Storing commodities by Cubic Meter as well as Tonnage

[CMDR Dankus]

Most commodities on the market are currently completely non viable for traders as they take up equal tonnage with other commodities while having a significantly lower profit margin.

This issue could be fixed with a combination of a cargo capacity as well as tonnage limit when it comes to carrying cargo. It does not make sense that a tonne of gold is equal in space to a tonne of grain or fruits, gold is significantly denser and thus should take a lot less space. However, currently your ship will hold an equal amount of gold and grain, as if they take up the same amount of space.

Implementation of a size of cargo system could go by converting current cargo by tonne into cargo by cubic meter/tonne. For example, Gold is 9000 credits/cubic meter/19 tonnes. Grain is 25 credits/cubic meter/.05 tonnes. As gold is significantly heavier, you will not be able to fill out your entire cargo with gold unless you have a very heavy duty cargo ship (IE: Type-9/Anaconda). In exchange however, you could potentially receive more value in high end ships as you can store significantly more gold than previously. These cargo capacities can be supplemented by carrying lighter cargo to fill up the remaining space available.

An example scenario:
Capacity: 250 Cubic Meters
Weight limit: 500 Tonnes
Gold: 9000/Cubic Meter/19 tonnes
Grain: 500/Cubic meter/.05 Tonnes

Maximum Gold: 100 Tonnes/26.32 cubic meters of gold/236,880 credits
Maximum Grain: 12.5 Tonnes/250 cubic meters of grain/125,000 credits

This could allow greater depth to trading mechanics as well as greater commodity viability in the game beyond high value goods like palladium and progenitor cells.

Of course, the prices of commodities, how much cargo weights, and carrying capacity of each ship will need to be completely overhauled in order for this system to work. In the long run though, it could be beneficial to trading if it is properly balanced.

TLDR: Implement a size system with cargo, it doesn't make sense that you can carry a maximum of 25 tonnes of gold OR 25 tonnes of grain since gold will take significantly less space.

 

[MephisRA]

If they would do that, what I think would be a good idea, they also should rethink cargo you find in space, like a black-box, that also sucks up a ton...

 

[DocLooshkin]

At a guess, I'd say FD has probably done this on purpose, because of gameplay issues.

If memory serves, the original Elite had smaller units of measure (grammes, I think) for gemstones, etc, which I could only find in small numbers in each port. Once I had enough money to buy those, I gave up on all other goods in favour of slowly stocking up a hold as completely full of them as I could afford and then cashing in at the first good-enough price. The profit was absolutely stupendous compared to anything else, but it killed the rest of trading stone dead. I suspect the devs don't want the same thing to happen to ED.

However, it's possible that at some point, trading will get a decent overhaul. If we get shifted over to a slightly more realistic economy, where prices reflect some noticeable system of supply and demand, then this problem largely goes away (presumably, it's replaced by massive market fluctuations, instead) and a realistic storage mechanic becomes a feasible option - although, I think it'll be slightly easier to understand as sales by the unit of volume instead of mass, but with the mass counting against thruster-power and FSD jump distance (I'm not sure what should happen if you can't actually get off the docking pad afterwards, but I'm fairly sure it'll be quite funny to watch).

I'd like to see this happen then - it definitely has interesting implications for the game, with players of all cargo-carrying professions having to judge increased profits against loss of manoeuvrability and jump distance. +1, if we can get the trading overhaul as well.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

I personally wouldn't gain anything from this conversion. I never trade, and if this extra layer of complexity were added, I would REALLY never trade.

I think the unit of measurement is tonne because that's the only element that affects us in space. If we think of each tonne of commodity not as a bag of gold bars or as ten bails of wheat, but as a canister, the volume is irrelevant. Canisters are uniform storage devices that can hold a tonne of gold (lots of empty room left in the canister) and a ton of feathers (little room left in the canister). Volume isn't the limiting factor of a cargo bay, weight is.

I think to address the problem you bring up (many useless commodities), a different approach should be taken. My solution would be that stations should 'fill up' on the expensive stuff much faster than they do now, forcing those palladium truckers to need to find several drop off points to dump a full load. Cheaper more commonly used commodities should take much longer for their price to drop, allowing market emptying T9s to do a simple short run of wheat all day. Actually now that I think about it, I believe this was how the X series solved this problem as well.

 

[Rodhern]

Commodity restrictions by price, weight and size.

Hello

I guess that it might improve the incentive to not just haul the cargo with the greatest per weight profit. There is some incentive today because the 'best' cargo often is the most expensive as well.

Let me spell out your example in a simplified manner:

Assume that we have two possible (cheap) commodities:

Commodity	Weight	Size	Profit
"A"	1 t	0.5 m3	100 cr/t
"B"	1 t	2.0 m3	200 cr/t

Let's say the ship in this example has capacity limits of 10 t and 10 m³.
We have several loading options available:

1. One obvious possible full load is 10 t of "A". Total capacity needed 10 t and 5 m³. Total profit 1'000 cr.
2. Another obvious possible full load is 5 t of "B". Total capacity needed 5 t and 10 m³. Total profit 1'000 cr.
3. A third possible full load is 7 t of "A" and 3 t of "B". Total capacity needed 10 t and 9.5 m³. Total profit 1'300 cr.

As proven by the third load option above, in this example there is a clear incentive to haul a mixed load of commodities.

Now, wheter it is worth overhauling the game to introduce these kinds of effects, that is a difficult question.