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Author Topic: What happens to the market if you sell a special item and the recipient uses it?  (Read 1570 times)

WhisperDSP

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Example: I have an extra Soil Nanites.

I sell to the biggest (or second-biggest) producer of food on the open market. They immediately put it into production, an extra +2 (aka 100x) as much food is now being grown.

What happens to the market?
* Does the total market size (credits) go up?
* Does the value of food drop?
* Is there more surplus food at that colony?
* Do other factions target them with punitive expeditions?
* A combination of all plus other things?

Does it make the Pathers suddenly take a greater interest in said colony? What if it’s a Pather colony?

Are more pirates attracted to said system?

Wyvern

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* No. Market size is based off of consumption of commodities. Selling soil nanites will not have an impact on market size. By contrast, selling a Fusion Lamp will increase the market size for volatiles.

* Yes, because there's more production, but the same total market size.

* Yes, that colony will tend to have larger stocks of food for sale.

* No, punitive expeditions apply to player colonies only. (Unless there's a mod that changes this? I wouldn't be surprised if Nex does something of the sort, at least.)

* Probably! All vanilla installable items will increase pather interest, and - as there's a limit on how many colonies the pathers have active cells on - this can decoy attention away from your own colonies. Mod-added installable items may or may not increase pather interest. I believe Pather colonies are immune to this effect? But I'm not certain; I'd have to go check the code to be sure.

* No, pirate activity seems to be more or less random, with one exception I'm aware of: that being that a player-controlled system with minimal/no defenses may attract raids.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

AcaMetis

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It's been a while since I tested this, but IIRC Luddic Church and Luddic Path markets are immune to Pather cells. Other markets can get pather cells added to them if they get a high enough pather interest from sold colony items.
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WhisperDSP

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Interesting, thank you both.

Time to evolve a couple strategies along tge lines of the Orbital Fusion Lamp.

Wyvern

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It's entirely egregious, but you can sell a fusion lamp to a low-accessibility pirate world, putting them into a permanent* volatiles shortage, and then personally ship volatiles over to sell on their black market.

* Well, you can temporarily avert it by selling enough volatiles... but it'll come back soon enough.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

WhisperDSP

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That was the plan.

Pity that the core worlds are out of range of the Coronal Hypershunts.