Why such a massive discrepancy in the price of the same goods?

G-Dubya

G-Dubya
hello,

In the attached image you have 3 orders for beer. Can someone explain why the payments of the three missions are upto 100% payment difference ?

For example, the first order is for 72 units of beer with a payment of 822,899 which yields a payment if 11,429 credits per unit delivered.

The third job (get to the second last) is again for 72 units of beer but the payment is only 418,837 which yields a payment of 5,817 credit per unit delivered.

The wing job has a count of 5452 units of beer with a payment 10,373,630 credits. With a wing of 4 moving 1300 units each, the payment of each unit delivered is 7,692 credits. if in a wing of 3, each shifting 1800 units, payment per unit is 5763 credits.

Why is the wing mission paying the lowest number of credits and why is there such a massive (100%) difference between the non wing missions.

I was under the impression that this got "rebalanced" in a patch or something but it seems the opposite is true. The numbers are wack. I'm scratching my head trying to understand.
 

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Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
G-Dubya said:
For example, the first order is for 72 units of beer with a payment of 822,899 which yields a payment if 11,429 credits per unit delivered.
The third job (get to the second last) is again for 72 units of beer but the payment is only 418,837 which yields a payment of 5,817 credit per unit delivered.
Click to expand...
The difference between these two is that the third job is to a station in the same system, while the first one is to a station 15 LY away. The greater distance means the first one pays more.

Price for a mission is affected by:
  • the rank of the mission
  • your reputation with the faction
  • the type of trade good
  • the quantity of trade good
  • the distance in LY to the destination
  • the distance in Ls once in the destination system
So maximising various of these can give better payouts. (Obviously in this screenshot the first four are the same, so you're just seeing the last two for the difference between the two non-wing missions)

(I did work out the formula for it once, but that was before they rebalanced them, so how much each factor is weighted has changed but the principle is the same)

G-Dubya said:
The wing job has a count of 5452 units of beer with a payment 10,373,630 credits. With a wing of 4 moving 1300 units each, the payment of each unit delivered is 7,692 credits. if in a wing of 3, each shifting 1800 units, payment per unit is 5763 credits.

Why is the wing mission paying the lowest number of credits and why is there such a massive (100%) difference between the non wing missions.
Click to expand...
Wing missions pay less per tonne in general, but conversely the overall payout is much higher, so if you've got a wing of high-capacity cargo ships, you can spend much less time taking and completing a single wing mission than you do looking for 5000+ tonnes worth of non-wing missions, even if the per-tonne payout is lower.

Whether the lower per-tonne payout is compensated for by not having to spend longer hunting for missions really depends on the exact details of the missions, your wing's cargo capacity and speed, whether the destination has a large landing pad, etc: there are some very nice wing missions out there even with the lower per-tonne payout, though that Beer one probably isn't one of them in most cases.

EDIT: there's also of course the benefit for wing missions that you can take a wing mission if just one of the four of you has the trade rank and local rep to be offered it, which can give you access to much better missions than you'd normally have. So then you might find the wing mission even pays a fair bit more per tonne, too.


(Now, why the payout for smuggling missions is considerably less - all else equal - than the payout for an equivalent legal cargo transfer mission? That there's no good explanation for.)
 
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rrobes

R
M. Doncaster states:

(Now, why the payout for smuggling missions is considerably less - all else equal - than the payout for an equivalent legal cargo transfer mission? That there's no good explanation for.)

Could be that the goods are illegal and can't be sold in the open market, so the buyer has downward price leverage. Also as part of the "assumed" behavior of the "buyer" and "seller", the "buyer" could always "turn in" the smuggler to the "authorities" if the smuggler tries to play hardball. Also the "buyer" has to wash the stolen goods and the subsequent "purchasers" "know" the sketchy history of the goods and they won't pay list for what they're buying.

Lots of assumptions here but possibility.
 
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