Data on Nanite farming via suspicious packages [Information]
So, I've seen several sources identify that buying up Suspicious Packages (specifically the (Tech) and (Arms) varieties) at Outlaw Stations in bulk, then selling all the illegal upgrades from them, is an extremely fast way to get Nanites. Possibly the fastest, assuming you have the units to afford it, but units are pretty easy to get.
But I wanted a bit more information than just "Oh, person X got this many nanites in an hour" or something similar; what's the cost efficiency? What's the difference between the (Tech) and (Arms) packages?
So last night I sat down to acquire some data. I bought up 300 of each, recording purchase price across 18 different outlaw stations, and then cashed them all in, keeping notes on what I got from them. And I figure other people might find my results interesting and/or useful, so:
Suspicious Package (Tech) results:
318 packages purchased, at an average cost per package of 80,327 units. The average price adjustment was +0.12%, and the closest any single purchase cost was to the base was a -0.1%, which was 80,162, so I estimate the base price at 80,250 units.
From those 318 packages, I got 253 illegal upgrades, and 65 resource boxes; I didn't track the resource boxes as closely, but I estimate about half gave smaller quantities of nanites (~100 each), and the other half gave crafting resources (including, but presumably not limited to: rusted metal, magnetic ferrite, copper, cadmium, emeril, indium, and chromatic metal).
In total, between the resource boxes that dropped nanites, and selling all the upgrades, I got 99,775, plus a decent quantity of crafting resources.
Looking strictly at money to nanites, this gives (Tech) packages an efficiency of around 313 nanites per package, or 256.5 units per nanite, with an additional benefit of giving an unpredictable quantity of crafting resources.
Suspicous...