Its an arbitrary limit imposed by FD, that also is in no way communicated to a player in game. Everything else is limitless, except these with a 40ly cap.
Exploring is one. Aimless wandering is totally different. 40 LY range limit is more like seeking a needle in a haystack.
Have they started encouraging that now?
That's my guess too.
Funny thing is, they've probably shot themselves in the foot by trying to make the mat traders pretty common.
If they'd put a total of, say, 30 (ten of each type) in the game they could've just given them their own markers, like the engineers, and at least people would be able to find them easily.
As it is, they've put heaps of them in the game but there's so many that they can't all be shown on the galmap and, as a result, people struggle to find any of them.
This is from a features of 3.0 post:
• Each trader type only trades in their type of materials and can be found in different economy types. Locations material traders can be found are:
- Raw Materials Trader: found at extraction and refinery economies, only trades in raw material found on planet surfaces and planetary rings.
- Manufactured Materials Trader: Found at industrial economies, only trades in manufactured materials.
- Encoded Materials Trader: Found at High Tech and Military economies, only trades in encoded materials.
- Systems also need to be mid to high security systems and have populations between 1,000,000 and 22,000,000.
• Materials Traders will not show up in anarchy systems.
• Materials Traders will not show up at stations that are currently controlled by a criminal faction.
• Materials Traders will be unavailable when a station is damaged, under repair or put on lockdown.
• Horizons is required to use Material traders.
• Material traders can be found using the new map view configuration ‘By Service’ option. This has a 40ly range and only shows traders that you have discovered.
• Material traders will also be shown on the system map in the station services list.
• Material traders will appear in the Human Bubble, Colonia and Pleiades regions at economies types listed above.
If you aren't finding one on your map, filter by economy, check to see a system with the correlating economy is 1-22 million and not anarchy, open up the system map for it and check station services. Once you get used to it, it is a pretty easy way to track them down.
• Each trader type only trades in their type of materials and can be found in different economy types. Locations material traders can be found are:
- Raw Materials Trader: found at extraction and refinery economies, only trades in raw material found on planet surfaces and planetary rings.
- Manufactured Materials Trader: Found at industrial economies, only trades in manufactured materials.
- Encoded Materials Trader: Found at High Tech and Military economies, only trades in encoded materials.
- Systems also need to be mid to high security systems and have populations between 1,000,000 and 22,000,000.
• Materials Traders will not show up in anarchy systems.
• Materials Traders will not show up at stations that are currently controlled by a criminal faction.
• Materials Traders will be unavailable when a station is damaged, under repair or put on lockdown.
• Horizons is required to use Material traders.
• Material traders can be found using the new map view configuration ‘By Service’ option. This has a 40ly range and only shows traders that you have discovered.
• Material traders will also be shown on the system map in the station services list.
• Material traders will appear in the Human Bubble, Colonia and Pleiades regions at economies types listed above.
If you aren't finding one on your map, filter by economy, check to see a system with the correlating economy is 1-22 million and not anarchy, open up the system map for it and check station services. Once you get used to it, it is a pretty easy way to track them down.
Remove the limit. Show all mat/data traders even if you havent docked there. Reveal all anarchy black markets. Hide all non-anarchy black markets until you docked there with a notoriety rating so they have a reason to let you in. Stop annoying players and start adding gameplay.
Just my suggestion, but what do I know?
Hahaha! What craziness is this?
Not going to happen.
That would be sensible.
I know most people would hate it, but I'd be fine with that . . . But I'd STILL expect to be able to see them marked on my map after I'd found them, and not just when they are less than 40ly away. I'm generally OK with having to discover things for myself. Once.No. Hide all planets and Stations until you had visited them in person and shaked hands with the inhabitants.
^^^ That seems the thoughts and ways FDevs like to make the game. ^^^
The 40ly limit is silly. If you've visited the system, the information should be in your database. Never mind the distance.
To those who say it's a "server juice" issue, being a developer, I can tell you it's not. Frontier has many other data lookups they do which are much more complicated which would not be in-game now if that were the case.
To those who say it's a "server juice" issue, being a developer, I can tell you it's not. Frontier has many other data lookups they do which are much more complicated which would not be in-game now if that were the case.
Except, I can filter the entire galaxy by dozens of other criteria, the vast majority of which is volatile data that changes, not a static flag.
If the game is able to sort by the state of the controlling faction for EVERY star system, when that state is dynamically changing based off of several factors, it should be trivial to send the client a static list of material traders and have the client use that list to sort for a specific trader.
I'm sorry but I just don't buy it.
More trash gameplay with no explanation from trash-like developers. If there’s a reason for it, tell us. If not, then you’re just plain trash. It’s okay to be trash, FD. Actually, it’s not but you lied to us so now taste your own Medicare!
See, this is why I hope it's a technical limitation of some sort.
It's either that or they're just being complete ats by forcing us to hunt around for these things for no good reason.
I mean, they're supposed to be businesses ferchrisakes. Businesses don't hide from their customers.
Just tell us if it's a technical issue and we'll stop moaning about it.
If not, change it 'cos it's needlessly spiteful to hide them.
It's the second option sadly...
I agree that it should be easier to find them in-game, but untill then I adapt:
EDDB.io
It’s that easy. Sometimes when a station has two economies you can’t be 100% certain about what kind of material trader it has, but usually you can trust the first economy mentioned/the one on top. You can find tech brokers too with that site.
But as I said earlier it’s strange that we can’t see all the services that we have discovered from anywhere. I don’t get the 40ly limit in that regard.
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i found another strange behaviour
i was in lembava, checked the map for guardian tech broker and saw nothing.
then i traveled over to Eurybia to mod my brand new pack-hounds and when opened the galmap to plot my route back,
i suddenly saw several blue dots around lembava... and that was outside the 40ly limit.
not only did they add such an arbitary limit that makes no sense,
they did not manage to make it work like it should at all.
so two fails in one
i was in lembava, checked the map for guardian tech broker and saw nothing.
then i traveled over to Eurybia to mod my brand new pack-hounds and when opened the galmap to plot my route back,
i suddenly saw several blue dots around lembava... and that was outside the 40ly limit.
not only did they add such an arbitary limit that makes no sense,
they did not manage to make it work like it should at all.
so two fails in one
Yes I use the third party sites as well, there are some amazing ones out there. The fact we do this shows that the 40ly range stops the feature being used as it could (and in my view should) be - but that CMDRs do need to access the information.
I’m pleased others feel the same way. But does anyone know whether FD have ever explained why the 40ly range is a thing? Have they ever covered it through this forum or the live streams?
I am just used to adapt in games and in my life in general instead of getting frustrated. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think it’s a shame that third party sites are better than the in-game features. I certainly do. But it doesn’t frustrate or irritate me. Not when there are other effective ways.
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