Premium scrap pricing.

[Mímir]

Well you are assuming that corporation have:

- More opportunities
- More connections
- More access to higher tiers of techs

But from what I can see those things are pretty unfounded in the actual lore, but solely hinges on our (contemporary) perception of what corporations are/can do.

- Junkers have opportunities with the unlawful side, Corsairs & Outcasts both need resources and could arguably be bigger players in the market of purchasing scrap metal than any lawful organization or house, as they have fewer options of actually acquiring the resources. Do they have "more" opportunities than ALG? I don't know, but either can be argued.

- Junkers have connections on both sides of the fence, lawful and unlawful. In terms of quantity ("more"), I'd say they actually outmatch ALG.

- The Salvager is a true technological marvel. Also the Collector and other ships in the junker line are good and specialized. ALG only have the Golem, again in terms of quantity, the Junkers have "more".



What I think you are actually meaning to imply is that ALG have "better" opportunities, better connection and better access; ie. qualitative criteria, but that can certainly also be debated. ALG is a Rheinland corporation, and while that is a strong ("better") domestic connection, Rheinland has a host of mining corporations bringing in the good stuff already, marginalizing ALG at the get-go as more of a waste collection service than actual resource-extraction (one doesn't rule out the other, obviously). It also leads to ALG being part of territorial conflicts involving Rheinland, although to a lesser extent than other Rheinland corporations - that is a clear weakness. The opportunities in my eyes are far from "better" as well. If you move out of Rheinland, their opportunities are linked to Junker-controlled scrap fields, marked by Junker installations and NPC's. It is true that they have access to house corp technology, like 5K'ers and military-grade ships, but if the focus is mining scrap metal, can these ships really be seen as "better" than Collector and Salvager?


In my view, the "problem" stems from the ALG player faction having extremely good leadership with lots of player connections to various key players in different factions, making ALG a very interesting faction to be in and cooperate with. That makes their popularity and "power" in-game bigger than what ALG on paper ought to have. One example is how Junkers allowed ALG to mine their fields, it doesn't make sense from a junker point of view, as resources are finite and everything ALG scoops up will be a future loss of profit for all junkers. So through skilled and charismatic leadership we see a faction that is overachieving IMO and nothing wrong about that (rather the opposite!) it's just worth taking into account when discussing strengths and weaknesses of the NPC faction.

P.S.: Also yes, I am the master of off-topic and I have no proper input regarding the actual prices of stuff (which this thread is about) as I don't mine or trade.

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