Trading / Selling Machine Parts for profit

[Bellrock]

I’m not sure if this is a bug, or if it is intended, however would like to ask the question. Can you produce, should you not be able too, sell machine parts for a profit?

To keep my economy afloat, I typically have to sell Metal, Rare, Food, Oil, etc. to keep the a positive credit balance. It would seem natural to me that turning some portion of the metal/rare to machine parts should be value added (as in getting an increase number of credits). However, when I run the numbers, it always more profitable to sell the metal, then it is to make machine parts. If fact, if I purchase the metal from traders, turning this metal into machine parts is always a net credit loss. I have played multiple play thru, and this seems to be a common theme in each game. It never makes sense to sell machine parts. However, you can sell HiTech parts for a rather generous profit.


To make the point I have generated the following excel sheet:

Sell part Excel table.png (54.82 KiB) Viewed 378 times

Top of the chart is the sell price of items to the traders, in my current game. The two tables is one for Machine Part, and the other for Hitech part production cost (based on sell data from traders). This data is from my current game (mid way thru), and is representative of other games I have played.

Summary you can’t make a profit selling machine parts tell Level IV Heavy Industry, but can make a profit on Hitech parts on level 1 HiTech industry.

Is this intended? What am I missing?

Thanks ,
Bell

PS: unable to upload original excel sheet.

[Thrake]

In multiplayer the first player to build heavy industry tend to make a profit selling them while other players buy machines for their own use. I can't relate to how the AI interacts with the market.

While it's generally not a good idea to buy metal to manufacture and sell machines it's often a good idea to sell metal to buy machines. Especially early it allows to save up on IP.