & Imperial Pilot
DocSavag
Sun Oct 24, 2004 6:37 pm
#6



lisasdarren wrote:


DocSavag wrote:
A lot of shipwrights won't bother to try to sell the Tier 0 chassis they make. They have this impression that those chassis aren't worth anything. They are wrong of course becasue no one in their right mind wants to use the n00b ship without hyperspace any longer than they absolutely have to.


But since gaining tier 1 chassis means less than an hour in flight with the starter ship buying a tier 0 chassis will not be necesary for most.




I flew most of Tier 1 and some of Tier 2 in a Z95 because it handles better than the Y-Wing. There are choices and a LOT of people won't be racing through tier 1 like that.



----------------------------------
Chataka Windae
Rifleman/Combat Medic
CEO, Windae Enterprises
Mesric Sanctuary Founder



DingoBoi
Mon Oct 25, 2004 3:52 am
#7






LadyIllyria wrote:


Remember though, that even after they buy the ship chassis off the shipwright, it's just a blueprint. They still have to take the blueprint and pay even more credits to have it turned into a ship. I think that pricing will have to take this into effect. Not perhaps for those doing shipwright to lower their prices, but boy are the customers going to scream bloody murder when they find out that after we charge them fair market value, they still have to pay more credits before they can fly.






this does not matter. Just because they have to pay a 'berthing fee', will not impact my pricing of ship chassis. This is a complete seperate issue and does not justify a lower cost.




~ EPC SHIPYARDS ~
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Premium Ships & Components Featuring 5 Master Shipwrights * Powering the Eclipse Galaxy
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LonelyGhost
Mon Oct 25, 2004 6:09 pm
#8

Its gonna be rather painful to see my beloved resources start to go. I've had much of them for many many months. I am very seriously considering specializing in maybe 5 of the components.



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rexan
Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:05 am
#9






DocSavag wrote:

This means there will be a market for looted components to be bought by shipwrights and reverse engineered. What the charge on those will be is anyone's guess at this point because there was no real way to test the value of those in beta because there isn't a real economy the way there is on live.




Not ture. Which this will probably mean is that power PvPers will try to collect all the loot for themselves. Loot items will go for ridiculously high prices. Especially the ones with the desirable stats.


Shipwrights will most likely become like weaponsmiths. The pilot will being in 4 looted engines with good stats. Then the shipwright will RE it for a fee, then the pilot will go on his way.





Rexan Ryu
Master Smuggler
Flurry Server
DocSavag
Wed Oct 27, 2004 12:20 am
#10



rexan wrote:


DocSavag wrote:

This means there will be a market for looted components to be bought by shipwrights and reverse engineered. What the charge on those will be is anyone's guess at this point because there was no real way to test the value of those in beta because there isn't a real economy the way there is on live.

Not ture. Which this will probably mean is that power PvPers will try to collect all the loot for themselves. Loot items will go for ridiculously high prices. Especially the ones with the desirable stats.

Shipwrights will most likely become like weaponsmiths. The pilot will being in 4 looted engines with good stats. Then the shipwright will RE it for a fee, then the pilot will go on his way.






There will be a certain amount of that too but, especially at lower levels you loot a LOT more components than you could possibly use. In beta we would delete them like mad. I suspect there will be a market for those however in live. We'll see.



----------------------------------
Chataka Windae
Rifleman/Combat Medic
CEO, Windae Enterprises
Mesric Sanctuary Founder



Cafa
Wed Oct 27, 2004 10:18 am
#11






DocSavag wrote:





rexan wrote:





DocSavag wrote:

This means there will be a market for looted components to be bought by shipwrights and reverse engineered. What the charge on those will be is anyone's guess at this point because there was no real way to test the value of those in beta because there isn't a real economy the way there is on live.




Not ture. Which this will probably mean is that power PvPers will try to collect all the loot for themselves. Loot items will go for ridiculously high prices. Especially the ones with the desirable stats.


Shipwrights will most likely become like weaponsmiths. The pilot will being in 4 looted engines with good stats. Then the shipwright will RE it for a fee, then the pilot will go on his way.






There will be a certain amount of that too but, especially at lower levels you loot a LOT more components than you could possibly use. In beta we would delete them like mad. I suspect there will be a market for those however in live. We'll see.




Here's the problem with the new additions -- STORAGE.


If there is any single issue correspondents could champion that would help crafters and merchants alike, this is it.


You might know that I am an advocate for 1000k stack, and vendor-like storage for crafter resources, but maybe correspondents could harp on thing that are plan unfair in the storage scenario first and chip away a brick at a time.


For example:


Merchant Tent/Small Naboo Style 2 = 1 lot = 75 storage units
Small houses/Medium houses = 2 lots = 150 storage units
Hospitals = 3 lots = 225 storage units (best storage in the game)
Cantinas = 5 lots = 250 storage units = 1.66 lots wasted
Large houses = 6 lots = 250 storage units = 2.66 lots wasted
PA Halls = 7 lots = 250 storage units = 3.66 lots wasted


People should not be penalized for playing the game to the fullest. Cantinas, large houses and PA Halls should be things you lavishly decorate, not acquire to have enough of your resources in one spot to craft.


This should be:


Cantinas = 5 lots = 375 units of storage (cantinas, more often than not, are the heart of player cities - let us have enough storage to decorate the things!)
Large houses = 6 lots = 450 units of storage (we should be able to display our trophies in one spot, which I cannot do with a large house today)
PA Halls = 7 lots = 525 units of storage (PA Halls should reflect lavishly decorated grandeur reflecting the work of hundreds of people over the period of one year plus to excel.


This is not an outrageous request. IMO, it could be accomplished with the change of three whole variables, most likely and would go a long way towards fair gameplay that respects performance by individuals and groups over the life of this game. Short-sheeting our lots does not, nor is there a viable reason for it when people that just want to have storage for storage are simply placing rows of factories for maximum storage efficiency.


Fivo Asia




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JTGAlpha
Wed Oct 27, 2004 1:57 pm
#12

Okay: My Two Cents and a Follow-Up Question...


First of all, have you guys considered the looted components factor? I'm admittedly rather ignorant on the crafting end of this so I have no idea where that comes into your pricing. But I think it's important to include in your scheme, because, while I have no idea how the loot tables finalized, I DO know that looted ship parts were EVERYWHERE. I'd filled my inventory with them twice, and some of them were top notch. This was as a simple novice pilot. I"m sure they got scaled down at some point, but that is something to consider as the loot-whoring business will ALSO be taking an interesting turn...


Which brings me to my Follow-Up Question: What do you guys anticipate PAYING for these looted components?



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DingoBoi
Wed Oct 27, 2004 4:51 pm
#13





buying loot components I expect to pay 5-10k each to start... eventually, I'll probably taper that down to just the better components.


I believe after reverse engineering you can get a piece of a schematic for boba's ship... which could be any piece... plus it's a limited 8 use schematic so we'll want many of these. *at least if i kept up on this right



~ EPC SHIPYARDS ~
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Premium Ships & Components Featuring 5 Master Shipwrights * Powering the Eclipse Galaxy
u A R B O R E A L H O R I Z O N S u L A R G E S T S H I P Y A R D S I N T HE G A L A X Y u Naboo -6500 3300u
u M E G A C O R P u P O W E R u Talus -546 -2767u
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