I don't know if this was posted before, I did a search and only found fragmented info here and there. I made a spreadsheet with the data I collected and this is the result. I'll be referring only to raiding for alloys, but the same reasoning seems to work fine for items too. I'm still pretty new to the game, so feel free to add corrections if I get something wrong or missing some important information. This basically boils down to two conditions and a strategy:

Conditions:

1. Market Raid will only give UP TO the amount of alloy that can be smelt in 24h (provided you have sufficient ore production to sustain it), multiplied by the number of smelters that you have

2. You will need the recipes for the alloys in the market you want to raid, otherwise you'll only get zero or one

Strategy:

1. Once you set your eyes on an alloy in a market you want to raid, calculate the 'Maximum Raid' that you could get under ideal conditions: (86400 / Smelting time in seconds) * Number of Smelters. This will give you the maximum amount of alloys that you can get by raiding that market. Next step is calculating the amount of total ore/second that your mines need to produce in order to reach that maximum

2. Multiply the *Maximum Raid* by the amount of ore needed for smelting that alloy, then divide by 86400 (number of seconds in a day). You can also use the abbreviated formula: number of smelters * ore to smelt / time to smelt

3. Upgrade and supercharge the mine that can get you closest to the amount of ore/sec production you need

4. Try to set your eyes on a mine that produces ore for smelting two different alloys on the market. The best mines to target are the ones that produce only 2 ores. There are two kind of those, 50% - 50% and 20% - 80%. It's can be tempting to upgrade and supercharge a mine that produces 80% of the ore needed to smelt the most valuable alloy, instead of the 50% - 50% one. That's not always the best course of action: sometimes supercharging a 50% - 50% mines will already give the amount of ore/sec production needed to achieve 'Maximum Raid' of the most valuable alloy, with the added benefit of getting more ore/sec production (and a better raid) of the less less valuable alloy


Final considerations:

- If your ore/sec production exceeds the amount needed to achieve 'Maximum Raid', you will NOT get more alloy. The only way to put that excess ore production to good use is to increase the 'Maximum Raid' by either conquering more smelters and/or using the Speedy Smelter artifact. Be sure to redo your calculations once you do that!

- Later alloys require two (or more) different kind of ores, in that case you will need to upgrade and supercharge two different mines. Calculate the ore/sec production for both ores and try to keep them balanced (enough of both to make the same amount of alloy). If the amount of the two ores are imbalanced, you'll get a bad raid, because one of the two ores will be the bottleneck

- Don't be shy in upgrading the mine that you want to supercharge, even way beyond ever getting any reasonable ROI before you finish the level. Achieving 'Maximum Raid' will greatly outweigh that

- Using Market Raid as a superpower will give 10 time 'Maximum Raid'. I usually only do a couple to save on powers, but I'm not that far in the game yet

- Artifacts & Advancement: Speedy Smelter will increase 'Maximum Raid', Mine Boost will boost ore/sec production and Alloy Values will maximize your profit once you sell the alloy. Among the 3, Alloy Values is the most valuable by a long shot

Xeno put together a good post on this as well.

https://www.warzone.com/Forum/570602-church-smmr

I saw a reference to that post but I couldn't find it, thank you!

Edited 10/7/2022 21:15:51

I just wanted to thank you geforce (and krinid for referring to the other post) as I too was wondering exactly how to maximize (I've even supercharged the target mine) but still ended up with just 1 of the desired alloy. Now I can use market raid without worry about just getting 1 (or 0) of the item/alloy bars