High-end mining material prices seem maybe a little bit TOO volatile

[Ezren]

Yep, couldn't find a good market for Void Opals, EDDM was not even close, I know it takes a bit for all the stations to update, but still, won't be looking for Void Opals for awhile. Finally found a station paying somewhat decent price compared to all the other stations I had jumped around to, but only made 540k a unit, that is considerable a lot less than what they used to pay, but better than 23k a unit at the other locations that were supposed to be paying around 1 mil or more.

Stations showing 1 mil prices have that because that was the price when somebody docked there. And that somebody probably docked there because the pricing was over 1 million, sold their lot, and sent the price down.

If you find a nice quiet breakfast place and everyone starts going there, it's no longer going to be a nice quiet breakfast place.

 

[Oldviboy]

Babel pretty much nailed your earlier question. Reality is, most people who have been making their fortune mining had third-party tools doing all of the work for them, and had no idea at all how or why the pricing was different anywhere.

I have a few stations bookmarked I like to sell at, systems that cater to the materials I mine and are a little out of the way. Systems I used way back, one of which was my old home system.

The biggest thing is that basically everyone was doing Void Opals/Painite. The market is flooded with these, so the people who have been mining other materials are way less affected. But the loudest complaining is coming from people who relied on the path of least resistance; mine the most popular thing, go to the location where a third-party tool points them.

Soon, mining will cool off as people move on to other activities now that it's not the absolute route to wealth, and supply will be less overwhelming, and prices will stabilize. The noise will subside.

if you look at my image, you will see on the right that it says that there is another station in the same system that sells it for more than a million, you go to that station and they give you 200k ..., you look to the right on the same screen, and It says they pay 1million at the station you just came back from, it makes no sense at all.


It is impossible to make any follow-up or mark stations to sell time later.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Babel pretty much nailed your earlier question. Reality is, most people who have been making their fortune mining had third-party tools doing all of the work for them, and had no idea at all how or why the pricing was different anywhere.

It's not even as if making a third-party tool to identify good sell spots now would be that difficult - you'd need to collect and process a bit more data than EDDB does, and make some inferences from the data you can see about the data you can't see, but it'd be relatively straightforward.

The problem (for those who just want a walkthrough, that is) is that the people who would find such a tool personally useful have a strong incentive not to share it if they do make one.

The biggest thing is that basically everyone was doing Void Opals/Painite. The market is flooded with these, so the people who have been mining other materials are way less affected.

I don't know how true that is - the min-maxers have certainly just been going for Void Opals/Painite, but the people who just like mining have been a bit more diverse for a while.

Looking at the Colonia markets, the demand for basically all core gems is in the 1200-4000t range, except for Low-Temp Diamonds which is at about 36,000t. Painite might in many circumstances be a better bet than many core gems since the baseline demand is much higher even with laser mining filling it rapidly.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

go to the location where a third-party tool points them.

This would be unnecessary if the game was able to display/filter its own data in a semi-competent way. Trying to find trade routes and neighboring system buy/sell prices is borderline impossible when using purely in game tools.

I also somewhat agree with the notion that a de facto nerf to mining payout is a bit of a kick in the pants when it is rolled out during a long content drought. If it were truly a "bug" or "exploit" as some in this thread (illogically) suggest, it would have been patched out a lot faster.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

Low-Temp Diamonds which is at about 36,000t.

LTDs were my go-to. They dont appear to be hit as hard as VOpals. I could typically get 1.2 mil within 150 LY of the system that I mine in, but now it appears to be down to ~ 950k / ton.

Not sure why they needed to slash prices 20%, but whatever. If they are going to play the supply/demand game, then other metals used in ship/station construction should have more massive demand then they currently do.

 

[Vayporz]

LTDs were my go-to. They dont appear to be hit as hard as VOpals. I could typically get 1.2 mil within 150 LY of the system that I mine in, but now it appears to be down to ~ 950k / ton.

Not sure why they needed to slash prices 20%, but whatever. If they are going to play the supply/demand game, then other metals used in ship/station construction should have more massive demand then they currently do.

This ^. If you want to "simulate" a more volatile economy, that should go for ALL commodities in the marketplace, and not just those FDEV put into the game as "gold rushes" from the onset (VOs, I'm looking at you!) FDEV set up the imbalance and this is their hackneyed approach to prevent credit devaluation when the cost of ships and modules are static.

Moreover, FDEV should have made player changes to its in-game market tools to track this volatility before instituting the change. If FDEV won't tell me plainly the price a station will offer me for something in my hold until I'm at the market, then they ought to let me haggle over the price I'm selling / buying commodities. Randomly jumping from system to system looking for prices reduces the profit/hour, and generally just adds to the grind.

Maybe all the goods are supposed to work this way, but as you said, with IDA working on stations, you'd expect the cost of construction commodities to go through the roof at the stations nearest the repairs sites as more and more pilots purchase from there, and then the sell price at stations under repair to increase commensurately when "demand" begins to outstrip the supply being brought in for repairs.