Worth upgrading low-grade stuff to sell?

[Masyaka]

So i decided to upgrade petty to common, uncommon, rare then exceptional low-price stuff (i sell raw force turrets, they're expensive)

 

Does it worth doing it? Do i loose some portion of money or get more on the price?

[Doc Savage NDMF]

Those force turrets are a mil plus at orange level...

 

I level up everything as I don't use the turret manufacturers. Too easy to make instant mashed OP whatever you want. Much harder to keep slamming stuff together and work with whatever you get. As a result, I end up with a lot of not so good orange waiting to turn purple, and if it's not stellar purple it gets sold.

 

I used to sell off anything 3 metals down from where I'm at, like all the iron. Then all the iron and titanium. But when you're sitting on tens of millions of credits it's not worth the time. Now I just turn it over until it's worth something playing turret lotto. Never fails I end up with some killer iron turret at some point that stays on the ship for a long while before being placed on the 2nd/3rd ships as I break into new metals. Otherwise, 3K for an iron turret is something I do only when I can't find a research station on this side of the galaxy and the game is having trouble chugging them all around.

 

For me it's worthwhile to work the upgrade mill, both for fun and profit. YMMV...

 

Cheers..!

[Pob]

personally, I sell repair and force turrets, I'll also sell mining and salvage turrets below my current mining level, because the damage they do is based not only on the weapon damage but also the material difference.

ie a naonite turret will mine/salvage iron faster than titanium, and naonit faster than titanium etc

on top of that they cannot mine/slavage 2 material levels up, so the last thing I want to do when researching is turn 4 xanion and 1 iron mining turrets into 1 iron turret.

when researching the material is randomly picked from the turrets you put in, so if you want to guaranty the material then you need to only put in that material.

 

this is pretty much why I sell them, I don't want them in there and accidentally waste stuff when researching, same goes for repair and force turrets.

 

The next thing to realise is that on average turret damage is based on tech level & rarity, material is also a factor but it's very minor compared to tech level and a research station always converts its output to it's tech level.

So if you take a bunch of tech 10 turrets to a tech 35 research station you'll get tech 35 turrets out.

 

The price of turrets seems to be based on type*damage*rarity, so converting low tech to high tech is usually good. 

As to which is better long term in money making, selling or converting and selling I don't know.

[Thundercraft]

The price of turrets seems to be based on type*damage*rarity, so converting low tech to high tech is usually good.

 

From my experience and observations, I believe that upgrading modules or turrets purely for the sake of selling the end result is a mistake because you'd be better off selling the ingredients.

 

Consider that we can insert anywhere from 3 to 5 modules or turrets into the slots of a Research station. But putting in less than 5 means that there is a good chance that the mix will fail and you will have wasted most of what you put in. The chance of failure is proportional to the number you put in. As such, if you averaged your failures with your successes you should find that there is no benefit to taking the risk. You're better off always using 5.

 

So, you put in 5 modules or turrets and end up with something better. The result is more-or-less randomized, but there are some patterns to it. And certain things are predictable.

 

For one, putting in 5 of the same module or 5 of the same type of turret (5 Chainguns, for example) will always yield the same thing, though the stats or details will be randomized.

 

For another, there is a decent chance that some beneficial traits will be carried over, though this is far from certain. Negative traits can be carried over, too.

 

What does seem certain, as far as turrets are concerned, is that the turret you end up with will use the worst material of the bunch. In my experience, anyway, I can put in four Naonite turrets and one Iron turret and reliably predict that whatever stats or traits the new turret has, it always seems to be an Iron turret.

 

Even putting in turrets of the same material, I think you'd get more money by selling them separately as the increase in value is not that impressive.

 

I'm more confident that holds true with modules - at least for most Uncommon and Rare modules. If you pay close attention to the buy and sell prices at Equipment Docks you'll see that 1 Uncommon or Rare module is usually worth less than 5 modules of one rarity lower.

 

(I say that with some confidence because in my old galaxy I regularly bought out all the "cheap" lower tier modules of certain types in order to mix them at Research stations... that is, until I realized that I was spending more money that way than by just waiting to find a higher rarity module and buying it.)

 

If there is any financial benefit to be gained from mixing stuff at a Research station and selling the result, there -might- be some merit to selectively mixing your cheapest, least valuable turrets you have because the result is randomized. You -may- end up with an especially good result. Might.

 

That, or maybe mixing "Petty", the cheapest modules, because those are typically worth less than a thousand or so, anyway. Though, to get even one high rarity module would require mixing many dozens or even hundreds of Petty modules. Or, maybe it's worth mixing Exceptionals to get Exotics or mixing Exotics to get Legendaries? I don't have much experience with the really valuable stuff. And one would -hope- that that mixing a module worth over a $million should be worth the ingredients.

[Masyaka]

I once mixed exotic ml, chaingun, lasers with dps ~200 and costs like a million

 

Result: Legendary 32 DPS ml for  100k credits

 

lame

[Doc Savage NDMF]

I always upgrade because I don't use the turret builder. I find all the values of things relative for sales purposes, I go through it to get those couple of high end turrets I need. The rest is just cannon fodder... If it doesn't get used, why not upgrade it and see what I get..? If I get a pathetic purple, I can always sell it off and not for cheap.

 

I can sell low level iron for 3k-4k, but it's drops in a 24 million credit bucket. Makes more sense to gamble on the RNG and take the few nice ones I get and then sell off the dross as bigger drops.

 

System needs redoing for sure. I don't mind some RNG or variance, but I truly despise all RNG all the time. If I'm going to put in the effort, I should at the very least get something related to that effort instead of the mediocre RNG garbage because reasons.

 

Time will tell...

 

Cheers..! 

[Pob]

The price of turrets seems to be based on type*damage*rarity, so converting low tech to high tech is usually good.

For one, putting in 5 of the same module or 5 of the same type of turret (5 Chainguns, for example) will always yield the same thing, though the stats or details will be randomized.

 

For another, there is a decent chance that some beneficial traits will be carried over, though this is far from certain. Negative traits can be carried over, too.

 

What does seem certain, as far as turrets are concerned, is that the turret you end up with will use the worst material of the bunch. In my experience, anyway, I can put in four Naonite turrets and one Iron turret and reliably predict that whatever stats or traits the new turret has, it always seems to be an Iron turret.

 

Even putting in turrets of the same material, I think you'd get more money by selling them separately as the increase in value is not that impressive.

 

I'm more confident that holds true with modules - at least for most Uncommon and Rare modules. If you pay close attention to the buy and sell prices at Equipment Docks you'll see that 1 Uncommon or Rare module is usually worth less than 5 modules of one rarity lower.

 

(I say that with some confidence because in my old galaxy I regularly bought out all the "cheap" lower tier modules of certain types in order to mix them at Research stations... that is, until I realized that I was spending more money that way than by just waiting to find a higher rarity module and buying it.)

 

If there is any financial benefit to be gained from mixing stuff at a Research station and selling the result, there -might- be some merit to selectively mixing your cheapest, least valuable turrets you have because the result is randomized. You -may- end up with an especially good result. Might.

 

That, or maybe mixing "Petty", the cheapest modules, because those are typically worth less than a thousand or so, anyway. Though, to get even one high rarity module would require mixing many dozens or even hundreds of Petty modules. Or, maybe it's worth mixing Exceptionals to get Exotics or mixing Exotics to get Legendaries? I don't have much experience with the really valuable stuff. And one would -hope- that that mixing a module worth over a $million should be worth the ingredients.

Please note I put Turrets because they have a tech level where modules do not.

My basic premiss here is the one thing that doesn't get randomised depending on what you put in is tech level, the tech level is always based on the tech level of the zone the research station is in, so take 5 iron white tech level 5 chainguns into a tech level 35 research station and you'll get an iron Green tech level 35 chaingun out, which on average will have far higher damage, and there for price, than the tech level 5 chainguns even if green.

 

As to material, it's random based on what you put in, and by my understanding of the code, it does seem to be based on ratio, ie 4 Naonite + 1 Iron = 80% Naonite, 20% Iron chance.

There might be some weighting I'm missing as my understanding of LUA is limited.

 

This is only on found items, buying to upgrade to sell is another matter as buying price is always higher than selling price.

I have bought white modules to upgrade but mainly because I wanted a specific type to use, mainly power boosters, because I wasn't finding that many of them, but I've also bought C43 object detectors because I wanted an exotic version as that gives whole sector range, again that was for use not sale.

 

potentially you could make money by flying out the the rim, farming low level pirates for low tech weapon drops then flying back into the centre and upgrading them to increase the tech level, however compaired to just hunting pirates or trading the returns will not be great.