Artisan Archive

Long post warning.

No, buying energy is perfectly reasonable, as described above. If people are charging 3:1 on energy, just plain don't buy it unless you have an emergency--it will very rarely be worth it.

NOTE, however, that this applies to miners, not to self-supporting crafters. If you can mine everything you need yourself, and use everything you mine, this isn't worth it (Why the difference? A seller of resources cares about total profit: (price per unit - cost per unit) * units sold, so selling more units with a higher cost can be beneficial. A *consumer* of resources cares only about cost per unit, assuming they can get all that they need. A good counterexample is architects, who never have enough ore.)

What would I do if I saw a market charging three per unit? I would undercut the price to sell my power first. In fact, that's exactly what I've been doing. My current going rate on power is 1700 power for 3000 credits, or about 1.75 to 1 (a markup of around 7x on my current solar generation area, which is still huge.)

Here's a rough analysis of the crossover points, assuming that you can generate power on a 50% location with the same sized harvester as you're harvesting minerals, and assuming that you can buy power for 2 credits a unit. Note that my estimates are slightly *optimistic*, because I don't account for leftover power available to be sold on the market for profit. In general, two generators of a given type will run eight harvesters of the same size and have some power left over (on a 50% concentration of power.) So the crossover prices may be slightly low in spots. The medium harvester case has little left over power, and already has higher crossover points: that's probably the set of prices to look at when considering how much you would "get back" from power sales.

Small Harvester/Wind Generator crossover points by price per unit:

2:1 -- buy at concentrations of 100%
3:1 -- buy at concentrations of 67%
4:1 -- buy at concentrations of 50%
5:1 -- buy at concentrations of 40%

Medium Harvester/Solar Generator crossover points by price per unit:

2:1 -- buy at concentrations of 107% (eep!)
3:1 -- buy at concentrations of 71%
4:1 -- buy at concentrations of 54%
5:1 -- buy at concentrations of 43%

Large Harvester/Fusion Generator crossover points by price per unit:

2:1 -- buy at concentrations of 95%
3:1 -- buy at concentrations of 64%
4:1 -- buy at concentrations of 48%
5:1 -- buy at concentrations of 38%

(And I'm adding a quick comparison of crossovers for 3:1, and 1:1 energy costs now, just to show how it changes, along with 2:1 energy cost vs. 40% and 60% energy concentration, all based on personal harvesters.)

Small Harvester/Wind Generator crossover points by price per unit (3:1 energy price, 50% wind concentration):

3:1 -- buy at concentrations of 102%
4:1 -- buy at concentrations of 77%
5:1 -- buy at concentrations of 61%
6:1 -- buy at concentrations of 51%

Small Harvester/Wind Generator crossover points by price per unit (1:1 energy price, 50% wind concentration):

2:1 -- buy at concentrations of 48%
3:1 -- buy at conecntrations of 32%

Small Harvester/Wind Generator crossover points by price per unit (2:1 energy price, 40% wind concentration):

2:1 -- buy at concentrations of 96%
3:1 -- buy at concentrations of 64%
4:1 -- buy at concentrations of 48%
5:1 -- buy at concentrations of 39%

Small Harvester/Wind Generator crossover points by price per unit (2:1 energy price, 60% wind concentration):

2:1 -- buy at concentrations of 103%
3:1 -- buy at concentrations of 69%
4:1 -- buy at concentrations of 52%
5:1 -- buy at concentrations of 42%

Okay, so what can we gather from these results? First, medium harvesters are actually slightly harder to run on purchased energy than the others. Not to any significant degree, though. Second, it's pretty much always worthwhile to have more harvesters on a valuable resource and to buy the power than to produce the power directly (assuming you are limited to your number of lots.)

Finally, note that if you can buy power more cheaply than 2:1, the crossovers go lower, if you can't spend the time to find a 50% energy spot, the crossovers go lower, and if you don't upgrade your energy production installations before you upgrade your other harvesters, your crossovers go lower because you need more generators per harvester.

Prices above 2:1 for energy are probably high enough that you don't want to pay them unless you're desperate or have some *really* high quality *really* high concentration material you want to dig up. You're unlikely to see energy prices drop as low as 1:1, but if you ever do, wow is it worthwhile to buy it up at that price. At the more reasonable 2:1 range, normal concentrations make it worthwhile at a 3:1 to 4:1 price to buy the power instead of produce it.

nevermind ... I had to reread your post about 3 times. Buying on the bazaar is by no means cheaper. Its for desparate people.