Shipwright Archive

Times will never be better for the SW profession than right now. This is the growth spurt. After this, the market will settle out, and the unprofitable will fall away.

Most trends are the same.
- Advancing players will eat up chassis.
- Once the bulk of players has advanced to the upper chassis, sales will slow.
- Advancing players will eat up components.
- Once the bulk of players has advanced through the profession, sales will slow.
- Every time a new ship comes out, there will be a surge of demand that will eventually slack off.
- PvPers will demand the best parts.
- Consumables will always need replenishment.

The real market will be for reversed engineered goods. PvPer just love "the best." That's the long term market in starships. Don't underestimate the worth of the perfect low mass/high performance item.

A great deal also hinges on post-master content. If players don't stay engaged in space, they will stop going there. When players have the high-risk/high-reward content, they'll have every reason to eat up their ships to get the "uber loot." The market for premium goods will then heat up.

We still don't know how the market will shake out, though.

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bontac wrote:

Has anybody thought about what could happen with credits and cost if this Solo Group patch comes thru that is on test center now. People think that the economy is bad now, just wait, people will not be able to really afford anything then. I sell my chassies for 10 cpu and parts for 20 cpu. I am staying pritty steady with work on that, however there is groups of people on Flurry server that is selling for 2 to 3 cpu. I hope they do well as they will never to get to enjoy the game at those prices. They can have tell hell. But what if this patch comes thru and when you run a 30k or if a smuggler a 44k janta mission with a solo group and you can only get 4k max credits due to group size? Prices will drop and all of us would be poor. Think about that.

Phish Head

Master Shipwright / Master Weaponsmith

Flurry

StarShip By a Phish

Vendors: Bela City, Dantooine

Message Edited by bontac on 11-10-2004 09:21 AM

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only thing i think would make this survive is: if they nerf the mission pay outs. not everyone who has paid 29 dollars can fully enjoy jtl. sucks for them... maybe if the developers halved the resource requirements for these chassis. then the nerfed mission payouts wont hurt people as bad. some customers think twice when they talk decimator prices with me without the nerf. not everyone in this game right now is a gazillionaire. after the payout nerf, people are not even going to ask how much a decimator is. yes i know there are a select few players who can say "money is no object" but what about all those people who ran out 3 weeks ago and forked out 79 bucks 40 for the game and 29 for jtl. theyare going to be in a serious hurt because they wanted to fly in starwars. what right does the developers have to puta restrictor chain on this new influx of "noobs"

The devs have every right to fix an exploit. And solo groups were an exploit, because it uses a game mechanic in a way that was not intendet. No MMORG really is trying to advocate solo play.

Having said this, if nobody is buying things, nobody is buying resources. If nobody is buying resources resource prices drop. If resource prices drop, ship prices will drop as well. Thing will eveb out and after some time, ships will actualyl be cheaper due to this "nerf".

Regards

Niacia

News flash

in r/l 90% of ALL small businesses fail within the first year.

of the 10% that remain only 1% of them grow to become big companies

Why is that?

1. Not having enough capital (aka not enough dough to launch the business and keep it going thru hard times)
2. Not knowing just what it is you are trying to do. You cannot cover all aspects of the market, you can narrow your focus and do that thing well or you can do it all poorly.
3. Not thinking ahead. Gotta plan for the long haul, you need to know what resources/equipment you will need to buy in the future if you encounter growth.

And you gotta be a decent salesman, telling people to piss off if they dont like your prices will just leave you with a full stockroom and an empty credit chip.

My shipwright business is small right now. I dont even run a vendor, I just use the bazaar for now. I own 3 heavy mineral harvesters and have built 3 personal chemical extractors, and a personal wind generator, and I share a factory with another artisan. I keep close track on what it costs me to extract resources so I know what I need to sell my wares for.

I spend extra time on surveying to find the highest concentration highest quality resources I can and pool my harvesters there rather than spead them all over

For the most part I have to buy my power and chemicals from another source until I can save enough for my own deep crust extractors (they are more efficient to operate than the personal extractors but cost a helluva lot more)

You gotta be efficient, and have business smarts, and know your limitations to be one of the 10% who make it.

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SdDarktide wrote:

Problem with shipwright as i see it is, theres little repeat business. Once everyone has their chassis and best components thats it. No more cutomers for shipwrights, same as it was for architect. All the cash is made at the begining by people who capitalise and gouge the market. Sure, you'll still get people buying missile packs and the odd bits but thats it. I dunno, maybe ill be wrong.

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You just successfully identified the problem with DE's you guys get to resell your ship parts, once us DE's sell something, its sold, they dont need squat from us anymore, not even shipwrights, once they got their shipwright crafting station droid, you dont need anything from us ever again. Which is why I doubled my prices you shipwrights are rich? well, I want a cut of that, and I will in the form of selling droids. And resources

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Kinshi wrote:
News flash

in r/l 90% of ALL small businesses fail within the first year.

of the 10% that remain only 1% of them grow to become big companies

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Luckily SWG is not RL. The only real question is, whether you have fun, being a SW, not whether you are making money. If you sell below costs and get your money by other means, this is fine. A char does not have to eat, nor does he have other needs, that cannot be paid by doing a few combat missions a day.

You guys realize, that this is a game, right? I am selling roughly at cost, and observed only a slight increase of my credits so far. The coin, I am paid with are contacs, players that feel lucky they could buy a ship at a decent price after all. Not everybody can pay millions for a single ship. This works very well for me.

Not everybody defines a sucessfull game enterprize by how many credits he makes. In fact, I believe very few people really do it that way. What is more important, a million more in your (game) account or a single player that gives you a tell, saying: "Thank you for that nice ship, I finally managed to the mission I was working on all week."

Regards

Niacia

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BillyBobthe50th wrote:

At least for making ships you dont have to have a large amount of factory made components for everything andmaster artisan components, Shipwright doesnt even NEED any MA parts for ANYTHING!, maybe DE's should start charging 300k for a crafting station droid? Would you like that? and if you complain we will say "thats for making me have to make all those factory schematics and get all those ma parts!"

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I'd say that when you start having to hand craft every droid, maybe you should charge more. Lol, I only wish shipwrights could make factory runs.

Also playing a DE, I usually hand craft everything I can. And the final assembly off a droid usually has to be handcrafted anyway. There are just to many possible combinations.

Regards

Niacia

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ZenDragonMLS wrote:

Trying to articulate any realistic vision of the economics of being in the shipwright *business* over the long term is pointless right now. We have a huge diversity of people in this forum, with a large gap between people who have had successful crafting business and people who haven't. I don't even bother reading any of the pricing discussions, because people don't understand economics or the marketplace and talk about things like "how much profit are you *entitled* to", as if this was about "morality".

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