QM/Trader Pricing Thread

[UrsulaMejor]

Please post any weird buy/sell exploits here, as well as any prices that seem off.

Some Goals:

1) I want crates to, generally, be cheap enough that regular crew might be able to afford some during the shift at their regular wages.

for reference:

/// e.g. clown
#define PAY_DUMBCLOWN 1
/// e.g. staffie
#define PAY_UNTRAINED 150
// e.g. miner
#define PAY_TRADESMAN 300
/// e.g. scientist
#define PAY_DOCTORATE 600
/// e.g. head
#define PAY_IMPORTANT 1200
/// e.g. captain
#define PAY_EXECUTIVE 2400

2) I want requisitions to be the main way QMs make money when mining/botany isn't providing support

[Cleaverwolf]

Blood bank seems a bit too pricey.

[Dhaidburt]

I'd need to take a look in-game, but I think fresh produce could be profitable 100% of the time right now. Otherwise, the Artifact Research Kit is a bit expensive and it's odd that Scrap Furnishings are over 10x more expensive than the normal furnishing crate. Neon I understand, that's overpriced furniture by its name, but scrap feels like it should be in the ballpark of 5k instead of 20k

[Silent Majority]

I prefer blood bank to stay expensive. Too many vampires on rp rely on takeout

[LeahTheTech]

You can still flip steel sheets for ~30k profit each by reclaiming them, also possibly fabric trades too.

[UrsulaMejor]

You can still flip steel sheets for ~30k profit each by reclaiming them, also possibly fabric trades too.

Flipping steel sheets should now no longer work. What's the fabric trades thing?

[CrystalClover]

You can still flip steel sheets for ~30k profit each by reclaiming them, also possibly fabric trades too.

Flipping steel sheets should now no longer work. What's the fabric trades thing?

You can buy fabric sheets from a trader for about 1k for 99, then sell it while material bars are hot for ~30k profit

[UrsulaMejor]

Ah, if it's about timing the market and not literally buying and selling stuff Infinitely, i am okay with that

[CrystalClover]

you can currently make a large profit of buying wires, processing them into bars, and sellign them if material bars are hot

[DasBrain]

The questions are:

Should processing bought stuff make profit?
I think, yes.

Should such trivial processing make profit?
Maybe not.

Should all prices for all things depend on the market prices of what you can process them into?
Sounds like a bit too much work for me.

[UrsulaMejor]

I think the solution here might be to make it so certain things never go hot or, more generally, change the way things go hot such that it's not simple rng that just randomly makes you a bajillionaire.

[Spoodle]

Another idea is to have traders only have so much money to give the player each trading cycle (not a low number probably; at least 25k or something but I haven't given the exact number much thought), and same thing for the market; probably for each individual item. It'd be like you could satisfy all of the demand, and then no one would need the given item anymore (for that trading cycle). Maybe that's outside of the scope of what you want to do for this though, or there's some other flaw with the idea, idk.

[TDHooligan]

Making it so that buyable materials never go hot makes sense. some way to tell there's an impending shortage of a certain thing would be really nice though.

Perhaps reimplement the stock market thing that can print off things like "ROBOTICS MANUFACTURER GOES BUST", basically saying 'robotic parts will be desirable'. Having second half of the trading cycle contain news flashes that foreshadow what will be hot next. Then when you're finished spending the first 5 minutes selling your previous efforts, you get 5 minutes of watching the trade bulletin.

Then, you can look at disabling certain trades based off of this. Robotics shortage? No prosthetic crates. Ideally the things that get disabled are solely things that the station can build themselves.

[Lord_earthfire]

Making it so that buyable materials never go hot makes sense. some way to tell there's an impending shortage of a certain thing would be really nice though.

This would be antithetical to the whole idea of "buy low, sell high", though.

I think the problem us now the rng part of the whole thing. If values change randomly on certain intervals, you are gambling to get rich quick on the market. This is not how most things on the market work.

Instead, there are trends and cycles. If we make the course of the market change gradually over time, people can expect and pass these moments.

[Kotlol]

Making it so that buyable materials never go hot makes sense. some way to tell there's an impending shortage of a certain thing would be really nice though.

This would be antithetical to the whole idea of "buy low, sell high", though.

I think the problem us now the rng part of the whole thing. If values change randomly on certain intervals, you are gambling to get rich quick on the market. This is not how most things on the market work.

Instead, there are trends and cycles. If we make the course of the market change gradually over time, people can expect and pass these moments.

If anything, the QM should have some effect on the market... 
But as the system is now it's impossible to do so since it's all in infinite quantities (cept the traders)
It would require limit quanities and such to get QMs to do anything with that kinda trade, thus an overhaul of the system.

"if anything" QMs should be only able to sell via orders to get their main form of money and to do that... "They gotta haggle" vs competitors.
Kinda like the Requistion system, but now the QM has to set the deal 1st before making the trade.

But this is more suggesting.. as for the pricing problems... Well even at my worst I can make a mill in no time...
But I think the easiest way to stop 80% of all trades to a million is simple:
"Anything bought on the market has 0 value to reselling"
This would stop the buying and selling of sheets.