Theres something fishy about "dynamic" price changes on the commodities market

Nozyk

N
Hello boys and girls,

For the past week or two I was really into finding that one trade route that would blow my mind just for the joy of exploring. After visiting well over 50 systems that had the desired economy I came to a conclusion that the market was sometimes either displaying wrong prices or reacting to what i had in my cargo bay. Here are some examples (I'll try to make it short):

1. I enter the station, see that gold and beryllium is priced 700 cr under the average so i buy 1 each and head off to a promising high tech system. In that system i sell both metalls for ~1200 profit and on my return trip i take cargo full of resonating separators - expecting this route to be a decent 2500 RT...
To my surprise when I got back to the original station both metals jumped 200cr up in price thus making this route like 15 other ive seen bofore. There was noone trading in that system and i can confirm that the supply values have not changed more than by 20.

2. I had a nice route a few days back and once the prices dropped i moved on, but lets not focus on that. On that route I had similar supply in one station and demand in the other for performance enhancers and consumer technology. For a few hours I was trading both of these items swichting between them as the demand dropped. Untill this happened - I bring perf enchancers to the station and the prices tell me that if i took consumer technology i would make 200cr/t more. 'Dang' I think and off i go to fetch the consumer technology for my next trip. When i return happy that i will make 100k CR more i am shocked as now the perf enchancers are the ones worth 200cr more. I repeat the process for 3 round trips and the same thing happens over and over again. When on the 4th trip i bring 1 perf and the rest of the bay full with technology - this resulted in both items being at low price.

3. (bonus) More than enough times have i entered a system where the system map station info told me that the station exports product A, B and C, but upon checking the commodities market in that station i see that the station is actually in need of these items with MED to HIGH demand.

Has anyone experienced the things i have just described?

PS
Anyone else thinks that the market price limits should be individually balanced for each item so that 80% of the commodities market is not useless if you want to make money?
I mean if you have a 3.000.000 HIGH demand on microbal furnaces and youre offering 66 cr more than gal.average noones gonna bother bringing you them ;)
 

Flavourless

Flavourless
Q1 and Q2;
The price you are offered for a commodity depends on how many of them you have in your hold. Someone called it a bulk-carrying tax.
So the market price for one is much higher than the market price for 300 even if the demand is high and over 300.

Whether that is how an economy ought to work is another thing.

Q3:
The trade route map doesn't really work.
 

Kalearne

Kalearne
Flavourless said:
Q1 and Q2;
The price you are offered for a commodity depends on how many of them you have in your hold. Someone called it a bulk-carrying tax.
So the market price for one is much higher than the market price for 300 even if the demand is high and over 300.

Whether that is how an economy ought to work is another thing.

Q3:
The trade route map doesn't really work.
Click to expand...

Do you have a source for the Q1 and Q2 comments? Last I'd read was that the price dynamically updates as you buy. So for instance while the station has 400 units of a commodity you pay 100cr per ton, if it has 300 units you pay 150cr. If your ship holds 200 units and you buy 200 when they have 400 in stock you will pay 100cr/t for the first 100 then 150cr/t for the next 100.
 

Luponator

L
Flavourless said:
Q1 and Q2;
The price you are offered for a commodity depends on how many of them you have in your hold. Someone called it a bulk-carrying tax.
So the market price for one is much higher than the market price for 300 even if the demand is high and over 300.

Whether that is how an economy ought to work is another thing.
Click to expand...
This. The bulk-trade tax is applied to your cargo hold, not to your selling, so you can't avoid it by selling smaller batches. This makes exact profit forecasting next to impossible, so to find trade routes that 'work' you'll need to find them with the same ship/load/goods you want to trade 'em with or assume a 5% max price delta as a tax.
It's outlined here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=94076 and here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=48645&page=2&p=858537&viewfull=1#post858537 called the 'Lakon effect'
 

shadragon

shadragon
I'm running into limited supply. My traditional trade routes are still there with the same prices but there will only be 95 units for sale instead of 100,000. I get one good round-trip and then supply runs out. Found this on three routes now. Am now hunting for new routes at random.

Never thought of Beryllium as a rare. :D
 

Defacto

Defacto
The ''Bulk tax'' really doesn't make sense. How can the market even know what I have in my hold? How can they adjust prices based on that?
 

Flavourless

Flavourless
Beryllium might not be a rare, but as a commodity that you can make over 1000Cr per ton then maybe it shouldn't just be lying around willy-nilly?

The bulk trade thing is easy to see with coffee and animal meat.
Both are usually around the same price, but if you take a load of coffee then the meat price is high, and if you take meat then the coffee price is high. Annoying.
 

Gemat

G
I have also noticed it but never at a large population place.
I believe this happens mostly at tiny or small population outposts.
Even there, the anomaly happens to low availability/demand commodities.
 
Last edited:

Kubicide

Kubicide
Defacto said:
The ''Bulk tax'' really doesn't make sense. How can the market even know what I have in my hold? How can they adjust prices based on that?
Click to expand...

It's the same sense as NPC pirates knowing when you are carrying gold or other high value items. It's wired into the game by the devs to make the game dangerous I guess...
 

Defacto

Defacto
Kubicide said:
It's the same sense as NPC pirates knowing when you are carrying gold or other high value items. It's wired into the game by the devs to make the game dangerous I guess...
Click to expand...

They do?
Pirates without cargo scanners have always seemed to assume that I carry cargo when I meet them.
That would make more sense though - market contacts, hyperspace tracking, it would be a pretty good idea for pirates to track merchants who deal in valuable goods.

I can't see how the bulk tax makes sense at all. The station doesn't know what's in your cargo hold, and even then, it's a public market. How can they mark down the prices depending on what's in your hold?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom