Its simple.

If you put helio up on the market and it doesn't sell, then there's no demand for it at that price. This simply means that producers aren't making items that use helio, or they have an alternate source than the market place.

Since all T1 items use plastasine, not using helio isn't an option, so it must be they have an alternate source. Corporations will simply have players harverst when helio is needed, since they aren't gathering for market, the market price is irrelevant unless its low enough to offset the time required; meaning there is demand the price has to be low.

Production only corporations will buy off the market, but because they are building for profit, they will not pay a premium unless it's an emergency. They also have alternate resourcers other than the market.

Low population means low production which means low demand, which puts the producers in charge of market pricing.

The volume/price/logistics of helio isn't a developer issue to fix. Reducing volume will simply make it easier for corporations to harvest, it will not change the demand/pricing on the market. The devs could drive up the price of helio by making it rarer, but its not supposed to be rare, and I don't really want the devs messing with the market in an attempt to change something that isn't broken.

@Hugh.

Understood ;-). My issue with helio is solely its volume. I find it intensely annoying. ;-)

i think that not everything needs to be balanced in terms of all has to be equal. if harversting heleoptris is that much more of "work" then it should reflect the price in the market. because that is player based. if no one is willing to pay for that work then simply dont sell it to that price. if someone else does it cheeper then let him have the hard job for less reward, and do yourself a better job with higher rewards. you can abuse this by selling the better stuff and buying the cheeper ones. problem solved.
if everyone thinks that way then the price of that harder to get stuff will rise. if some dont do it... then use it to your advatage.

my 5 cents

There's some history behind why Helio still has a higher volume.

T1 modules used to contain Espitium. That epitron based commodity was removed and replaced by a larger amount of plastosine, which has helio as a component.

Plant layers used to grow only at higher elevations, which made plants rare on some islands, this max elevation was reduced which created many more opportinuties for plants to grow, and made them more plentiful.

It was a concious decision on the devs part, for whatever reasons, to not change the volume of helio; most likely as it related to the T1 module change.

But, it all comes back to how much players are willing to pay for anything that determines the price.

Sure this is a game, and anything can be changed, but something will always be the 'pain' to gather, unless everything is exactly the same volume/value. This month its Helio's turn to be the bad guy.

@Annihilator,

Harvesting and then transporting 1M of triandlus is quite painless. Harvesting and then transporting 1M of helioptris is literally nearly 3x harder. For instance, when I harvest I usually use 3-4 gargoyles in an area, then run 1-2 sequers at a time to collect the field cans. Doing so with helioptris creates a situation wherein even with two sequers I can't catch up.

Now I understand that your concern is primarily with the manufacturing costs, and from that perspective gathering a smaller amount of helio for direct use is no big deal. My concern is with the "marketability" of helio. To compare: I not only can get a better price for triandlus on average, but I can do so with far less effort.
Thus, given the current volume of helio, and a price range historically on a par or less than triandlus, I can't imagine ever gathering it for sale to the market.

The volume on helioptris is bad for the game economy. It takes an important raw resource and makes it fundamentally problematic to the market. This is my complaint. At the moment, this is my complaint because I am primarily a "gathering" type set of characters while slowly working on expanding the prototype techbase...

@Arga,

Thanks for the information on the history of helio ;-). I understand the background of why it was done, but my complaint stands as outlined above: the volume of helio is not reasonable. Its lower demand per creation of key commodities (i.e., previous posts outlining it) coupled with its volume create a situation where it never makes sense to sell the raw plants to the market. When you create a situation where it "makes no sense" to sell something to the market, by definition it is not balanced in terms of the game economy.

My recommended solution is to simply change the volume to make it equivalent to triandlus. Other options exist, but definitely do not prefer them. :-)

Oh i like that analogy!

Like Sun says, market drives the price, not the volume.

The price on the market now, is set by the demand balanced by the supply. Lower volume means more supply, but it doesn't change the demand, so prices will simply drop until it again 'makes no sense'. On the flip side, now players like Sun that used to get 1-2 production days worth of helio in 1 trip, now can get 4-5 days worth, so chances of 'I need it now' demand go away too, reducing demand on the market too.

@ sun

Plastosine and Polynu are both used in bot production in fair quantity, Plastosine is in all T1 modules, and for mining charges. You can burn through a lot of helio making 1.5 million mining charges a day