@ajqtrz forgive me as I am horrible at economics / trade markets or whatever it is called but how would I determine how something that is in abundance and is hard for most people to trade can be adjusted to a fair market value based on the market and be able to make a profit? How does one even go about determining what they would consider fair market value? Because to me it seems like if I’m adjusting my bismuth to $25K asking for $20K of Shrooms or Soap I’m in no way making a profit. I’m not evening breaking even. Are you doing cross trades? I’d be happy just to be breaking even. I’m all for helping née players out that need help and I have more than enough base goods but sentient goods, especially S3 are becoming a struggle / problem in order to progress in the game.
Two things people forget and thus miss the opportunities. First, you boosted goods are cheaper to produce for you than for about 2/3 of the rest of the players. Second, most people count on the star system to measure if a trade is fair, unfair, or a good deal. This produces an opportunity to profit.
First, though, "profit" does not mean for every scroll you use to purchase silk or crystal you are going to get more silk or crystal than scrolls you offer. Profit is not about a 1:1 ratio because the supply is not 1:1. Right now the supply of scrolls is 1.2 to 1 for crystal and a bit more for silk. Thus, a properly balanced trade would be 1200 scrolls for 1000 crystal. That's the market value because of the surplus of scrolls.
Now if that's true, and I'll bet it's pretty accurate, if you trade 1100 scrolls for 1000 crystal you are profiting. You are receiving for your scrolls more than the current fair market value. And since you are also producing them for a lot less than silk or crystal, you are profiting in that manner also. If I spend X dollars to feed a cow each year but one year somebody drops a load of feed off for nothing, I'm profiting more because my costs are less. In any case you can measure profit by using the artificial 1:1 ratio (this is called a controlled price) or you can measure it by if your city is gaining in silk and crystal even if you sell only scrolls.
So I put up 3-star trades of scrolls for crystal or silk at 10% bonus. 110 scrolls for 100 crystal or silk. I usually have to wait about 2-4 hours before they are gone. I keep doing this about once every other day (110k scrolls for 100k of silk or crystal), and about 5-7 each time and within a day my crystal and silk go up. I'm at over 2 million in each now and still have 4 million of scrolls.
This is how it works with scrolls and I'm doing the same thing with Bismuth. If I didn't have to supply my fs with soap and shrooms I'd be a very rich player. I have about 150k of silk and shrooms now and I expect to see it back up to 200k of each in the next day or so. Same method and same results.
That's how it works for me and how I actually profit.
AJ