*Sorry I thought I was posting in Suggestions - if a mod wants to move it please do.
So, recently I've taken an interest in building up an active in-game 'trade map' of everything around my home system. Currently it's looking like this:
(No I am not starting a Liquid Oxygen trade it is just an illustrative example)
Basically it gives you on-the-fly in-game updates about commodities you select on the left-side filters - this can help you find good sale prices for stuff currently unknown on eddb/inara so has some decent utility. I took an interest in this when I used this map to find a very good sale price on Muskgravite that was completely unknown on eddb/Inara at the time. While it appears to apply to all stations you've ever visited, the supply/demand icons above only seem to appear for whatever is in ... I wanna say 40ly of the system you're in. All well and good so far.
A fairly significant limitation of this system is this:
That's a bummer. A quick System list in eddb shows upwards of 130 populated systems within ~40ly that I need to visit to complete my trade map. Depending where your own home base is, this could be better or even worse for you.
To make matters worse, in the 'slap in the face' kind of way, there's an in-game feature of 'buy trade data' for 100cr for certain systems within a relatively short distance of wherever you are, similar to the 'buy cartographic data'. But it has no effect on market data at all - after buying 'trade data', if you have not visited the system before, you still get the above message about needing to dock there. All 'buy trade data' does is give you the glowing trade lines.
I don't want to admit just how long I've been spending on this pet project but it's been a lot longer than I originally thought, and involved a lot of docking and undocking. Anything to speed this up would be good, even if just a little.
My suggestion is to add a 'Buy Market Data' button - or just update/replace the 'buy trade data' button - to have the following functionality: allow us to buy a market price list, identical in functionality to 'having docked there before', for available systems. 'Available system' would need to be limited to something reasonable, I think, either a small range (10ly or less?) or just those systems that currently have active trade lines with the system you're in. In either case, buying market data would be able to give you insights on 3-5 other available systems if you purchased it.
So, recently I've taken an interest in building up an active in-game 'trade map' of everything around my home system. Currently it's looking like this:
(No I am not starting a Liquid Oxygen trade it is just an illustrative example)
Basically it gives you on-the-fly in-game updates about commodities you select on the left-side filters - this can help you find good sale prices for stuff currently unknown on eddb/inara so has some decent utility. I took an interest in this when I used this map to find a very good sale price on Muskgravite that was completely unknown on eddb/Inara at the time. While it appears to apply to all stations you've ever visited, the supply/demand icons above only seem to appear for whatever is in ... I wanna say 40ly of the system you're in. All well and good so far.
A fairly significant limitation of this system is this:
That's a bummer. A quick System list in eddb shows upwards of 130 populated systems within ~40ly that I need to visit to complete my trade map. Depending where your own home base is, this could be better or even worse for you.
To make matters worse, in the 'slap in the face' kind of way, there's an in-game feature of 'buy trade data' for 100cr for certain systems within a relatively short distance of wherever you are, similar to the 'buy cartographic data'. But it has no effect on market data at all - after buying 'trade data', if you have not visited the system before, you still get the above message about needing to dock there. All 'buy trade data' does is give you the glowing trade lines.
I don't want to admit just how long I've been spending on this pet project but it's been a lot longer than I originally thought, and involved a lot of docking and undocking. Anything to speed this up would be good, even if just a little.
My suggestion is to add a 'Buy Market Data' button - or just update/replace the 'buy trade data' button - to have the following functionality: allow us to buy a market price list, identical in functionality to 'having docked there before', for available systems. 'Available system' would need to be limited to something reasonable, I think, either a small range (10ly or less?) or just those systems that currently have active trade lines with the system you're in. In either case, buying market data would be able to give you insights on 3-5 other available systems if you purchased it.