It was recently pointed out that a number of low-value items which were formerly useful for XP are no longer giving out the same quantities of experience. I mentioned that I hadn't changed XP numbers, and wasn't sure how it was calculated, but thought it might be something based on the ramp of min/max values.

I was correct. XP is calculated at the time an item is sold based on the min/max values and how much the price increases per minute. Thus, items with slow bounceback times make for better XP.

There were a variety of items where I generically dropped their bounceback times from 180+ days to something like 90 days. I could go through and try and find some of these items and push them back up to a longer bounceback, if that's desired. We don't really have time to change how the XP mechanics work right now, so that would be simplest.

I don't imagine there's a downside to this, since most of the items in question are insanely cheap and have very low peak values. So, basically they're only useful for XP.

This would not impact any of the special stuff I've been adding for grayspace routes and other areas of unusual peak value. This would only impact the "common case" for these low-value items.

Ecka, if you have a list of specific items you were wondering about, feel free to post it.

+1

Some of the items that I noticed drop in XP value were Bearing Grease (from 12 to 4), Coolant (from 12 to 4), and ore (from 3 to 2).

EDIT: I found that Itani Education disks no longer give 12 xp. Not sure exactly what they are at now.