The current state of Cosmic Exploration rewards cheaters

[Thurmnmurmn]

And right here is the big elephant in the room that everyone in this thread seems to be ignoring: a single player being *able* to take up so *many* slots in a market-board list... and if they have multiples of retainers, being able to fill the *entire* list with things they personally are selling. This goes beyond the Cosmic Exploration stuff, by the way: I and others have seen this in multiple listings where everything on the list is being sold for the exact same price, with scads by one retainer, then scads by another---and often by the retainers' names you can tell it's very likely ONE player who's hogged the entire listing.

This is an ongoing problem. I'd like to see some way of devising a limit on how many items a *player character* can post for sale, whether they have one retainer or nine. Say, five non-stackables of a *specific* item, or if it stacks, five listings of stacks?

Most people don't and won't do this "board hogging," but for the ones who do, if someone tries to undercut them JUST to get an item into the listing to sell, they'll often reprice *all* their listings to knock that person back off the listings page. It's just not right.

We already have a restriction of 20 per retainer and you want to add even more restrictions? Get that garbage out of here. It's already restrictive enough as it is.
You can undercut everyone else the same as they undercut you. I will continue to sell however many or whatever I want.

[Nana_Bear]

We already have a restriction of 20 per retainer and you want to add even more restrictions?

You clearly missed my point; so an example:

If you look up an item for purchase, there's a limited number of listings FOR THAT SPECIFIC ITEM the market board CAN display. Let's pick a non-stackable item: lunar rover minion.

If, no matter how they achieved it, a player gains enough of them to fill up EVERY listing that WILL show for that item, and uses multiple retainers to take over that entire listing... sure that person can grossly undercut anyone else, because they know they're going to make a decent profit by selling a huge quantity of lunar rovers. If they have multiple retainers and use the "20 sale items per retainer" to just put lunar rovers in the listing, they literally can take over EVERY LISTING the board will show for lunar rovers. In effect, they are the ONLY player selling that item to people on their world.

People who do this, quite often if they see some person trying to undercut their already super-cheap price, they'll just change enough of their listings to move that person's item far down (or entirely off the listings, if they're using some mod for pricing items).

I'm not talking about changing the number of SALES a retainer can do, just limiting the number of items a PLAYER CHARACTER can put on the boards for a SPECIFIC item. So, our hypothetical player character here could put 5 lunar rovers total onto the boards---and yes, if they want to keep undercutting others, they have the ability to do so. They also can still put OTHER items up for sale... so say they have 6 retainers: that's still 115 total sale slots they have to put OTHER things on the market... stacks of prisms, shelves they've crafted, tradeable gear their retainers brought them, etc... just putting a limit on how much that player can put up for sale of a single TYPE of item---say, our micro-rover---so they can't just flood ALL the listings with only THEIR items.

As it stands now, it's like if you prepared a meal for 8 people, but one of them sat down and ate ALL the food before anyone else could even get a bite: the others who were supposed to be able to eat some of the food were impacted by that person's greed and desire to deny food to the rest, and the host of the meal ought to step in and ensure all their guests get a chance to eat, rather than just standing back and watching that piggy person eat all the food.

Whatever that "single type of item" limit is---5? 8? 10?---the point is that a single player character ought not to have the capability to lock the door and keep other people totally out of the "displayable number of listings" for that item, and if someone manages to get into the list to try to sell as well, to then kick them right back out and off the DISPLAYABLE list for that item. I know people that's been done to (often sprouts trying to build up funds) and honestly, not cool.