As written this would cripple those institutions as using them would require holding back a large number of credits. If the costs were paid after the restocking instead of during the resolution process then this would be good.

Solely because I am insufficiently mathsy to understand the new Black Market equation.

Yonah raises a good point, but Kevan’s initial complaint is also valid.

What if we did something like “You can’t do this the last 24 hours of a cycle”? It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would still be a lot better. We could also reward it to factor in restocking, if we do that we should reword it something like

“When specifying Directions to the Net, a Player may specify a number of Crates to be Shipped. After the Restock phase but before checking the Public, if the Player who Influenced the Exchange specified a number of Crates to be Shipped during the current Cycle, then if the Player has Credits equal to at least X multiplied by MPI (where X is the number of Crates they specified), then they lose a number of Credits equal to X multiplied by MPI, and gain 5X Power. If they specified a number of Crates to be Shipped during the current Cycle but have fewer than X*MPI credits, then they lose Y*MPI credits and gain 5Y power where Y is the largest positive integer for which that player has at least Y*MPI credits”

[Yonah] Not really. If you’re relying on the +10 bonus credits to get you back up above zero after a Black Market shopping spree, then you’d be ending up stuck in the <10 dead zone anyway. But Clucky’s fix would be fine.

[Josh] Sorry, yes, it’s ugly, it’s just exactly equivalent to the current costs (you pay 5 for the first Marine, 5+1 for the second, 5+2 for the third, etc). We seem to be living in reactionary times, so I didn’t want to risk simplifying it.

Ah, fair enough. CoV

Seems good. The cycle does need to be protected.

CoV Kevan has convinced me.

I would have proposed the “you can’t do this the last 24 hours of a cycle”, but this is much much better.