Weaponsmith Archive

It's a consequence of the competition new smiths are under while they collect the correct resources.

As an example, I'm currently resource-limited, so my weapons can have advanced barrels and stocks and cores, but I can't make an advanced power handler, vibro unit, or feeding mechanism yet. Therefore my weapons are inferior to those of true master smiths and I have to sell them on the cheap to get any sales at all. As a point of reference I'm currently running 14 medium harvs and I have serious issues making daily maintainance on them. I have to choose to either put fewer harvs on that Ostrine ore or the nice polysteel with 1900+ cond/oc or I run survey missions to make ends meet. I make about 40k credits in sales daily, most of which are from seriously nice scouts and DLT20a's that I whince and put on the bazaar for 3k. To get sales in my shop the price has to be at obviously less prices than the going rate.

So now I'm becoming known as a reasonably priced weaponsmith, when I do have the resources at my disposal I'll have to make a decision. Jack my prices up, potentially losing my established customer base of players that have bought from me when I needed it most or keep going as a price leader with solid equipment and buy buttloads of factories to keep up with demand. I can see benefits to both possibilities.

So it's not so simple as "price high and make a huge profit per item". There's overall revenue needs to account for, plus you have to keep in mind who your established customer base is.

Thanks for your insight, its much appreciated!!

However, the point I'm making is not that we should charge outragious prices.....just that we price our goods in perspective.

The problem I have is people selling weapons cheaper than you can buy a SLICE or BUFFS, hell cheaper than a ticket to another planet...

I mean think how many weapons your going to have to sell in order to make it anywhere close to being worth it if your selling them 1-2k

Evil's Pride

You're right, 1-2k is definitely way too low. Even though I'm "undercutting" the true masters, I'd never price that low. It's more a case of using 20 cpu as my baseline and then factoring in named resources and such instead of 30 cpu like others.

If they're selling at 1-2k I can't imagine they could keep up with demand. They'd run out of resources weekly if they did that on Kauri

it can take some time to get your name established, even when you have all the resources. I sold very cheap at first, yes even intentionaly undercutting, for a few weeks. I broke even most days, profited on others, but the biggest accomplishment was earning a solid customer base. As soon as i noticed i had quite a few of the same names showing up in email sales notices, i gradually raised prices with each item i restocked.

What I see on flurry is a HUGE price variance. Extremely cheap to way over priced. I have a vendor setup in a tent with 2 other weaponsmiths. One is an established weaponsmith been around for awhile, and the other is a new Master Weaponsmith, like I am. I try to look at the current weapons they have to offer and to what price. Since the resources are somewhat poor lately, and not enough of thecritical ones, I try to make whats in demand. Whatever results I get, I compare to what the other 2 are offering and base my price on theirs. If my weapon is better than the new Master Weaponsmith but not as good as the established Weaponsmith, I base my price in between the 2 of them. However, what I find is both of them offer weapons at a price way to low. (I think) I do know there are players on Flurry that have credits to burn so will pay any price you list because they will probably slice 20, keep 5, and sell 15 at a higher profit. Other people don't have enough credits to by a shuttle ticket, which is why some weaponsmiths keep the prices down.

If there was some sort of price list with stats that all weaponsmiths adhered to, then this thread wouldn't be here. So for now I base my prices off the other 2 weaponsmiths, if I don't I won't sell anything. Half the time I make something I don't know if its any good because I have never used the weapon before.

There's nothing wrong with narrowing your production range, then selling off your excess resources. This won't help your mass production, but will help the bottom line. Concentrate on what you can do well, then make money off of that. Get consistantly profitable. From there, expand into new territory. It's a modest formula, but very successful.

Don't feel as if you must produce everything.

Speaking of Flurry weaponsmiths, as i am nearly master at this point (4/4/2/4), i plan on specializing in melee weapons. any flurrians know any other melee specialized WS's that i can compare my stuff to? Thanks.