Shipwright Archive

---

PaladinX333 wrote:

I haven't looted anything from space that I would actually use in the last two weeks. It's all crap now. It would be nice to loot things that are worthwhile at least once and a while.

On the ground I have been lucky enough to loot a few adhesives from low level NPCs. Other than that it is all crap too.

One of my complaints witht the ground game is that the weapon components that are looted from NPC are almost all worthless. You can loot a wide variety of power handlers,pistolbarrels, etc. and none of them have any use what so ever. I don't see any reason for that useless crap to even drop. Whats the point really?

At least the parts I get in space can be redeemed for cash. It's at least a little rewarding to get 3 level 7 droid interfaces that are worth 7K a piece. You don't get squat for the kill itself. The cash is all in the loot.

---

---

Jagged-F3l wrote:

Just want to toss in another data point, that perhaps only the veterns of the game will appreciate.

You have to go way back, before the days of ships, before the days of Jedi, before the days of vehicles, before the days of players cities and mounts. We went everywhere we wanted to go on foot. Having 100K credits made you a very well off player. During these days, creature handlers were greatly respected by all. Why? Anyone could have a single creature up to level 20. Everyone wanted a tamed rock beetle. Don't laugh. Back then, rock beetles were level 20, had a medium armor, and a lethal ranged attack. Creature handlers walked the deserts of Tatooine night and day looking for baby rock beetles to tame. Creature handlers were barking in Mos Eisley, Anchorhead, and Bestine to sell their beetles at 20-50K on any given day, depending on the demand.

Now, I'd like to make a couple salient points here. First, the economy of the day was such that 100K in your pocket made you a well off player. If you didn't have maintenance to worry about, you could probably live on 100K for 4-6 months, depending on how bad you beat on your on your weapon. Second, what did it cost the creature handler to tame those beetles? Nothing, except the skill they had earned and their time. Nevertheless, players were paying good money for them. I knew of newbies grinding 1K missions for days to be able to afford a rock beetle. It was all the rage, sort of like Pet Rocks were back in the 70's (wonder how much it cost to put a single Pet Rock on a shelf in the store--if these things were around today you wouldn't be able to touch them on eBay for less than $20 a pop).

---

God I remember that LOL and good point Jag.

I see the issue as one simple little thing.....

• Shipwright has a HUGE resource requirment to craft most every item

Players don't like paying big bucks for anything, We could have a chassis that took over 1 MILLION units of resources, if we charged 750K (.75 CPU) they would still complain.

Case made

Message Edited by Doo-Boo on 01-03-2005 05:59 AM

1. They only care about themselves and have not a care for the greater good of the game and profession.


2. They're completely ignorant of the truly dynamic economic system that SOE created...with the farce that is the ground game these days, the merchant and economy system in this game are truly one of SOE's biggest selling points.


3. They have it out for the "elite power gamers" and the "crafting kingpins" of their respective servers and apparently wish to "teach them a lesson."


4. They just don't care.

Now, some of these can be remedied obviously by educating some of the masses out there. Unfortunately we are dealing with a community who run the gamut of real world society, from 13 year old kids to 50 year old retired US Marines, from the unemployed, just starting a job tomorrow college student (That's me!) to the 20 year veteran of computer networking, from people who play 2 hours a week to people who play 20+ hours a week. You try educating a grizzled Marine veteran or a 13 year old ADHD kid...it's not the easiest thing in the world, believe me, I've done Adult Education and Middle School Education in my time...even in a classroom setting it's hard to do. And we're in a game, supposed to be having fun, remember?

So what the heck do we do, Scythy?!? Well the sad end of it is that no matter how many people we reach, you'll still come across people who just don't care, or have an oversensitive revenge gland, and there's no quick-fix for those. I"ve come across many a "Master" shipwright in the last couple months who, after a brief lesson in macroeconomics (I should really make a macro for it, it'd save me a lot of time each time) come around to my, our, way of thinking. Try to reach out to those who you can, it's really the best we can hope for. But the pilots are not the people to run to, it's your fellow "Master" shipwrights who need the educating. I use the term "Master" in quotes because anyone can grind a profession, it takes an amount of skill, intelligence and common sense to be able to say you have mastered something, not green boxes in a video game.

As an aside, regarding the comparasons to other professions, Shipwrights have it good in only one sense. The rare resources that we require for certain items are always spawned, available in ready quantities, and even are not "capped" on statistics (conductivity on steel, etc) or concentration (80%+ spawns of Fermionic Ore.) This character started as my alt, I bought him right around Christmas of last year. It took me 6 months to get Class 3 Solid Petrochem, required for Advanced Vibro Units...into Vibroknucklers,a staple for most WS income. It took me 8 months to get Atlantium Carbonate Ore, required for the construction of T21 rifles. This doesn't justify the comparative pricing of low end weapons, Swords cost me next to nothing but sell at 5-6k all day long, and don't get me started on the Great Powerup Scam. If I were to sell my VKs at my Shipwright prices, well I wouldn't be above 1k/VK, but think of the 6 months of idleness before I could make them, and also consider the 20 million I dumped into getting my +12 Experimentation, something no shipwright requires (yet?) Take it as you will. The only thing I come close to my SW margins in WS is in grenades. A givenImperialDetonatorcosts me 251 resources, I sell by the crate of 25 for 55k. 10 CPU on that would be 62500...Shipwrights are not the only ones feeling the selfish player hurt.

---

Scythykins wrote:

Unfortunately even if some group consensus were to be reached here, we would be unable to effect any major change. There are just too many "Crazy Larry's Starships" out there who happily go about selling for 2-3 CPU or less and think nothing of it for several reasons:

1. They only care about themselves and have not a care for the greater good of the game and profession.


2. They're completely ignorant of the truly dynamic economic system that SOE created...with the farce that is the ground game these days, the merchant and economy system in this game are truly one of SOE's biggest selling points.


3. They have it out for the "elite power gamers" and the "crafting kingpins" of their respective servers and apparently wish to "teach them a lesson."


4. They just don't care.

Now, some of these can be remedied obviously by educating some of the masses out there. Unfortunately we are dealing with a community who run the gamut of real world society, from 13 year old kids to 50 year old retired US Marines, from the unemployed, just starting a job tomorrow college student (That's me!) to the 20 year veteran of computer networking, from people who play 2 hours a week to people who play 20+ hours a week. You try educating a grizzled Marine veteran or a 13 year old ADHD kid...it's not the easiest thing in the world, believe me, I've done Adult Education and Middle School Education in my time...even in a classroom setting it's hard to do. And we're in a game, supposed to be having fun, remember?

So what the heck do we do, Scythy?!? Well the sad end of it is that no matter how many people we reach, you'll still come across people who just don't care, or have an oversensitive revenge gland, and there's no quick-fix for those. I"ve come across many a "Master" shipwright in the last couple months who, after a brief lesson in macroeconomics (I should really make a macro for it, it'd save me a lot of time each time) come around to my, our, way of thinking. Try to reach out to those who you can, it's really the best we can hope for. But the pilots are not the people to run to, it's your fellow "Master" shipwrights who need the educating. I use the term "Master" in quotes because anyone can grind a profession, it takes an amount of skill, intelligence and common sense to be able to say you have mastered something, not green boxes in a video game.

As an aside, regarding the comparasons to other professions, Shipwrights have it good in only one sense. The rare resources that we require for certain items are always spawned, available in ready quantities, and even are not "capped" on statistics (conductivity on steel, etc) or concentration (80%+ spawns of Fermionic Ore.) This character started as my alt, I bought him right around Christmas of last year. It took me 6 months to get Class 3 Solid Petrochem, required for Advanced Vibro Units...into Vibroknucklers,a staple for most WS income. It took me 8 months to get Atlantium Carbonate Ore, required for the construction of T21 rifles. This doesn't justify the comparative pricing of low end weapons, Swords cost me next to nothing but sell at 5-6k all day long, and don't get me started on the Great Powerup Scam. If I were to sell my VKs at my Shipwright prices, well I wouldn't be above 1k/VK, but think of the 6 months of idleness before I could make them, and also consider the 20 million I dumped into getting my +12 Experimentation, something no shipwright requires (yet?) Take it as you will. The only thing I come close to my SW margins in WS is in grenades. A givenImperialDetonatorcosts me 251 resources, I sell by the crate of 25 for 55k. 10 CPU on that would be 62500...Shipwrights are not the only ones feeling the selfish player hurt.

---

If you paid 100 cpu for the Desh Copper, Class 3 Solid Petrochemical Fuel and Planite Copper to make your Advanced Vibro Blade Unit instead of waiting for a spawn to harvest it yourself the +5300 credit cost could be easily absorbed into the price of the final VK. And not only would nobody be aware of it but they would not complain about a 10k-15k price tag for the final VK. That's what this is about here. Eventaking in account rare spawned resources in other professions, those professions are capable of charging higher cpu for their products than Shipwright without receiving half the complaints. Yes, Doctors may be paying 100-150 cpu for high quality Avian meat to make their buffpacks. But in the final breakdown of the total resource cost for a full series of buffs is usually breaking the 400 cpu mark.

It's not so much 'greed' as it is simply volume. To make a pack of Proton III Torpedos requires a little more than 13x the resources to make a Vibro Knuckler. 53x as much to make a Tier 0 chassis. With those types of volumes, people are already paying a significantly less cpu than they do for the products and services from other professions. If I were to charge 125,000 credits for a single pack of Proton III Torpedos, 100 CPU, people would call me insane. But they prolly paidfar more than that for most of their ground equipment.

---

Rogue1970 wrote:

To make the point hit home a bit more.....

Average price for a set ofgood PvPComposite Armor : 450k (3,000 resources x 150cpu)

Average price for a 101k mass X-wing chasisto PvPin space: 300k (60,000 resources x 5cpu)

If a shipwright charged Armorsmith prices an X-wing chasis should be 9 Million credits EACH.

An armorsmith can also make unlimited amounts of armor in a factory - while he sleeps. EVERY item a shipwright sells (except comsumables) has to be hand crafted ONE AT A TIME.

Now who's greedy?

---

Actually a good set of PVP Composite uses well over 5000 resources. Even though factories could be used to craft armor, it takes a loooooooooooong time to run in the factory. Try making armor sometimes, its a lot more difficult than crafting Ships. You can't really compare Weaponsmiths and Armorsmiths prices to SW either.

When I hear people complain about paying 3 cpu for a ship chassis I usually tell them to pickup SW and make it themselves. I especially get a kick when I see a person on the trade forums auctioning steel for like 20 cpu and then complain that ships are too expensive.

What I personally do, if I see a SW selling chassis or other parts for 1-2cpu, I buyout there vendor. I do absolutely no work and make more money than them. This holier than thou attitude they have also "Oh, I just want to give my customers awesome prices and not rob them." is complete bs.

AS has the highest mark up of any profession. Back in the days, I could sell one chest plate with 90% base for 1 mil plus. That's about a 1,000% mark up