How to make a station sell more stuff? Discussion

How do you make a station sell a wider variety of stuff? We're located way out on the fringes of the bubble (outside of power play region) and the systems here have terrible stock on modules. How can we use the background simulator to help a station sell more stuff?
 

Lestat

Banned
How do you make a station sell a wider variety of stuff? We're located way out on the fringes of the bubble (outside of power play region) and the systems here have terrible stock on modules. How can we use the background simulator to help a station sell more stuff?

You know you described where I live. I don't have a Starbuck or Walmart or any major stores. Just like how Frontier has the outer stations. They should not have it all.
 
You know you described where I live. I don't have a Starbuck or Walmart or any major stores. Just like how Frontier has the outer stations. They should not have it all.
Bro. I'm not saying that little rinky-dink systems on the outer edges should have the cat's meow when it comes to outfitting by default. I'm asking how do I help them build up to the point where they have a high population and they DO have all that jazz. Y'know what I'm sayin? The Elite Dangerous world is not static, it is very much dynamic. CMDR's can influence a systems population, quality of life, the laws and government control of a system, the economy, etc. So let me say again: I agree that rinky-dink stations on the fringes of the bubble "should" not have awesome outfitting options by default, but I also disagree with you if you're inferring that they "should" always be that way, regardless of player actions.
 
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Bro. I'm not saying that little rinky-dink systems on the outer edges should have the cat's meow when it comes to outfitting by default. I'm asking how do I help them build up to the point where they have a high population and they DO have all that jazz. Y'know what I'm sayin? The Elite Dangerous world is not static, it is very much dynamic. CMDR's can influence a systems population, quality of life, the laws and government control of a system, the economy, etc. So let me say again: I agree that rinky-dink stations on the fringes of the bubble "should" not have awesome outfitting options by default, but I also disagree with you if you're inferring that they "should" always be that way, regardless of player actions.

AFAIK the system population is not dynamic.
 
This was helpful. Thank you! :) Oh next question: Is the change long-lasting or does this bonus in outfitting options go away after the investment state is over?
It'll almost certainly (not actually tested since 3.3, but that's how it worked before) go away after it's over. On the bright side, it's a lot easier in 3.3 to maintain an Investment state for an extended time, and to restart it once it does end.

Changes of controlling faction at a station won't give you *more* stuff in total, but if it's to a different government type will give different stuff. So you may get some benefit if you can make sure each station is controlled by a different government type. Of course, that's then several factions to maintain in Investment rather than just one, and you may need to do a lot of shuffling of factions around to test which government type gives the most modules of types you want at each station.

It requires patience, but if you submit a CG for a new station in the system (poke around the Community Goals subforum for some explanatory threads and the form), you may be able to get some better outfitting as a result. You'll probably only be able to do that once, and it might take years to get to the front of the queue, so don't expect quick results from that. This is also the only real way at the moment you can get a population increase, and it probably won't be a major one.
 
It'll almost certainly (not actually tested since 3.3, but that's how it worked before) go away after it's over. On the bright side, it's a lot easier in 3.3 to maintain an Investment state for an extended time, and to restart it once it does end.

Changes of controlling faction at a station won't give you *more* stuff in total, but if it's to a different government type will give different stuff. So you may get some benefit if you can make sure each station is controlled by a different government type. Of course, that's then several factions to maintain in Investment rather than just one, and you may need to do a lot of shuffling of factions around to test which government type gives the most modules of types you want at each station.

It requires patience, but if you submit a CG for a new station in the system (poke around the Community Goals subforum for some explanatory threads and the form), you may be able to get some better outfitting as a result. You'll probably only be able to do that once, and it might take years to get to the front of the queue, so don't expect quick results from that. This is also the only real way at the moment you can get a population increase, and it probably won't be a major one.

This is the kind of helpful response that I'm looking for. Have a +1 rep man. Thank you :) Okay so if I understand this correctly, population isn't influenced much by player actions? And we can temporarily increase the amount of modules available by putting minor factions into a state of investment... hmm okay neat. I'll need to learn more because I don't know enough to know how exactly to force an investment state rather than accidentally causing the minor faction to expand into another system. Thanks again! I am now pointed in the right direction.
 
This is the kind of helpful response that I'm looking for. Have a +1 rep man. Thank you :) Okay so if I understand this correctly, population isn't influenced much by player actions? And we can temporarily increase the amount of modules available by putting minor factions into a state of investment... hmm okay neat. I'll need to learn more because I don't know enough to know how exactly to force an investment state rather than accidentally causing the minor faction to expand into another system. Thanks again! I am now pointed in the right direction.
Being in a fringe system, getting into investment state shouldn't be too hard. It depends on what other populated systems are nearby, and if there's no suitable systems available to expand to, then you'll automatically go into investment once you've thrown enough influence(&credits) at them.
 
Being in a fringe system, getting into investment state shouldn't be too hard. It depends on what other populated systems are nearby, and if there's no suitable systems available to expand to, then you'll automatically go into investment once you've thrown enough influence(&credits) at them.
That's no longer true in 3.3 - a failed expansion just goes back to "no expansion".

Investment is now "boom, but more so", and putting the economic activity in to sustain an investment does risk also running up the influence counter a lot.


If you can lock enough of the other factions in the system in conflicts, then that reduces the pool of available influence a lot (since the ones in conflict won't move significantly) - you can then throw a lot of economic transactions at them without risking hitting 75%.

There's also the benefit than in 3.3 an Expansion doesn't cancel economic states, so if you do get an Expansion it's not as big a deal - the Investment carries on, and if you expand to a system you don't care about you can just ignore the faction's presence there.
 
...Okay so if I understand this correctly, population isn't influenced much by player actions?

Population isn't able to be influenced at all by player actions. FD changes the population of some systems during major or minor updates. The changes are either entirely random, or are in line with whatever plot FD wishes to drive forward, or are as a result of algorithms so obscure and arcane that no-one outside of FD has yet been able to decipher them.

It is perhaps a good thing that population can be manipulated. Once a "formula for reducing population" was made known, then the entire galaxy would become a collection of ghost villages within weeks. This is especially so when you consider that population is a key component of Powerplay economics.
 
That's no longer true in 3.3 - a failed expansion just goes back to "no expansion".

Investment is now "boom, but more so", and putting the economic activity in to sustain an investment does risk also running up the influence counter a lot.


If you can lock enough of the other factions in the system in conflicts, then that reduces the pool of available influence a lot (since the ones in conflict won't move significantly) - you can then throw a lot of economic transactions at them without risking hitting 75%.

There's also the benefit than in 3.3 an Expansion doesn't cancel economic states, so if you do get an Expansion it's not as big a deal - the Investment carries on, and if you expand to a system you don't care about you can just ignore the faction's presence there.
I think it also depends on location.
I'm in a system that's 140ly from the nearest populated system. It went from an expansion attempt (which obviously didn't work) into investment. Been in investment ever since. The influence threshold is no risk, since there's nowhere to expand to. :)
Though i suppose this is a bit of a rare edge case.
 
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