If you sell high-value trade commodities one unit at a time, you get more merits than selling them all at once. This is well known — so much so that there is a ticket for it. After reading this, I want you to confirm and upvote this ticket because it's destroying fair play in PowerPlay.
Issue Tracker
Here's my reasoning: One by one sales encourages players to find a cheap load of high-value goods and sit there, sometimes for hours, selling one by one. Eventually, some Cmdrs will turn to the dark side and realize that they are still being beaten, and the obvious conclusion is selling macro scripts one by one.
Games should prioritize PLAYING the game, not cheesing a bad by design game mechanic. If you have an hour to spare, and you can do four loads of high value goods, great. You should get 4 loads worth of merits whether you sell them 1 x 1 or all at once. If you run a system out of a high value good, you need to play the game to find more. That's great. That's how the game should be played. The 1 x 1 seller doesn't have to do that. That's not fair to the Cmdr who is playing the game right. The 1 x 1 seller will get at least 10 times the amount of merits as the Cmdr who plays the game the way it should be played. That's not fair.
I don't want high-value trade to be nerfed; I want it to be fair and eliminate any potential advantage someone can get by using a macro sell bot. FDev, please give us the same number of merits per unit as selling one at a time. This will push people to haul more, force them to find more stations with the stuff they need, and actually play more. And it hurts cheaters. Win-Win-Win.
This used to affect BGS as well. FDev almost certainly got sick of all the trade botters, so they fixed trade and botting mostly went away as a BGS problem. They also fixed it for mining merits. You get the same number of merits selling 1 x 1 as selling all at once. The exception is high value trade, and it needs to stop.
The excuse for 1 x 1 sales I often heard back in the bad old days was that it allowed an early hours Cmdr in a Cobra Mk 3 to have the same sort of impact as an experienced Cmdr in a Cutter or Type 9. That was almost a reasonable excuse because it took months to earn the credits required to buy a Type 9. These days, credits are easy to come by. It's a matter of a few hours if someone tells you how to do laser platinum mining. Earning credits and buying a Type 9 or Cutter is a non-problem now. But 1 x 1 sales create a real problem in that a single Cutter load of cheap silver or gold might earn 40000 CP or more in an hour or so by NOT PLAYING the game but sitting at a station and doing the same action 794 times. Probably with a macro script. Let's get rid of the problem.
Reproduction steps. In galmap on Friday or Saturday, find a power, any power, but you probably will think of your opponents first. Click on the Power Play Activity filter. Choose Reinforcement. Choose Minimum Activity Level, and start with High, but Low also works. Look at the systems that have ridiculous amounts of reinforcement already. Now, think how many Cmdrs it would take to do that at 10 kCP/hr, and compare that number to the Inara data on total number of pledges for that power. It doesn't add up. Change to the trade view, so you can see the trade lines between systems. If there are trade lines, then trade is being done. Go to the system, look at the ships in the system in station news. It's probably high. Go to Inara, and find a good trade loop with more than 40% profit margin. It's likely to be one of the systems in the gal map that you already spotted. This is a system where 1 x 1 selling is taking place. It needs to stop.
NB: This is not an official Pranav Antal position, but I believe it is in the interest of a free and fair contest that encourages game play, and eliminates the use of macro scripts to get an unfair advantage. I do not claim ANY player or group is cheating. I have specific systems that FDev might be interested in, and I'm sure you can find others in your own backyard, so I'm not going to share these systems because that will only identify a group or set of players, and that's not my point. Only FDev can look into it, and only they can fix it. I don't want anyone punished, I want the issue fixed, and it's an easy fix. Just give us the same merits per unit regardless of the number of units sold. Same as in BGS, same as in mining merits.
Issue Tracker
Here's my reasoning: One by one sales encourages players to find a cheap load of high-value goods and sit there, sometimes for hours, selling one by one. Eventually, some Cmdrs will turn to the dark side and realize that they are still being beaten, and the obvious conclusion is selling macro scripts one by one.
Games should prioritize PLAYING the game, not cheesing a bad by design game mechanic. If you have an hour to spare, and you can do four loads of high value goods, great. You should get 4 loads worth of merits whether you sell them 1 x 1 or all at once. If you run a system out of a high value good, you need to play the game to find more. That's great. That's how the game should be played. The 1 x 1 seller doesn't have to do that. That's not fair to the Cmdr who is playing the game right. The 1 x 1 seller will get at least 10 times the amount of merits as the Cmdr who plays the game the way it should be played. That's not fair.
I don't want high-value trade to be nerfed; I want it to be fair and eliminate any potential advantage someone can get by using a macro sell bot. FDev, please give us the same number of merits per unit as selling one at a time. This will push people to haul more, force them to find more stations with the stuff they need, and actually play more. And it hurts cheaters. Win-Win-Win.
This used to affect BGS as well. FDev almost certainly got sick of all the trade botters, so they fixed trade and botting mostly went away as a BGS problem. They also fixed it for mining merits. You get the same number of merits selling 1 x 1 as selling all at once. The exception is high value trade, and it needs to stop.
The excuse for 1 x 1 sales I often heard back in the bad old days was that it allowed an early hours Cmdr in a Cobra Mk 3 to have the same sort of impact as an experienced Cmdr in a Cutter or Type 9. That was almost a reasonable excuse because it took months to earn the credits required to buy a Type 9. These days, credits are easy to come by. It's a matter of a few hours if someone tells you how to do laser platinum mining. Earning credits and buying a Type 9 or Cutter is a non-problem now. But 1 x 1 sales create a real problem in that a single Cutter load of cheap silver or gold might earn 40000 CP or more in an hour or so by NOT PLAYING the game but sitting at a station and doing the same action 794 times. Probably with a macro script. Let's get rid of the problem.
Reproduction steps. In galmap on Friday or Saturday, find a power, any power, but you probably will think of your opponents first. Click on the Power Play Activity filter. Choose Reinforcement. Choose Minimum Activity Level, and start with High, but Low also works. Look at the systems that have ridiculous amounts of reinforcement already. Now, think how many Cmdrs it would take to do that at 10 kCP/hr, and compare that number to the Inara data on total number of pledges for that power. It doesn't add up. Change to the trade view, so you can see the trade lines between systems. If there are trade lines, then trade is being done. Go to the system, look at the ships in the system in station news. It's probably high. Go to Inara, and find a good trade loop with more than 40% profit margin. It's likely to be one of the systems in the gal map that you already spotted. This is a system where 1 x 1 selling is taking place. It needs to stop.
NB: This is not an official Pranav Antal position, but I believe it is in the interest of a free and fair contest that encourages game play, and eliminates the use of macro scripts to get an unfair advantage. I do not claim ANY player or group is cheating. I have specific systems that FDev might be interested in, and I'm sure you can find others in your own backyard, so I'm not going to share these systems because that will only identify a group or set of players, and that's not my point. Only FDev can look into it, and only they can fix it. I don't want anyone punished, I want the issue fixed, and it's an easy fix. Just give us the same merits per unit regardless of the number of units sold. Same as in BGS, same as in mining merits.
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