I have a unique business venture in Realm 2 where I offer to complete researches by request. In this post, I'll discuss the price of research from a seller's perspective.
There are a couple schools of thought on research pricing:
1. Cost of research times some multiplier (2-3x)
2. Analysis of research cost plus time spent - see Knolls Thread
I've been using the 1st method for quite some time now but have always found the profits to be lacking compared to my other businesses. The 2nd method from Knolls thread is fine for single researches, but fails when I need a uniform price list for all researches - given that all my RCs are different sizes.
Thus, I wanted a new way to evaluate research price that factored in profit per unit time AND is invariant to research center size (AND hopefully more simple than Knolls calculation).
I decided that the best way to do this was to compare my research centers to my sales buildings and demand that the profit per unit time be similar for these buildings. Note that these buildings must be the same size, however, since sales buildings maintain consistent sale times with size (for full buildings) it is easy to scale the buildings to the same size. Example: if a 100m2 sale building makes 50k per day, a 300m2 sales building will make 3*50k per day.
I found that my sales buildings tend to bring in at least 1 million profit per day for every 2000m2 of space or 500 caps per day per 1m2. I again used a thread by Knolls to make this calculation. Now, armed with this information, I simply need to see how research times scale with building size:
Time for a Q19 research:
500m2 = 24.7 Days
1000m2 = 12.6 Days
Note that the relationship is nearly a direct inverse here: doubling the size nearly halves the research time. Let's see what this does for the research price (Q19 research base price = 1.8 million):
500m2: (24.7 Days) * (250k per day) + 1.8 million = 8 million
1000m2: (12.6 Days) * (500k per day) + 1.8 million = 8.1 million
So how did I do? Price is nearly invariant with size, so that's good. The reason I chose Q19 was to compare my result with the result from Knoll's thread. Knolls price for Q19 research with a 500m2 research center was found to be 7.86 million, so we are actually in agreement here on research price. Plus the calculation involved wasn't nearly as bad.
In summary, if you want to find profitability in research, all you need to do is simply set how much profit you want to make per unit time and then perform a simple calculation like above to determine the price. After that, all you need to do is find a buyer!
On the Pricing/Profitability of Research
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Guest
On the Pricing/Profitability of Research
Last edited by Guest on 03.03.2009, 05:09, edited 1 time in total.
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Guest
People want 40+ research on finished goods which fetch a good price in shops. Some materials are popular, also, like oil and wood. You should research a good item and then auction it. If it doesn't sell, you're in that business, so choose wisely.
There's a Q37 oil for sale in the market for 200M by anup plc. Watch and see if it sells.
There's a Q37 oil for sale in the market for 200M by anup plc. Watch and see if it sells.
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Guest
This is a good way to work out how to sell researches at a reasonable price- but say if SoeoS decided to sell his Q112 gas research.
Now you cant price that at 500k a day can you?
Personally i think that this research would be 8bil+ Due to the fact its number one, it takes yaers to get there and very few people have the buildings required to reach such a quality
Now you cant price that at 500k a day can you?
Personally i think that this research would be 8bil+ Due to the fact its number one, it takes yaers to get there and very few people have the buildings required to reach such a quality
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Guest
Good research is a collectible. People will pay more than it's worth in terms of income generation, because KL goes on for years and advanced research is entertaining.felixbluindustries wrote:say if SoeoS decided to sell his Q112 gas research.
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Personally i think that this research would be 8bil+ Due to the fact its number one, it takes yaers to get there and very few people have the buildings required to reach such a quality :P
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Guest
As a couple of you have hinted/stated, optimal sale price of a research is simply what the market will bear. Of course, there will be a premium on researches for a number of reasons including contest products, competitively high researches, and highly profitable industries.
In the first 2 cases, I see no reason to follow the algorithm listed above, since in these cases, the buyers will decide the true worth of the research based upon how it will positively impact their business. In these cases, the researches "sell themselves" due to either rarity or overwhelming demand.
For the 3rd case, I really see it as a matter of personal preference on business model. Could I have made more money auctioning off my researches to the highest bidder? Absolutely. I have even turned down offers from businesses willing to pay twice my asking price for immediate delivery of researches I was requested to make for a different company. For me, I'm not so much interested in maximizing profit from a single research sale, but rather in building a solid network of customers and a semi-steady, good stream of income from my research business.
Edit:
An interesting side trip, if you were to value the Q112 from my above algorithm, I'd assume we're talking about a fully expanded RC, so to make it easy on the math, I'll say its 30,000m2, but that shouldn't matter too much since the algorithm doesn't depend on RC size for the most part.
30,000m2 = 15 million caps per day (500k per 1000m2 of building)
Q112 Research for 30,000m2 takes 448.6 days and has a base cost of ~2 billion. Thus, doing the math:
(448.6 days * 15 million per day) + 2 billion = 8.73 billion
So in the end, this algorithm actually agrees with the price you mentioned felix!
In the first 2 cases, I see no reason to follow the algorithm listed above, since in these cases, the buyers will decide the true worth of the research based upon how it will positively impact their business. In these cases, the researches "sell themselves" due to either rarity or overwhelming demand.
For the 3rd case, I really see it as a matter of personal preference on business model. Could I have made more money auctioning off my researches to the highest bidder? Absolutely. I have even turned down offers from businesses willing to pay twice my asking price for immediate delivery of researches I was requested to make for a different company. For me, I'm not so much interested in maximizing profit from a single research sale, but rather in building a solid network of customers and a semi-steady, good stream of income from my research business.
Edit:
An interesting side trip, if you were to value the Q112 from my above algorithm, I'd assume we're talking about a fully expanded RC, so to make it easy on the math, I'll say its 30,000m2, but that shouldn't matter too much since the algorithm doesn't depend on RC size for the most part.
30,000m2 = 15 million caps per day (500k per 1000m2 of building)
Q112 Research for 30,000m2 takes 448.6 days and has a base cost of ~2 billion. Thus, doing the math:
(448.6 days * 15 million per day) + 2 billion = 8.73 billion
So in the end, this algorithm actually agrees with the price you mentioned felix!
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Guest
my friend always asks me to price his stuff on the market and for some reason i can