4. Trading help

Trading help


  • Hi, I'm a new player on screeps and I just got my first terminal. I was really excited to start trading the mineral in my room: oxygen, to get some credits which I could use to buy some energy. I thought this would really boost my economy and my base would become more efficient, but it turns out that I don't get much credits for selling oxygen. In fact, energy is worth more than oxygen on the market.

    So I have a few questions: Should I be making creeps to mine oxygen for trading or should I spend my resources elsewhere? Is the terminal useful if you don't have valuable resources (complex commodities and deposit commodities)? Is it worth it to buy energy since its so expensive?

    Any thoughts are much appreciated.


  • It depends on whether you want to code for boosting creeps or not.

    If not, then yes mine oxygen to sell for energy, but first, do the calculation to see if it's showing a profit. So the cost of oxygen mining creeps, harvesting and transporting, plus the cost of trade against the energy you get back. Also, consider cpu time and spawn ticks.

    Alternately sell half your oxygen for another resource and make boosts for one of your creep types.

    Best maybe to start mining neutral rooms for energy and minerals which give you more options for boosting and trading.


  • Yeah, so I did the calculations and I'm spending like a 1000 energy on mining oxygen every 1500 ticks and getting 1800 oxygen which sells at 0.1 per oxygen giving me 180 credits per 1500 ticks. That only buys me about 200 energy if I buy someone's sell order and gets me 760 energy if I make an average buy order. So, I'm losing energy.

    It's a lot of math though, so I'm not 100% certain.


  • So I have another question, are boosts worth it, and if so which ones? They seem quite expensive and they still cost energy and they only affect creeps for a short duration of time.

    1 Reply

  • I think your math on Oxygen is correct. You've found one of the unexpected gotcha's of Screeps market. The energy price + the energy cost of dealing on the market can create some odd situations (You can make more credits by not mining Oxygen and instead selling more energy on the market).

    I think currently the easiest way to make credits is increase your remote mining + energy income. If you've got the GCL pick up an X room since X seems to keep a consistently high price.

    Is a terminal worth it; Yes. It's a fun aspect of the game. Many peoples' market code is rudimentary (stupid). So it's sorta like the stock market on easy mode.

    1 Reply

  • @deft-code Ok thanks, I think I should focus on getting more rooms then.


  • @at_t30 said in Trading help:

    So I have another question, are boosts worth it, and if so which ones? They seem quite expensive and they still cost energy and they only affect creeps for a short duration of time.

    As before the answer is "do the maths".

    In general, I think they are all good if you can use them, assuming your code's OK of course.

    Consider a harvester WWWWWMMMMMC So 800 energy and 33 ticks to spawn.

    Now consider W* boosting work with utrium alkalide +400% harvest.

    So W*CM does exactly the same thing as WWWWWMMMMMC, but it costs 200energy and 9 spawn ticks.

    So how much does the bost cost you, that allows you to push out harvesters at four times the rate and a quarter the cost?

    Well 20 energy for the boost and 30xU, 30xH and 60xO plus lab and reaction time. You can probably buy UH and O for around the energy value or mine yourself; Either way, it is a gain if you can do the code.

    Can do a similar analysis for each boost type.

    👍

  • Ok thanks everyone for the help, any other thoughts and opinions are still very much welcome.


  • Continual boosting has pretty tight margins. An example: saving a single CARRY part usually saves you 75 energy. But it costs 20 energy to boost. means you need to acquire 30 KH for less than the cost of 55 energy. Not impossible but tight.

    Boosting your Mineral harvesters is usually a good investment, (unless you're mining Oxygen 🙂 )

    It think the math works out for PowerBank and Deposit farming since they're high value and require large creeps.

    Otherwise most non-military boosting becomes a play to reduce intents buy being slightly less credit efficient. Which opens up a whole new layer calculations to play with (more remotes using boosts vs fewer efficient remotes, etc).