Explanation to TRADINGCHANGES since 25th November

Like many of you might have noticed there happened something strange with the tradingsystem two days ago!


Michael Brookes explained in the gamma-bugs-forum that there was a delay with syncronising the galaxy wide trade data regularly since start of Gamma now five days ago. They fixed this bug two days ago and suddently all prices reacted a once!


Now my story and analysis of what happened and how to deal with it:

On first day of Gamma I started at Chemaku and made my way to Anlave. Around this system I traded Metals and the usual HithTech goods. The profit to and from Systems within 14ly was about 1k-1,8k per tonne. So i was able to buy a Type 6 with completely A systems. About 8 million credits in 3 days.
Then came the "crash-night"...
All my different tradingroutes broke down. Metals, Minerals, all products that are worth 6k+ credits got no profit. Not on one route, but on about 30 systems in that area. Then i startet writing down prices and they were everywhere the same! For example the GOLD that everyone loves :)
Before: buying at a hi-supply station 8,8k per tonne -> selling at a hi-demand station 10,4k per tonne. Galactic average at that point was about 9,5k.
After: EVERYWHERE where there was supply the price was EXACTLY 9900c per tonne. The stations without supply, but demand, were at 9,5k.

So i thought: Okay, its strange, that all routes dry out at once but i will try my luck in other parts of the galaxy!
100ly upwards to alliance: 9900c per tonne Gold on stations with supply...
okay... then 150ly to Sol! 9900c at Galileo...
hmpf... Lets visit the outer edges of the imperial space and their 5 biggest Extraction/Refinerysystems with BILLIONS of people. (The Imperium has the biggest Refinery Systems while the Federation has the most populated Hi-Tech Systems)
200ly nope! EVERYWHERE 9900c EXACTLY!
I flew around for 30 hours of gametime since, advance scanned 120 systems and traveled around the whole civilised space TWICE! with my AAA empty Type 6 with 25ly jumprange...
Nope... no good traderoutes for Hi-Tech or metals anywhere!
The market was killed and programmed for these materials. That didnt happen by bad luck.

Even Coffee and Tea are worth more and then returning Agri Meds, Farming Machines and Aqua Gear to the Agri-Planets.
I looks like we are told to trade other mid-value goods and be happy with 500-800c profit per tonne.
I think this happened to prevent us to get to far ahead of the 16th december players and looks like a sign they try to slow us down to not being forced to wipe at end of Gamma.
Whatever... But it would have been nice if someone told us before :)

How trading works now:

A product from a supplier with a stock of high value goods (6k-12k) traded to a buyer is always around -200 to +500 credits. This is the fixed value for this product GALAXYWIDE. Before there where bigger FIXED BASEPROFITS to which you added your selffound timed specials.

SOMETIMES (in about 10% of all stations) there is a special price modifier to one or a few goods. A product with demand can have a higher price up to 1000 credits and a product with high supply can have a price of 1000 credits lower depending on the worth of the item.
This doesnt show on the galaxy map, not in the news and not in forums. This can only be found by visiting A LOT of stations.
Now you have found for example Berylium for 7,5k instead of 8,5k. This is one of the "hacked" goods (like gold) that has usually a profit of -100 credits from supplier to demand (or whatever system). So you will have here 900c profit just because its especially cheap!
Would you now find a system that has a SPECIAL demand this would add to this profit. For example you find a sytem that needs Berylium (for a limited time and/or ammount until the market synchronises again) this would add for example 800c per tonne.
Now you are at 1,7k profit! (-100 base +1000 cheap offer +800 special demand)
Finding this is rare when 10% chance on special offer and 10% on special demand within jumprange of 25ly
Now you have to hope that on the way back there is at least a commodity with 500c BASEPROFIT since its very unlikely that there is a special timed offer or demand that works on the way back...

Finding this route of two special places takes time. And then it resets after a while what frustrates...

Now we can hope that the BASEPROFITS that got hit by releasing all our tradedata two nights ago will recover by themselves over time and wont stay this way!

TLDR:

Before: high BASEPROFITS (gold from refinery to hightech 500c+) + special offer (-1000c sell and/or +1000c buy) (not timed due to a bug that got fixed now) -> 500c "meh routes" or 1,5k "yay! 3day-grindroutes"
Now: low or negative BASEPROFITS (gold from refinery to hightech -200c) + Special offer (-1000c sell and/or +1000c buy) (now timed to the galactic market.) -> -200c "BUG1!!11 routes" or 1k "at least something! timed routes"


I hope this explains the situation!

Fare well and good profits!
Cmdr Lord Shadmode
 
yeah there are some really offputting things with some of the trading items

i always thought mineral processors should be worth more than the minerals, it's like those industrial products are the joke item to trade; but i think i'm right in saying that running what a system needs from that list (like atmospheric processors and marine equipment and crop harvesters) actually improves the system's supply yield...

they should really adjust the prices for those items to make them like 10k each for all of them, not for profit's sake, but because then people will run them rather than just resources






if there's no wipe at the end of the gamma i'm not gonna play the main game. people already glitched like 50m credits or more and are circlejerking the bug. so if there's no wipe some people are going to start with anacondas and ....
 
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Thanks for linking this interesting Video! This shows what might be the reason for one of the "special" needs or offers on systems what i called "10%-chance-on-special-trades" but not why the WHOLE GALAXY AT ONCE changed all their prices. That has to be the effect of a manually fixed price setting "artifical flattening of BASEPRICES" or the effect of resolving all pricechanges of the first three unsychronised days at once which flooded the market. But the last one isnt that likely since it happened even in the most remote edges of the colonised space while only the beta players where trading for three days... how should the galaxy cope with the tradingvalue of all players on release? profitmargins of 10c per tonne?
 
FYI guys, the original game would go thru "market crashes". You could be trading very happily and profitably in a particular material and the market would saturate and prices drop badly so there was nothing to me made in that material. Sounds like what they will be trying to do here as well.
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It was annoying for me when it happened, but there was always another "gold rush" to be found elsewhere. I would trade when prices were good, and do other things when they weren't.
 
FYI guys, the original game would go thru "market crashes". You could be trading very happily and profitably in a particular material and the market would saturate and prices drop badly so there was nothing to me made in that material. Sounds like what they will be trying to do here as well.
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It was annoying for me when it happened, but there was always another "gold rush" to be found elsewhere. I would trade when prices were good, and do other things when they weren't.

I think the problem here is that prices globally are exactly the same. That shouldn't happen...
My guess is that they ran into some trouble or something is unfinished with the economy system.
 
I think the problem here is that prices globally are exactly the same. That shouldn't happen...
My guess is that they ran into some trouble or something is unfinished with the economy system.

Read the OP fully. He describes the price fluctuations in some detail later in the post. That is what I am addressing. Crashing prices were a feature of the original game.
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I agree that perfectly uniform prices everywhere is an anomaly. That's NOT what I was addressing.
 
Read the OP fully. He describes the price fluctuations in some detail later in the post. That is what I am addressing. Crashing prices were a feature of the original game.
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I agree that perfectly uniform prices everywhere is an anomaly. That's NOT what I was addressing.

Well I did read the OP fully... (why is it that people always assume that other people do not read the OP's)
I'm talking about the price behavior described in the beginning of the post...

Does these price drops appear as dynamical? Or are they engineered? Because having the price of a certain good being the same evrywhere certainly sounds artificial.
 
Well I did read the OP fully... (why is it that people always assume that other people do not read the OP's)
I'm talking about the price behavior described in the beginning of the post...

Does these price drops appear as dynamical? Or are they engineered? Because having the price of a certain good being the same evrywhere certainly sounds artificial.

Well, I'm NOT talking about the price behavior described at the beginning of the post, as it is almost certainly an anomaly, bug, glitch, call it what you will.
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In the original game, prices seemed dynamic but would eventually reach some unseen breaking point and the prices on that item would crash, sometimes to even lower prices than the supply point, that's all. I believe you are making more out of the glitch than you should. I wouldn't expect that behavior to be an ongoing thing.
 
It appears to me that due to the error Michael Brooks has discussed the markets have done something very odd indeed. I thought I'd got my head around trading but every time I try now I seem to lose money. That could just be me of course.

I'm guessing that either something has been done deliberately by the devs or the bug has caused unforseen issues. One way or the other I'm sure it's something that can be fixed as it seems to me that the markets are not performing entirely as they should.
 
Thank heavens. I thought I had completely lost my touch and had to resort to writing out the key profitable trades between systems just to convince myself it was still possible to turn even a mediocre profit. Yes, I've seen many examples of commodities that should have positive margins go completely against me. It's usually best to return the goods to the original system to minimise the loss.
 
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https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=65532
Here is another thread about this which i just found and read completely. It seems that the galactic wide pricedrop was the result of recalculating the trading behaviour of the npc-traders of the first three days. now some people see a slow recovery of the lesser demanded supplys what will result in cheaper buy prices and better profits. But it will never return to the values of the first days because the npcs will also buy the high supply stuff.
 
Thank heavens. I thought I had completely lost my touch and had to resort to writing out the key profitable trades between systems just to convince myself it was still possible to turn even a mediocre profit. Yes, I've seen many examples of commodities that should have positive margins go completely against me. It's usually best to return the goods to the original system to minimise the loss.

That is exactly what would happen in the original game! It is what I was describing. Haven't done much trading in this iteration, myself, and it's interesting to see the consistency.
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Now here's a trick for you... in the original you could sometimes "stimulate" a market by selling some goods the port didn't normally have a lot of demand for. Then the price would actually rise for a bit, but not as high as those "golden opportunity" materials. Kind of like selling galactic pet rocks or something, then the fad would go away and the market for it would crash too. I always found that odd. Wouldn't surprise me if that isn't worked into the current market algorithym too. ED is sure following in the track of the original as far as I can see.
 
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