Raw Material Traders

I have been searching for a local Raw Material Trader. So, I filtered the galaxy map for Refinery/Extraction Economies, and I head off. Each and every Material Trader I come across, in these Extraction/Refinery economies turns out to be a 'Encoded Material Trader'. The Encoded Traders are supposed to be in High Tech/Military systems.

Specifically I am looking for a few bits of Niobium. The planets that have Niobium have stations orbiting them, so I can;t figure out why I am only finding Encoded Traders. Is this a bug, or just an misunderstanding of the outline for finding the Traders FD put out in Beta?
 
There's a raw mat' trader in Muang, at Al-K Enterprises.

I'm there now and I'm finding it all rather baffling, tbh.
 
Try this scheme, worked for me on my first try:

Locations material traders can be found are:
- Raw Materials Trader - Found at extraction and refinery economies, only trades in raw material found on planet surfaces and planetary rings.
- Manufactured Materials Trader - Found at industrial economies, only trades in manufactured materials.
- Encoded Materials Trader - Found at High Tech and Military economies, only trades in encoded materials.
- Systems also need to be mid to high security systems and have populations between 1,000,000 and 22,000,000.
Materials Trades will not show up in lawless and anarchy systems.
Materials Traders will not show up at stations that are currently controlled by a criminal faction.
Materials Traders will be unavailable when a station is damaged, under repair or put on lockdown.
Horizons is required to use Material traders.
Material traders will appear in the Human Bubble, Colonia and Pleiades regions at economies types listed above.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...rial-Traders?p=6444568&viewfull=1#post6444568

And in addition: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/402263-List-of-all-trader-material-groups
 
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Thanks for that, but I had already tried that. In my area of space all of the Raw Mat guys turned out to be Encoded instead. My search continues.
Do you can provide some starsystem and station names, please? There is some fiddling with mixed economies needed for determining the trader type and I am still finetuning that. If it is not some weirdness in the game itself, but I rather doubt about it... ;)
 
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Do you can provide some starsystem and station names, please? There is some fiddling with mixed economies needed for determining the trader type and I am still finetuning that. If it is not some weirdness in the game itself, but I rather doubt about it... ;)

When I queried INARA I was returned (among many others),and searched :

LTT 17102 / Velasquez High Tech / Refinery
Apala / Wilson High Tech / Refinery
Mjikan / Smeaton High Tech / Refinery

They all turned out to have Encoded Traders rather than Raw Material Traders. That seemed weird, because each system seemed perfect for the Raw Mats guys. I went on another tact after searching many systems with just the Galaxy Map, and then the INARA suggestions. I think the key may be, for some reason, what should have been a Raw Mats guys, turned out to be an Encoded guy in my region.

Using FD criteria I searched a good deal more systems in the area looking for a Raw Material Trader. I looked at Ground Bases and Stations in all of the systems. Even verifying the presence of the Miobium I was looking for. No luck. I had to go to: HDS 1879 / Shaikh to get the job done. One caveat: The Listings I used from the INARA page showed the Raw Material as unbolded, where the other types looked bold (if that makes any sense and/or difference).

I hope this helps. PM me if you need to ask any more questions.
 
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I have been searching for a local Raw Material Trader. So, I filtered the galaxy map for Refinery/Extraction Economies, and I head off. Each and every Material Trader I come across, in these Extraction/Refinery economies turns out to be a 'Encoded Material Trader'. The Encoded Traders are supposed to be in High Tech/Military systems.

Specifically I am looking for a few bits of Niobium. The planets that have Niobium have stations orbiting them, so I can;t figure out why I am only finding Encoded Traders. Is this a bug, or just an misunderstanding of the outline for finding the Traders FD put out in Beta?

Weird stuff, report the systems. So far it works exactly as advertised for me...
 
I have been using the Raw Trader in the "Clido Pi" system in Imperial space. Very near Cubeo.

Not sure if you are close enough to use this one, but it is most definitely a Raw Trader and located at the system's main Starport.
 
I have been searching for a local Raw Material Trader. So, I filtered the galaxy map for Refinery/Extraction Economies, and I head off. Each and every Material Trader I come across, in these Extraction/Refinery economies turns out to be a 'Encoded Material Trader'. The Encoded Traders are supposed to be in High Tech/Military systems.

Specifically I am looking for a few bits of Niobium. The planets that have Niobium have stations orbiting them, so I can;t figure out why I am only finding Encoded Traders. Is this a bug, or just an misunderstanding of the outline for finding the Traders FD put out in Beta?

Same with me. Exactly the same. You would think after 1000 of game play I'd have a few raw material traders showing like I do for the other two. I finally gave up and collected raw mats the old fashioned way... SRV scooping.
 
Which only display anything once you've actually visited them.

At some point, we're probably all going to have to go on a grand-tour around them all, just so the gal-map will display them usefully.
Odd. I was at Jameson, choose the filter and they came right up. I needed the data bloke and the manufactor bloke and there they were, both 1 hop away. Never visited them before.
 
When I queried INARA I was returned (among many others),and searched :

LTT 17102 / Velasquez High Tech / Refinery
Apala / Wilson High Tech / Refinery
Mjikan / Smeaton High Tech / Refinery

They all turned out to have Encoded Traders rather than Raw Material Traders. That seemed weird, because each system seemed perfect for the Raw Mats guys. I went on another tact after searching many systems with just the Galaxy Map, and then the INARA suggestions. I think the key may be, for some reason, what should have been a Raw Mats guys, turned out to be an Encoded guy in my region.

Using FD criteria I searched a good deal more systems in the area looking for a Raw Material Trader. I looked at Ground Bases and Stations in all of the systems. Even verifying the presence of the Miobium I was looking for. No luck. I had to go to: HDS 1879 / Shaikh to get the job done. One caveat: The Listings I used from the INARA page showed the Raw Material as unbolded, where the other types looked bold (if that makes any sense and/or difference).

I hope this helps. PM me if you need to ask any more questions.
Thank you, there is apparently a problem with the primary/secondary economy swapping, which cause the problems. As there is no easy way out at this moment, I have listed both types in such cases. The life cannot provide a certainty all the time. ;)
 
Thank you, there is apparently a problem with the primary/secondary economy swapping, which cause the problems. As there is no easy way out at this moment, I have listed both types in such cases. The life cannot provide a certainty all the time. ;)
Apologies for the thread bump but I had this problem this evening and I'm guessing it might catch other players out, too.

I need ten lumps of vanadium to complete the last mod on my weapons. Normally I would drop the SRV onto a vanadium-rich planet and crawl around for half an hour or so, but I thought I'd give the raw material trader a go instead.

I've used the information in INARA and various forum threads to visit several recommended stations including two that other posters swore carried raw material traders, and each and every one of them was a manufactured trader not raw.

Does this mean that these traders can swap between types depending on the current economic state of the system? If so, does the galactic map update in real time? In other words, if I visited a system when it was a data trader but in the meantime it's switched to manufactured, which will show on the map when I apply filters?

I don't have an issue with this mechanism in principle; having an initially difficult hunt for something but then being able to easily return to it later is not an uncommon game mechanic. But as with many things ED there seems to be just one too many hoops to jump through, one too many unpredictable variables to account for. Certainly the 40 light year radius limit is ridiculous; no other aspect of the galactic map has this restriction. IMO that should be the first thing to go.

It's a good job I still enjoy flying the ship, otherwise the last 90 minutes would have been a complete bust. I'm beginning to wish I'd just done it the old fashioned way, driving around in the buggy and shooting rocks.
 
Apologies for the thread bump but I had this problem this evening and I'm guessing it might catch other players out, too.

I need ten lumps of vanadium to complete the last mod on my weapons. Normally I would drop the SRV onto a vanadium-rich planet and crawl around for half an hour or so, but I thought I'd give the raw material trader a go instead.

I've used the information in INARA and various forum threads to visit several recommended stations including two that other posters swore carried raw material traders, and each and every one of them was a manufactured trader not raw.

Does this mean that these traders can swap between types depending on the current economic state of the system? If so, does the galactic map update in real time? In other words, if I visited a system when it was a data trader but in the meantime it's switched to manufactured, which will show on the map when I apply filters?

I don't have an issue with this mechanism in principle; having an initially difficult hunt for something but then being able to easily return to it later is not an uncommon game mechanic. But as with many things ED there seems to be just one too many hoops to jump through, one too many unpredictable variables to account for. Certainly the 40 light year radius limit is ridiculous; no other aspect of the galactic map has this restriction. IMO that should be the first thing to go.

It's a good job I still enjoy flying the ship, otherwise the last 90 minutes would have been a complete bust. I'm beginning to wish I'd just done it the old fashioned way, driving around in the buggy and shooting rocks.


From INARA:

The technology broker and material trader types are determined by the station economies.

I try to use only stations that show a single type to avoid mistakes.
 
I try to use only stations that show a single type to avoid mistakes.
Right. Having checked the places I visited last night they're all mixed. I'm going to try one of the single economy stations this morning. I also noticed that the places I visited are now showing as manufactured material traders, so the real-time update through EDMC seems to be working. I guess some systems are just changing more frequently than players (or at least players providing data to INARA) are visiting.

All of this stuff is kinda cool in its way (I know others might disagree) but it's a shame so much of it is out of game. It would all be so much more engaging to me if I could do all this data mining through station services or the galactic map.
 
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