Meta Alloy changing value

[CrowBarHero]

I'm doing a bit of meta-alloy harvesting in the Pleiades, figure it's an easy way to earn some credits with a small ship.

I check into Darnielle's progress, which eddb tells me offers a good price on them, and I see buying and selling prices of about Cr114K/unit. Sounds good.

Go off and harvest a hold full, fly back (dodge a few pirates), and now I get offered a value of about Cr98K. I'm not bitter, as it's all profit, but it's still irksome.

In both instances there is 1 unit on offer at the port, so it's not like they've suddenly been flooded..

Is this a bug?

 

[Jmanis]

I'm doing a bit of meta-alloy harvesting in the Pleiades, figure it's an easy way to earn some credits with a small ship.

I check into Darnielle's progress, which eddb tells me offers a good price on them, and I see buying and selling prices of about Cr114K/unit. Sounds good.

Go off and harvest a hold full, fly back (dodge a few pirates), and now I get offered a value of about Cr98K. I'm not bitter, as it's all profit, but it's still irksome.

In both instances there is 1 unit on offer at the port, so it's not like they've suddenly been flooded..

Is this a bug?

Nope. A fair while ago a mechanic was introduced which slightly reduces profits from an item, based on how many you have in the cargohold. i.e you could go to a station with 1t of palladium for 1,500cr/t profit, and go to the same station with 200t and only get 1,250cr/t profit. It's probably a % of the galactic average, which is about 88k for meta-alloys.

Not entirely sure why this was introduced, other than to promote diversity of trading.

 

[CrowBarHero]

ah. So the prices offered are customised to each individual. Another cmdr sat next to me selling a different quantity at the same location could be offered a different price then?

Kinda renders eddb.io and some of the other online commodities trackers a bit useless then, doesn't it?

 

[CMDR Dreamstate]

It also depends if the system you are selling in is in Boom - you get much better prices selling in Boom systems.

 

[Jmanis]

ah. So the prices offered are customised to each individual. Another cmdr sat next to me selling a different quantity at the same location could be offered a different price then?

Kinda renders eddb.io and some of the other online commodities trackers a bit useless then, doesn't it?

Not really, because the base price is still correct. You just need to take into account that if you have lots in your hold, it'll adjust the price down a little.

i.e lets say you jump onto EDDB and see two places you could sell at... one you'll make 2,000cr/t profit, the other you'll make 1,800cr/t profit. If you take 600t of that cargo, you'll find that the 2,000cr/t profit margin is actually 1,800cr/t, and that 1,800cr/t profit might be just 1,620cr/t profit, based on losing 10% of that profit due to the volume in your cargohold (figures picked randomly).

In such a case, you'll still make the most profit selling to the place EDDB listed at 2,000cr/t profit.

I may ship just 10t of the same cargo and make 2,000cr/t profit, but that'll be 20,000cr profit, rather than your 1,080,000cr profit. It still works out good for you.