Increase Income from Artifacts

[zjdtmkhzt]

im surprised rarity is such a big indicator of prices given afaik folk have 0 control over the rarity they get. should artlab's payout as a job really be such a gamble?

Well the artifacts they get are influenced by rarity, due to how probability works, so it kind of averages out. 🤔
I think the main payoff of artlab should be the artifacts themselves, not the cash you get for selling some of them.

The main issue here is people being disappointed by their artifact sales since they have no idea which artifacts are rarer than others, that's why it may be good to make more common artifacts give more money and balance it out by maybe making higher tiers give a little less. (People could also use the appraiser tool. Do artlabs get one of those these days?)

I can say that generally in my experience, if not always, artlabs do not get a cargo appraiser(afaik). I'm also sure how it would work on artifacts, given that the payout is based on accuracy(could players just scan with various combinations of things on the artifact identification form to find out how correct they are? or would it give the value for 0% accuracy regardless of what's on the form??). I'll give it some in-game testing today and see if an appraiser would work for stuff like that.

I coded it, it gives the base value assuming the filled out sticker you put on is 100% accurate.

Personally, I never really had any issues getting more artifacts, since there are many ways to get more. You can simply ask cargo, in 80% of cases they just order me all the artifacts which are almost always available. If that doesn't work often I get them sent randomly by mining even without asking. If that doesn't work I can either go into the debris field or something to get them (although that feels a bit metagamey, so not cool on RP), or I can just walk around the station with the pinpointer the artlab gets and find artifacts that way.
Even if every way is a little bit chance based, many chance based things together (of which most are pretty likely) form a pretty robust system for getting more artifacts in my opinion.
And once you have some the ball kind of starts rolling and you get more and more from resupplies and events.