If you wonder why the RMC price has gone up at outposts, that’s because there is a new cargo duplicator exploit that allows you to sell your cargo twice at TDD centers!
If you pay a visit to Area 18, ArcCorp, you will spot lots of abandoned cargo ships like C2 Hercules around the Riker’s Memorial Spaceport. Well, they are indeed cargo duplicating, and it is commonly being done by RMC, as it is easy to find and provides an acceptable profit.
In the case of how to do it, players can currently store their ship at the major cities and sell their cargo at the TDD center for the first time. Then, they can retrieve their ship in a hangar and return to the TDD to sell it again.
The exploit caused a surge in the minimum price of RMC at outposts from 11.6K aUEC in the beginning of the Alpha 3.23.1 up to 12.6K aUEC, though it seems like the price has backed off a little bit to below 12K aUEC again.
The bigger problem with cargo duplicators, however, is the fact that they fill up the RMC capacity in all TDD centers pretty fast, leaving real salvagers in the verse nowhere to sell their hard-earned cargo other Brio’s Brakeryard, Reclaimation Centers, or Samson & Sons for a lower price.
Cloud Imperium Games increased the in-game price tag for almost all the ships and ground vehicles with the arrival of Alpha 3.23 and wiped the players’ in-game balance in order to monitor how long it takes players to get rich with the new conditions. However, the cargo duplicator exploit seems to question the reliability of the results of the player progression in the new patch.
It doesn’t seem like a hotfix is in the works for this exploit, and we should probably wait until Alpha 3.23.2 at least to hopefully get this issue fixed.
What makes this exploit affect the economy more than ever is that fact that Invictus Launch Week 2954 provides a wide variety of ships for free. So, even players who do not originally own a freight ship, will be able to rent something like a C2 Hercules or a Drake Caterpillar to the take advantage of the exploit while it is in place.