No memory of trade data? Crackers

[UnicycleBloke]

I am old and feeble minded, but I can usually remember the prices I paid for things the last time I went to the shops in town, at least for a while.

I don't understand why my super duper ship's computer can't remember the prices of commodities in System XYZ the last time I was there. Of course, if my last visit was ages ago, the data I have on my ship might be almost useless, as the prices will have changed and/or the availability/desirability of various commodities will have changed. They might have changed a lot, or not at all.

I am not interested in using something like Thrudd's Thingy. I regard this as basically a cheat, because (as I understand it) I can get stacks of information about places I have never even visited. The only legitimate way for this to happen in my view is to purchase the data in game, in a nearby system, but that feature of the game seems to be almost useless at the moment. Why not present the prices of things in the target system when the data was gathered whether the data was purchased or picked up by me when I last went there? Oh, and include a time stamp so I know how old the data is.

I suppose I could manage a personal Thrudd-type database, but it seems painfully obvious that my space ship's computer should be able to manage that without even breaking into a sweat. I have lots of room on my hard disk for the necessary data files.


UB

 

[moqui]

If you haven't already done that, take a look at the Trade Computer Extension (TCE). It's basically a 3rd party add-on to your ship's computer - I don't consider it cheating as you have to provide the trade data on your own. It comes as a screen overlay on top of your ED window, so no more alt-tabbing.

Unfortunately I can't post hyperlinks (this is my 1st post) so you'll have to search for your own

 

[UnicycleBloke]

TCE looks interesting, though I find VB impenetrable at the best of times. The fact that such ingenuity is being exercised by the community shows just how badly the devs failed on this one. A really neat solution for them would be to create an open API to let third party tools into the data without having to mess around with OCR and all that. Mind you, I want the game out of the box, so to speak, to contain everything it needs...

ALT+TAB is eliminated by setting the graphics to borderless, no?


UB

 

[moqui]

I agree! A trade-computer like TCE should already be integrated into the ship. Nevertheless I prefer TCE (including fiddling around with OCR) over a classic "pen and paper approach".
Yes you're right, ED needs to be running in borderless-mode... took me ~30min to figure that out. That's what you get for not reading the FAQ xD

 

[Xeros]

Yes Please: Trade Data Memory

I agree that we need in game trade data memory. I'm spending far too long writing down prices when I visit new systems and this has quite a high impact on my enjoyment of the game. This is what I use to do in the original Elite on the C64 when I was eight, it’s fun for a little while but gets old quite quickly.

I've never liked third party add-ons to games especially ones that don't use a published API. Anything that requires you to Alt+Tab (or windows key) out of the game is just annoying.

I'd like to see the trade data from your last visit to a station stored against that station and accessible from the system map. Adding a button to the left hand panel of information would be a good way of toggling the map and trade data once the station has been selected. If the devs think that this would make the game too easy then they could consider adding this as an internal module, this may make you choose between the likes of a Docking Computer and Trade data. However, my hope is that this will just be a standard part of the game.