Newcomer / Intro Commodities prices- where?

[stanima]

I played the original Elite back in the day, and I quite like the new version. Has enough of the feel of the original, with a little more than just new shiny graphics.

HOWEVER!!!! When I played the original I remember keeping a yellow pad next to my keyboard to jot down pricing at various stations so buying stuff and wondering where to sell it wasn't such a crap shoot. I am having horrible flashbacks about what a PITA it was, and now I am starting to get more than a little annoyed that I might have to do the same thing again.

It isn't 1984 any more, so my question has to be- where do I look to see what the prices are at various systems? OK, they don't have to make it super easy and give me all price info for all systems live, but for godsake surely there is enough memory available on my 500 GB HD for the program to save the commodities prices for systems I have already visited.

If the game already does this, can someone please tell me where to find it, and if it doesn't- why the hell not? I am about ready to start using my phone to take pictures of the commodities screens, something, anything so I don't have to go back to using a yellow pad.

Thanks...

 

[Skip Intro]

There's a small drop down arrow on the Galactic average price that will allow you to select a system's prices against the ones in the current system.

 

[stanima]

There's a small drop down arrow on the Galactic average price that will allow you to select a system's prices against the ones in the current system.

Well, found the arrow, but it does not do what you say. It does not show prices, in fact I could only see if other systems produced those items.

Which is kind of close to useless.

 

[Legionnaire]

From the Galactic Map, if you hover over a system, you sometimes have the option to buy financial data for that system fr a limited period of time (24hrs real time iirc) also although i havent played with trading too much, i have noticed, it keeps track of what price i bought things for. Plus on the galaxy map, under the view tab, you can change it to map from realistic, and then you can see the direction of the flow of goods, which should help to give you an idea of where to buy and sell.

 

[DaveB]

To more fully answer the OP...

One thing that persists from the original is that there is no in-game way to get a price quote from a remote port.

You can see historical data, indicating trades that have been made in the recent past, but those do not quote the amount of profit or loss that was made.

Think about it, if you could see the actual price at the remote station there would be no skill in trading at all. look up best profit, make the trip, repeat. And you thought people were complaining about mindless grind NOW!

The trick is to predict pairs of stations where there is likely to be something profitably traded between them and then go check them out to find out what. You can do that from the systems economy types, particularly the minority economies of systems where the economy on different stations diverges. You're more likely to strike it rich by not trailing the trend, so regard trade lines on the galaxy map as warnings, that while there is almost certainly money to be made there, some commodities that look like a sure thing are likely to have saturated markets where you might even make a loss.

Yes, you'll still be making notes but you wont be floundering in the dark as much as you were with the original.

 

[stanima]

I know that the program keeps track of what I paid for things I have in my cargo bay right now, but mystified by the notion that one can see "historical data". What? And where?

I am not asking for a cheat, or instant knowledge of all prices everywhere. If I am an actual space traveler, and I visit 20 different stations, or 100, I personally gain first hand knowledge of what things go for in the markets at those stations. I should be able, in the game, to refer to that historical data, learned first hand and KNOWN TO ME, at any time. The notion that a person who leaves a station would instantly wipe their ship's computer of all that information is absurd. If someone is seriously going to play the game as a trader then that knowledge is priceless, and playing a guessing game studying "trade routes" is equally asinine.

I just can't believe that the developers would force me to start maintaining hand written sheets of paper to record prices like it was 30 years ago.

But because I am not that stupid, my Kindle is now sitting next to me while I play, so I can refer to elitetradingtool.co.uk. While not as convenient as what should be implemented in the game, it is actually better because I get pricing data without having to visit systems first. So better info than the simple feature that should be in the game.