Black Market

No one ever said that corporate warfare was going to be easy -- or fair. Treacherous CEOs like you are the reason that the Black Market thrives in Mars’ seedy underbelly. The Black Market contains plenty of underhanded tricks and tactics designed to thwart your competition and stop production dead in its’ tracks. The starting prices of the various sabotages varies depending on how many players are in the game. As these are paid for, their prices will go up exponentially, resulting in them being rather high-cost by endgame. It’s important to know that certain items will have diminishing returns if you continue to use them on the same tile repeatedly. Additionally, it’s not possible to actively stockpile more than 1 use of a black market item at a time. The only exception to this is when someone else targets you with an item and your Goon Squad intercepts it, but you already have the item. You will be able to hold 2 in this case. Sabotages There are several Black Market items available, but only a random selection of them appears each game. They are: Bribe Claim This allows you to purchase an extra claim. These are especially handy for getting a leg-up on your competition by enabling you to erect more buildings and produce more resources! Goon Squad This protects a tile from black market effects. When a black market action targets the protected tile, it triggers the Goon Squad and will swipe the item, granting its use to you instead. It also tells you who the sneaky little bugger was who had the gall to attack you in the first place so that your retaliation can be swift and merciless. Cook the Books Mmm, alphabet soup. This action improves your bond rating. While it will help you stay out of “D” levels of debt, it’s not a cure-all! You want to try to avoid getting to the point where you’ll need the help of this particular action. Pirates Everybody loves pirates! That is, if they’re Johnny Depp, and you’re not the target of their sabotage. These filthy bandits will steal up to 100 units in resources by attacking freighters traveling across a specific small region of the map. Magnetic Storm Enjoy the crackly, lightning-y goodness of this Black Market action. We’re not really sure how one buys a Magnetic Storm, but here it is anyway. This action destroys all freighters and any other moving units in any given area. Adrenaline Boost These workers had their coffee this morning! This action doubles the speed at which the targeted buildings work. The primary targeted tile will receive the longest lasting boost. EMP Freeze! The EMP is a nasty little piece of subterfuge that halts production of a targeted tile for 100 seconds. It also targets adjacent buildings for lesser amounts of time, but the result can be pretty devastating. Power Surge Time to get frazzled! This action affects several tiles by continuing to “jump” between them and freezes buildings, much like an EMP. Circuit Overload Danger, Will Robinson! This action spreads like a Power Surge and lasts longer, but doubles Power consumption instead of freezing the affected buildings. Slowdown Strike Slooooooow it down, now. This action cuts the speed of targeted buildings in half. Slowdown strike is the only offensive black market action that can ignore a Goon Squad. Core Sample Dig on down, see what you get! This action generates extra resources on tiles that have none. Hologram You didn’t see anything...This action causes the target tile to appear to be something that it is not. Only spies can show your opponents what the targeted tile really is. Spy Sneaky, sneaky! Sending a spy will get you complete information on the targeted tile and its surroundings for the remainder of the match. Because spies are slippery sons of guns, spies do not trigger Goon Squads. Network Virus Give the computer a cold! This action spreads like a Power Surge, but lasts shorter on successive tiles and instead forces the target buildings to be online and use resources. Dynamite ‘Cause I’m T-N-T! Demolishes the target building, forcing it to need to be repaired at the cost of half its construction resources and taking its full construction time. Dynamite is particularly fiendish to use against Offworld Markets as well as buildings that are far away from the headquarters, because the repair droid that does the repairs travels very slowly and will consequently take a lot of time when it needs to travel across half the map. Mutiny Traitors! You never knew how good you had it! This action takes control of an opponent’s target building for 120 seconds. Underground Nuke Nothing like some subterranean subterfuge! This action reduces any low or medium resource pip to trace, cutting its base production value by a fairly large amount. Auction Tile Going once...going twice...sold! This action will only appear in matches with 4 or more players. The targeted unclaimed tile to go up for auction for everyone to fight over. If a self-owned tile is being auctioned, the proceeds go to the company initiating the auction. MULE Hee-haw! Hee-haw! This action produces 200 units of a primary resource over time.