New career path "Trading Scout"

[CMDR Coypu]

How about a new career path for those of us who can't be bothered with just hauling cargo, but could help those who want to. Like some of the 3rd party tools but in-game and incentivised.
Like "universal cartographics" we could contribute to a galaxy wide information service - the obvious name is "universal exports" I guess ;-)
An official trading scout could perhaps join the guild, then go and travel around, keep a central commodities pricelist up to date, find new profitable trade routes and publish them. Then the scout gets a bonus, eg. for every route over 1000 Cr/t) and a % of the profits whenever anyone uses it (both stations would benefit from more trade, so the money could come from them rather than from the traders).

 

[Karaaz]

I like eveything but the % from trades. How do you picture that working? The way I see it it could either be: 1. Most recent scouting of the route. You'd only get the bonus until someone else updates the information, which could be minutes. 2. Everyone who scouted the route gets a percentage. This would likely result in something ridiculous like over 9000 players each getting a few percent.

 

[DaggerSnake]

I like that these kinds of things are community built and supported. I don't think everything needs to be programmed into the game. If you want to scout trade routes, you just go do it!

 

[korsobar]

How about a new career path for those of us who can't be bothered with just hauling cargo, but could help those who want to. Like some of the 3rd party tools but in-game and incentivised.
Like "universal cartographics" we could contribute to a galaxy wide information service - the obvious name is "universal exports" I guess ;-)
An official trading scout could perhaps join the guild, then go and travel around, keep a central commodities pricelist up to date, find new profitable trade routes and publish them. Then the scout gets a bonus, eg. for every route over 1000 Cr/t) and a % of the profits whenever anyone uses it (both stations would benefit from more trade, so the money could come from them rather than from the traders).

I didn't see your post before writing up one of my own here:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=111892

Part of my idea is very similar to yours, specifically #3. Sorry for the wall of text there though. I like the idea as players have to explore for routes anyways, but get no reward for discovering one other than the ability to use it until it loses profitability.