Balancing Changes to MMs, POPI and alt. recipes (May 6th, 2025)

Announcements
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Release date

We plan to adjust market makers, POPI balancing, and a couple recipes on May 6th, 2025.

Changes

Marker Makers

Based on @lowstrife’s detailed feedback combined with our own judgement and taking near-future recipe plans into account, we’ll adjust the prices at which market makers buy commodities as follows:

  • ADR: 58000 → 70000
  • AIR: 185000 → 200000
  • CBL: 91000 (unchanged)
  • CBM: 63000 (unchanged)
  • CBS: 42000 (unchanged)
  • CC: 370000 → 650000
  • CCD: 61000 → 80000
  • CRU: 185000 → 200000
  • EDC: 11100 → 8000 (over the course of 4 weeks)
  • FFC: 185000 → 240000
  • IDC : 15300 → 11000 (over the course of 4 weeks)
  • LIS: 310000 → 450000
  • LOG: 68000 (unchanged)
  • NV1: 120000 → 135000
  • NV2: 180000 → 200000
  • POW: 5500 → 6000
  • RED: 50000 → 60000
  • SDR: 80000 → 100000
  • SP: 1580 → 2500
  • SRD: 59000 → 70000
  • STR: 1000 → 1750
  • SUD: 83000 → 100000
  • UTS: 2200 → 3500
  • WR: 61000 → 140000

Note: Most of these are buffs (also accounting for overall inflation), except for IDC / EDC which will be adjusted in 4 steps (25% of the change each) to arrive at the final numbers listed above (for example EDC will go to 10325 when the changes release, then 9550 the next week, then 8775, and then finally 8000). We hope that this process together with this early announcement of the upcoming changes will give everyone enough time to adjust their plans.

Population Infrastructure

  • PIO needs for comfort (5% → 3%), culture (3% → 2%) and education (2% → 1%) reduced and shifted to life support instead
  • SET needs for comfort, culture, education (all 5% → 3%) reduced and shifted to life support instead
  • POPI upkeep tick lengths increased from 3 → 5 (short) and 10 → 15 (long)
  • POPI upgrade costs reduced (growth factor 1.2 → 1.15)
  • POPI upkeep amounts adjusted (see red numbers here)
  • Base tier level-up rates increased:
    • PIO to SET: 0.15 → 0.2
    • SET to TEC: 0.01 → 0.0125
    • TEC to ENG: 0.005 → 0.0075
  • Level-up bonuses via POPI increased:
    • Museum: 0.0005 → 0.001
    • Library: 0.001 → 0.002
    • University: 0.002 → 0.003

Many thanks for the input to @Archiel!

Recipe Changes

A couple alternative recipes were too costly to ever be considered, so we’re trying to bring them in line a bit more:

  • The BDE recipe in PP2 now costs 40 PG (down from 60)
  • The PT recipe in BMP involving W gets +50% output: 10 → 15
17 Likes
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Horray! I am very pleased at the community response to these changes. Thanks for the support everyone.

My only notes are that lis seems to be a little weak, especially given that it’s construed of air/wr which on their own are quite strong. Eyeballing your changes, it I would ideally like to see LIS at ~460,000, maybe more. It’s the most complicated item out there by a lot! IMO it should be the best.

But still! Great changes. I can now implement my planned changes to my empire I’ve been contemplating for weeks.

8 Likes
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Yes, I’ll be closing my three EDC/IDC bases soon. With the current price of consumables those items will barely be profitable.

I notice several items on the list show no change in price. Any reason they are included if there is no change?

You mentioned future recipe plans. Sounds intriguing. Anything that hasn’t been discussed publicly yet?

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Oh one more thing. Air vs WR, WR is too cheap despite them being made of quite similar constituent items and having similar COGS input. WAI is shared, PCB is shared, WAF + SEN is slightly cheaper than SAR, the rest is quite similar.

WR → 140k, LIS → 460k. That will have these 3 APF items all quite nicely balanced and the whole list as a whole in a really good place.

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I like to see drones at the top, I’ve already seen some people expressing interest in getting started in those.

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few of these changes are the same. please check CBL, CBM, CBS, LOG

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Sorry, that could have been clearer. It’s just an export of all the MMs so they were included. I marked them as “unchanged” in the patch notes now.

In other news:

  • Increased WR and LIS MMs a bit more
  • Added a section on POPI changes that we are planning to implement with the same update
  • Added a couple recipe changes we will also sneak in
3 Likes
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Heads-up: We pushed the release date back 1 day to May 6th. :slight_smile:

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Do you know what time this will happen? I imagine a lot of players will be rushing to the CXs…

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Probably in the morning, around 9 or 10 GMT.

2 Likes
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The current MM price for IDC is currently 14225. Thus the effective price is 14200 (because there’s only 3 significant figures on the order books). However the price band is still 14225, which means that players without PRO cannot sell IDC at all to the market maker.

This issue was discovered by kalanchloe on discord

1 Like
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Price bands are a wonderful benefit as they prevent costly fat finger mistakes. They are also a frequent nuisance when they are set with an unreasonable price.