Excluding core minerals for a moment... you can find good stock levels/prices using two pieces of information:
1. The indicative prices via the market info e.g here:
View attachment 419889
(This is production, so higher prices = lower stock)
2. Population of the system.
Reason you need these two bits of information is because:
- Lower price == Higher Stock
- Supply/demand values are proportional to the population.
So a low pop system will have low supply prices at, for example, 1-5t and high supply prices at 50-75t... meanwhile a high pop system will have low supply prices for 1-150t, while a high supply pricing will be for 800-1000t[1]
Sure, you need to find out these things, but once you work that out, it's hard to unsee these things.
What helps in a major way is the galaxy pop slider. Want to find high-pop refineries for sourcing Insulating Membranes?
This is a shot of all refinery economies in (an area):
Here's what I call "high" population refinery systems (10m+) using the filter... exactly the same shot.
You then apply the High Tech and Industrial filters to rule out hybrid economies, and then that'll show you Pure refinery economies
Looking at these 4 systems quickly in Inara (to prove the point more than anything)
View attachment 419894
View attachment 419895
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Here's the rub. When you don't know any better, is it much easier to use Inara? Yes.
But this sort of thing is now pretty much second nature for me, and it's quick... but
most importantly, it's reliable and accurate.
This description
feels long because I'm doing it step-by-step... but when you just
intuitively know to do these things, it's very fast, and most importantly, live.
I didn't "pre-scope" these systems with Inara, I simply used the ingame tools like the above and then used Inara to save running out to each of these. You'll note some of the
really old data will basically be fine, it means these aren't popular and are therefore your best source.
An orbis needs 1200 membranes? There's more than enough up in that result set.
Maybe you need to do six runs in a python to an outpost rather than two in a T9... but it's 100% better than waiting for 2 hours getting ones and two's from market respawns.
Again... this
looks lengthy to explain step by step... but when you know this is how to do it in your head, it's quick. I do this all the time.
EDIT: And to circle this back around; if you go to one of these systems and dock somewhere that isn't good for stock, use the indicative pricing to find where else it's stocked in that system and head to the cheapest place (== highest stock)
[1] these are just exemplar, to explain things
