Tailor Archive
Thread: The Casual Tailor
When I decided I wanted to be a tailor, I didn't realize that meant I had to be a merchant too. I wanted to be able to outfit my friends with nice clothes at no cost (they pay me back with whatever their skills are usually).
I wanted to be able to take a few days off in the game without losing everything I already had.
Right now, I am paying about 12000 credits a day in maintenence, and I havn't even put up a factory. I feel like a mother bird or something, my harvestors are all peeping for more and I just can't get it fast enough.
My issues (Some related, some not, we'll see 
):
- I don't like prostituting myself out to all the l33t d00ds on the server who want a black duster. But that seems to be the only way to make 6k in an hour without picking up a gun.
- I don't want to kill all the other tailor's businesses by putting 10x black dusters on the bazaar at 3k each.
- I would like to have enough scraped together at the end of the day (typically3 hours for me) that maybe I could pay my costs for the next day AND still have a good time exploring the game.
- I like dealing with people 1 on 1, but it seems like whenever I advertise, I either get 10 people all at once (and nobody is totally satisfied) or somebody that wants me to show them everything I can possibly make then offers 500 credits.
Proposed Solutions:
- If I had a central way of paying the upkeep and moving power around for my harvestors, I could spend more time actually playing (keep in mind I didn't say empty the hopper). Is it that unfeasable that power lines don't exist in a time with laser rifles and floating cities?
- If I could pay some kind of holding fee on my factory where it would be off for a few days without using so much maintenence (but still reserving my plot) I could decide to not craft for a while without having to re-deed. I don't like losing 2500 credits to reclaim my deed and finding out the next day that somebody decided to put a flora farm right in front of my door.
- Some kind of holding fee on my house would also be good, but the rate is low enough that it is almost trivial. Vendor fees are quite a bit more.
Ideal scenario: A new type of player became more widespread, a retailer (more art gallery). They could take the inputs from various crafters, sell them with a % cut, and send in requests. Typically an art gallery will take 40%of the sale of an artists work. This could be a good way of spreading out the workload to several casual crafters. I have so far only seen this with weaponsmiths (high ticket items by comparison).
Barriers: There is no way for the crafter to be notified when the retailer sells a particular item of theirs unless they have their own vender. The retailer would have to be mostly on an honor system for sales unless they buy wholesale from the crafter (Possible, but requires a lot of investment on the part of the retailer; small stores tend to work this way, but not craft stores). It's hard for an individual to handle returns, but a retailor could get stuck with something that will never ever sell (pink boots with a green trim anybody?)
Some people enjoy the act of selling things, making deals, and being storekeepers. I personally hate it. I make clothes for fun, not soI can have a second unpaid job.
Radiant Server BTW
But I agree about one central area that you can use to pay maintenance, etc... or maybe have a droid “run around” and do the work for you, or even some NPCs that charge you an extra 100 credits per harvester.
Takes a lot of resources to make 50,000 ribbed shirts =p
bah
Anyways.. yeah sue I have 3 =D And only because someone gave me #3 heheh
buy resources.
I used to bother with harvesters, then i got too busy and they starte dfalling apart, so i just spent more time making clothes, which gave me more exp, which got me cooler stuff, which got me more money per sale, now i just buy my resources. Find a starting artisan, offer them like 3 credits/unit for fiberplast and steel, etc. They need the money, you need the resources. 12000 credits in maintenance can turn into 4000 resources per day, which can turn into a lot of clothes to sell for money (if you're not getting over 12000 credits after using 4000 resources you have a problem)
I'm sorry, did you say 12000cr in maintenance a day?
You want to know your problem, that's it, right there. I have 1 chemical harvester, 2 mineral and 1 wind. Since I trade the produced ore from one of the mineral harvesters to an architect friend for fibreplast, I actually have 2 chemical, 1 mineral and a wind.
That's like 3000cr or so a day. Add in my factory and small house, and I spend maybe 5k a day. That's 3 cloaks I have to sell a day to break even.
Live within your means. This is a lesson that'll serve you well in SWG as well asreal life! Even if I ground (past tense of grind), I could get probably an hour or two's worth of XP from the 4k of fibreplast and 2k of metal I get everyday. If I buy a bunch of hides, I could grind even longer. Does anyone really want to grind for 3 hours a day?
If you're a casual tailor, meaning it's not your primary profession, there's really no reason you need to grind at all. Pull up those harvesters and go have some fun, man! 3 harvesters (on high concentrations, of course) will net you about 6k in resources a day. That's plenty.
You could make things with those resources and sell them to other players and pay the maintenance that way.
I'm guessing that the person with 19 harvesters has admin rights on harvesters placed by other people. It is impossible to have that many since we are limited to 10 lots per person.
I have 2 chem, 2 mineral, and 2 wind harvesters. All personal size ones. I pay 6k maintenance a day. I sell about 2k resources on the bazaar for 3 credits aresource to pay for maintenance. I still have enough resources left for all my crafting. My suggestion is to either cut back on the number of harvesters or start selling off excess resources.
I've had good luck arranging distribution services through other players. You can do it a number of ways. One is to offer items on their vendor at a discount, then they sell and keep the profit. Another is to front them some items (ie offer on their vendor for 1 credit), then they /bank tip you when the item sells. Of course to do it that way, you need someone you trust. But if you're going to be in business that closely with someone, you probably want them to be someone you trust anyway.