Two bits of anomalous market behaviour here, which may be of interest.
Behaviour on Zero Demand
The first is to do with the behaviour of commodities when they reach zero demand, and seems to be new in 3.7.05 - if you actually get a commodity down to zero demand, which takes some doing, it stops regenerating the demand normally and stays at zero for a while.
Here's an example with Gold - you can see it being zeroed briefly in early August but recovering on the normal slope, whereas when the same happened on the 11th it pinned to zero for over a day before returning to normal.
To check this wasn't a coincidence, I did the same with Synthetic Reagents
As you can see, they aren't traded heavily, and normally regenerate pretty fast
...but once it hits zero, the regeneration stops. This isn't just demand being a signed value behind the scenes - I only "oversupplied" by about 100t, which shouldn't have kept it sub-zero for more than a couple of hours at most.
Pretty cool addition, I think, to give "met" demand a bit more stickiness and even make it plausibly possible to meet a (small!) station's entire demand. (Does anything happen if you do? If anyone with a fleet of haulers wants to test it, get in touch.) Zeroing supply doesn't do this - it just regenerates as normal - which is fair enough.
Then I moved to another station nearby and tried with Tea
Zeroed the demand in two trips easily enough ... but then it wouldn't stay zeroed - the regeneration stopped, but it consistently rebounded to a floor of 74t. Most of my subsequent sales don't show on the graph, but every single dot between the two zero points is me showing up, dropping >74t on the market, then going back to get some more. But ... as you can see from the later data points and comparing to the earlier regeneration, it has paused the regeneration rate for several hours.
Well, it's not perfect yet, clearly, but still, pretty neat.
Anomalous Behaviour under a Boom+Civil Liberty exact state combination in High-Tech economies
But, why was I looking at behaviour at zero-demand in the first place? It's a pretty rare condition pre-3.7.05 for anything but LTDs (and there's the well-known bug with infinite regeneration stopping the other core gems and Painite being affected by that) and they regenerate slowly enough not to need an explicit zero "hold"
Well, it turns out that a few of the local high-tech stations have permanently zero demand for a small subset of goods when in the Boom+Civil Liberty combination. This behaviour appears to have been going on since Civil Liberty and multistate was introduced in 3.3
Here's Silver at Whirling Station, for an example.
In Boom+Civil Liberty the demand is zero, unchanging. In just Boom, just Civil Liberty, or Boom+Civil Liberty+anything else, the standard market effect multipliers for the Boom and Civil Liberty states are applied.
Another example - Imperial Slaves at Spassky's Prospect
So far all the stations I've found this applies to are high-tech ones. There appears to be no apparent connection between the goods.
[Station, System, Faction]
Whirling Station, Ogmar, GCDC = Beryllium, Clothing*, Cobalt, Food Cartridges*, Gallite, HN Shock Mount*, Power Generators*, Rutile, Silver, Water*, Water Purifiers*
Dervish Platform, Ogmar, GCDC = Clothing, Food Cartridges, HN Shock Mount, Power Generators, Water, Water Purifiers
Spassky's Prospect, Macrath, Sovereignty = Imperial Slaves
Whirling Station's set of 11 is a superset of Dervish Platform's 6 (adding some minerals and metals)
Spassky's Prospect's single commodity is entirely disjoint - though Imp Slaves are outlawed at the other two.
I can't think of a plausible explanation for why the exact combination Boom+Civil Liberty would zero a small random selection of import demands while in effect, but not consistently between stations. If it's a bug, I can think of no plausible mechanism by which it might occur. If it's intentional ... I can think of no plausible reason for Frontier to do it.
Has anyone else got stations outside Colonia in Boom+Civil Liberty right now? If so, are any of your demand levels exactly zero? (If this only happens at three Colonia stations, then it's even weirder, and I'm not ruling out a subtle "have you tried listening to it" tin foil message)
Behaviour on Zero Demand
The first is to do with the behaviour of commodities when they reach zero demand, and seems to be new in 3.7.05 - if you actually get a commodity down to zero demand, which takes some doing, it stops regenerating the demand normally and stays at zero for a while.
Here's an example with Gold - you can see it being zeroed briefly in early August but recovering on the normal slope, whereas when the same happened on the 11th it pinned to zero for over a day before returning to normal.
To check this wasn't a coincidence, I did the same with Synthetic Reagents
History of Synthetic Reagents at Whirling Station
cdb.sotl.org.uk
History of Synthetic Reagents at Whirling Station
cdb.sotl.org.uk
Pretty cool addition, I think, to give "met" demand a bit more stickiness and even make it plausibly possible to meet a (small!) station's entire demand. (Does anything happen if you do? If anyone with a fleet of haulers wants to test it, get in touch.) Zeroing supply doesn't do this - it just regenerates as normal - which is fair enough.
Then I moved to another station nearby and tried with Tea
History of Tea at Diva Mines
cdb.sotl.org.uk
Well, it's not perfect yet, clearly, but still, pretty neat.
Anomalous Behaviour under a Boom+Civil Liberty exact state combination in High-Tech economies
But, why was I looking at behaviour at zero-demand in the first place? It's a pretty rare condition pre-3.7.05 for anything but LTDs (and there's the well-known bug with infinite regeneration stopping the other core gems and Painite being affected by that) and they regenerate slowly enough not to need an explicit zero "hold"
Well, it turns out that a few of the local high-tech stations have permanently zero demand for a small subset of goods when in the Boom+Civil Liberty combination. This behaviour appears to have been going on since Civil Liberty and multistate was introduced in 3.3
Here's Silver at Whirling Station, for an example.
History of Silver at Whirling Station
cdb.sotl.org.uk
Another example - Imperial Slaves at Spassky's Prospect
History of Imperial Slaves at Spassky's Prospect
cdb.sotl.org.uk
So far all the stations I've found this applies to are high-tech ones. There appears to be no apparent connection between the goods.
[Station, System, Faction]
Whirling Station, Ogmar, GCDC = Beryllium, Clothing*, Cobalt, Food Cartridges*, Gallite, HN Shock Mount*, Power Generators*, Rutile, Silver, Water*, Water Purifiers*
Dervish Platform, Ogmar, GCDC = Clothing, Food Cartridges, HN Shock Mount, Power Generators, Water, Water Purifiers
Spassky's Prospect, Macrath, Sovereignty = Imperial Slaves
Whirling Station's set of 11 is a superset of Dervish Platform's 6 (adding some minerals and metals)
Spassky's Prospect's single commodity is entirely disjoint - though Imp Slaves are outlawed at the other two.
I can't think of a plausible explanation for why the exact combination Boom+Civil Liberty would zero a small random selection of import demands while in effect, but not consistently between stations. If it's a bug, I can think of no plausible mechanism by which it might occur. If it's intentional ... I can think of no plausible reason for Frontier to do it.
Has anyone else got stations outside Colonia in Boom+Civil Liberty right now? If so, are any of your demand levels exactly zero? (If this only happens at three Colonia stations, then it's even weirder, and I'm not ruling out a subtle "have you tried listening to it" tin foil message)
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