Sorry wall of text, and I seem to be picking on tailgunner
you are the only one really presenting an arguement, although I don't agree with the op on the implementation of trade computer/data. Old news is old news and just that. Anecdotal nostalgic information, and nostalgia (pen and paper is half the problem!).
I am sorry, I do not agree with this idea. It defeats the whole concept of the game. It would take the risk out of trading, and result in players hanging around in a small area, trading goods that they know will bring them good profits.
Well that would be instantly sorted out by having dynamic prices in the universe. The more a commodity is traded, the lower the price becomes? Stay in Eranin or wherever when what your trading rock bottoms out, the rest of us will head off to other systems, seeking data to complement our sophisticated set of trading and route planning tools, which I sincerely hope are coming. This seems not only an obvious solution but it had better be in the game. Static prices are going to be far more immersion breaking than adding in something that should already be an optional upgradeable suite or removing/changing interdiction. Isn't this more or less the case? My trading never found high profit repeatable routes, just half decent (500+ per item) that were somewhat static. The prices do change but I don't know if that's us trading or just the game manipulating prices.
I do not trade much as I mostly run missions, I would like the idea of a 'courier' role, after working up reputations with various factions, allowing access to high value sensitive deliveries. But that aside, the idea of simply presenting information to the player that entirely, or for the most part removes the risk of trading would be wrong.
The trading screen would display a news ticker along the top of the screen, displaying brief summaries of events in systems local to the starport that the player is located at. These might go along the lines of "Eranin: War and food shortages has led to riots in the streets of the capitol", "Freeport: the discovery of new resources has lead to a 'gold rush' at the station", "Aulin: A major company releases a new product that revolutionises robotics" These sort of news items might lead the trader to consider moving food, personal and non-lethal weapons to Eranin. Mineral extractors and HE suits to Freeport and superconductors, polymers and metals to Aulin. This adds to the living galaxy without the hand-holding the the OP's idea provides.
This news ticker is a good idea but only as an enriching component to the game, probably the whole game. It sounds like it could give people an incentive to move out and try new systems just for the hell of it rather than because my silvers now worth very little where I was. But I don't think in any way that is a substitute for a purchasable trading suite that would add another tab to the flight computers and give different information based on the price and quality of the suite. Cheap ones will indicate the stations selling/buying silver within 10Ly while more expensive suites, or upgrades to the suite will give prices (accurate to within x credits, how much was your suite?!) and increase the range. Total universe range would be silly.
If you want the tables, and spreadsheets, then by all means create them. I personally enjoy the challenge, surprise and frustration that trading provides, when I do it.
Well, maybe when you do it, when you have a cargo hold that will earn more credits than even one of those ~200k hunting missions, and you end up flying from station to system to system looking for somewhere to unload because someone in the 34th century didn't build the equivalent of a modem into space stations to allow communications of data you will turn to your outdated collection of paper excel scraps and lose 100cr per item because it's out of date. Immersing.
No one would be forcing you to use it if you want to use paper because nostalgia is more important than progression. You will get to the same credit balance as you wanted to get to, you might get lucky on a mooch or whatever but apparently it's not the destination that counts. Where as we are all forced to wing it as it stands.
That is not what the game is about.
No, apparently the game is about trading or so I thought, or at least that is a more than crucial component of it. Now you mention it I really like the idea of people buying large amounts of stock and deliberately manipulating markets. You talk about risk. How about we risk some 500 million credits stashing palladium away somewhere and the plan doesnt work? Thats substantially more risk and effort than anything I think any of us have pulled off so far. Corruption is clearly part of the lore here and dodgy traders? I'm quite liking it.
As i said, build your spreadsheets, collate your tables, as you wish, but you put the effort in, to obtain the reward.
Again, there is risk. The risk of flying a half decent cargo hold ship (lets forget the hauler!) and the cost of the goods inside. There are still interdictions to give us 'risk'
I don't agree with the op (sorry!) that a trading computer feature should be restricted to old data from past visits. I think that in this day and age (2014), given I can shop around for internet stock trading software for variety of commodities with slightly different refresh rates of data right now. If I want the best trading software for commodities I had better get my hand in my pocket and buy one, see where I'm going? That flight computer should be remembering an awful lot more than it does for 3300.
I also do not want to see whatever trading extensions we are permitted to have being limited to a tablet device. Shocking I know, I don't own one. So I need to shell out another £70 + whatever FD may or may not charge for the app to get the most out of my game? When there is a flight computer to my right and a flight computer to my left. Anything requiring a peripheral device like that should be strictly optional.
