NPC Traders dropping cargo

[bonalste]

Hi, I am witnessing an odd behaviour with the HOP ships around my Grand Exchange station.

I'm selling Terran materials, which fly off the shelves, but ever 5 minutes or so I notice a HOP trader with cargo around it. At first I thought they had hacked the station and were collecting it, but I checked the logs and what they dropped matches perfectly with what they just bought from my station.

I'm curious as to what could be causing this. There aren't any pirates around, so I don't think they're being accosted by pirates and forced to drop it. Best I can see, they're dropping their cargo of their own volition then staying perfectly still. In fact the last one to drop its cargo hasn't moved for 10 minutes.

Any thoughts?

[Alan Phipps]

Perhaps you are selling shoddy goods to them?

I think I recall a mechanism described by one of the devs that if they are committed to a buy order then they have to honour it, but if their situation changes (say their home station storage gets hacked or destroyed) and their priorities change then they may have to dump current cargo and wait for further orders. That is all very vaguely recalled though.

I think a more likely explanation is a remote and reflagged pirate hailing them, although you did say that you had checked for that. Either that or a PAR force attacked them and they dropped cargo as a decoy/surrender option.

[bonalste]

Hmm now you mention it, this did occur just after destroying Apotheosis, so perhaps something in the economy changed. Thanks for the insight, that sounds like a reasonable (and lucrative!) explanation.