Official News - page 2

WHY THE GALAXY'S EXCHANGES SPEED UP AND SLOW DOWN

by Hazed

Over the past few months, on several occasions I have had people moan to me about the speed of the planetary trading exchanges. "What's going on?" they cry. "The Galaxy's exchanges are on a slow-down! They're running much, much slower than they normally do. What has Bella done to them?"

Inevitably a few days later, I'll hear, "Tell Bella thank you for fixing the exchanges - they've speeded back up now."

Then last week, I was sent a 'bug report' about the exchanges running much, much faster than normal. "Bella's obviously done something to make them go so speedily, and it may be a bug."

However, I can categorically state that on none of these occasions has Bella actually done anything to the code that would affect the exchange speed. In some cases, no new code has gone in at all at the time the change in speed has been reported.

Leaving aside jokes about feeding the hamsters extra caffeine, this isn't a bug, it's supposed to happen. There are mechanisms in the game that will make the exchanges fluctuate. Sometimes they will speed up. Sometimes they will slow down. It's not a bug, it's not because Bella has tweaked anything, it's just the way it works. Individual exchanges will be affected by the efficiency levels which will change as POs do builds that boost individual commodities or commodity groups.

There are also things that affect the Galactic economy as a whole, slowing down or speeding up every exchange, and that's where the noticeable changes come from. The biggest cause of these speed changes is the number of Merchants and Traders in the game. The more there are, the faster the exchanges will run.

It's as simple as that.

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