The Cabal's Secret Hideout

Introduction

Over the past few months, I have been researching how to make the absolute MOST money possible when doing planet trades. This is the primary differentiator in who can make the most cash in a game, since it affects sales from Colonist production, SDT, Buydown/Megarob, and Buydown/RTR. Many thanks to Traitor from TW-Cabal for some of the background information that helped me figure all of this out.

I started out by observing how certain helpers and scripts attempted to negotiate, and discovered that most of them do a horrible job. I knew from experience that at "good" ports, I could make very high counteroffers and get away with it, while at "bad" ports I had to be much more conservative. All of the helpers and scripts I looked at made very conservative counteroffers all of the time, missing out on lots of additional cash potential at the "good" ports.

For example, one of the most widely used haggle routines uses a standard counteroffer of 106% of the port's first offer. As you will soon learn, even the worst equipment buying port will take 110%, and the very best will take almost 135%. The best ore ports will take 149%. So there is obviously a lot of room for improvement!

After a great deal of testing, I discovered that for each "MCIC" value, and for each type of product, there was a fixed percentage over a port's initial offer that it would consider reasonable enough to continue haggling. Over that percentage, the port would tell you to get lost, and you used a turn for nothing. This "counteroffer percentage" is the same whether the port is trading at 100% or 1%, although the actual amount of the port's offer is significantly decreased at lower trading percentages.

That's all great to know, but players have no way of knowing what the MCIC of a port is because that value can only be seen in TEDIT. To determine how high of a counteroffer I could make, I had to find some way of determining the MCIC based solely on the information a player has available, namely, the port's current trading percentage, the number of units of product being sold, and the number of credits the port offers for the product.

After much more testing, I found that MCIC (and the maximum counteroffer percentage) can in fact be derived from available information. Knowing the actual MCIC is not important, aside from having a standard way to describe how "good" or "bad" the port is. What is important is the maximum initial offer the port would make IF IT WERE TRADING AT 100%. From there, you can look up the counteroffer percentage to use against the port's actual offer. Here's what I found.

The Formulas

For Fuel Ore: the maximum price/unit the port will initially offer is

port max init = (($perunitinitoffer-25.60558)/($tradingpercent-11.7248))*(88.2752)+25.60558

For Organics:

port max init = (($perunitinitoffer-50.62764)/($tradingpercent-11.28715))*(88.71285)+50.62764

For Equipment:

port max init = (($perunitinitoffer-90.6281)/($tradingpercent-10.98921))*(89.01079)+90.6281

Don't ask me why each product uses a different formula, I simply don't know. Also, note that these formulas tend to break down the closer the port is to its baseline percentage (approximately 11.7% fuel ore, 11.3% organics, 11.0% equipment). Luckily, you don't have much interest in negotiating at such low percentages because the prices you get are ridiculously low. These formulas work 100% of the time down to about 15% trading percentage, and there's really very little reason to do planet trades under 15%. The only exception I can think of is when you capture a recently used enemy port, and you want to know how good it is. Under 15%, I simply do not know how to accurately measure a port's "quality". If you can figure it out, I'd love to hear about it.

Now then, by applying the appropriate formula, you know what price/unit offer the port would make at 100%, so you are halfway there. The next step is to look up the corresponding counteroffer percentage. These values are provided in the following tables. (Note: I realize that using lookup tables is pretty clumsy - it would be far better to use a formula. However, a close look at the data will show you that while the numbers are -almost- linear, there are enough quirks that no simple formula can accurately model the results.)

Lookup Tables

Note: The full tables contain values for MCIC from -90 to 0 in increments of 1. The tables above show representative samples. For complete accuracy, consult detailed lookup tables or use interpolation between known values.

How to Use This Information

1. When you approach a port to trade, note the port's initial offer per unit, the quantity being sold, and the trading percentage.
2. Apply the appropriate formula (Fuel Ore, Organics, or Equipment) to calculate the port's maximum initial offer at 100%.
3. Look up or interpolate the counter percentage from the appropriate table based on the calculated max init value.
4. Make your counteroffer at that percentage of the port's actual initial offer.
5. Continue negotiating using middle and final haggling strategies to maximize profit.

By using these techniques, you can significantly increase your income from planet trades compared to conservative haggling methods. The difference between 106% counteroffers and optimized counteroffers based on port quality can mean millions of credits over the course of a game.

Middle and Final Haggling

Once you've made your initial counteroffer successfully, the port will make a second offer. Your middle haggling strategy should be based on splitting the difference between your initial counteroffer and the port's second offer. Generally, you want to be aggressive but not so aggressive that you break off negotiations.

In the final stage of haggling, the port will make its best offer. At this point, you should accept if the offer is reasonable, or make a final counteroffer that's very close to their last offer. The goal is to extract maximum value while ensuring the deal closes.

Remember: The quality of the port (as determined by MCIC) affects not just the initial counteroffer percentage, but also how aggressively you can negotiate in later stages. Better ports are more willing to pay higher prices throughout the entire negotiation process.