Am I flipping ships correctly?

[TBBle]

I saved up enough to buy a derelict outright that I'd previously looted. 61k cost, estimated value was 60k-110k.

I noticed immediately after buying it that the broker offered me 110k for it, so I thought "Great, I'll fly out, repair its bits, fix some systems, and that'll bump the price even more".

So I did that, fixed some things, but was out of carbon fibre so came back to OKLG. Stopped by the ship broker, and the offer price was now 64k... For a ship I'd cleaned and repaired since they offered me 110k.

On poking around, it seemed every derelict I bought was immediately saleable for its maximum estimated value, which was nice, but surprising. So I just flipped each ship I could afford outright, and I'm a few k short for the next one (which is selling for 95% of its max estimate, so that won't get me far). They all now appear in the second-hand ships list, at the same price I sold them.

The only thing I can think of that might matter, since I saw life support having value mentioned in another thread, is that when I had first looted that derelict, it was airtight, so I'd opened my airlock and filled it with enough oxygen to not need my helmet. During the repairs, I needed to remove a wall (to get to stuff outside the ship), and that drained the atmostphere. Some air had come back in, by dint of the airlock, but it wasn't AFAIR back to 20kpa of oxygen.

So, my questions:

Is simply filling a ship with air (sealing it and opening the airlock) enough to nearly-double the value of a ship? Or did I hit a bug where the broker immediately offers the maximum sale price, and leaving the area (or the station, or perhaps just that UI) would have correctly offered me a lower price.

(If the latter, perhaps I should go repair the ship before I buy it, to maximise that price? Maybe that also shifts the purchase price though.)

And what is the intended flow for flipping ships, since repairing it seemed to not improve the value much compared to the purchase price, and I can immediately flip them for more than that anyway.

[veryinky]

Initial Purchase price for a derelict does not change if you've done modifications to the ship, to prevent players from ripping out all the parts, buying the ship for 5000$ and then re-installing them to sell the ship for millions. If the derelict was 60k at game start, then it'll be 60k when you buy it. If you did any repairs, it'll mean you can sell the ship immediately for a profit.

Intended is supposed to buy the ship, fix it up, maybe specialise a few rooms for bonus value, sell the ship.

[TBBle]

As a follow-on question, what determines the potential price range? And do items sell for more in a ship than they do loose? Maybe I did the wrong thing by ripping all the high-value parts out and selling them as now the derelicts can't achieve their highest value.

Although as I noted, I seem to be able to sell the derelicts immediately for their highest "potential" value already. So what I'm wondering is what I should do to achieve an even higher value.

[zantanzuken]

potential price is based off the blocks and parts the ship is made of, the original manufacturer i assume, and the number of rooms available on the ship.

every installed block increases its value, so yeah, adding more to the ship is the right idea... and you likely get a greater return by installing stuff you've ripped out of other derelicts ONTO ships you've purchased, as simply installing an extra RCS thruster will give you more in ship value than just selling it on the market would.

for maximum profit, fully scrap a small derelict you haven't bought, blocks and all... then add -everything- to another ship. i added on a new room to a single room salvage tug and pulled it up from 60k purchase to 670k sale.

[TBBle]

Yeah, makes sense. Definitely sounds like I went in the wrong direction. and wasted a lot of potential value by stripping and selling high-value parts. I'm going to need to hold out for a better starting ship than the new one (Liliput?) if I want to scrap and move an entire ship's worth of walls and floors to another ship. Or perhaps I should take the time to expand it by leeching off a derelict ship first, then start looting and flipping. ^_^

I'm still not sure why the first ship I flipped sold immediately for 110, and then after flying out and doing repairs, the sale price fell to 64k (slightly above the 61k purchase price). I'm _fairly_ sure the only thing I'd stripped and sold earlier was a nav console. Perhaps the oxygenated atmosphere I'd introduced on the first trip triggered a "life support functional" bonus.

Does the damage status or condition of the ship parts affect the sale price?

I would guess that a damaged item in a room will reduce or eliminate the room specialisation (i.e. a broken reactor means the room won't count as an engine room) which would mean repairing things is valuable, but even if that's true, I'm not sure if it's worth restoring ship components.

[zantanzuken]

honestly, on that front i'm not sure... you would assume that actually fixing parts would bring up their value (in the same way that a broken RCS wont sell in the salvage terminal for nearly as much as a fixed one) and i have absolutely no idea how the game figures each 'room' type, (assumedly having toilet and sink would make a 'restroom', having a bed and other relaxing type stuff would make a lounge, excercise equipment for a gym... etc. each as a sealed room with an airlock between.)

[Tumskunde]

Making dedicated rooms actually increases values by a set modifier, usually somewhere between 1.4-2x the valuse of what's inside, which can lead to some huge gains in value.

For example :
A Reactor Room needs a Reactor and has to be at least 4 tiles in size, it nets you a 1.6x modifier on the value of what's inside.

A Rec Room, on the other hand, requires a table, a fridge and a tv/terminal, you can't have a reactor in it, and it must be at least 10 tiles in size. Doing all that nets you a whopping 1.9x modifier on the room's contents.

Heck, simply closing off the Nav Console into it's own room changes the modifier from a 1.3 to a 1.5.


All this is found in the Rooms.json file.
I went ahead and wrote out a rough guide based on what's there, should be up soon. Made it mostly because there wasn't a handy way to figure out that TIsRoomWellnessOptionals01 is actually a group of items including the FLEX, treadmill, fridge and sink.

[Fuzzymail]

Pretty sure that the derelict price will increase if you improve it, even if you don't own it. Happened to me when I commandeered a ship priced at $100,000, fixed everything up, replaced the doors etc. Only to come back and find they jacked the price up to $200,000.