Fleet Carrier owners, how do you find the best prices in the galaxy/bubble ?

[Erei]

So, I'm a recent owner of a FC thanks to President Hudson fetish about CMDR Jameson (F), and the fine alcoholics in Rakham peak. I've seen, and dealt with, many carrier owner who trade large quantities of commodities, buying low one place, selling high another.
I always thought they used Inara or Eddb to know where to go and didn't check further.

Now that I'm part of the club, I'd like to trade like they do. But to my surprise, I realized both Inara and EDDB list for lowest/highest price is truncated. The best price list, especially to buy, is too small and can't be filtered on both. The one that is filtered on EDDB is limited to roughly 50ly around you, which is very small.
The ingame tool is also very limited in range.

So, how do you work that out ? Do you simply bookmark known system (I see some system on the various FC subreddit regularly, like Brandi), and check like a hawk when prices go low/high enough ? Is there a way to filter or a tool I'm not aware of ? Do you use the trade opportunity thing in Inara (still trying to wrap my head around that one) ? I couldn't find any answer online.

Any help, or even a link to a guide (couldn't find any), would be greatly appreciated.

 

[goemon]

generally, you can work around it with https://eddb.io/commodity - if you single click on a commodity, the 50 ly range does not apply.

probably an overkill for you, but what i do is taking advantage of Ian D.s https://cdb.sotl.org.uk/
with the state modifiers there for supply, demand, sellprice and buyprice you can predict demand, supply and price (taking hydrogen fuel levels into account) for any commodity, so i than search for appropriate stations/systems, and check their current states ingame.

that said, if you know which highly profitable commoditioes are more relying on buyprice (e.g. silver, gold, palladium) and which states you need, and which on sellprice (e.g. agronomic treatment or bauxite), it massively cuts down only to work one side of it (find a low price selling place for silver OR find a high price selling place for bauxite).

on the other hand - even with a 45k credits per ton profit bauxite route, in most cases it isn't worth it to use a carrier (because you basically need 4 dockings per load doing so, somethin like 45 mio hour ... ) . it's great for backgroundsimulation manipulation though (but for that you only need 2000 cptp)

 

[Erei]

generally, you can work around it with https://eddb.io/commodity - if you single click on a commodity, the 50 ly range does not apply.

probably an overkill for you, but what i do is taking advantage of Ian D.s https://cdb.sotl.org.uk/
with the state modifiers there for supply, demand, sellprice and buyprice you can predict demand, supply and price (taking hydrogen fuel levels into account) for any commodity, so i than search for appropriate stations/systems, and check their current states ingame.

that said, if you know which highly profitable commoditioes are more relying on buyprice (e.g. silver, gold, palladium) and which states you need, and which on sellprice (e.g. agronomic treatment or bauxite), it massively cuts down only to work one side of it (find a low price selling place for silver OR find a high price selling place for bauxite).

on the other hand - even with a 45k credits per ton profit bauxite route, in most cases it isn't worth it to use a carrier (because you basically need 4 dockings per load doing so, somethin like 45 mio hour ... ) . it's great for backgroundsimulation manipulation though (but for that you only need 2000 cptp)

The list is still truncated massively if I use the "click on commodities". It's a problem for best buy (and to some extent best selling), because I have a long list of planetary outpost with supply in the single digits, and that's not very useful.

I'll explain a bit further. It's mostly intended as a semi passive thing ? I like the carrier-player interaction for trade. It's good emergent gameplay, even if it's simplistic, IMO. I'd like to partake in it, and make a bit of money on the side (the 5billions for carrier +1bil I stored in it to not bother with the upkeep was rough).

I didn't think of using BGS as an extra filter. But that's a whole part of the game that I'd classify as "headache inducing" And I was kinda hoping I was missing something obvious.

 

[goemon]

no, you are not missing something obvious. especially all the new odyssey markets with low supply make the previous shortcut a problem.

generally i don't think bulktrading with bulkcommodities works as a passive income very well - your best bet would be to load up cheap yourself and move to a good sellprice system.

what does work nicely to do it with mining only commodities. talking from my fc, a place where a miner can get a very good, relieable price for anything, while me delivers those mining commodities if the states allign works as a service.

also fetch-mission commodities, engineer unlock commodities, and tech broker unlock commodities work.

still, it is not like many commanders are trading extensively (or mining that much any mire), as earning rates are so high (and players get very quickly to the point, where earning more credits does not enhance their game).

also you'll come quickly to the point my FC owning bubble not maim commander is at. i started with 4 weeks of upkeep, and now, a good year later, is sitting on 4 years upkeep and counting. at which point making 20 mio per shuffling mining commodities somewhere is more of a hobby.

 

[Erei]

It's relatively popular actually. Reddit have several subreddit where FC announce unloading/loading regularly. The PTN player group use it intensively. I used it myself for decent money, sometimes they open a 25k/t offer, for a single jump trade, which is decent.

I wanted to be a part of the "simulation" if you will, and since it's passive, it's also a way to generate without much work. Like AFK t10 but without feeling guilty^^ Someone recently said he did a few bil in a year by just having open orders on his carrier. Which is kinda what I'm looking for.

I thank you for your input.