Some secrets are best left to be discovered by players on their own... personally I would prefer if the enemy didn't know that when he hit the buy crystal button he was giving me a 4.1 exchange rate on all my crystal. The more people spamming trade centers and buying resources, the more money I make. If they start getting matter processors instead my income is going to go down...

Its one of those things that will work good for the few, but if the whole does it dies out. Like going to to best buy early to beat the rush when a new game comes out. If only a few people do it it'll work out for them, if everyone does it its just going to be the same as if they went at any other time. If only a few people are waiting for someone to buy metal/crystal, it'll work out. If everyone in the game is sitting around waiting to see who has to buy resources first, then everyones just going to go on sitting.

I always use the blackmarket with in like 2 or 3 mins of playing the game.

90%+ of games I play as vasari, the resource I am strained for is crystal. I don't know about you but I seem to find many more metal neutral extractors than crystal, although that could be untrue and I just "perceive" it that way since I am strapped for crystal.

Also keep in mind, your starting planet has 2 metal Extractors, 1 crystal.

The problem I always have with vasari, at least on random maps, is that neutral extractors are almost always metal. They give a lot of metal too, so I don't know if I have the illusion of having not enough crystal or I just get a ton of metal it makes my crystal income look like crap. On top of that I always get metal planets and all my allies get crystal lol.

So does this mean a good counter-LRM spam strategy would be to start the game, buy 300 crystal, turn around and offer that crystal for 12 per and effectively delay tec for minutes because he cant get enough crystal?

You can't set the price above what it would normally cost to buy it, because really... when you go to buy a Hamburger and Jacky's Burger's has it for 2 dollars and Billy's Burger's has it for 1 dollar, why would you buy the more expensive one? So no, you couldn't set the price of crystal to 12, because then what you'd have is someone always putting 100 crystal up for 100 credits each just to prevent anyone from ever using the blackmarket.

You can however lower your price, this is so you can compete with other players trying to sell their crystal(or metal) on the blackmarket by offering a lower price. As for your stratedgy there though, I don't think it would work very well. You'd be buying crystal for lets say... 3.4 each, and when you put it up for sale it'd still be 3.4. If you bought some crystal and then waited for the price to go up then maybe, but you'd only be getting around .2 credits worth of profit each, so you'd get 20 credits profit for every 100 bought, if anyone buys it.

Its more of, if someone is having to rely on the blackmarket for their metal/crystal income, you can sell yours for 2-3 times what it would sell for normally, and benefit from every purchase they make.

innociv -- I don't see how anyone is wrong. In 1.03 crystal/metal sells, if you just sell it immediantly, for .9 or 1.1 or something each. If you put it up and wait for other people to buy it, you can get 3.5, maybe even 4.5 or so each. So your getting 3-4 times what you would get if you went for immediate gradification. The original point being made was that if TEC only needed credits and then could buy their other resources, Vasari could do just as well for credits by benefiting from every batch of metal/crystal the TEC purchases. So bascially, they are giving you 400 credits or so for every 100 metal/crystal that you give them. So every thing equals out in the end.

Zukkus I'm afraid not. One thing you can try to do, at least in theory, is buy when the market crashes and sell when it booms. This strategy is also sadly flawed as in most games if the crystal market booms it probably won't ever crash. Same goes for metal. Additionally, I don't know about you, but I'd just end up spending all my metal and crystal myself without a concern for what the market's doing.

Using the offer amount still gets you more credits than just hitting F5 or whatever you have it hotkeyed to(mine are f1 and f2) for selling. Maybe its not as big an increase as preivously, but its still more. Re-reading the original post, it makes no mention to a version number. The original post is just pointing out that if TEC requires only credits to fuel its economy, then the "weaker" Vasari player can benefit from the TEC players relience on the black market. I don't see what that has to do with versions or how big of an increase it is.

If you put up 200 crystal on the black market, and someone goes to buy crystal, they are buying your crystal. They don't get to choose not to, thats why it doesn't let you put the price really high. So no, they arn't going to pay more for my crystal than they would already, they are instead going to pay exactly the same as they already would, but I would get the credits instead of... wherever it is they go, the pirates.