Shipwright Archive
Thread: Publish 11.4, Starterships can be upgraded
MoonlghtKnt wrote:
Vaxon wrote:
Also, if you look at it from a logical standpoint, a chip is a ship is a ship, there isn't any good reason the starter ship shouldn't have been upgradeable to begin with.Yeah, there is a good reason... it's a STARTER ship... that's the whole reason why it SHOULDN'T be upgradeable... you should be looking to trash that thing as fast as possible and buy a real CRAFTED ship. Shipwrights ARE overcharging for starter chassis on all servers ATM, and that should stop. I've seen them go for 6k on Scylla and that's just ridiculous ( and I don't want to hear anyone griping about the resources it takes... drop a harvester in a high percentage ore location for a couple hours and you'll do fine). Tier 1 ship chassis should sell for 1k tops.
Besides... to say that shipwrights "did this to themselves is absurd... despite the fact that SOME of us do charge 6k ( I don't, but I've seen it) alot of people are bring those prices down even under 1k (I've even seen 100 creds for a new chassis).I'm willing to bet the complaint was not about the shipwrights, but the chassis dealer charging 15k which most newbs don't have.
Tier 1 ships should sell for 1K tops? A tier 1 ship takes 15K resources to make. That would mean you're selling those Tier 1 ships at .07cpu. You can't even mine the resources that cheaply. Perhaps you meant the Novice ships should sell for 1K. Well, those take 5K resources themseleves. That would work out to be .2cpu. If you're really lucky on a few spawn points, you could mine the resources for that and break even on the sale. Of course, this doesn't account for time to find/mine the resources and to craft the ship itself.
Yes, I've sold novice ships for 1K and given a few away, but that is when I know the player or it is a new player just starting out and I want to give them a bit of help. I have even tipped some of them the credits to pay the Chassis Dealer.
BUT, I charge 7500 on my vendor for novice ships. 1.5cpu is not price gouging after you factor in my time and overhead. The point is, that this change in the starter ship basically kills the market for novice ships. Being upgradeable is fine. Generally, I'm not losing any current business by allowing a new player to upgrade the starter ship. They'd be using loot to upgrade a ship they bought from me most likely anyways. But, by giving them a hyperdrive too, there is absolutely no reason to buy a novice ship from a SW. Even if the SW gave you the ship for free, the chassis dealer fee is more than the slight mass increase is worth.
Before this change, a new shipwright at least had a small niche market they could fill, by selling novice ships on the bazaar for 6K to recover their costs for mining/buying resources and their time. Now, they don't have anything marketable at all. Loot will be as good or better than anything a low level SW can produce, and their only viable market for novice chassis just got yanked away from them as well.
Perhaps a better change would have been to reduce or remove the chassis dealer fee on novice ships. As a brand new character, it doesn't take long at all to make the credits to buy a 6K to 10K ship from a SW, and a crafted novice ship is perfectly viable for use all the way through tier 2. I used my Z95 until I could get a Y-Wing LP.
Message Edited by Flop on 12-08-2004 12:53 PM
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entertainer - Lowca
Ducimus wrote:
In specific.
>>I am starting a new character and there is NO way I can afford the prices SWs are charging for anything unless I get help from others...
I think this is exactly why SOE made the startership upgradable.
Any of you guys acutally try to start a new pilot from scratch on a server other than the one you nomrally play on?
It's bloody hard!
It doesnt take long before your 1000 or 11xx and you really can't afford anything. The chassis dealer alone gobbles up 15K for your first ship, let alone what the local money grubbers will ask for.
Um, yes I did.
And it was not as hard as you make it sound, and that was before the chassis dealers would buy loot components!
I used the starter ship till I was 1/1/1/1 and by the time I started on my first tier 2 mission I had enough credits from credit chips and selling my loot (that I didn't want to keep for myself) to buy a crafted Z-95. I then used it till I was certed to use the Y-Wing "Longbow". That toon is now at 3/4/3/3 flying a well built and equipped X-Wing.
I've done no work at all on that toon'sground based skills.
The point is the DEV's have said over and over that they don't want to do anything that would hurt the player crafters, and these changes do that.