Shipwright Archive
Thread: Those of you grinding Shipwright look hear
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ravingbantha
Sun Nov 07, 2004 8:42 pm
#1
I have seen many players post about charging cheap prices for their chassis becasue they are grinding out shipwright, and they are very low. I am a master and looked at the first z-95 I made with my grinding grade resources, and I made one yesterday I made with high end resources. The difference.... very little I was able to add on a few hundred pounds of mass, and added about 60% to the Hitpoints.... But in the end this made little difference. That much hitpoints will only let you last a a second longer in space, once a ship is loosing chassis hitpoints, it's all over anyway.
I ground shipwright, and put every chassis I made on my vendor for 10 cpu and have sold them all. I contenstantly restock. If you sell at 5 cpu or less your only hurting yourself. You can't afford to buy the resources you need to recover.
Hear's how it works. You spend 1 million on resources (all you really got).... let's say you got lucky and bought from a real sweet guy (or had the forsight to stock up early when prices were cheap) and you paid 2 cpu... so now you have 500k of resources. This will get you to about 2-0-0-0, but now your broke and it took you all of 20 mins to burn that. So to get some more money you sell your chassis at 5cpu to get back some of that. You sell a z-95 for 25k (5cpu), now you can go buy a little more resources.
Hear's the catch, with the current market you'll most liekly be buying at 5cpu... but once agin lets say you find a nice guy and he sells to you at 3cpu... you've now got enough resources to make 1 more chassis. With that 25k at 3cpu you got 8k in resources, a Z-95 takes 5k in resources... Now if you sell at 10cpu you made 50k off that same z-95... even if you only find the resources at 5cpu you still get 10k resources and can make you 2 more chassis.... If you get lucky and find that 3cpu guy you now have over 16k in resources, enought to make 3 chassis.
Now as you well know not every chassis you make will sell right away, so you need every little edge you can get to halp you with this most expensive grind.
The other downside to selling at 5cpu now is, your customers will come to expect this from you, and other shipwrights. When the time comes and your a master and this is how you earn your money people will still want to buy at 5cpu and will critisize you for raising your prices.
So keep all this in mind when grinding shipwright.... if your in for for a quick buck, then sell your resources to a shipwright. Average going rate for steel and ore these days is 5 cpu, more if they are green bar quality.
Hope some of you are just starting down the path of Shipwright take some heed, and don't kill yourself in the grind.
OdiousEncounter
Sun Nov 07, 2004 9:22 pm
#2
Wish I could do that 
. I've been shouting for weeks and haven't managed to sell a single one of my starter ships at 40k.
. I've been shouting for weeks and haven't managed to sell a single one of my starter ships at 40k.
Loki_Ashaman
Sun Nov 07, 2004 9:25 pm
#3
I'm selling all of my chassis right now at 5cpu, I harvest all my own resources so I'm still making a tidy profit... although I'm still short of master, and trying to keep a vendor stocked. I have good sales, and really haven't noticed that much difference between the chassis I've built at different levels in the tree.
On the other hand, I had a guy walk into my shop last night while I was building for a friend, take one look at my TIEs and exclaim about my outrageous prices and demanded I cut them in half. I informed him my prices were not dropping (most of my customers have told me my prices are cheap), and he spouted off the prices he saw at another shop. I asked him why he wasn't shopping there, but alas the poor pilot couldn't remember where that shop was. I laughed him out of my shop as he left to find this wonderous vendor... The prices he quoted me came out to 2cpu. I'm tempted to find that illusionary vendor myself 
ravingbantha
Sun Nov 07, 2004 9:33 pm
#4
Do you have any vendor's? I was also fortunate enough to have this set upbefore hand and my server already knew that location. If your having problems selling at that price, find a master wearing a helper tag, see if you can sell to him, at a little lower than what he sells for.
I know on my server, i'll buy up cheap chassis and resell them, wish I could help you out there, but I'm sure you'll find someone who will be able to hook you up.
PugBalato
Mon Nov 08, 2004 2:37 am
#5
ravingbantha wrote:
.....
Hear's how it works. You spend 1 million on resources (all you really got).... let's say you got lucky and bought from a real sweet guy (or had the forsight to stock up early when prices were cheap) and you paid 2 cpu... so now you have 500k of resources. This will get you to about 2-0-0-0, but now your broke and it took you all of 20 mins to burn that. So to get some more money you sell your chassis at 5cpu to get back some of that. You sell a z-95 for 25k (5cpu), now you can go buy a little more resources.
....
You're assuming that we all buy the resources we need to make our chassis and components. I'm certainly not. Now, if you're able to sell all of your wares for 10cpu then that's good. However, if I'm able to sell them at 5-7 cpu and make a nice profit (because I'm harvesting my own resources) then I should hopefully be selling more than you and making a bigger profit. Plus I'm offering my customers (and perhaps even your customers) a cheaper alternative.
Mankind00
Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:24 am
#6
I'm not a ShipWright yet but I will be once Activision sort out the UK distribution soI can get my second copy, however from my experiences as a Pilot & knowing a few ShipWrights as well as my Shipwright experience from beta I think chassis are currently way too over priced.
Master level chassis, 150k resources selling at around 7+cpu. That makes them well over the one million mark. As it stands at the moment with the chassis decay rates this ship isn't going to last that long so it is way to much.
When I do go SW I will be limiting my selling to the public but I will be doing some, however for my chassis I will be making them with low quality resources but cheap. I aim for my chassis to be 5cpu at the most, idealy lower. If I buy the resources for a Master ship for 2cpu (quite low quality) thats cost me 300k, now if I sell that at 2cpu more I'm still making 300k per chassis. Sure it won't be a great chassis but the people I sell to will know that I'm selling these like this as I know first hand what it's like to have to buy these chassis as often as you do.
As it is going at the moment Starships are going to end up been limited to only the very rich (the high level ships anyway) & in my opinion thats just not right. I belive that the chassis buissness was designed to be low markup but still large returns on money (which it is the way I've said I will probably do it), much like archi where, on my server at least, you can often get a BER13 harv for around 125-140k creds, so around 4-5cpu. If they did away with chassis decay then I would raise my prices but this is what I'm going for untill that time.
The componant buissiness is differnt to this though & should probably have a higher markup & it will which I agree with. But chassis, in my opinion, need to be kept cheap so that everyone can aford them without having to join a solo-group to go make money, especialy as I'm willing to bet that solo-groups won't exist after the CU, & that will have a big knock on effect to the crafters, even if not all of them have realised this yet.
But yeah as I keep saying thats just my opinion, don't flame it but by all means comment weather you disagree or agree.
CerionSkydreamer
Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:49 am
#7
I swore I wouldn't post in another pricing post, but here I am again, lol...
Right now, the market is wonky...an inflation spike has got resources priced pretty steep. Now as a SW I can support the inflation and buy resources at the current high prices (even for 'grind' quality) or I can take the market-correcting route and harvest my own resources. I've chosen the later because resources, imho, are more overvalued than Enron Stock at the moment. Since, as the original poster pointed out, using HQ 10 cpu resources really is a waste, any resources I harvest for chassis have a market value of under 5 cpu. Therefore, by charging 5 cpu, I'm neither undervaluing the finished product, nor contributing to the inflation spike.
So until Resources come down in price, I'll not be buying much, and certainly never 10 cpu HQ resources for a chassis in which it makes no difference.
Right now, the market is wonky...an inflation spike has got resources priced pretty steep. Now as a SW I can support the inflation and buy resources at the current high prices (even for 'grind' quality) or I can take the market-correcting route and harvest my own resources. I've chosen the later because resources, imho, are more overvalued than Enron Stock at the moment. Since, as the original poster pointed out, using HQ 10 cpu resources really is a waste, any resources I harvest for chassis have a market value of under 5 cpu. Therefore, by charging 5 cpu, I'm neither undervaluing the finished product, nor contributing to the inflation spike.
So until Resources come down in price, I'll not be buying much, and certainly never 10 cpu HQ resources for a chassis in which it makes no difference.
Kinshi
Mon Nov 08, 2004 11:46 am
#8
I concur, charging 10 CPU *IS* a waste , mainly becuase it wont take long before EVERYONE has 1, 2 or 3 ships and the market for new chassis will go down because there just isnt anyone left to sell to. Also, the grind to master is owned by people who have huge stockpiles of resources and large harvester farms, and can afford to produce components cheaper. Kudos to them.
Thats not to say smaller shipwrights cant make it, its just you have to forget about being a 'General Motors Corporation' and more about being a 'Corbin Motors'. For a small vendor, you need to make contacts, see what your friends need, find a niche that no one else is filling in your corner of the galaxy.
You may even need to relocate your business out of your home town (or even off planet) if there are too many shipwrights there.
I saw this phrase posted here somewhere else. Basically a tricked out Z95 in the hands of an Ace will kick the ass of a tricked out X-Wing in the hands of a trained squill. I dont care how loaded up and how big of a mass you have, your butt will still be whomped by a ace pilot in a technically 'lesser' ship.
There is an old saying about having champagne dreams on a beer budget. Think about that.
Thats not to say smaller shipwrights cant make it, its just you have to forget about being a 'General Motors Corporation' and more about being a 'Corbin Motors'. For a small vendor, you need to make contacts, see what your friends need, find a niche that no one else is filling in your corner of the galaxy.
You may even need to relocate your business out of your home town (or even off planet) if there are too many shipwrights there.
I saw this phrase posted here somewhere else. Basically a tricked out Z95 in the hands of an Ace will kick the ass of a tricked out X-Wing in the hands of a trained squill. I dont care how loaded up and how big of a mass you have, your butt will still be whomped by a ace pilot in a technically 'lesser' ship.
There is an old saying about having champagne dreams on a beer budget. Think about that.
ravingbantha
Mon Nov 08, 2004 3:57 pm
#9
PugBalato wrote:
You're assuming that we all buy the resources we need to make our chassis and components. I'm certainly not. Now, if you're able to sell all of your wares for 10cpu then that's good. However, if I'm able to sell them at 5-7 cpu and make a nice profit (because I'm harvesting my own resources) then I should hopefully be selling more than you and making a bigger profit. Plus I'm offering my customers (and perhaps even your customers) a cheaper alternative.
Your right I am assuming that some people have to bu their resources.... Becuase many do. I have gotten alot of tells asking how I was already a master shipwright, and they gasp when I tell them it took me 2 hours to do it. It's becasue like I said I had and still have a large stockpile of resources available to me. I know people that got the game the day it went live and are still working on shipwright.... My original reason of this post was to let the little guys, the ones that are scrimping by, know they don't have to make a sacrifice in their pricing just becuase they are not master... Pople like you and me, who have plenty of harvesters at our disposial are not mostly effected by this.
I'm gonna sell at 10cpu for chassis and 40cpu for components, I've made 40 million in a week and sales are not slowing down... If I don't sell 1 more item I'm still happy with what I made. I would like to see other shipwrights make what I made, it's real's nice having this money.. I can buy new things to collect, and it would be cool if others had this option, but by undercutting yourself your really only hurting you. There are still people on my servrer that still sell really cheap... but I still made 5 million yesterday in chassis sales alone.
Good luck to all...
MackAgp
Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:04 pm
#10
Have to say i've not even tried to recover any of the resource costs, but then it's only really cost about 1m in harvesting.
Didn't seem worth the time and effort to try and sell them , much quicker to use practise mode
ravingbantha
Mon Nov 08, 2004 5:20 pm
#11
MackAgp wrote:
Have to say i've not even tried to recover any of the resource costs, but then it's only really cost about 1m in harvesting.
Didn't seem worth the time and effort to try and sell them , much quicker to use practise mode
More power to you man... I didn't have the heart to do that.
Stikjok
Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:59 pm
#12
I have to respectively disagree with you.
By selling every chassis I've crafted (I'm not using practice mode) at 5 cpu I am making every credit back I've spent to make my chassis and other items, plus a profit. Granted I'm not making 40 million the first 2 weeks as you claim, but my bank account has more in it now than it did before I started spending credits to run harvesters, pay contracted miners, and when necessary buy recourses (last resort). And keep in mind I'm still spending on harvesting/contract mining/and buying.
It has been my experience (former Master Armor Smith for over a year) that a fair price and good customer service is what it takes to make a successful and profitable long lasting business. There are a few things about your post that tell me that you are not in this for the long haul, but the quick credits;
- You always referred to working you way up to master as a "grind"
- You sound as if you assume every player will be buying resources
- Your "catch" scenario works from the assumption that as soon as a beginner sells a chassis he or she has to run out and get more resources
- And most of all you've contradicted yourself in your own argument for higher prices.
How did you contradict our self you may ask; well first you said "I am a master and looked at the first z-95 I made with my grinding grade resources", then you said "I ground shipwright, and put every chassis I made on my vendor for 10 cpu and have sold them all".
So which is it; you sold them all, or still have some you can't sell?
In my opinion you are trying to;
- Justify your outrageous prices
- Limit the impact of the low price sellers from taking your business by convincing them they are selling too low
- And maybe even discourage others from taking a shot at shipwright
This post sounds so much like the big American automakers sounded when Honda and other low cost imports began moving into the US market. Look at them now.
Chewie101
Tue Nov 09, 2004 1:47 am
#13
CerionSkydreamer wrote:
Therefore, by charging 5 cpu, I'm neither undervaluing the finished product, nor contributing to the inflation spike.
So until Resources come down in price, I'll not be buying much, and certainly never 10 cpu HQ resources for a chassis in which it makes no difference.
Price increases are anti-inflationary. Price increases powerfully assist in reducing demand and increasing supply so that inflation can be brought to a halt.
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