The black market consists of three main components: Weapons Auction House, Parts Auction House, and Resource Exchange.

In the black market, captains can purchase weapons, parts, and resources from other captains for gold. The exchanges are done through an auction system.

Weapons and parts can alternatively be purchased entirely with gold through the auction house as opposed to travelling to the port and purchasing through gold and resources. Weapons and parts each have their own auction houses that operate in the same manner.

This is the alternative to directly selling a weapon or part. Items can usually be auctioned off at a higher price than directly selling.

Items can be auctioned off from the hangar. The starting bid range for a common items is 40-100% of the Estimated Gold Value (EGV). The starting bid range for rare items is 40-50% of the EGV.

Rares have an auction duration of 24 hours. The auction fee paid to the auction house is 2.5% of the EGV. Common items can have different auction durations. The auction house fee is dependent on the duration. See table below.

Example:

Black market will keep 10% of EGV plus any proceeds above EGV for common items and ALL proceeds from an auction above EGV for rare items. In other words, The seller will only receive a maximum of 90% of the EGV on a common item. The seller will receive a maximum 100% of the EGV on a rare item. This limitation is a security measure against gold transferring between accounts.

Items are can only be bid on by gold. There is no bid limit. Once and item is bid on, the gold used to bid is locked down until the end of the auction. Additional gold can be added to the bid before the auction closes. At the end of the auction, failed bids are returned.

Messages are received in the inbox (if the inbox is not full) when a bid is made, added to, outbid, and when the auction is over to indicate success status.

There is a separate market for each resource (wood, ore, and plasma rock). Each resource market operates independently. The operation of each market is identical. Resource markets closes at 0700 UTC.

Both bidding on resources and putting resources up for auction cannot be done on the same day within the same market. However, bidding more gold or putting additional resources up for auction can be done.

At market closing, the price per unit resource is calculated by dividing the total number of resources put up for auction by the total gold bid on that resource. The total gold received for putting resources up for auction is calculated by multiplying the unit price by the number of resources put up for auction. The total number of resources received from auction is rounded.

As explained by the developers¹⁾, this is how resources are allocated (using plasma rocks as an example).

1. Average price = all gold bidded / all P.rocks on auction
2. All bids below the average (except for those with more than 0.995 P.rocks allocated) fail and their gold is returned
3. Calculate the NEW AVERAGE based on gold from those with > 1 allocation. THIS IS THE CLOSING PRICE.
4. Calculate an allocation average by taking X highest bids using a for loop to remove the lowest bid and recalculating the new average each time.
5. Calculate resources allocated = Round DOWN (gold bid / allocation average)
6. Repeat until the maximum number of resources can be allocated without having to magically create any
7. Give any unallocated P.rocks to the lucky lowest bidders who had between 0.995 and 1 allocation initially.

This method doesn't seem to be quite correct though, since it is well-known that bidders can get an item for far less than 90% of average price. Other theories²⁾ have been suggested as to how resources are allocated, but the exact mechanism is still not known by the community.

This can be done by going to the resource market and inputting the quantity of resources to be auctioned off.

There is a limit to the amount of resources that a captain can put up for auction per day. They are as follows.

• 5000 Wood
• 875 Ore
• 25 Plasma Rocks

This can be done by going to the desired resource market and inputting the quantity of gold to be bid on the resource. There is no limit on bids.

Bidding closes 1 hour before the auction house closes (0600 UTC).

When bidding for resources, it is not necessary to bid at the present value (which can be observed from the resource price trend graph) of the resource to win a single unit of resource. A bid can often be won at approximately 90% of the face value, so it is suggested that you bid as much as you can.