Market Discussions

normally a manufactured ship should be at least 20-50% more expensive, it seems like the manufacturers do not want to have a margin on what they do, for me it does not make sense to manufacture if selling the raw material gives the same profit

ah ok, so for what premium do you seel the ship vs. material cost? +20%? just rough i would like to know...

There are some special cases though, outside the realm of skills and material efficiency.

With some tech 1 ships, especially cruisers, it's also the case that they are below current production costs, because the materials were increased when the ships were given a substantial buff. I.e a cruiser might have cost 4m to build before, but now it costs 8m and you notice the market price is say, 6m. This is because people stocked up on a LOT of ships before the change, and as such theres a large stockpile out there that people are still getting rid of.

Procurers are another example, the old cost was ~3 million, the new cost is around 22 million. Currently they go for 8 million and they've been around that price for the past 5 months :)

The same thing will happen with Dominixes, Armageddons, Typhoons and Scorpions. Currently the production cost is ~80 million and come Odyssey on june 4th, the new production cost will be around 170-190m due to buffs to the ships themselves.
As such, after june 4th, noone will be building these for a very very long time, until the stockpiles run out :)

Other than the aforementioned mineral changes;

All the cool kids want to build ships.

This.

People will mine minerals, build a ship, and less the ship at the same or lower price of the minerals at market price.

Mining your own minerals helps keep costs down so you can undercut the market.

Aside from ship changes that increased costs, so people mass-produced huge numbers of ships before the changes took affect and can now sell below current cost yet still turn a profit, there exists three groups of people:

Group 1: For some reason, some people feel they have a right to a profit making whatever they want to make. They completely ignore the needs of the market (often driving down prices in the process), then come into the forums and complain that the world doesn't spin in their preferred direction.

Group 2: Then there is also the "it's a game crowd". They've posted that they don't care about making profits, because they just like building stuff. They are almost like the "Minerals I Mine Are Free" (MIMAF) crowd, except they do know what they are doing, but they just don't care. They don't put a value on their time.

Group 3: Lastly there is the MIMAF crowd. I like to think they simply don't know better, unlike group 2.

None of those matter - MIMAFs and game builders, never have the capital to do suffcient construction to actually take up demand, and by not profit seeking effectively, they don't increase their capital base to the point where it will take up demand.

In addition realize that mineral prices tend to go up and down a lot, and vary from place to place. Not mention the difference between buy and sell orders. So it's possible the minerals for a ship were bought at a lower price. In my experience tech 1 ships are generally sold at ~5% above mineral cost at most trade hubs.

This happens in every game. People say that they gathered all the materials so they can sell it for whatever price they want. They don't value their time spent at all & often end up selling the item for less than what it costs to produce, lining someone else's pocket in the process.