Since I have a few moments of rare morning time free and I can't feed my normal news junkie habit on the current depressing headlines, let's take a moment to discuss a good bid philosophy.

Ranagrande's analysis about stock vs bribe is a dead ringer for bidding principles. It's pretty much a good idea to bid on everything, this is no prob for me, typing in 20 or 30 3-4 digit numbers per player per week means about 1 minute per player. If something goes for less than it's LiqVal plus Round Income you got a deal, you can just liquidate it at the top of the next round and turn a small profit if it doesn't meet into your personal expansion plans. So there's really no reason to ever bid less then about 20% above min bid on any standard asset or luxury, or stock.

Now, as for planets and miscellanous stuff like heroes or electors, I really have no idea what electors are worth, Planets just have that min value so if someone uber-over bids I have some value to liquidate their planet for, you can't voluntarily liquidate a planet. The MBs for those are simply 1, 2, and 3000 MS, those are insanely low. Parmentier, on our outcry bid right now, should retail at well over 6000 MS. It's a rich world, meaning it comes with 2d6+10 x100 MS income, or 1700 MS avg, roughly 3 times a standard asset with LiqVal 2000. It also grants 4 votes, and electors have been going at about 300 a vote, so figure it's worth about 3 of the minor standard assets and one weak elector, about 8-9000 MS by current rates... now it also comes with only one location and 3 militia. Locations are a hindrance, they can be attacked and have to be defended, so 3 standard assets and an elector have 4 times the land to guard. You have a Base BS of 5 and 3 militia you already are at an 8, throw in 3 legions and your at a BS of 14, nigh invincible at this stage of the game.

Let's look at this strictly as being worth exactly 5 rounds of income and ignore the votes and say it goes average... 1700x5 or 8500 MS, and you'll guard it with 3 legions

Recruit and transfer 3 legions - cost 3300 MS
Seize def score of 14
8500-3300 = 5200 MS

Compare that to the same for 3 ore mines each with one militia and getting one legion, BS 5 (nobody obviously has a Seizure score of 5 since its an odd number but raids and all, decent average too)

1800x5= 9000
Seize defense score of 8
9000-3300= 5700

but no votes and those 3 mines can be picked off by a note particularly dedicated attacker, having an attack score of 9 isn't too hard for a player with a combat of 4

One of the reasons I think Diplomacy might be too weak and will probably introduce a diplomacy based revenue bonus to replace the current diplo elector/planet bonus, once I've figure dout how that can best function, like vote total x diplo score times some amount of cash, maybe 15 MS, so a dip 4 player with 20 votes would get 1200 MS a round, that would seem to rebalance it, I just need to determine X, where X is some value between 5 and 20 MS, the just Inc=DxVxX, I hate midgame rule tinkering but I hate unbalanced games more Players are welcome to suggest what X be, and X iteself need not be a constant value, it could be something like 20-Rd# or 10+Rd# or even Inc=(D+2)xVxX, the spreadsheet does the math, not me, I just don't want anything weird enough I couldn't handcrank it in an emergency or players couldn't predict their own without being math-skilled. Figure that change along with the Grudge rules coming in during round 3, I'd rather do all revision in one big heap and the more game play I can see the better I can see flaws.

Anyway, it might behoove players to discuss how much something is really worth so they have an idea where to bid on things, that's part of the purpose of Outcry bids, to give a faster more interactive source of info on perceived value. I say perceived because especially this early in the game system nobody really knows, figure by late rounds or future games there will be a general 'standard', likely down to a couple hundred MS, that anything is worth to an average player. Most players are basically striking blind right now, and I can't help too much since I have only whatever guess-timating edge a deeper familiarity with the rules grants.