When you know JUST enough to be dangerous... to yourself (newbie funny/embarrassing story that's cobalt-related) [Information]
I'm a returning player to NMS (last save was in Jan 2017!) and of course the most recent expedition for the Normandy hooked me back in. Started a new save afterwards and dove right in, eager to absorb everything. I've spent some time looking at the wiki, and watching YT videos featuring the likes of SurvivalBob, etc., and as a newbie I was trying to make enough units early on to fuel my desire to buy the hottest ships I could find.
After a brief dalliance with the chlorine refining method, I found out about cobalt flipping, and swiftly set to work. A little here, a little there, and wouldn't you know it? I was pumped to hit the 1billion units mark.
Being bored a little earlier today, I decided to do some cobalt flipping while watching tv, passively. After several hours of this (doing a little side-exploring when the mood struck, of course) I started to notice that my profits weren't adding up as I thought they should. Only about an hour prior, I had upped my sales from 30 stacks to 40 stacks, and I wasn't noticing the big profits I'd expect from that. After seeing that my total units were hovering around the same value after 2 systems, I decided to keep a log of my finds. Maybe there was a bug? Maybe the flip was unintended profit and the devs had nerfed it? I needed to get to the bottom of this.
(some of you will be able to get the joke right off the bat, stay with me!)
Here is the detail of my laborious logs of 3 systems:
1st station logged:
4,274,268,643 starting units
--Vykeen 3 tier at -3.4%--
sell all for 76,510,304 (40 stacks + 36 (4 plugs of 99,999, or 3,999,996 total cobalt)
4,294,967,295 (only recv'd 20,698,652)
BUYBACK at -80.7%
99,999 at 4,781,894 x4 = 19,127,576
final amt: 4,275,839,719
profit yield: 1,571,076
2nd station logged:...