Ch.194″The spaceship sometimes serves as excellent material for the stock market.” (3)

At first glance, one might wonder how an “auction” could function like a stock market.

To be precise, the ship trading system in this game worked like this:

Players would place their desired selling and buying prices for specific ships. Then other players would buy and sell based on those prices, and the average transaction price would be calculated as the market price.

And how did small-fry users like me turn this into a stock market?

Nothing special to it.

Just buy at the lowest price and sell at the highest.

Of course, “buying and selling” was strictly done through the trading window, while the auction house had its own gambling-style system layered on top, creating an absolutely maddening structure.

One wrong move and gamblers would jump in, making everything even more complicated.

Nevertheless, I dove into the market with overflowing confidence and a mere 2,100 gold.

But as they say, even Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered gravity by having an apple fall on his head, couldn’t predict the madness of humans in the stock market.

I too was forced to experience the remarkable roller coaster of ship-stocks that briefly soared before crashing spectacularly.

At first, with what you might call beginner’s luck, I started with 2,100 gold and managed to increase it to 4,500, then 6,000 gold in just a few days.

“Who am I? Icarus, the man blessed by fortune!”

Spouting such nonsense, I was filled with hope that with just a little more, I could finally get my hands on a “medium cruiser” class ship… but…

Unfortunately, not long after, I watched my graph plummet, losing 1,500 gold from my 6,000. Then, panicking and trying desperately to recover, I caused a catastrophe by losing another 2,500 gold.

Of course, I can’t go into details because the PTSD still lingers, but I didn’t lose those thousands of gold all at once.

It was the accumulation of small losses as I stubbornly tried to hang on, attempting various things and gradually whittling away my funds.

Naturally, Jessica, unable to bear watching me anymore, asked Pashtra and Smeraghi, who had stopped by for a report, for help.

With bloodshot eyes, as I was about to dive in again trying to recover my 6,000 gold, they grabbed both my arms and calmed me down…

A few minutes later.

-Squish squish♡

-Soft soft♡

“Ufufu, feeling calmer now♡, Commander?”

“Uung, thwank yoou…”

“Commander, next time just do it once and then rest, okay?”

I felt my mind and body stabilizing remarkably quickly amid the soft, fluffy, squishy sensations coming from all directions.

==========

Anyway, after displaying such shameful behavior.

Whether due to the brain parasite implanted by Griyanar’s strange “Red Bean Filling Yes” project or not,

I stroked Smeraghi’s white hair—who was being strangely friendly to me despite barely having over +100 affinity—and said:

“Jessica, no matter how I look at it, if I try to gain any definite profit through this, I’ll just end up with egg on my face.”

“I’m glad you’ve realized that now, Commander.”

Of course, contrary to her words, Jessica was exuding an aura that screamed “Didn’t I warn you about this?” with her entire being.

‘Hmph, such audacity.’

Receiving Jessica’s murderous(?) audacity, I decided to make a definitive declaration:

“Let’s give up on deliberately earning gold through ship stocks. Let’s just settle for making small, steady profits with small ships.”

“Hmm, so you’re not thinking about large ships at all?”

“Unless I had ten times my current gold, I doubt it.”

It was all based on typical “beginner’s luck” that allowed me to triple my initial investment.

If I tried to chase that kind of luck again, I felt my already gacha-destroyed fortune would only worsen.

“If I steadily accumulate just a few dozen to a few hundred gold each day, I could save about ten thousand gold in a month.”

“I suppose so.”

“Besides, there’s something else I discovered while dealing with these ship-stocks.”

“What?”

I opened the community window and showed Jessica the gallery, who looked puzzled.

—————————————-

Title: ATTENTION TO THOSE TRYING SHIP-STOCKS OR AUCTION HOUSE!!

Author: Anonymous

Content: [Image of a toad with a confident expression against a background of mathematical formulas, none of which are correct]

I’m writing this because too many people don’t know

People say you can’t get gold anywhere except the initial 100 gold the auction house gives you

That’s bullshit

Among the quests given by the Xenovia Empire, there’s a gem mining quest

If you take the gems you get there to the auction house, you get 10 gold per gem

And if you’ve joined a clan, and that clan captures a space city or a decent residential area, the gold generated there is automatically distributed to clan members

Obviously it’s divided by clan leader-vice leader-executives-first tier-second tier members

Of course, if your clan hasn’t captured any gold-producing areas, you won’t get any

Comments:

-[Wait, there are such places?]

-[Tell us where to capture them!!!]

-˪[Find that out yourself, bye](Author)

-[No wonder some clan executive kept spending despite clearly having no gold, there was a reason]

-[What? So the auction house benefits from trickle-down economics?]

—————————————-

“Oh my, so gold income is possible?”

“Exactly, and this was completely new information to me.”

When I first started looking into trading and auction houses, no one had mentioned anything about gold income like this.

Finding this information felt like being hit hard from behind.

Fortunately, I was now mentally stable, stroking Smeraghi’s white hair as she purred beside me, so it didn’t bother me much.

Moreover, this issue wasn’t due to the developers implementing some terrible stealth patch…

—————————————-

Title: The gold income system changed quite a while ago

Author: Anonymous

Content: [Screenshot showing clan gold distribution notification]

To be precise, this changed right after being incarnated here, about 3 years ago?

No, about 2 years and 10 months ago

They changed it to allow gold income through clans because players were complaining so much

Comments:

-[So another update happened while I was away]

-[Why does this crappy game only implement convenience updates after all the players have left?]

-[But why did the player count still decrease even after that?]

-˪[Because the company continued to do stupid things afterward, too many to fix with updates or patches]

-˪[Ah, I see]

—————————————-

As the post I found while browsing the gallery to recover my mental health and find targets to vent my frustration on revealed:

This was “another” patch that happened during the period when I had quit the game.

—————————————-

Title: It’s natural that users complained about no gold income in the early days

Author: Choglisk

Content: Think about it

In the early days, light cruisers or medium cruisers were the maximum, with ship points only around 200-300

Clans with users who couldn’t even reach 100 ships, what power could they have?

For gold income, you need a massive space city or a fortified planetary system

Do you think the clans of that era could handle that?

No matter how experienced the players were, there’s no way around the absolute difference in power scale

Agree? Yeah, agree.

Comments:

-[That’s true]

-[When I participated in a planetary system siege battle recently, I saw lower-level players’ fleets getting completely wiped out regardless of control, it was intense]

-[What’s a city siege?]

-[These veteran players are doing fun stuff that only they know about while newbies are left in the dark again]

—————————————-

As one oil baron from Justice Clan said, back then even if players had been told about this, they wouldn’t have had the ability or means to do anything about it.

So knowingly or unknowingly, everyone just kept quiet about it, which made me nod in understanding.