Oolite Bulletins

I imagine this has been discussed before but I couldn't find any threads on it.

It seems odd to me that the quantity of good available at a station is not enough to fill even one large ship eg. would a highly populated rich industrial world only have 60 tonnes of machinery to sell?

It has indeed been discussed before.

Unfortunately the higly protectionist nature of the galactic cooperative of worlds seems to explicitly forbid stations' markets from making more than 128 units of cargo available per commodity, per standard day. This generally leads to the artificial restrictions you noticed...
One other restriction is the ban on broadcasting a station's commodity prices. The main station has got a special licence to broadcast its prices on a system wide basis, but no further than that.

Yep, nothing can quite beat classic handwavium!

Kaks wrote:

Yep, nothing can quite beat classic handwavium!

I know, I tried new formula handwavium™ but it just didn't take the time-stress like naturally synthetic durallium.

The way to "work around" this is by buying many types of cargo and visiting multiple (secondary) stations in the same system. If you don't have any OXPs installed, the only secondary stations that may exist sometimes are Rock Hermits, which are typically between the planet and sun.

All Rock Hermits will likely have for sale is Minerals, Gold, Platinum, Gemstones...and maybe occasionally tiny amounts of Radioactives and Alloys. Minerals are a last resort, but Radioactives sell for a higher price at rich industrial worlds and are much cheaper at poor agricultural worlds.

mcarans wrote:

It seems odd to me that the quantity of good available at a station is not enough to fill even one large ship eg. would a highly populated rich industrial world only have 60 tonnes of machinery to sell?

Probably you did not look well and entered the wrong door. When I go the the marked in my town, and ask for a truckload of potatoes, they will not have that many. When I visit the market in our capital town, I will get a similar answer. So the size of the marked has no relation with the size of any single store.

When I need a truckload of potatoes I have to knock on a different door. The wholesale market. For Oolite that is the F8F8 button. There you can buy stuff in quantities to fill a good part of an anaconda bay. But with that quantities you must already have a buyer in mind that can use such quantities. Lucky enough the screen also offers a place to sell these big quantities. However, you can sell it elsewhere when you prefer.
(And when you don't make it in time, you have to sell it elsewhere anyhow.)

not very ethical, but theres money to be made filling your missile pylons with cascade missiles at navy stations, and selling them at the main station in the same system.
and woe betide any pirates that decide to have a go at you!

Go Bugbaiting, collect the dead Thargons, and sell them at Hoopy casinos and Navy stations. Alien items sell at those stations at high rates, often over 80cr/tc. Of course there's juicy bounties on Thargoid combat ships. If you can avoid getting too badly scratched n' dented, it's win-win.

Then there's bounty hunting. The bounties on pirates is just gravy; the real profit is in the recovered cargo and scooped pods.

Also don't forget that there are more goods waiting outside the station. You just have to politely "ask" another trader (or other traders) to give you the cargo pods they have unjustifiedly privatized in their cargo holds.

Commander McLane wrote:

Also don't forget that there are more goods waiting outside the station. You just have to politely "ask" another trader (or other traders) to give you the cargo pods they have unjustifiedly privatized in their cargo holds.

...He said while chugging rum and donning a pirate hat.

In many systems, just go wandering the space lanes about 1 hour after you first enter the system and you'll find numerous unclaimed cargo canisters.
Most of the pirates will be dead simply because new traders (and even Vipers in more organized government systems) arrive all the time...but pirates don't tend to be replenished.

Switeck wrote:

Most of the pirates will be dead simply because new traders (and even Vipers in more organized government systems) arrive all the time...but pirates don't tend to be replenished.

It's even worse! When a pirate has filled his cargo bay, he effectively becomes a trader himself, because he will head for the station (in a neighbouring system, though) and try to sell his loot.

Switeck wrote:

.but pirates don't tend to be replenished.

Time to tweak the populator?
Like: for every killed pirate roll dice if another appears somewhere in the system, chance being dependent on government type & poor-rich -scale

Zieman wrote:

Switeck wrote:

.but pirates don't tend to be replenished.

Time to tweak the populator?
Like: for every killed pirate roll dice if another appears somewhere in the system, chance being dependent on government type & poor-rich -scale

I wouldn't do that. I find it odd enough that for every exiting trader another one is added. I can live with it, because it is simply for playability: the likeliness to meet another soul shouldn't drop to 0.

However, this is completely different if a ship is killed (as opposed to jumping out). Why should another ship be magically called from out-of-system to replace it? If you as player have the urge to empty the system, you should be able to do it. So if you kill all the pirates, you should be hoorayed, not have magically thrown more pirates at you from the witchpoint. It isn't justifiable in-game.