Trading is Flat (Economy) and Boring.

[_Dastardly_]

Trading is boring.. So many people say so, and I believe them. I got into my Anaconda via Exploration (yes you can do it!) and thought I'd try my hand at Trading, I thought it would be fun finding new trades, something someone else has not found and making a mint.


It's easy to get a 2300 cr/ton (10,000cr/ton/hour) 1 jump route. With a bit of trying you can get a 2600-2800 cr/ton route but it might be longer than the 2300 route.If your not in huge population, wealthy industrial/refinary (secondary to an agricultural system) trading with a hightech something like that then you are not going to make any more than the standard routes.


There's very little likelihood of finding a decent 3 step or 4 step route either. And Agricultural stations? Useless! (Sometimes they can be good for Imperial Slaves but that's only in Empire).


Then I realised something, every commodity in Elite is artificially limited with a lower and an upper price regardless of demand. This makes the entire economy completely flat, no surprises, very little difference if people are trading or if the system is never visited.


Frontier I beg you!:


Step 1:
Please remove your artificial limits from the commodities, if there's demand and nobody is supplying that demand then surely the price should start to go up. Those systems that are 400,000ls from warp in. Nobody goes to them, however if the price they are offering for their goods starts to go up, and their stockpile of goods increases so the price you can buy stuff keeps going lower. At some point someone is going to find that station, let out a cheer and start making some credits. Of course this is offset by the time they spent going from system to system playing the game and LOOKING for trades instead of watching netflix while their trading ship goes from system A to System B (repeat endlessly).


Those small outposts with small demands.. let the price go up.. and up.. then some new player in a T6 or T7 will find 'wow this platform is paying 30k for palladium!' go off and fill the demand of 200 to 400 units. They just made the trade of the year (for them), the price goes back down and then slowly starts building up again.


Step 2:
Add some commodities to Agriculture or dramatically raise the price of an existing one so that they have something to export. 'Luxury Food' maybe.


Step 3:
Mini Local community Galnet news items that last a day or two at most :
'Gold found in them thar hills!' Huge reserve of gold found planet-side. : Causes supply of gold to increase and price to fall (even on planets that don't normally have it)


'Bio terrorists release crop destroying bug' Price of food cartridges shoots up to 1800 cr/ton for short while.


Limited by demand these would expire quickly and would only be found by people going round looking for them very easy to automate.


TL;DR
Make trading an interesting profession, I'm not saying to increase the income, to find 'better' trades takes time that could have been used for trucking A-B which evens things out.
Remove the artificial price limits
Add commodities to the 'useless' economies.
Dont nerf the existing trades but let people explore to find higher value shorter term trades. (Taking into account the time to explore the income would probably be similar.. but more satisfying).

 

[bamber]

Rememebr that the NPC's are "trading" - there was awful problems early on similar to what you are describing as wanting where the NPCs were flooding markets - it was possible to earn thousands/T between stations never mind systems! I remember making 4000CR/T hauling imperial slaves between two outposts about 100LS apart!

So in theory with enough work it is possible to do what you suggest - the NPC's managed it so why shouldnt we?

 

[_Flin_]

Yes, you are mostly right. This is one thing that bugs me as well.

There just isn't any use for the low value items. And to go for maximum income, it is the same old, same old. Palladium, Gold, Beryllium oneway, Hightech the other way. Maybe Imperial Slaves. All the rest is useless.
I'd really like to be able to trade more stuff at a comparable profit. There should be more items that can enter the top range for profits.

Plus there are certain economy types that are useless. Like Industrial and Agricultural. They are one-trick ponys, and High-Tech systems are the mother of all golden calves.


So my suggestion would be to create more possible opportunities with more trading goods. Increase the range at which items can trade. Lower the top items, like Palladium and Imperial Slaves.
Of the items with possible profits over 1300 Cr. / ton all are from Hightech, Refinery, Extraction. No Industrial, no Agricultural.
Industrial only exports valuable stuff to Agri, and Agri has only 1 valuable export, which is mostly illegal.

So in the end trading is always: Find High Tech system and a big Extraction or Refinery close by. Fly circles.

 

[_Dastardly_]

Rememebr that the NPC's are "trading" - there was awful problems early on similar to what you are describing as wanting where the NPCs were flooding markets - it was possible to earn thousands/T between stations never mind systems! I remember making 4000CR/T hauling imperial slaves between two outposts about 100LS apart!

So in theory with enough work it is possible to do what you suggest - the NPC's managed it so why shouldnt we?

NPC's managed nothing, Selling to a market only lowers the price it does not increase the price...

Maybe they use NPC's to regulate the markets but that just leads to the stale, flat unexciting trading we are seeing now. Limit the NPC interactions with the market, let some of the markets go haywire and prices skyrocket. It probabily happened in early beta but then there were very few real people limiting it. Now with hundreds of thousands of players it will regulate. Some people will make a profit for a while, then others will jump on and that one will vanish, then the next one will need to be looked for.

Excitement! Fun. You know.. Like a game.

 

[bamber]

Beta was worse - there may have been fewer players but we also had access to fewer planets so then everyone really did trade the same things and heaviliy and yes it flattened the market
.
Also there may be hundreds of thousands of players now but at least one often two of the systems I visit is only visited by me based on the stats so id be in a great market if it was nt for NPCs

 

[_Dastardly_]

Beta was worse - there may have been fewer players but we also had access to fewer planets so then everyone really did trade the same things and heaviliy and yes it flattened the market
.
Also there may be hundreds of thousands of players now but at least one often two of the systems I visit is only visited by me based on the stats so id be in a great market if it was nt for NPCs

BUT.. if they changed the market so that it was the way I suggested then people wouldn't sit just in the hi-tech, extraction etc and they *would* go to the systems you mentioned because there would be a reason to. As it is there's no profit in it so they dont.

 

[Poplin]

I've done a lot of trading(500 mil worth), and I can't see how having a more dynamic market would hurt things. I like these suggestions.

 

[Fyrd Judge]

Trading is boring.. So many people say so, and I believe them. I got into my Anaconda via Exploration (yes you can do it!) and thought I'd try my hand at Trading, I thought it would be fun finding new trades, something someone else has not found and making a mint.

.

I have found one product after logging down 155 stations in 60 systems over many months. This product stands out selling cheaper than any where else it is being sold and one station stands out in its demand for it, paying far more for it than all the 155 stations i have so far logged. It makes me millions an hour in a 3 jump turn about using a Python. This can not be a one off, i presume more stations like these two are out there somewhere.

 

[punkerich]

the 'economy' is just a joke, put together with a hot needle. e.g.: perf. enhancers? 7518cr. cons. tech? 7518cr. prog. cells? 7518cr....
huh? and then look how painite was 'added': let every station in the universe simply freak out about it (high demand), even if they're not into minerals at all...?
i do have some hope for 1.3, though...

 

[vjek]

cue my sig:

How to fix the Galactic economy? Here's how:

• All MED/HIGH supply prices should be below/far below the galactic average.
• All MED/HIGH demand prices should be above/far above the galactic average.
• No player, alone, should be able to affect the supply and demand prices of a system with millions of inhabitants and hundreds of thousands of commodities.
• NPC's should be restricted to transporting commodities worth less than 500CR per ton to a max total distance of 8LY.

Why? How? What?

Price disparity would actually exist, and be variable and meaningful.
You could find places that are actually paying more than 2 credits above the galactic average for food, despite having no food within 7.9LY, that's an opportunity for a trader to exploit.
Traders would look for situations, not spreadsheets. I might actually carry the remaining 50 commodities instead of just the three most valuable. (yes, FDEV, we've figured out there's no point carrying the rest, strictly for trading profit)
And of course, the totally nonsensical current situation that a single player CAN affect supply and demand prices of a system with millions of inhabitants with (in some cases) millions of commodities? That needs to just die.

 

[Poseidal]

Agriculture needs to be more valuable. In some systems, animal meat would be worth it's weight in gold.

 

[_Dastardly_]

cue my sig:

How to fix the Galactic economy? Here's how:

• All MED/HIGH supply prices should be below/far below the galactic average.
• All MED/HIGH demand prices should be above/far above the galactic average.
• No player, alone, should be able to affect the supply and demand prices of a system with millions of inhabitants and hundreds of thousands of commodities.
• NPC's should be restricted to transporting commodities worth less than 500CR per ton to a max total distance of 8LY.

Why? How? What?

Price disparity would actually exist, and be variable and meaningful.
You could find places that are actually paying more than 2 credits above the galactic average for food, despite having no food within 7.9LY, that's an opportunity for a trader to exploit.
Traders would look for situations, not spreadsheets. I might actually carry the remaining 50 commodities instead of just the three most valuable. (yes, FDEV, we've figured out there's no point carrying the rest, strictly for trading profit)
And of course, the totally nonsensical current situation that a single player CAN affect supply and demand prices of a system with millions of inhabitants with (in some cases) millions of commodities? That needs to just die.

I dont think we are saying the same thing at all. You are saying you want bigger profits, where I am saying that supply and demand should actually work. The only thing we agree on is the restrictions on NPC's. As for if a single player can affect the economy of a system... that really depends on the size of the system.

 

[Defacto]

cue my sig:

How to fix the Galactic economy? Here's how:

• All MED/HIGH supply prices should be below/far below the galactic average.
• All MED/HIGH demand prices should be above/far above the galactic average.
• No player, alone, should be able to affect the supply and demand prices of a system with millions of inhabitants and hundreds of thousands of commodities.
• NPC's should be restricted to transporting commodities worth less than 500CR per ton to a max total distance of 8LY.

Why? How? What?

Price disparity would actually exist, and be variable and meaningful.
You could find places that are actually paying more than 2 credits above the galactic average for food, despite having no food within 7.9LY, that's an opportunity for a trader to exploit.
Traders would look for situations, not spreadsheets. I might actually carry the remaining 50 commodities instead of just the three most valuable. (yes, FDEV, we've figured out there's no point carrying the rest, strictly for trading profit)
And of course, the totally nonsensical current situation that a single player CAN affect supply and demand prices of a system with millions of inhabitants with (in some cases) millions of commodities? That needs to just die.

I think that this is too arbitrary, and doesn't really solve the actual problem, only some of its effects.
You are right about system population affecting the markets, though. This seems to be really inconsistent.

There's, as I see it, a number of problems currently.
Firstly, the way the market reacts to goods sold at stations or produced at stations seems to be completely off. Some times, the supply will simply be halved for no reason, and prices can fluctuate wildly without there being some kind of cause.

Secondly, AI trade is nonsensical, it doesn't seem to obey prohibitions, it doesn't seem to be affected by system security, and, since 1.2, it doesn't even seem like the AI traders even care about making large profits anymore: They'll happily trade polymers and biowaste when they can do a lot more profitable trade with more valuable goods. What this also means, is that even if supply/demand actually gets fixed, there still never will be any well-established players trading the cheaper goods, since AI trade will pull the demands down.

Thirdly, once the demand is at ''high'', it doesn't seem like the price keeps increasing. Also, lack of goods never seems to stop production of goods further down in the production chain... even if an Industrial station doesn't even get a single canister of metal, it can still chug out Crop harvesters and mineral extractors indefinitely.

Finally, and this is more of a personal opinion, even the most expensive goods are so cheap that traders really don't risk very much when filling their holds with that good. Lakons filled with Palladium and Gold is the standard. I find this surprising: I thought that the rare high-value goods would be just that: High value, not the bulk, main trade goods like they are now. What if the high value goods were expensive, really expensive?

Suggested changes:

1: Fix the crazy market fluctuations for no reason
2: Make traders (unless they are smuggling) obey prohibitions.
3: Make system security and piracy affect trade volumes going in and out of the system.
4: Traders should care about profit when trading, not just move any good that gives profit
5: Make prices 100% dynamic. If a station needs a good, the price should keep rising for that good unless it is supplied. Possible exceptions: Things like food, where the price would only rise to a limit as long as other food types are supplied.
6: Actually make critical commodity shortages stop processes in the station (materials shortage means no production of goods that require material, equipment shortage means more inefficency in processes, food shortage means lots of dead people, etc.)
7: Increase the price difference between the cheapest and most expensive goods.

 

[lovely lovely]

They've killed the Imp Slave prices for a while if you read the Galnet news - over 2m in a training centre

 

[Doolittle]

Rememebr that the NPC's are "trading" - there was awful problems early on similar to what you are describing as wanting where the NPCs were flooding markets - it was possible to earn thousands/T between stations never mind systems! I remember making 4000CR/T hauling imperial slaves between two outposts about 100LS apart!

So in theory with enough work it is possible to do what you suggest - the NPC's managed it so why shouldnt we?

I don't think NPCs do any trading. Have you ever followed an NPC to a station who was carrying cargo? Once it drops out of SC by the station it disappears. The only AI trading that goes on is internal and never present from the players perspective. Would be cool if the NPCs weren't instanced for every instance and there was some actual mechanic that used them properly instead of as a gimmick just to have NPCs around the player. Strange having NPCs fly into a far off system that had no one in it for light years, but 3 mins after I arrive..... the NPCs start showing up, complete immersion breaking mechanic, and the main reason I stopped playing for several months now.

In other words you could sit outside a station in SC waiting for NPC haulers to arrive to pirate and never have any effect on the station pricing....unless FD has made some changes I still think it works this way.

 

[Innigo]

In my opinion the commodities market needs a dramatic overhaul, from top to bottom. The ability to remember the prices of stations you've been to would be a nice start, but also the values are all over the place. The OP is correct in that low value items are really little more than filler to make the list look bigger. Does anyone really spend any time hauling biowaste? - Which, I might add is a silly thing to haul. Anything of low value is a silly thing to haul, but from a player's PoV but from a pure economic PoV unless you can do so in multiples of thousands of tonnes - which we can't.

But drawing on real life, a tonne of tobacco has a very approximate value of £200,000 (probably more like £300,000, but I'm thinking about the retailer, not the consumer), yet isn't a particularly expensive item in ED. Beer, by contrast would be worth about £30,000. I'm struggling to wrap my thoughts into something coherent, but I think what I'm driving at is simply this; almost ALL of the commodities are too cheap. Manufactured goods are another example. I work in engineering and the thing I'm working on weighs about 500g and will sell for around £25,000. That's £50 million/tonne - it won't be shipped by the tonne, but it's just an example. I appreciate the economics of the 34th century could be very different from today but what we've got is indeed very flat and a very simple fix could be simply adding ship components to the mix.

Trading is only slightly less dull than mining from me and when I bought a type 6 I actually stopped playing after a couple of days because I was so bored, but couldn't see any other way of earning enough money to buy the Asp I so desperately wanted. Fortunately the rebalancing of bounty hunting fixed that for me and I now have my Asp

But please FD, give us an interesting economic model.

 

[Atinus]

This came up in the design discussion forum. I brought it up as often as I could. Specifically, the price floors and ceilings. Temporary price fluctuations are definitely what is missing. There simply is no volatility. It all becomes very predictable. There are no price booms. No price busts. No bubbles or manias. No recessions. Just a standard profit margin in less traveled systems that flattens with volume in the more heavily traded systems.

I also asked for a bid/ask system to facilitate said volatility. That way you could log into the commodities market, see a chart, and watch the price move in real time. You could even day trade.

I also asked that inflation get baked into the cake. Thought use of credit might not be a bad idea, too, to help facilitate price fluctuations. I even thought interest rates would be helpful to commanders who don't log in very often so their credit value would rise with inflation. In real economies with growing populations, you see general price levels rise over time. Have populations stopped growing in the 34th century? If not, then why would economies or prices?

I thought the prices of certain commodities should then feed into the price of certain equipment. Then there would be variability whilst you were outfitting as well. You could go to different places to find cheaper equipment based on the supply chains. And so forth.

Perhaps what I asked for was overly complex. Or considering the sheer number of systems and variables, would require too much memory to run and so,neat idea, but impossible. I don't know.

Perhaps the simulation already is quite dynamic but nonetheless price stability is achieved simply because players are such a small percent of the trading population, so our influence is insignificant. Or, maybe with the simulation there would be price booms and busts -- but for the price floors and ceilings. I don't know.

What I do know is it is impossible to tell what's going on because there is no way to reliably chart price histories of commodities. We're not given any data on general economic conditions. We have data on economy types, population (which seems to have zero effect on prices), etc. But what about growth rates?

Alas, I said my peace when it mattered during the course of design. Maybe something like that pops up with a later expansion, but I am more or less resigned that it is what it is. If they expand on the simulation later on, I'll be very happy and would probably spend more time trading and trying to find unique profit opportunities for undertraded goods.

Until then, there is some movement in prices, but only ever downwards, from what I've observed based on how much volume comes through the stations. In this view, the best profit margins obviously are rare goods (which seems to have almost nothing to do with the simulation and the only variable is distance), and far out systems that nobody goes to. But I don't see much more variability than that, where for example, food is not being traded so prices collapse at the agricultural world and explode on the industrial world. Traders would be chasing yield, there would be news waves, and people would be racing across the galaxy to get in on it while it lasted. Pirates would flock to where the getting was good, too. Bounty hunters would follow.

 

[EUS]

Yes, the economy requires a complete do-over.
The pricing does not reflect inventory levels, nor should hauling in even a T9 touch pricing in a high supply environment (600000 tons) for example, unless 1000 CMDR's are doing it, in which case the inventory should be dropping like a stone.
For example, stations in LHS 3447, or whatever @ 120K LS away should be crying for goods, because no one goes there on purpose.

 

[Solreal]

This is a Sand Box, not an economic simulator. Take your shovel, pick up some sand, and place it in the bucket. Sorry, we're all out of water so you can't actually shape the sand, but who cares?!

Sand!

In a box!

I sure miss being in kindergarten, boxes of sand are fun!

 

[medwyn]

Lovely thread, months have passed since the trading topic gets some attention again!
I would also point at the problem about the commodities: there are only a handful of them traded because they are the only profitable ones.
Since the prices can not get out from a certain frame, I wouldn't even talk about "levelling" regardless of the players' impact on supply and demand.

All spot on observations and ideas above, I would put one more in: let's make the trade ranking useful with licencing. Set up a list of commodities and assign a minimum trading rank to them: below that it's not tradeable. (I guess it's too late though, after the seriously unpolished launch now there are all big ships and lots of money anyway...)
Also I would like to see small commodities worthy to trade - I see more immersion in helping a station out with basic food and fuel than haling gold and other metals all the time.
And it's a great opportunity to overhaul the missions as well as they are pretty unorganic and disastrous since launch. I guess a proper mission generator which is related to the actual supply/demand state could spice up trading.

So yes, trading is not boring at all, it requires cunning senses and careful planning keeping lots of factors in account IF the games's economy background is solid and intelligent. Right now it's far from it.
There are plenty of sensible ideas in older topics, hopefully FD will take a look at them and put something together.