I agree with you however I would suggest the FEW times I took a loss in your scenario was due to the fact I forgot to check the DEMAND at the import station. I got burned a few times until I realized that trading in that commodity was recently saturated and even though it was an import it was low in demand. You see this very frequently with Imperial Slaves, right. At Point-in-Time A, IS purchase for 13K at export site, sell on a return route at Point-in-Time B for 17k. When you've run the route a couple days and others have caught on, you are going to see that 17k drop steadily as time moves. Even to the point of a few hundred credits loss, Check the demand before the trip to make sure it is worth your time.
Discussion Open Letter to Frontier Developments
- Thread starter AnthorNet
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I agree with you however I would suggest the FEW times I took a loss in your scenario was due to the fact I forgot to check the DEMAND at the import station. I got burned a few times until I realized that trading in that commodity was recently saturated and even though it was an import it was low in demand. You see this very frequently with Imperial Slaves, right. At Point-in-Time A, IS purchase for 13K at export site, sell on a return route at Point-in-Time B for 17k. When you've run the route a couple days and others have caught on, you are going to see that 17k drop steadily as time moves. Even to the point of a few hundred credits loss, Check the demand before the trip to make sure it is worth your time.
I fully support the 3rd party devs. Although I am retired I do have a life to lead as well as playing ED. I loved the original played on my BBC B, but in those days I was working 12 hours a day and would have bitten someone's arm off to have a price comparison chart done for me.
To misquote Zager & Evans: "In the year 2525 if Man is still alive."
Therefore by 30xx the machines will be running the universe and even they will either use drones to carry out their preferred method(s) of making money or money will no longer exist and stuff will be beamed up from the planets.
So please DB et al build a trading computer into the ships systems even if, like the docking computer, you have to save up enough credits and even then like the docking computer it may hit things and crash annoyingly.
To misquote Zager & Evans: "In the year 2525 if Man is still alive."
Therefore by 30xx the machines will be running the universe and even they will either use drones to carry out their preferred method(s) of making money or money will no longer exist and stuff will be beamed up from the planets.
So please DB et al build a trading computer into the ships systems even if, like the docking computer, you have to save up enough credits and even then like the docking computer it may hit things and crash annoyingly.
If you had read the thread you would know by now that the majority of the people would be tickled pink with an ships computer storing the market data of stations you landed on and tools that allows you to query it in an sensible way (Like "List all thorium prices highest sell/buy") OUT OF DATA YOU GATHERED SELF
The ammount of goods and data and stations is too overhelming for pen and paper and too time intensive for player who have RL commitments too.
Trade sites as it is now (the 3rd party sites) offer data collected by players, so it is in between 1 minute and 30 days old in general, so not an real time picture, and not an iWin button either.
But you at least have some rough picture and can narrow your search down to 10 or 20 systhems.
Tradetools inside Elite are pathetic, you follow them you sell at lower prices than you bought going from producer to consument!
That is trading random!
I did the flying around and collecting data myself and it is just not "rewarding" because you drown in paper and I am personally not able to write my own app to store and query data.
Without 3rd party tools i would not do any trading in Elite at all because it would be honestly pretty boring and so time intensive that all other activities give much better reward.
I tried it while there where no 3rd tools avaiable still and learned very quick that you stay with routes you find and grind them into oblivion, vbery boring, with 3rd party tools i can find new routes to fly as soon i am bored out of my mind so i have other station names to fly too (all other stays the same sadly so there you are)
Way back in Newsletter #10 we got a sneak peak of what we hoped trading would become. Sadly it didn't.
As for the API to the companion app for data, it isn't needed. The information is already in the client. The server for the companion app can be switched off and an API can be developed to access the in client data.
That is until we get something close to the concept art in Newsletter #10.
As for the API to the companion app for data, it isn't needed. The information is already in the client. The server for the companion app can be switched off and an API can be developed to access the in client data.
That is until we get something close to the concept art in Newsletter #10.
Only thing that early sketch showed additionally was historical data collected by player himself, which majority of people here agree would be "nice to have".
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Game is saved all the time, "save and exit" is just not really well named menu option. You can't save game and then return back to some artificial point.
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Errr...that's how trading in Elite supposed to work. Either you find and pick one route which is very profitable and milk it, or take risk to move to another one.
Also very funny how you say trading without tools is not profitable - it is, but it is much harder to do that. So where are all those people claiming trading is OP activity in the game? Right.
While I would agree with putting it to a vote, not if it's a forum poll thanks. Those are notoriously badly compiled and therefore almost always skewed in terms of their results. That is to say, anything but reliable or representative most of the time, and therefore usually of relatively little value actually, statistically speaking. Now, a survey sent to all players by Frontier themselves, seeking input on a range of topics about the game rather than just this particular topic, is something I could support unreservedly. Personally, I'd prefer to see improved tools and functionality in-game rather than directly support 3rd party tools. I think we'd be silly though if we thought Frontier didn't already have thoughts on the current state of things and where such improvements are on the roadmap, whether that be they're happy with the current state of play or otherwise. Frontier are known for keeping things close to their chest where the roadmap is concerned so it would not be surprising, I think, to find they already have some improvements in the works that may well address at least some of the things people are wanting 3rd party tools for.
Hey all I just wanted to follow up with a second reply here.
For those requesting clarification on the use of the campanion API and also.the future of the API.
To clarify the previous post. There is no updates at the moment. I will make sure the suggestions and requests are passed on. Hopefully we will be able to have more news in the new year for the possibilities of new API support and clarify the use of the campanion API.
Sorry for any confusion.
Thanks Zac,
We understand that this week is a holiday time, and we will wait for a proper response next week.
Of course you can. Publicly traded companies have to disclose all sorts of information, especially if you're a shareholder.
Lots of stock brokers also gamble with food shortages in the third world.
I'd love to see a client-side API. Everyone has their own use cases of course, but for me I'd be interested in the pieces that allowed you to control your vehicle. The ability to query status (am I in a buggy or a ship? Am I in normal space or supercruise? Am I docked? Are the cargo scoop/lights/hardpoints deployed? What's my current pip distribution?) and to alter it (launch, deploy hardpoints, engage FSD) would create a plethora of additional tools and enhancements to existing tools.
But given the movement we've seen on this over the past year I don't expect to see it appear. The simple reality is the FD's development priorities are the next new shiny, fixes for egregious bugs and exploits, and that's pretty much it.
But given the movement we've seen on this over the past year I don't expect to see it appear. The simple reality is the FD's development priorities are the next new shiny, fixes for egregious bugs and exploits, and that's pretty much it.
Wrong, i said trading in elite without 3rd party tools is random chance.
You go places and write down numbers and then find traderoutes, but that is pretty stupid if you think it through to the end.
There is no skill involved, nothing but dumb collecting numbers and looking "high/low"
You need no bgs for that, it is wasted code, just put and rng on every commodity and shuffle it new every 6 hours or so.
There should be news reeds, hints, data you buy (or collect self) and then you figure out stuff beforehand (you know like in.. real life trading) involved.
Not visting stations and putting pen to paper and kinda do it the ape way hitting buttons (visiting stations) look what happens (bruteforce what is an good route)
You should be able to wander through the bubble one end to the other never visting one station again and make an decent profit by keeping your eyes open and figuring out what is needed where by traderoutes shown in map, population, economy and so on, there should be some skill and sense in trading.
Right now we either visit stations or 3rd party site, and with 3rd party site there is more skill involved actually, just picking the top earner on trade routes is prone to be an error, distance, number of jumps, what ship you fly and so on makes a route great or just soso, more skill involved than bouncing mindless around from station to station and waste paper.
Trading the way you propose (and how it sadly is) will kill tyhe game for trade inclined people because not the ammount of credits in the end keeps people playing (most traders have plenty of credits) the skill needed to trade successfull keeps traders playing (earned per day is the fun part, not the millions you already have, i have 6 ships fully quipped and 300mill cash, so guess what drives me to play, having more of what i have plenty of OR making trading actual fun?
Right now i just go along until i have ELITE ranking and then i will be off looking how many starts i can map per day or something like that, because as it is I am done with trading.
NOT because i have an truckload of credits, BUT because it is such an lousy sythem that there is no drive to make more credits.
There are many ways that trading could be interesting and they do need mainly code and very little graphics and UI and so on, there are plenty of formulas out that show how markets work and many ways Frontier could implement an systhem that even can be adjusted on the fly. (no systhem runs forever without something going south at times, you need to adjust as the game master)
Point is, trading as Frontier made it up is plain stupid and boring, 3rd party tools do add a little bit of spice there, they are pushing it a little the direction it should be (would still prefer to work only with my own data and data i Buy in game from others)
The whole mess we have and call it economy right now is plain and simple early beta. No life in it, no skill involved if you stick with the game tools only because theese are plain and simple not working.
I do not remember the exact details, however it was one of those "low profit" goods like hydrogen fuel or something. And I did not plot that route for profit, I had a mission and wanted to haul some side-cargo.
You do find stations that according to the info we get export stuff, but have very low supply and others importing it, having very low actual demand. And it's not ressources that have been depleted by players.
You can either try to crutch-justify that by lore, or acknowledge, that the system with seeding and randomness does generate some rather unfortunate combinations which does lead to a "meh" gaming experience.
These requests have fallen on deaf ears for over a year. Fundamental gameplay improvements are not on the cards.
Instead, we got a slider that lets you calculate FSD boost from synthesised fuel that is, for some absolutely unfathomable reason, only available if home made and not sold in even the highest tech station of a 15billion population system.
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>>Originally Posted by Kristov View Post
Why do people keep using the Stock Exchanges as examples here? We aren't buying and selling stocks in companies, we're buying and selling wholesale goods, very different things totally, you can't compare the two. I can see how much WalMart's stock is selling for, but I can NOT see what WalMart is spending on their products. Do you see the difference there?
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Im sorry, but this is a fallacious argument. If you you were indeed a wholesaler with business selling to wall mart, you could very well learn their purchasing prices.
At the very least, your SCM would record the information for future use.
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I'd love to have such a thing, too. A galaxy map app that lets me plan out routes that the in-game map currently does not. Would be great.
If you only provide information about your ship and not about others that wouldn't be an issue.
I do so appreciate the 3rp party tools.
So I want to thank all of you that make them.
Thank you!
So I want to thank all of you that make them.
Thank you!
I want to show my appreciation and support for the 3rd Party tools,
And to those that do not approve of them : Elite is in an advance space age timeline, even with the basic internet we have today I can find out what stock and the prices of things in nearlly every country / town. So having to hunt around in the future to find out basic information on a distant space station seems rather weird. althow I agree there should be more integrated within the game. But I can understand this is not a priority as of yet.
And to those that do not approve of them : Elite is in an advance space age timeline, even with the basic internet we have today I can find out what stock and the prices of things in nearlly every country / town. So having to hunt around in the future to find out basic information on a distant space station seems rather weird. althow I agree there should be more integrated within the game. But I can understand this is not a priority as of yet.
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