Edit :
-- Even with 11,000 credits it can still buy in lots of 25.

But I'm more concerned with that weirdness with the black market. It seems really weird that the ai is forced to purchase the 400 credit crystal that I'm selling instead of the 300 credit crystal I can buy.

The way it is now, it doesn't make sense though. It's like having two hardware stores next to each other, they both sell the same hammers, one for $15 and one for $10. However, if the ones that cost $15 are in stock, you can't buy the ones that are $10 next door, but the instant the store with $15 runs out, then you can start buying the $10 ones again from the other store.

Plus, if this works in multiplayer, the first person to buy from the black market simply wins, as he can put those resources up for 400, and every time someone buys, he immediately spends the $400 he made to buy another load of crystal (which only costs him 300). Because he was the first person to buy from the black market, he can easily dominate it for the entire game, I don't think that's how it's supposed to work.

That 8th level TEC tech would give him 16% of purchases from the black market, but doing this would give him 25% right from the very beginning of the game.

If someone tries to undercut him, they are either going to have to use their own resources from extractors and sell for less profit than normal, or buy the goods from him to sell on the market, either way, he wins.

Yes, but, those people would be slower to develop, because every time they needed to buy resources, it would be 33% more expensive than it usually is. I don't know about you, but by 30 minutes in, I've usually spent several thousand in the black market to make development as fast as possible. He would have more credits, and cheaper access to resources, so chances are, his fleet will be larger than yours. He only has to keep 200-300 of a resource for sale at any given time.

As for selling homegrown resources on the black market, I think I rarely ever do that, at least not in the first hour.

The thing is, there's really no reason not to do this, as every unit you sell is profit for you, if you suddenly need all your resources, you just stop, and you're more powerful than everyone else because you've been earning all this extra income. There are hotkeys to add and remove resources from your store, so you don't even ever need to visit the black market screen, so it's not like you're spending all your time focusing on it or anything.


Well, in the end, it just feels like it rewards extensive micromanagement, and going by what I think the intention of shield mitigation is, they don't feel too highly towards it.