Info: Spectre L hits an all time low price - SFE say "...great value high end armour!"

[ACEwoK]

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SFE MONTHLY PRICE GUIDE

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Hello and welcome to the monthly
Southern Fortress Engineering Price Guide!​

As many of you already know, we have started posting these guides to not only SFE's monthly pricing but also to shed a bit of light on the market variations of the materials we use in order to continue bringing our armours to you. Whilst our amazing Marketing gurus are updating the SFE online catalogues, these threads will explain any of the armour prices that have changed, either more expensive or cheaper and give you, the community and our loyal patrons, an idea of the cost driver behind each price change.

Firstly, the familiar Hawkwing preamble:

As the Treasurer and manager of SFE's shops, it is my responsibility to set prices that are reasonable and fair. In order to do this, SFE undergo a once a month review of prices that is an intricate balance involving the current monthly averaged market prices, procurement prices as supplied from SFE Logistics department, success rates as dictated by SFE Crafting department and of course blue print procurement for those blueprints that have a limited life expectancy! All of this swirls around my own amazing little spread sheet and out come the price recommendations for the following month!

So, let us take a look at the month of August 2010.

For a look at the list of older Guides here at our Forums or here at our website

Hello Armour fans! But, seriously, how many of you are fans of armour? I'm sure none of you think of yourself as massive fans of armour, but I bet you all use it don't you? eh? We here at Southern Fortress happen to be massive fans of armour and our chief crafter even has his own cheer squad routine. Of course, it's still a one man show but he's hoping to expand it as more armour fans are discovered! For those of you who are more fans of PRICES, we'll move right along and look at those.

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Economically and looking at materials prices, the majority of materials headed upwards in price, though with a couple of stand out exceptions. There does not appear to be a pattern to the market averaged markups, both expensive materials and cheap materials moving upwards, hinting at an overall recovery of material prices across the board. For the most part, SFE has elected to not move prices unless the material price movement was quite high. This does mean that even minor increases in material prices next month may result in armour prices increasing, but for now there are only minor changes.

Price Adjustments due Material Prices

Vindicator: Price Increase, Shins, Thighs, Face, Arms, Gloves and Foots all from tt+65 to tt+70, Harness from tt+120 to tt+130. (Due to Maganite rising 607.18% to 693.28%)

Spectre: Price Decrease, Shins and Thighs from 235 to 215%. Harness from 270% to 250%. Arms, Face, Gloves and Foots from 235% to 215%. (Due to Langotz falling 716.74% to 591.47%). This is the cheapest Spectre has ever been!

Lich: Price Increase, Shins and Thighs from 420% to 470%. Harness from 390% to 440%. Helmet from 425% to 475%. Arms from 435% to 485%. Gloves and Foots from 445% to 495%. (Due to Light Metal Plating rising from 7025.00% to 9345.76%)

General Comments

While Lich has gone up in price quite steeply after a sharp drop in price last month, Spectre has once again fallen in price, now only 1416.60ped for a full tt suit! This is fast becoming a great value suit of armour.

Meanwhile, please be advised that SFE have closed our shops at Block A, Silver Building, Treasure Island City and also at CND shop #26. However, our shops at Shop #10, Floor 1, Twin Peaks Mall and Shop #10, Floor 1, Port Atlantis Mall are both still open for business.....and stand by for some exciting refurbishment of these two shops in the near future!

Hawkwing
Treasurer SFE

 

[M Rufen Power]

Good stuff guys . But could I ask where are your Limited Bodyguard, Pioneer & Renegade sets are at? I'd also like to know if the price of UL Renegade has gone up. Thx Mark. I sure am a fan of armour .

 

[Few Scars]

Keep up the good work guys!
They made me a set of Trooper UL (M)! It's hard work when Rugaritz and Dunkel are in short supply! Well done!

Cheers
Bjorn

 

[TimUnleashed]

Hey Mark!

Good to see another armour fan!

The three armours you asked about aren't for sale in our shops at the moment for the simple reason that we don't have enough item points for them.

We're hoping to change that soon, but for now you can always order them by sending us an email, a PM (details at the Contact Us page of our site).

Regarding Renegade UL, the more recent history is that the price of a suit dropped by 1 ped in February, and then down again by a further 6 ped in May. I'll have to check this with Treasury, but I believe it's now the cheapest we've ever had it!

 

[Dr.D.C.]

hello
I would like compliment you for your shops. They are full of armor set, large variety and your shops are always open.
If i can, i would like also suggest you to press the little graph option in each item description, yes the MV to be clear. It s not a critic, it s just what each player will do before to buy an item.
In any case great initiative and gl guys.

 

[TimUnleashed]

Hey Dr D.C,

Thanks for the support

Regarding the market price - it's an ongoing issue that the market often significantly undervalues crafted armour, and there's not much we can do about it as far as we can see.

In limited armour, for example, things often go in auction for close to TT value when there's only about 5-10% left in them, and these drag down the market value. All our limited armour, on the other hand, is full TT, so any price comparison there doesn't make sense.

In non-limited armour we sometimes have problems too. Take Ghost for example. The crafting cost is so much higher than what it sells for in auction, that if we tried to compete we'd lose hundreds of peds on each suit! For that reason, we don't bother selling it at all. There's plenty of supply everywhere else, so we can add no value by stocking it in our shops too.

We'll be the first to say (and we do when people ask us for help) if you can get something cheaper in auction, go for it! Competing with auction is quite simply not what we're here for. Instead, we look for where we CAN add value.

The result is what you see. We will charge a fair price based on crafting cost, which means we're quite literally not factoring in the auction values when we price our armour.

We realise our customers will check market price, of course, as you point out - and we hope they continue to do so for their own benefit. We're happy with this because we know that in plenty of situations, our service offers great enough value to the customer that we will win the business. In those situations, it's a win-win: the customer is happy, and we haven't sold for a loss! In some cases we even come out cheaper than auction. In fact, our prices change based on changing material costs every month

We think that to pay attention to the prices asked by people who are prepared to sell their armour for far less than the cost of crafting it, makes very little sense. In fact, it's a recipe for going broke. We expect that those who do such things can only be making a loss. They may be funding such a loss themselves, but to us that's quite simply a terrible way to do business. We're not a charity - we're here to provide a service and we must break even if we're going to continue to do so.

If that means people buy the armour in auction sometimes instead, we accept that. We don't expect to sell every piece of armour in the universe. We expect that where we DO add value, our armour will sell, and Entropia will be a better place as a result.

I fully take your point, Dr D.C., and I hope that explains things a little. All we ask is that you keep an eye on our prices when they change each month, and when you see a deal that you like, go for it!