This post applies even to the traders who hate using 3rd party tools and crowdsourced data, and who would prefer to do trading the "honest" way or "in the spirit of the game".
This post ALSO applies to the people who hate trading entirely. Read that again: even if you HATE trading, you should check out TCE, because it might change how you feel about trading.
Finally, this post ALSO applies to the hard-core traders who are already happy using 3rd party tools like Slopey's BPC and Trade Dangerous.
Why do I make these claims? Because I want people to be more happy with the game and feel like they can get their goals accomplished with minimal pain. The more people that are happy, the more money FD makes, and therefore the more improvements we see to the game at a faster pace. Truly, my motives are ultimately selfish, lol. I just want ED to be around and grow because I like it a lot.
Seriously, though, trading is currently the main path to money and achieving many of these goals: even if those goals are only to afford and maintain bigger/better combat craft loadouts for pirating or bounty hunting, and even if those goals are only to pay for the cost of repairing/replacing your ship after exploration mishaps. At some level, everyone needs to trade right now, but many players rightfully resent that fact and avoid trading because it bores them to tears.
So what the heck does TCE have to do with making people of all tastes so happy?
TCE integrates EliteOCR seamlessly into itself. You _never_ have to fiddle with OCR directly. You _never_ have to take manual screenshots. Instead, you just push one button in TCE itself when you're in the Commodities screen of ED. Done!
It gives power traders nearly all the essentials they need. Sure, there are some times you might still go to Slopey's or whatever to do a search/filter that TCE can't do, but TCE covers the 90% use case for hardcore traders just fine. The only thing you give up (kinda) is crowdsourced data, which brings me to...
TCE gives the "honest" players who feel it's cheating or "too easy" to use third party tools a way to enjoy nearly all of the same benefits the power traders have enjoyed, BUT WITHOUT "cheating". Why? Because by default TCE uses a private database that only you can populate and only you can see. Honestly, the really advanced power traders want this private data too. Most of the other good tools force you to crowdshare your data. Not TCE. For the "honest" players, all that TCE does is take the 14th century manual bookkeeping and note-taking out of the game, and slap you squarely in the 34th century, with tools that make sense when you're flying multi-million credit ships dozens of lightyears in a few minutes.
TCE enables you to roleplay a "trader explorer", which is something the game itself does NOT do well at present. When you see how fast and easy and immersive TCE is for yourself, you'll quickly realize that it's actually an enjoyable impetus to explore every system in your current vicinity. Instead of staring at planets and other system bodies and selling the exploration data for relative peanuts, with TCE every system you explore can yield new stations and their commodity data that you can add to your ever growing personal library of trade data. The more you explore, the more trading option you open for yourself and the more money you can make in a VARIETY of "trading styles", not just grind-monkey speedruns between two stations over and over and over and over...
I'm going to stop here, and urge you to look at the guide I wrote specifically for TCE (it's the yellow link below in my sig block). It will give you TONS of details about how TCE works, what it can do, and how it can support the trading techniques I explain in my trading guide (the orange link below in my sig block).
And if the fact that TCE requires Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access makes you balk and want to instantly reply "It sux because I don't have and cannot afford", my guide explains near the top that you can subscribe to Office 365 for only $9.99 a month, and you can even run a free trial for a while. That free trial will let you at least try out TCE for yourself and see for yourself.
Anyway, just a pro trader tip I wanted to throw out there. I love TCE and have it on pretty much all the time now except when all I'm doing is bounty hunting.
This post ALSO applies to the people who hate trading entirely. Read that again: even if you HATE trading, you should check out TCE, because it might change how you feel about trading.
Finally, this post ALSO applies to the hard-core traders who are already happy using 3rd party tools like Slopey's BPC and Trade Dangerous.
Why do I make these claims? Because I want people to be more happy with the game and feel like they can get their goals accomplished with minimal pain. The more people that are happy, the more money FD makes, and therefore the more improvements we see to the game at a faster pace. Truly, my motives are ultimately selfish, lol. I just want ED to be around and grow because I like it a lot.
Seriously, though, trading is currently the main path to money and achieving many of these goals: even if those goals are only to afford and maintain bigger/better combat craft loadouts for pirating or bounty hunting, and even if those goals are only to pay for the cost of repairing/replacing your ship after exploration mishaps. At some level, everyone needs to trade right now, but many players rightfully resent that fact and avoid trading because it bores them to tears.
So what the heck does TCE have to do with making people of all tastes so happy?
TCE is a screen overlay tool that appears to be a seamless part of the game UI. No more alt-tabbing to look at external tools, spreadsheets, text files, etc. Stay in the game all the time. It feels like the in-game trade computer interface most of us have asked for at one time or another.
TCE integrates EliteOCR seamlessly into itself. You _never_ have to fiddle with OCR directly. You _never_ have to take manual screenshots. Instead, you just push one button in TCE itself when you're in the Commodities screen of ED. Done!
It gives power traders nearly all the essentials they need. Sure, there are some times you might still go to Slopey's or whatever to do a search/filter that TCE can't do, but TCE covers the 90% use case for hardcore traders just fine. The only thing you give up (kinda) is crowdsourced data, which brings me to...
TCE gives the "honest" players who feel it's cheating or "too easy" to use third party tools a way to enjoy nearly all of the same benefits the power traders have enjoyed, BUT WITHOUT "cheating". Why? Because by default TCE uses a private database that only you can populate and only you can see. Honestly, the really advanced power traders want this private data too. Most of the other good tools force you to crowdshare your data. Not TCE. For the "honest" players, all that TCE does is take the 14th century manual bookkeeping and note-taking out of the game, and slap you squarely in the 34th century, with tools that make sense when you're flying multi-million credit ships dozens of lightyears in a few minutes.
TCE enables you to roleplay a "trader explorer", which is something the game itself does NOT do well at present. When you see how fast and easy and immersive TCE is for yourself, you'll quickly realize that it's actually an enjoyable impetus to explore every system in your current vicinity. Instead of staring at planets and other system bodies and selling the exploration data for relative peanuts, with TCE every system you explore can yield new stations and their commodity data that you can add to your ever growing personal library of trade data. The more you explore, the more trading option you open for yourself and the more money you can make in a VARIETY of "trading styles", not just grind-monkey speedruns between two stations over and over and over and over...
I'm going to stop here, and urge you to look at the guide I wrote specifically for TCE (it's the yellow link below in my sig block). It will give you TONS of details about how TCE works, what it can do, and how it can support the trading techniques I explain in my trading guide (the orange link below in my sig block).
And if the fact that TCE requires Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access makes you balk and want to instantly reply "It sux because I don't have and cannot afford", my guide explains near the top that you can subscribe to Office 365 for only $9.99 a month, and you can even run a free trial for a while. That free trial will let you at least try out TCE for yourself and see for yourself.
Anyway, just a pro trader tip I wanted to throw out there. I love TCE and have it on pretty much all the time now except when all I'm doing is bounty hunting.
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