UNKNOWN ARTIFACT: the rare commodity price angle

[woodhouse]

Hebo: 200k

I remember checking the black market in He Bo with a UA on board that was duplicated in the Red Wizzard gettogether at Timocani. I don't recall the exact price offered, but in my memory it was between 170.000 and 180.000 and not 200k.

Could it be that the origin depends on the place where the UA is picked up? It would make quite a difference if it's intercepted from a convoy in 109 Viginis or from one in Timicani.

 

[nikos]

I remember checking the black market in He Bo with a UA on board that was duplicated in the Red Wizzard gettogether at Timocani. I don't recall the exact price offered, but in my memory it was between 170.000 and 180.000 and not 200k.

Could it be that the origin depends on the place where the UA is picked up? It would make quite a difference if it's intercepted from a convoy in 109 Viginis or from one in Timicani.

It is possible, but I believe that what Red Wizzard proposes can explain this difference away: some UAs are tagged as stolen and some are not, and there is a 25% price difference between them.

 

[Palidin]

Essentially we need a lot more data to prove anything. But the current rare models don't fit the pricing. There is one price, the black market discounts it when you sell on the black market. But the price is changing slightly even you take into account the black market discount. But this may be due to the demand system instead of the rare pricing. I still don't think the price is changing rapidly enough over distances to call it a rare. It could also have it's own economic structure that we haven't seen yet.

 

[Dr.Evanzan]

Just catching up with this...

While I lost my UA, I have a screenshot from Leonard Nimoy Station (LHS 3006) with the following data:
Sell 181,836
Demand 427 High
Galactic Average 220,000 CR
Artefact is both Illegal and Stolen.

I'm afraid I don't have a screenshot/video anymore for Talos 2 (Peregrina) but it was the same artefact (so Stolen), it was 174K (but I don't have the final three digits) and I think it was a lower number for demand but can't confirm this.

 

[nikos]

Just catching up with this...

While I lost my UA, I have a screenshot from Leonard Nimoy Station (LHS 3006) with the following data:
Sell 181,836
Demand 427 High
Galactic Average 220,000 CR
Artefact is both Illegal and Stolen.

I'm afraid I don't have a screenshot/video anymore for Talos 2 (Peregrina) but it was the same artefact (so Stolen), it was 174K (but I don't have the final three digits) and I think it was a lower number for demand but can't confirm this.

Thanks! Updated OP.

 

[Shuruga]

No, only the blackmarket. There are two flags that make a item only saleable on the blackmarket: "stolen" and "illegal". You can have a regular commodity that has been stolen and therefore can only be sold on the blackmarket (e.g. gold from the SSS trap). You can have a regular commodity that is illegal in the system you are in, but not stolen (e.g. tobacco obtained from the commodity market in a system where it is legal and then taken somewhere where it is illegal). Or you can have both, which is the case for most of the salvage-only goods (e.g. antiquities, artworks, etc). All of my UAs were illegal everywhere I took them but one of them somehow lost it's stolen status.

I think that if you just jettison a stolen item and re-scoop it, it will still be marked as stolen. But obviously there are ways to "clean" them. I had a cargo hatch failure at one point and a bunch of stolen items fell out (battle plans, artworks, ancient relics). When I re-scooped them those ones were no longer marked as stolen. I don't know if that's intentional behaviour or not. I don't think it's what happened with the non-stolen UA anyway, I'm not sure how that one got clean.

Unfortunately I don't have my UAs anymore. I must have had another cargo hatch failure that I didn't notice. So I'm out of the research business until I can find another one.

Stupid question, if you actually sell a stolen item at a black market, can you immediately rebuy to "whitewash" it? This is also a thought, because maybe the UA could be "repaired" in that way. I am just trying to figure out if range could be increased. Of course you can repair your ship, but this is not what I mean.

P.S. I will continue to go fishing for the UA. I actually did encounter one of the correct convoys, but unfortunately the one with the Vultures, where you need fighting to get it. I instead tried to bump the T9, but with D4 shields on my ASP the T9 was not impressed. Not a scratch on it's shields and mine went out. Do you know if a hatch breaker limpet controller would work without fighting? I guess I am going back to outfit one for trials.

Some more thoughts:
- Maybe the new Galnet post for the frontier trip could hint at provide further inhabited worlds south of Peregrina.
- Maybe we could plot the prices as a 3D landscape, based on the XYZ coordinates of systems.

 

[RedWizzard]

Stupid question, if you actually sell a stolen item at a black market, can you immediately rebuy to "whitewash" it? This is also a thought, because maybe the UA could be "repaired" in that way. I am just trying to figure out if range could be increased. Of course you can repair your ship, but this is not what I mean.

P.S. I will continue to go fishing for the UA. I actually did encounter one of the correct convoys, but unfortunately the one with the Vultures, where you need fighting to get it. I instead tried to bump the T9, but with D4 shields on my ASP the T9 was not impressed. Not a scratch on it's shields and mine went out. Do you know if a hatch breaker limpet controller would work without fighting? I guess I am going back to outfit one for trials.

You can't rebuy from the blackmarket.

I tried ramming the T9 in my python and got the shields down but I couldn't damage the cargo hatch that way (this was a hafnium convoy, not ua). I was hoping it would at least make the T9 change course but it just ignored me. With an asp I think you'd need a wing. Otherwise you could try following the T9 into SC and hope to isolate it. I haven't found the hatch breaker that effective - most well defended ships will destroy it.

 

[Jackie Silver]

I hope that someone who has one of these can take them down the line of the Sirius colonies out to Sothis - they're in more or less a straight line and it would give us a great baseline to work from.

 

[gazelle]

I found a system where one of my rare item where legal on one station and illegal on the other. In both cases the price and the average was the same, no penalty.

Spoiler

 

[nikos]

I hope that someone who has one of these can take them down the line of the Sirius colonies out to Sothis - they're in more or less a straight line and it would give us a great baseline to work from.

OK everyone, thanks for the insightful comments but price most probably indicates only demand: I just landed in Sothis with a UA and it is priced at 180k

On the plus side, I got to visit one of the most distant inhabited systems

 

[Jackie Silver]

OK everyone, thanks for the insightful comments but price most probably indicates only demand: I just landed in Sothis with a UA and it is priced at 180k

On the plus side, I got to visit one of the most distant inhabited systems

Uck. Thanks for trying.

 

[Shuruga]

I am still fishing for the Unknown Artefact. I have in the mean time relocated to Timocani and also changed my ship setup a bit. My new strategy to bring down the T9's shields will be to use a class 2 mine launcher. Hopefully this will not turn the ships hostile. This will then be followed by hatch breaker limpets. However, I haven't had the correct convoy spawn in 2 days. Fortunately I have a week of vacation coming up...

I still think that supply and demand are not the only factors determining the price of the UA. While they may not have the exact behavior as other rare items, it may still be possible to identify some useful trend.

Edit 1: Forget mine launchers. While it would be feasible to get close, shield damage is minimal. I am even unable to get my shields down by a ring if I deliberately run into my own mines.

Edit 2: To the UA hunters out there, the best option has been posted on the main thread. Stay close and masslock the T9 until the heavy escort has jumped out the system. You can deal with a single ship more easily. You can wait until the ship decomposes by itself.

Here is the link to the OP: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=141038&page=341&p=2210347#post2210347
Alternatively one can use a wake scanner to follow, the T9 will be left alone: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=141038&page=342&p=2210750&viewfull=1#post2210750

 

[nikos]

I still think that supply and demand are not the only factors determining the price of the UA. While they may not have the exact behavior as other rare items, it may still be possible to identify some useful trend.

No objections to more testing. With the UA kindly donated by digitalscream I plan to record every price I can, plus demand. I will be moving about to test other theories too, so should eventually have a good sample.

 

[mrtree]

So, I've got one for you. In trying to reproduce the Halsey Spaceship One explosion (thinking maybe a UA was on-board & caused the multiple systems failure), I jumped to her supposed destination, Azaleach. No catastrophic anything, but there's a Black Market here. And the UA will only sell for 169,723.

Sub-170k credits.

 

[Ratking15]

Imeutsu 241,008 just illegal

 

[daygobah]

PROBABLY LAST UPDATE:

Price at the most remote outpost "south", Sothis, is 180k. Price probably does *not* tell us anything about the spawning point

UPDATE:

Every CMDR with a UA can report here

1. SYSTEM whether price was checked,
   
2. PRICE obtained with full precision if possible (no rounding to nearest k),
   
3. whether the UA is marked STOLEN or not.
   

CMDRs with UAs can do this in any system they like initially, to get the data coming.


New facts:

• UAs may or may not be marked as stolen.
• We need to re-verify most prices obtained and include the information about whether the UA is marked stolen or not.

Verified data:

System	Stolen	Price	Reported by
Timocani	Yes	181749	Nikos
Gatonese	Yes	181722	Nikos
Lati	Yes	181737	Nikos
Timocani	Yes	181673	Red Wizzard
Timocani	No	242230	Red Wizzard
LTT 12033	Yes	181191	Red Wizzard
LTT 12033	No	241587	Red Wizzard
Kali	Yes	180316	Red Wizzard
Kali	No	240421	Red Wizzard
LHS 3006	Yes	181836	Dr.Evanzan
Peregrina	Yes	174000	Dr.Evanzan

---

OP:
We know that the price offered for UAs on the market differs greatly. This, combined with the abundance of the word "rare" in the descriptions of UAs point to the possibility that the price offered varies with the distance from its "source", just like other rare commodities. If this theory is correct, we can pinpoint a direction to the source, if not the source itself (it may well lie in a system without a black market, probably in an uninhabited system).

To test this theory, I collated some data on prices.

Galactic average: 220k

109 Virginis: 240k
Hebo: 200k
Timocani: 181k
Gatonese: 181k (own data)
Lati: 181k (own data)
Peregrina: 174k
LHS 3006: 181k

Assuming a rare commodity price behaviour these prices point to the galactic south.

This post by Taleden of EDshipyard fame gives a formula that allows calculating the price at source from the galactic average. This yields a source price of 150k. If this is accurate it means that the source is not 1000s of LYs away.

Suggestions:

• We must find black markets that offer less than ~170k. This is probably going to happen south of Peregrina, Lati, Timocani, Gatonese.
• Any help in getting a better formula for triangulating the source would be fantastic.
• Lines drawn from the places where the highest prices are observed towards the lowest ones, point towards Pleiades or the California Nebula.

I'll update this post with any offered info.

I like this idea also.

Maybe we could find the source or even UA's that are not even in convoys.

How can i help?

 

[Ratking15]

Furuhjlem I-645 240,540 just illegal