Brought up on a few different threads, I wanted to clarify some questions I've had...

SSM = Sell Steal Move. Right? You go to a port with say 250 holds of eq. You sell it, steal it back, then move to another port. Moving is important because you can't do "evil" from the same port twice in a row. And you sell it first to an XXB port so that it sits on dock for you to steal it back. Is that right? You basically end up with a load of eq you sell over and over till you bust.

SST = Sell, steal, transport. You have eq and an XXB port. You sell eq, steal it back, then transport over to hit another port. I hear people talk of SST+Jet. Why would I want to jetison my cargo then? Is it just at the end? It seems that the advantage of SST over SSM is that you spend fewer turns moving between sectors, it's slightly faster (no move delay?) and lets you hit ports within xport range instead of just adj. Is that close? The result is that you end up with a load of eq you keep selling over and over until you bust.

SDT = Steal, dump, transport (then sell?). You find an XXB port, you upgrade the port to put material on dock (Upgrading an XXB port seems to upgrade both the capacity and the dock %, meaning that upgrades to a buy port happen as port regen does) then steal it off the dock. From there, put it on a planet and transport to another area and repeat. At the end of the day you have a nice upgraded XXB port and lots of free product ready to sell to the port from the planet. It's basically an evil buydown it seems.

At what point does the planet trade % mess with this tho? I would think there'd be a point where, if it was low enough, an SST would be more profitable. I guess you don't have to wait till the end to sell, you could sell at the end of each turn, but wouldn't that just be an SST in disquise? I've used "team SDT" scripts that have player B wait for player A to bust, then trade that port to clear the bust and it seems to work well, provided you have enough experience so you don't bust too often.

RTR = Rob, transport, rob. Used to rob credits from a port if you can't get them all in one sitting with mega rob (non-MBBS). Rob from X, transport then rob from Y. Repeat until bust or drained. Why would anyone RTR in an MBBS game? Like megarob, combine with a buydown to get lots of free product. I'm guessing you'd need a mobile planet to make best use of this tho?

RMR = Rob, move, rob. Does anyone ever do this anymore? Seems that it would work as an RTR substitute maybe in an unlim or if you're in a 1 tpw ship and ports are all adj (ie: a fantasy land full of free fighters and cash, where little blue fairies furb all day long and the flowers smell of corbomite).

Variations based on fleeing. Seems like movement used to be a lot more expensive than fleeing. Does anyone still do this?

Megarob = Steals a bunch of credits from the port all in one sitting. Only works in MBBS, right? You could wander around hoping to find a rich port, but an easier way is to buydown stuff from an SXS port. Probably to a mobile planet. You buy a bunch of stuff, then mega the credits back. Result is a lot of free equipment you can sell. The cost is a handful of turns for the buydown, plus any spent selling and 1 for the mega. It seems slightly more efficient than an SDT because of busts and turns spent xporting.

Usually used in conjunction with planet trading at upped ports. Sadly this is when it gets more complicated it seems. How does ptrade % effect this, and if port regen is low... clearly you have to spend more time between hitting each port. Does that mean you don't trade as often, or that you upgrade more ports? Say you steal 10 ports worth of eq per day, but regen is only at 70%. So you need what, 15 ports to cover the sell-off? Or not? Seems that ports buy on a bell curve, so the first 50% of capacity pays better than the last 50%. Might make sense, in a turn limited game, to only sell down to 50% so you don't waste buydown turns by selling product at a discount. Or does that not come into play with ptrading? If it regens at 70% and you wanted to sell down to 50% each time, you could space it out and sell down what, 35% capacity twice a day? Let it get to 85% then sell? So then 29 ports needed in that scenario? Or am I missing something obvious.

Ports seem to work around a "dock." Selling ports have all their product on dock, so capacity = on dock. Dock is exchanged for credits. Credits decay at port regen rate? Buying ports exchange stored credits for product that is then placed on dock. Capacity - On dock = Amount it can buy. If you upgrade a port the dock is instantly upgraded and filled with product, so a selling port ups instantly and a buying port ups at the rate of regen? Means that a low regen rate makes it easier to RTR or mega rob but harder to sell any product you've stolen, doesn't it? Seems like a big capacity planet and good ports (good grid) would be a requirement there, probably in inverse proportion to the regen rate.

What else is there in today's game? How does MCIC play into this? Do you want a really good MCIC, or a really bad one when trying to mega? I'm guessing MCIC = price flexibility and not just "a good price" so if you're going for a worst price deal then you still want the best MCIC. Is that right?

quote:Originally posted by Singularity

SSM = Sell Steal Move. Right? You go to a port with say 250 holds of eq. You sell it, steal it back, then move to another port. Moving is important because you can't do "evil" from the same port twice in a row. And you sell it first to an XXB port so that it sits on dock for you to steal it back. Is that right? You basically end up with a load of eq you sell over and over till you bust.

SST = Sell, steal, transport. You have eq and an XXB port. You sell eq, steal it back, then transport over to hit another port. I hear people talk of SST+Jet. Why would I want to jetison my cargo then? Is it just at the end? It seems that the advantage of SST over SSM is that you spend fewer turns moving between sectors, it's slightly faster (no move delay?) and lets you hit ports within xport range instead of just adj. Is that close? The result is that you end up with a load of eq you keep selling over and over until you bust.
Yes, you're right on these two. The only time you'd use SSM generally is in an unlim where turns don't matter. You *might* use it to a limited degree if playing solo in a game and you didn't have the cash to bust up to the XP required to SST with decent ships, but generally SSM is not useful in turn games. As for SSTJ, I've never seen anyone mention that, but I suspect they may be talking about buying some small amount of ore along with selling the equipment, then jetting it before you steal the equipment back. This would give you +4XP per cycle (2 XP per ore trade), which might help to gain some XP if using mules before you have enough XP to use colts, or for a little extra XP kick to keep up with busts on a bad day.

quote:SDT = Steal, dump, transport (then sell?). You find an XXB port, you upgrade the port to put material on dock (Upgrading an XXB port seems to upgrade both the capacity and the dock %, meaning that upgrades to a buy port happen as port regen does) then steal it off the dock. From there, put it on a planet and transport to another area and repeat. At the end of the day you have a nice upgraded XXB port and lots of free product ready to sell to the port from the planet. It's basically an evil buydown it seems.

At what point does the planet trade % mess with this tho? I would think there'd be a point where, if it was low enough, an SST would be more profitable. I guess you don't have to wait till the end to sell, you could sell at the end of each turn, but wouldn't that just be an SST in disquise? I've used "team SDT" scripts that have player B wait for player A to bust, then trade that port to clear the bust and it seems to work well, provided you have enough experience so you don't bust too often.
Sort of. The idea is to steal 2000-5000 equipment at a time, and then nego-sell the whole lot. SST turns per cycle = 1 turn sell, 1 turn steal, 1 turn transport, 1 turn sell, 1 turn steal, 1 turn transport = 6 turns. SDT turns per cycle = 1 turn steal, dump (no turn cost), 1 turn transport, 1 turn steal, dump (no turn cost), 1 turn transport = 4 turns. So doing that for 2000 units per planet is 8 cycles or 32 turns, then you spend a 33rd and 34th turn nego-selling. At 100% nego this gives you the same amount of money in 34 turns as the other one would in 48 turns for 8 cycles. So 34/48 = 70.83% of the turn use, so a little over 70% planetary nego is where the breakeven point is. Since you also have the chance of busting and not being able to nego-sell what you'd stolen so far (unless you have a fellow corpie to nego for you and/or clear your bust), plus you spend some cash on gentorps, and spend more on port upgrades than SST, 75-80% is probably a better breakoff point to use.

Note: You always use the upgrade trick to create equipment on the dock. That's how you get the equip to start any cycle, not just SDT.

quote:RTR = Rob, transport, rob. Used to rob credits from a port if you can't get them all in one sitting with mega rob (non-MBBS). Rob from X, transport then rob from Y. Repeat until bust or drained. Why would anyone RTR in an MBBS game? Like megarob, combine with a buydown to get lots of free product. I'm guessing you'd need a mobile planet to make best use of this tho?

RMR = Rob, move, rob. Does anyone ever do this anymore? Seems that it would work as an RTR substitute maybe in an unlim or if you're in a 1 tpw ship and ports are all adj (ie: a fantasy land full of free fighters and cash, where little blue fairies furb all day long and the flowers smell of corbomite).
These are rarely useful. In games without megarob your blues might still buydown equipment, though, and you can use RTR to get the credits back a little at a time instead of all at once. Rarely done, though, since you need a lot of XP to make it profitable.

quote:Variations based on fleeing. Seems like movement used to be a lot more expensive than fleeing. Does anyone still do this?
Flee was changed to cost a turn about half the time, so instead of 2-turn cycles SDF is more like 3. Still beats transport, but it's a pain to set up.

quote:Megarob = Steals a bunch of credits from the port all in one sitting. Only works in MBBS, right? You could wander around hoping to find a rich port, but an easier way is to buydown stuff from an SXS port. Probably to a mobile planet. You buy a bunch of stuff, then mega the credits back. Result is a lot of free equipment you can sell. The cost is a handful of turns for the buydown, plus any spent selling and 1 for the mega. It seems slightly more efficient than an SDT because of busts and turns spent xporting.
Megarob is only useful once you have a mobile planet. You're never going to find a port with that many credits otherwise, and 30000 equipment on an immobile planet in a sector with a xxS is useless. Yes, MBBS only. The selling is almost exclusively nego-sell, as it's not really worth selling one set of holds at a time even with 60% nego.

quote:Usually used in conjunction with planet trading at upped ports. Sadly this is when it gets more complicated it seems. How does ptrade % effect this, and if port regen is low... clearly you have to spend more time between hitting each port. Does that mean you don't trade as often, or that you upgrade more ports? Say you steal 10 ports worth of eq per day, but regen is only at 70%. So you need what, 15 ports to cover the sell-off? Or not? Seems that ports buy on a bell curve, so the first 50% of capacity pays better than the last 50%. Might make sense, in a turn limited game, to only sell down to 50% so you don't waste buydown turns by selling product at a discount. Or does that not come into play with ptrading? If it regens at 70% and you wanted to sell down to 50% each time, you could space it out and sell down what, 35% capacity twice a day? Let it get to 85% then sell? So then 29 ports needed in that scenario? Or am I missing something obvious.
Nego-sales sell all of the product at the rate the first hold would sell at w/ the current port %age. So if the port is at 100%, you get more credits from a 100% nego-sale than you would one load at a time.

quote:Ports seem to work around a "dock." Selling ports have all their product on dock, so capacity = on dock. Dock is exchanged for credits. Credits decay at port regen rate? Buying ports exchange stored credits for product that is then placed on dock. Capacity - On dock = Amount it can buy. If you upgrade a port the dock is instantly upgraded and filled with product, so a selling port ups instantly and a buying port ups at the rate of regen? Means that a low regen rate makes it easier to RTR or mega rob but harder to sell any product you've stolen, doesn't it? Seems like a big capacity planet and good ports (good grid) would be a requirement there, probably in inverse proportion to the regen rate.
Credit decay, I don't know. It's slower than the regen rate of the material itself, as even once a port has reached 100% again, there are still credits on the dock. But they do decay. Something I haven't tested.

Upgrading either buy or sell produces material on the dock. This means upgrading buy gives you a lower current percentage, upgrading sell gives you a higher available percentage. And yes, lower regen means you need more upgraded buy ports to handle a given amount of stuff for sale.

quote:What else is there in today's game? How does MCIC play into this? Do you want a really good MCIC, or a really bad one when trying to mega? I'm guessing MCIC = price flexibility and not just "a good price" so if you're going for a worst price deal then you still want the best MCIC. Is that right?
You want a bad MCIC on the xxS you're going to megarob from (or at least, bad enough to give it enough creds to megarob), and of course good MCIC's on the xxB's.

Phew, that's a lot of questions for one post. [:)] I'm sure others will elaborate better than I did, too; it's late and I'm tired.

Just adding to what Xentropy already said

SST+Jet is where you buy a few holds of ore if available after you sell. gets you a few more exp (up to 4) for little cost, and since you have used a turn already, you may as well do it. You jet the ore. Helps you maintain your exp during that first day when busts can really hurt. The amount you spend on the ore is trivial compared to the exp you can save. However, you are spending 2 times as much time haggling.

RTR: Hard to maintain your exp with this method. In games with lots of PPT'ing going on, like games with aliens, you can make some profit, but SDT is more reliable. In games with no Megga-robs, if you have a mobile, you can haggle dump around 2k to 10k eq (depending on your exp), then move to another port, and do the same, then rtr between them. Then sell off the eq. You need to have high exp to begin this, (think 20k) but properly done, it's possible to maintain exp, and you make more than SDT per turn. My old corpie Roberts was the king of this method, and he would regularly bring in tons of cash. Think of them as mini-megga robs. Nobody I know of uses this method much. Most people play MBBS now anyway.

Credits on ports used to decay. Now they don't decay, but if they buy product from someone, i believe that they pay out of the credits on dock first. Not sure if it eventually decays, but i've tracked ports over 24 hours and not seen any loss.

I know it decays at some rate, because I've seen credits on dock vanish in test games that no one else is playing in and no aliens are in, and which I haven't sold anything to. I know for certain when you sell it comes out of creds onhand. That's why if you're going to buy down equip and negosell excess organics or something, you sell first or rob the creds before selling.

I'll do some credit decay testing at some point. I also need to do some cloak failure rate testing. I've noticed it's impossible to cloak fail the same day you cloak out (even through an extern), and there appear to be some special rules about the extern the day after you cloak out as well (not 100% safe, but you don't fail at the full displayed rate, either).

Ok.

SSM. Would it be useful in a game with a good 1 tpw ship? Or no? I've tried to before on a 200 holds ship when I had nobody else at keys and it worked some, but I'd imagine that using a colt instead would be more profitable with SST.

On SST. Would a team SST work? I've played in several MBBS games with low trade percentage, seems like something that could be useful.

With SDT, why 2000 to 5000 eq at a time? Is that a magic number? I thought you could still planet nego even if you've busted at the port.

Anyway, let me see if I've got this. Note 1: When doing evil, it's always a good idea to find some way(s) to add extra XP into the loop? An RTR wouldn't have such a thing by default, so every time you bust you'd just be cutting into the XP you've made during the robs? That's why doing a little buydown, a little RTR, a little buydown, a little RTR, would work (albiet slowly), probably buying multiple products at once to get 4xp instead of just 2. 100 buys, 400 exp extra, yah... I can see how that'd be more bust friendly.

With mega, what would the breakeven point be between spending the turns selling 1 load at a time versus nego-selling the whole lot? I'd imagine it would have to be pretty low to make up for the lost buys you could do. Around 50% I guess since the turns selling would be the same as the turns buying, hence doing half the number of buy. Note 2: Credits, or atleast sales/robs, per turn determines how valuable something is.

Now with nego-sells, it's treated as a giant first hold then? Selling at whatever 1 load would sell at? That's very good to know. Trying to keep ports above 50% like that would end up costing quite a bit of money then. Yowza. I'm guessing it would be better to "rotate" ports then, hitting one group while letting the other regen to 100%. Since at, say 70%, you could do 2 trades every 3 days or so (slightly more) then splitting the group up into 2 and doing a group every other day and a half would make better sense, wouldn't it?

Ok. So upgrading a buy port would reduce the available precentage and reduce the amount you get for selling. So sell any product first, then the port. Not the other way around. The reverse is true for sell ports since upgrading them increases the percentage you'd get a better deal if you upgraded then bought. So important note number 3... upgrade your ports at the correct time.

Cool. Thanks!

quote:Originally posted by Singularity

SSM. Would it be useful in a game with a good 1 tpw ship? Or no? I've tried to before on a 200 holds ship when I had nobody else at keys and it worked some, but I'd imagine that using a colt instead would be more profitable with SST.
Even a 250-hold 1TPW ship wouldn't be as good SSMing as two SSTing, since you'd have to stick to adjacent xxB ports, whereas you have a range of 7 with SSTing Colts. Still, with edits like that, it would certainly be a much more viable option solo than it'd ever be stock.

quote:On SST. Would a team SST work? I've played in several MBBS games with low trade percentage, seems like something that could be useful.
The point of team SST is that ports only remember the most recent player that busted at them. So with at least two reds, you can clear each other's busts. You SST at a triad, player 1 starts by SSTing between ports A and B. When he busts, say at port B, player 2 SST's ports B and C. When player 2 busts, if it's at port B player 1 can continue on A and B, if it's at port C, player 1 uses A and C. And so on.

quote:With SDT, why 2000 to 5000 eq at a time? Is that a magic number? I thought you could still planet nego even if you've busted at the port.
There's no "magic number". It's just the tradeoff between using as few turns doing the selling as possible vs. as little risk of leaving a lot of unsaleable equip on the planet. With two reds (or even a teammate blue who can do the nego if you bust) that risk is negated, but you still have the issue of upgrade cost. Upgrading too many units can quickly cut into your profits, especially if you bust too quickly after the upgrade. SDT can actually *lose* you money in the short term.

quote:Anyway, let me see if I've got this. Note 1: When doing evil, it's always a good idea to find some way(s) to add extra XP into the loop? An RTR wouldn't have such a thing by default, so every time you bust you'd just be cutting into the XP you've made during the robs? That's why doing a little buydown, a little RTR, a little buydown, a little RTR, would work (albiet slowly), probably buying multiple products at once to get 4xp instead of just 2. 100 buys, 400 exp extra, yah... I can see how that'd be more bust friendly.
Not exactly. SST tends to stay in the ideal XP range since bust rate increases as you pass 2x the ideal amount of XP for a given stolen amount. Say the steal factor calculates out to 30 XP per hold of equipment. You need 7500XP to steal enough to fill a Colt. If you pass 15000XP, your bust rate goes up (though not as quickly as it goes up as you go under 7500). You also lose exactly 10% of your XP when busting, whereas the XP gained from a successful steal is constant. So if the average chance of busting is 1 in 50 (and it tends toward that, regardless of other factors, a lucky or unlucky streak, etc.) and stealing 250 holds of equip earns you 22 XP, then you'll tend to gain 1078 XP (49 successes) then lose 10% (bust). This will tend your XP toward around 10780. This is why steal factors that require less XP per hold can actually be detrimental in some ways; you'll tend to go above the optimum range faster and need ways to bleed XP (fake busting, getting beaten by the underground guards, or whatever), and steal factors requiring more XP per hold than 45 or so make life miserable for reds because they'll tend to fall under the optimum range and have to bust back up a lot.

Robbing gives you greater XP gains when robbing the max # of credits (since there's no upper limit for rob, other than what the port has onhand, so there's no XP amount above which more is useless) but since you tend to have higher XP in general if you're robbing at all, you lose a LOT when you bust, so you tend to overall lose rather than gain XP when robbing (not megarobbing) is your main source of income. If ports are very wealthy, though, it can still be profitable to rob and use some of the profits to bust back up to a high XP level. Those calculations are very situation-specific, though, so it wouldn't be useful to go through them here.

quote:With mega, what would the breakeven point be between spending the turns selling 1 load at a time versus nego-selling the whole lot? I'd imagine it would have to be pretty low to make up for the lost buys you could do. Around 50% I guess since the turns selling would be the same as the turns buying, hence doing half the number of buy. Note 2: Credits, or atleast sales/robs, per turn determines how valuable something is.
Even at 50% ptrade, selling one load at a time, your last load will sell for much less than your first load, whereas the entire load would just sell at 50% of the 100% rate using a nego, which means it would rarely be worth the extra turns spent. Even if you were already going to buydown something on the port, it costs you the other turn to pick up the equipment to sell as you buydown. Iff you have turns to burn and very few usable ports, (you're probably screwed anyway since your grid is insufficient else you'd have enough ports,) it may be worth it to sell one load at a time in a low nego% game since you would get more profit per port but a lower profit per turn.

quote:Now with nego-sells, it's treated as a giant first hold then? Selling at whatever 1 load would sell at? That's very good to know. Trying to keep ports above 50% like that would end up costing quite a bit of money then. Yowza. I'm guessing it would be better to "rotate" ports then, hitting one group while letting the other regen to 100%. Since at, say 70%, you could do 2 trades every 3 days or so (slightly more) then splitting the group up into 2 and doing a group every other day and a half would make better sense, wouldn't it?
Yes, you never want to nego until a port's at 100%, unless you're in dire need of cash. Period. If you have more turns than you have ports to buy your stuff, upgrade more ports or spend more turns gridding and less cashing so you can find more good-MCIC ports worth upgrading.

quote:Ok. So upgrading a buy port would reduce the available precentage and reduce the amount you get for selling. So sell any product first, then the port. Not the other way around. The reverse is true for sell ports since upgrading them increases the percentage you'd get a better deal if you upgraded then bought. So important note number 3... upgrade your ports at the correct time.
Yep, if you're going to buydown a bunch of material, upgrade the port fully then buydown. It can even be worthwhile to upgrade it slightly more than you're going to buy, since it'll make the last holds you buy cheaper (you'll be buying when the port has 20% left instead of 5% left). And it's a total waste to do what I've seen some people do (which makes me cringe), upgrade a little, buy it all down, upgrade a little more, buy all that down, etc. For buying, yes, if you're going to upgrade a port all the way from 3k to 30k or 60k or something, sell the 3k to it first so you get a little use out of the 100% it has right now. The extra few hours it might take down the road to regen that 5% the 3k would amount to after the upgrade is insignificant.

Great explanation on the triangle bust clearing. Always wondered
about that, but it makes perfect sense now.

So if you have too much exp, 2x the optimal, then it hurts to have
any more experience. But because rob takes more exp when you bust,
you tend to bust "harder" with it than just stealing. So stealing
is easier to do over a longer term. From what you're saying there
tends to be a bit of an equilibrium on experience tho, busts go up
so exp goes down... then busts go back down naturally and exp goes
back up. Why 10780?

With the selling 1 load at a time... I hadn't thought about loading
from the planet. You're right tho, that would drain a LOT of turns.
Probably closer to 30% break-even then. Never seen a game that low.

From your explanation I can see why upgrading then buying down in
chunks would be bad idea. You'd pay more per unit as the percentage
would decrease faster, costing more. If anything, upgrade a little,
buy down to 50%. Upgrade more, buy down to 50%. Repeat until it's
fully upped then buydown completely? Would that work?

quote:Originally posted by Singularity

Why 10780?
Stealing 250 holds of equipment always earns you 22 XP. You will tend to bust 2% of the time. So all things equal, you'll succeed 49 times for every bust. For sake of argument we'll say you always succeed exactly 49 times then fail, since while realistically you'll fail twice in a short time then not for a long time, etc., the statistical tendency will be toward that average. That's 1078 XP gained then 10% XP lost.

Say you're starting a little under 10780; you busted up to 8000 (enough to steal 250 holds plus a little breathing room). You start your run. You bust with 8000+1078=9078, so you lose 907 (I actually never paid attention to whether the 10% loss rounds up, down, or to the nearest, but 1 XP isn't particularly meaningful. I'll assume it rounds down.) You now have 8171. You get furbed and continue. You gain 1078 to 9249 then bust and drop to 8325. Next run, 9403, 8463. 9541, 8587, 9665, 8699, 9777, 8800, 9878, 8891... Eventually you hit the point where you have 9702 XP before the run, gain to 10780, then bust back down to...9702. So while of course in a real game your XP will vary more wildly than that tight range, statistically you'll average right back to the 9702-10780 range, since that's where your busts equal your gains.

Same thing happens on the way down, of course. If you start with 12000 XP, the series goes 13078, 11771, 12849, 11565, 12643, 11379, and so on. Notice the numbers are drifting downward instead of upward in this case.

quote:With the selling 1 load at a time... I hadn't thought about loading from the planet. You're right tho, that would drain a LOT of turns. Probably closer to 30% break-even then. Never seen a game that low.
It varies from 20 to 100, so it's possible to have a game with it set that low; typically settings don't vary a whole lot among the popular games, though. That's what makes them popular; people are familiar with them. Instead of adapting to a new setting, most players would rather recommend the same old settings to the sysop and refuse to play until they're changed.

quote:From your explanation I can see why upgrading then buying down in chunks would be bad idea. You'd pay more per unit as the percentage would decrease faster, costing more. If anything, upgrade a little, buy down to 50%. Upgrade more, buy down to 50%. Repeat until it's fully upped then buydown completely? Would that work?
You're still better off upgrading the entire chunk plus ~10% then buying down the amount you need. Circumstances may demand you do otherwise (say you don't have the entire amount of cash necessary to do the full upgrade right now), but you'd still generally be better off waiting until you have the cash than doing some now and some later.

According to Traitor, bust rates don't go up with Exp. If they ever did, they don't now. If Traitor says he's tested it, that means he's spent more time testing it than the Martin's and HVS spent coding it.

With SDT, there's another reason to adjust the number of steals between selloffs. If you are using 8 steals/sell (2000 units), then you'll be upgrading the ports at least 200 units per day. That makes an SDT port useable for 15 days, assuming 32,650 unit max. 2500 units = 12 days. 4000 units = 7 days. Of course, they can be used as mega buy ports later if you can hold them.

Xen, ship trades are more profitable than ptrades. The ports' offers are better, and the haggling is better (with the right haggle routine). So yes Singularity, 50% is probably the right time to stop ship trading and move on, but varies by ptrade %.

Assuming you are using my haggle, SST tends to be as profitable as SDT when ptrade is between 90% & 95%. There are other advantages to SST. To name a few... You bust 1/6th less often vs SDT, since your steals/turns is 1/3 vs ~1/2. This also saves blue turns. Your SST ports are less consp!cuous since there isn't a planet under them. Therefore, you'll hold better ports longer, increasing profits. You gain higher exp because of all of the haggling. And I'm missing a few. But I'm biased...

Triangle bust clearing works for 2-man. For 3 or more, its better to use 2 ports, choosing the best 2 MCICs within xport range.

+EP+

Cool, nice to know they removed that aspect at some point then. Bust rate used to start going up as you went past 2x minimum, according to Rave who saw the actual code. That was, of course, many versions ago, though.

You will never bust negotiating from a planet.

Ok. So you upgrade, steal, dump, transport. 8 cycles at 250 per
means you've upped the port 2000. With 32650 max you can keep
that going for 16 days? Why only 15?

Is your haggle available somewhere?

How does 3 or 4-man bust clearing work? Player A trades 2 ports,
busts at 1. Then player B comes along and trades the same 2 ports,
busting at one. If it's the same one, player A can continue if
it's not then player C trades the 2 busts, clearing one and allowing
that cleared player to trade? Triangling players instead of ports...

"With 32650 max you can keep
that going for 16 days? Why only 15?"

i'll answer with a question...
do most ports start buying 0 equip?


"How does 3 or 4-man bust clearing work? Player A trades 2 ports,
busts at 1. Then player B comes along and trades the same 2 ports,
busting at one. If it's the same one, player A can continue if
it's not then player C trades the 2 busts, clearing one and allowing
that cleared player to trade? Triangling players instead of ports..."

players A, B, C
ports 1 and 2

player A starts, and busts at port 2.
player B starts, and either...
1) busts at 1
2) busts at 2
lets say its 1
now neither A nor B can run.
player C starts, busts at
1) if port 2, player A goes
2) if port 1, player B goes

rinse and repeat.
sometimes 2 people will continue to clear each other's busts while the third sits and waits for *his* bust to get cleared.
if this happens, just have someone ***** bust for him

Lol, good point. Port starts at 2000... you only get 30650, or 15 days.

You don't have to upgrade a port fully every day. It depends on port regen and whether you sell off all your equip to the port every day. If you can keep a specific pair of ports for a while, leaving the equip on the planets pays for itself in decreased upgrade costs.