So we know that SEED’s market has not always been what you might term reliable. This is a top priority - making it reliable, that is. We’ve been spending a lot of time on it and studying what exactly is happening when a market order doesn’t go as expected. Turns out a lot is going on. 

We’ve already made significant progress. Market failures have dropped from around 20% to around 4%, with the biggest improvements coming in the issues that could actually cause items or money to be lost or orders to become blocked. Which is great, but there are still problems that can make the market frustrating to use even when they don’t result in items or money being lost. Auto-restock not working correctly is one example – we’re working on this!

We can say that there are also a lot of market fixes coming with the 0.3.5 update, which should improve the experience further.

While we continue working on the underlying systems, our data has also helped us understand some of the things that can prevent a delivery from succeeding. Based on what we’re seeing now, these account for the majority of failed deliveries.

One example is the buyer’s inbox. The default setting allows all kinds of items to be placed there, which can mean that Seedlings put deliveries into an inbox - as well as use it as regular storage. If that inbox is full, this can prevent the delivery from being completed.

Another common issue is hauling. A delivery needs Seedlings who are available and scheduled to pick it up. If the buyer, or the delivery company they hired, doesn’t have enough Seedlings assigned to delivery work, the delivery may not be collected. This can also happen because of AI or scheduling issues, which we are continuing to investigate.

There are also cases where a hauling Seedling starts moving an item and then gets interrupted. The Seedling might keep the item, become unconscious, or die (poor thing!) and drop it somewhere. Technically a logistics issue rather than a market issue, but hey, we know they're all connected! However we can say that this particular category used to account for more failures than it does now, and has become much smaller as we’ve made improvements.

So while there are still real problems in the market and logistics systems that we need to fix, the data tells us that many of the deliveries currently failing are being affected by the way the simulation is set up around them.

For now, there are a few things you can check if a delivery isn’t going through:

• Make sure the buyer has space available in their inboxes and storage

• Make sure there are Seedlings available and scheduled to do the hauling. 

We also know that it shouldn’t be necessary to understand all of these details just to successfully buy something. We’re therefore working on the UI and notifications as well, so that when something goes wrong, the game can do a much better job of telling you what happened and what you can do about it.

There is also an important distinction in how we handle items that are genuinely lost.

When a delivery fails because of a legitimate simulation outcome, the loss is currently assigned to the player responsible for organising that part of the delivery.

For a same-sector delivery, that means the buyer takes responsibility for items once they have been picked up from the seller’s outbox.

For a cross-sector delivery, the seller remains responsible until the items reach the seller’s Spaceport. After that point, responsibility passes to the buyer.

The idea is that if everyone involved does their part, the items should arrive. If something goes wrong because the delivery was not properly organised, the player responsible for that part of the delivery takes the loss.

This is also why we changed how refunds work. Previously, when a buyer lost an item during delivery, the buyer could be refunded from the seller’s account. That was unfair to sellers who had already done their part, and it also created opportunities for the system to be exploited.

If an item is lost because of a bug, that is different. We do not consider a bug to be a legitimate simulation outcome. In those cases, we need to investigate what happened and decide whether compensation is appropriate, with that compensation coming from the game rather than being taken from another player.

There is one further complication. Sometimes a delivery Seedling doesn’t actually lose an item. They may keep it or drop it somewhere, in which case the item still exists in the world. Automatically compensating the original player in this situation could create another exploit, since both the original item and the compensation could potentially end up existing at the same time.

We know this is a complicated system, but that shouldn’t mean that you, the players, have to find your way blindly through it when something goes wrong. Part of our work here is fixing the underlying problems, and part of it is making the game much better at explaining what happened.

There is still work to do, but the numbers show that we are moving in the right direction. We’ll keep working on it until the market is something you can rely on without having to understand everything happening behind the scenes.

Meanwhile, thanks so much for helping to build this world of Avesta!