buy off blackmarket is better short term

refineries are a long term investment and require crystal to build

yes and no

if you need immediate then no, use black market

if you are looking for a long term (in other words you can turtle and wait) then yes

The general answer is - USE THE BLACK MARKET, ALWAYS USE THE BLACK MARKET.

Refineries are only viable under very situational circumstances.  You will need a planet with a lot of phase lanes going out of it so that refineries there would cover a minimum of... say 12 extractors (more is better) for refineries to become a viable option.  In other words, you would only ever have a couple of places on a large map where you might could viably put refineries.

So the answer is, 1) build a long line of trade ports to get the income you need to buy whatever you need from the black market, and 2) if there happens to be 1 or 2 planets on your map that cover 12+ extractors, and you control those planets, put refineries there.

thank you very much.

You don't need the fleet with a starbase.  You're better off bringing in your main fleet to defend it if the enemy chooses to attack.  And Pirates aren't really a problem anway on aneutral because they are invulnerable to weapons fire.

-Twilight Storm

Edit, the maps I play the neuts split the battlefield sometimes, like foriegn invasion.  Where massive battles take place mostly the whole game, in addition the AI is going to continue to attempt to retake it.  I found placing well (placed SB) cuts down the pirates incomming to my base and keeps the AI from taking my stuff not advised for online play its a different beast.  AI is predicatable online is not. 

Untrue; black market is really part of any long-term economic plan.  If you have a surplus of crystal now, chances are you will have a similar surplus ten minutes down the road.  Generally until you move over to a dominantly trade-based economy, you will have at least one resource in surplus.  You can sell this resource pretty much at will (though waiting for good prices is always favourable) because it's not doing any good just sitting in your bank account.

The same works in reverse; if you have a deficit of metal now, chances are that deficit will continue to haunt you for the rest of the game.  Aside from the early-game where you're still acquiring new extractors at an alarming rate, you will almost never recover form a deficit and will be dependent on the black market for the entire game.  You can freely buy your deficit resource (again, waiting for good prices is favourable) because crystal and credits will simply go to waste if you don't have the metal to pay the full price.

No, put it at 100%.  The only realistic case that demand does not exceed supply is if no one is buying, in which case it doesn't matter what % of market price you offer.  If anyone at all is buying, then you will succeed in selling at 100%.  I have never encountered a situation where this is not the case.

It's true that few players will ever put resources on the market and the AI doesn't do this either, but unfortunately as a buyer this has no effect on you at all.  You still must pay the full black market rate even if the player is charging less than 100%.  As well, as I mentioned before, almost all human players will put their resources on the market for 100% anyways.

That's not really true.  When I was a beginner I felt this way (because, like most beginners, I bought too many high-level technologies before my empire was ready to support them, which cost a lot of crystal) but now that I've reached a certain level of mastry I find metal and crystal are about equal in value.  Although a few of your most important expenditures are high-crystal, most of your day-to-day expenditures are high-metal, so it really evens out in the end.

Where do you get that from?  Sure, a high extractor income is nice, but it doesn't matter whether that's metal or crystal, you'll liquidate the excess on the black market to supplement your credit income.  That's typical early-game economic strategy.  Late-game it's all about trade-driven economies, and once they're off the ground they will dwarf what you can do with extractors.

While I agree with you that there does come a point at which you've won the game by economic means, it really doesn't matter what kind of resource you're producing surplus of.

No; don't get this upgrade.  I've crunched the numbers, it's cheaper to leave it a trade port and use the credit income to buy metal/crystal from the black market.  It's that bad.

Speaking from experience: a tech advantage doesn't count for very much on its own.  You need a large fleet to take advantage of these technologies, which requires a holistic advantage.  Being the most technologically advanced player is often meaningless if your opponent simply has overwhelming numbers of lower-tech units.  If you're going to beat him by sheer attrition, it's really about your overall income, not any one specific resource. 

It's an alternate mode of operation.  It wouldn't be so bad if it actually did something useful, but its modifiers are so low that you're just better keeping it in trade port operation and spending the proceeds on the black market as necessary.

However, this isn't actually a huge Advent disadvantage.  At the end of the day they're still able to trade port spam like everyone else, so their potential to build a superpower economy is still there.  Sure, you don't have much in the way of refineries, but you can keep step with TEC and Vasari no problem.  The real economic advantage of the TEC is actually the Akkan, building a superior foundation and getting their economy rolling that much sooner. 

Its a constant trade-off. You shouldnt have a large surplus of anything. If you do then your not building enough ships. You will be surprised on how many ships even a small Economy can support.

I didn't see it here, but there is a helpful trick to using black market.

You know that when you sell a lot of something very fast, the market crashes? Prices go down from ~500 to ~400. You can use this to buy a crapload of something cheaper. For instance, you have 1500 crystal floating but you are going to need a LOT more. The price is currently 505. You might SELL the 1500 crystal all at once first - this will crash the market and drop the prices to ~400. Then buy as much as you need.

Of course, the "insightful reader" might decide to fully calculate the profit/loss ratio of such an operation. I've just finished my midterm in portfolio analysis and have had enough for the day .

My rough estimates say that this trick works (assuming you manage to crash the market from the 500s) if you have to buy about 2300 crystal.

But hey, it's a trick .

i usually have a surplus of metal so the black market goes well there. however, a great way to make some easy money is to get the crystal asteroids at the non-colonisable locations which has much more income than colonised planets asteroids