I know that the whole 1t trading topic has kinda quietened again,,, but now that I've been able to do trading for the first time in forever because <reasons>, I was reminded of the, dare I call it, "gentlemans agreement" I came to with someone via PMs about the topic.
Basically, we concluded that there's too many "legitimate" gameplay techniques that attract the "transactional" type of influence. I won't list them all here, because it's slightly pointless. But the accord we came to was pretty simple.
If you sell or buy something, buy/sell it in one transaction.
Now, on the surface that *seems* a bit "duh". But what does this mean in practice?
If I'm at an Extraction economy, and want to do a run to a High Tech+Refinery economy, I might load up on all palladium, ship it, and were I a 1-tonner I'd sell them one at a time and make huge influence gains. If I were to sell it all, i'd make "one transactions" worth. But fundamentally people 1t trade for one reason. Influence gain. It's definitely not for profit, because you're much better off selling everything at once for efficiencies sake.
So instead, in a "fairer" way, I know a HT/Ref economy has about 20 different metals. So instead of loading up my python with 200t of Palladium, I load it with 10t of each type of metal I can make a profit on. That way, when I sell, I sell each commodity at once, but get 20 "transactions" occurring for the purposes of influence. This makes a lot more sense anyway as the markets should benefit from diversity of trade, rather than pure profit. You could still have a cobra and load 1t of each for a similar impact, but the net effect of a larger ship is more profit.
It also legitimises the technique in a sensible way. We can argue back and forth whether someone selling 200t of palladium 1t at a time is exploiting the game or not, but it's pretty obvious someone simply shipping a variety of goods to hedge their bets about which will be more profitable, is not trying to exploit the system, and there's a definite case that trading a diverse range should have more impact on a system (satisfying a variety of needs, rather than a single one).
So, yeah... basically;
- When trading, trade everything at once.
- Consequently, trade a single good for profit, and a range for influence
People will still 1t trade... but at least this is a way you can do it with some sportsmanlike attitude to it. Think of it like selling exploration by page, rather than by individual entry.
Just some food for thought.
