Buying goods should increase rep with the stations owning faction
- Thread starter Lugh
- Start date
But it does avoid the potential to buy & dump cargo in order to directly convert credits into reputation. Just a thought.
yeah...Not only would that be pretty easy to track and exclude from generating rep it also wouldn't really save much time considering you can get allied in only a handful of loads anyway
But they way it's set up now they don't have to track and exclude at all so that's extra work they don't have to do, and since when did the speed of rep gaining come into it? It's fast so why not just make it trivial? That's not an argument in favour of the change, if it becomes that trivial why not just give everyone full rep the moment they land because whats the point or rep at all then?
It'd be interesting if goods remembered their point of origin and provided a benefit to the selling station - provided they were sold for a profit.
I don't think that's the case? I agree with the "selling at profit" to gain rep... but a loss doesn't lose rep last I checked.
I'd argue buying off a station should benefit the selling station owner regardless of what you do with it afterwards.
It's the same problem that exists with bounties/bonds at the moment. Destroying a ship wanted by a faction does not increase influence/rep with the faction it's wanted by. Only handing in the bond/bounty does. That really makes no sense.
If a local station says "Pirate Faction X has too much influence in this system, we want you to thin their numbers"... if you go and wipe out a pirate wing that will affect them regardless of if you get paid for it or not.
Really, the whole exercise needs to be based around whether or not you are buying from/selling to demand IMO, not profit or loss.
e.g If station X has demand for 1,000t of widgets, and I sell 100 to them, as far as that demand is concerned it doesn't matter if I made 10,000cr/t profit or 10,000cr/t loss. They now have 100 of the 1,000t they need.
Strictly speaking, whether you make a profit or not should arguably have a net neutral effect, if not a negative effect for more extreme cases.
e.g if I have 10,000 credits, and demand 1t of coffee,
- If the seller provides the coffee at a loss for 1,000cr, I now have 9,000cr and 1t of coffee. The game would reduce my influence for this.
- If the seller provides the coffee for a personal profit at 10,000cr, I now have 0cr and 1t of coffee. The game would increase my influence for this.
That just doesn't make sense.
Yeah, selling basic medicines to an outbreak at a marked up price - that should work to end the outbreak sooner, sure, but the faction is buying medicines at inflated prices - surely that's not... good for their economy?
It used to be the case. Selling at a loss reduced your standing with the faction in control of that station. Is it not that way now?
I do very little trading in game at this point. Have all the money I could want in game, and it still seems to just keep going up from mission running and exploration.
I can't remember at time it ever did cause rep loss tbh. I remember it causing influence loss (and that is still the case), but not rep.
Yeh, that how it works in RL. Movie "phenomena" can confirm it (with Travolta).
To be fair, nothing indicates is good for the economy directly. It boosts the influence of the faction, which makes a degree of sense, since presumably you tell other people about it, which increases their popularity and therefore influence.
Presumably, secondary effects like booms are because of increased traffic, not directly because of the commodity itself. A loss leader, more or less, like selling milk on discount so people buy other stuff too while they're at the store.
I do agree that you should get reputation for buying goods, though, it just should happen at a fraction of the rate as donation missions.
a lot of mis-information in this thread
sell at profit or loss has positive effect on rep but has positive or negative effect on inf.
selling at a loss is the 'peaceful' method of creating inf loss
buying does the same.
meaning if you buy at a high price then sell at a loss, both stations feel the negative trade impact, but because you simply traded with both your only effect via rep is positive.
if you have never yet seen these effects it is more likely because you are not using the method along with the math in a way that will actually have an effect.
test in a system with the smallest population you can find
test by buying every item they have - if you test 1 item at a time you have to keep upping the qty until you see a result, thank exploiters for this = you can no longer cause huge changes by buying or selling a large amount of something 1 ton at a time, you need to either trust what others tell you(HA!) or test to find the delta point for each item yourself - this test can take months. And if you play the BGS, this test should never stop. note that often items go on a type of sale, as long as there is traffic and other stations nearby then the market can easily change daily all on its own, this is reflected in the trade and delivery missions too.
test by selling them every item you can find.
test by largest amount of profit
test by largest amount of loss
these results take time as there are a lot of items to test and in a no traffic small pop system this takes many weeks of testing.
unless fdev just introduced a new thing where your rep is not affected from buying over the last few days, it has always worked this way.
a thing to note is selling is the strongest tool of the 2, because you can sell at any price and any item. But you cannot buy an item from a station that they do not sell.
and even though you see a demand list in the sell portion of the market, it is very incomplete.
Taking 1 of everything to a station is the only way to get a complete display of the market demand, this includes having 1 of everything they sell already, just to see the list.
if you own a carrier you can change prices making it easier to see the inf effect of buying from a station, the rep factor only cares that you are buying and doesn't care about % of profit or price
factors that matter are
the % of profit or loss
actual price
all that aside if a person is really only wanting rep quickly, missions, carto data, bounty vouchers.
I won't waste my time addressing the total mis-information here, there appears to be more assumptions than facts.
supply & demand is a thing, but it is not like the world we live in.
a real person would not buy 1 ton of gold at 110,000 credits when the market clearly has it set at say 8,000 credits. for this as a major component of BGS trade one can only assume that all stations are contracted to buy, no matter the price.
that aside there are toxic items, radioactive items, alien items
even though there is usually a high price on most of these, not all stations want them, because some are very bad to buy and can actually cause other states to occur.
biowaste being the most common - only agriculture wants it, all others will suffer if you sell it to them
it is the perfect item to test for those that are not aware.
buy 100-300t from station , sell at a profit to agriculture
next day
buy 100-300 t from same station and sell at a loss to a hi tech or industrial(not counting combo stations that have dual economies with 1 being agriculture)
even if you sell at a profit you will see a result, do it for a week or 2 and you will see outbreak occur
you will see all 3 stations have an effect from this
keeping in mind qty vs population is very important in the equation.
and if your rep was neutral or less, after a few days you will see a change in all 3 stations.
like another said, Not sure why changed rep from buying would matter to you when it is so easy to change by other methods
as for INF, that's important as these are all BGS plays and inf is what BGS is about and rep is near meaningless for that.
sell at profit or loss has positive effect on rep but has positive or negative effect on inf.
selling at a loss is the 'peaceful' method of creating inf loss
buying does the same.
meaning if you buy at a high price then sell at a loss, both stations feel the negative trade impact, but because you simply traded with both your only effect via rep is positive.
if you have never yet seen these effects it is more likely because you are not using the method along with the math in a way that will actually have an effect.
test in a system with the smallest population you can find
test by buying every item they have - if you test 1 item at a time you have to keep upping the qty until you see a result, thank exploiters for this = you can no longer cause huge changes by buying or selling a large amount of something 1 ton at a time, you need to either trust what others tell you(HA!) or test to find the delta point for each item yourself - this test can take months. And if you play the BGS, this test should never stop. note that often items go on a type of sale, as long as there is traffic and other stations nearby then the market can easily change daily all on its own, this is reflected in the trade and delivery missions too.
test by selling them every item you can find.
test by largest amount of profit
test by largest amount of loss
these results take time as there are a lot of items to test and in a no traffic small pop system this takes many weeks of testing.
unless fdev just introduced a new thing where your rep is not affected from buying over the last few days, it has always worked this way.
a thing to note is selling is the strongest tool of the 2, because you can sell at any price and any item. But you cannot buy an item from a station that they do not sell.
and even though you see a demand list in the sell portion of the market, it is very incomplete.
Taking 1 of everything to a station is the only way to get a complete display of the market demand, this includes having 1 of everything they sell already, just to see the list.
if you own a carrier you can change prices making it easier to see the inf effect of buying from a station, the rep factor only cares that you are buying and doesn't care about % of profit or price
factors that matter are
the % of profit or loss
actual price
all that aside if a person is really only wanting rep quickly, missions, carto data, bounty vouchers.
I won't waste my time addressing the total mis-information here, there appears to be more assumptions than facts.
supply & demand is a thing, but it is not like the world we live in.
a real person would not buy 1 ton of gold at 110,000 credits when the market clearly has it set at say 8,000 credits. for this as a major component of BGS trade one can only assume that all stations are contracted to buy, no matter the price.
that aside there are toxic items, radioactive items, alien items
even though there is usually a high price on most of these, not all stations want them, because some are very bad to buy and can actually cause other states to occur.
biowaste being the most common - only agriculture wants it, all others will suffer if you sell it to them
it is the perfect item to test for those that are not aware.
buy 100-300t from station , sell at a profit to agriculture
next day
buy 100-300 t from same station and sell at a loss to a hi tech or industrial(not counting combo stations that have dual economies with 1 being agriculture)
even if you sell at a profit you will see a result, do it for a week or 2 and you will see outbreak occur
you will see all 3 stations have an effect from this
keeping in mind qty vs population is very important in the equation.
and if your rep was neutral or less, after a few days you will see a change in all 3 stations.
like another said, Not sure why changed rep from buying would matter to you when it is so easy to change by other methods
as for INF, that's important as these are all BGS plays and inf is what BGS is about and rep is near meaningless for that.
It already cheeks if you bought them from a carrier and doesn't count them toward your trade rank so seems that system is already in place
Because its time vs cost. the amount of credits you have to lose doing it wouldn't exactly be cost effective considering how little time you're actually saving. And again, this was just an addition to my original point where this wouldn't work and could be easily avoided.
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all this did was show that the BGS is even more broken and illogical than some people already thought.
Yes... it causes INF loss, and IMHO it is a broken mechanic... why a faction should lose INF because a CMDR earns a loss on his/her own balance only FDEV knows
from a pure economical point of view, it should be the opposite, as the station owner is earning goods paying it much less of their price.I'd be totally fine with the profit and loss having some impact on the ECON rating of a faction, since that's flavour and diversity more than anything else (corollary: famine is a great state for influence generation, and i wish i could cause it more readily)Yes... it causes INF loss, and IMHO it is a broken mechanic... why a faction should lose INF because a CMDR earns a loss on his/her own balance only FDEV knows
But yeah... influence is, presumably, the outcome of a faction achieving it's core objectives, e.g fulfilling market demand. When a faction buys 1t of coffee for 2000cr off me, it's irrelevant whether i bought it for 1000cr or 10,000cr.
But what is relevant is how badly that item was needed. Selling to high demand should be more influential than selling to low demand... and selling to a supply good (or 0 demand) should be an influence loss.
yeah, its mostly just silly that selling to them would lose them influence in any way. I mean if it was going to be bad for them they just shouldn't be buying it in the first place.
Throwing in some personal bias here, but it's already bad enough that there's an inadequate amount of sane ways to cause negative effects, and an equally inadequate amount of insane ones. While I can't disagree with your statement about them "not buying it in the first place", I'd want to know how any mechanism change would balance the opportunity to cause negative effects.
Natural gameplay mechanics needs to yield a mix of positive and negative results, unlike the current near-homogenous positive state universe[1].
[1] With most negative states focused primarily around Anarchy factions, since they're the proverbial punching bag for nearly every sane activity out there.