Selling back equipment to EQ docks bug/exploit

[Falcrack]

I did a little test, to see if when we sell back items to equipment docks (like installed weapons, deployables, etc), if the equipment dock recycles the things you sold back into the raw materials.

I bought advanced satellites that were worth 1000 advanced electronics, 2500 ecells, and 1000 scanning arrays. It cost me 9788700 credits to make the purchase. I checked the equipment dock stock after I made the purchase, and the advanced electronics, ecells, and scanning arrays went down by the specified amount. So far so good. I then immediately turned around and sold back all those satellites I had bought. I checked the storage on the equipment dock, and it did not go back up in the stock of advanced electronics, ecells, or scanning arrays. Basically the wares used for satellite production were wasted, dissolved into nothingness.

But, I did get paid. In fact, I made a profit, I was paid 10229650 credits when I sold them back, I think because the price dynamically adjusts based on the amount of stock of the components on the station. Since my purchase had consumed a large number of adv electronics, e cells, and scanning arrays at the equipment dock, it must have bumped up the price for these items, and thus I got a larger refund for those same amount of items than I had paid for it.

If I wanted to cripple a faction, I can think of no easier way than by doing this trick, which is simply buying upgrades at equipment docks, shipyards or wharfs, and selling back to them, repeatedly. Make sure they are really big upgrades, that use up lots of resources, until you have depleted the docks of critical resources. Not only will you harm the faction by wasting their precious resources, but you will make a tidy profit while doing so.

So, IMO, the way it SHOULD work, is when you sell equipment back to wharfs, shipyards, and equipment docks, the items you are selling back should be recycled into whatever amount of components that were originally used in their construction. That would stop this exploit/bug. If you are selling stuff back to equipment docks, and being paid the value of the items you are selling them, logically they should be able to use the items you are selling, rather than have it disappear.

[Falcrack]

Recycling goods would not solve the problem of being able to make a profit by repeatedly upgrading and then selling back upgrades. You could still, for example, buy upgrades worth 9000000, sells the upgrades back for 9500000, buy the same upgrades for 9000000, sell them back for 9500000, etc. But, if they made it so that when you sell equipment to a dock, there was a 10% penalty, so that instead of receiving 9500000 credits for selling back the equipment, you received 8550000 credits instead (10% below 9500000), then you couldn't easily make a profit repeatedly upgrading and selling back upgrades.