Thought's about using Slopeys

[Serpentstar]

Personally, I use it. It is a means to an end.

It has allowed me to get the ship I want, the weapons I want, and now I go and hunt down USS all day long.

For me, I do not feel there is anything inherently wrong with it or any other tool that provides information. It is no different than having a program to scour the internet for buy/sell data so you can choose what to get, where to get it and then go sell it.

As many have said (including myself)... Use it or don't. It's your choice. Just don't go and force your choice on me.

 

[forger]

i don't need any helper 3rd parties and i don't use any as it will be no funm for me, but if sole purpose of plying this game is earning max possible credits in shortest possible time then...

i like to play old school and have fun, and you don't have to be a genius to figure out best routes by yourself.

 

[flexy123]

re: "Thoughts about slopeys"

Seems that EVERYONE and their mama, including myself, now has a fully decked out Anaconda.

Wonder why....

Simple: Because people have the tool running, find the best route, and then spend some time grinding this route up and down.

A few hours later: Anaconda, here I come!

Think for yourself whether THIS is how you want the game to be....

We have a problem here if the game becomes less about discovery but more a grind of the best route to make money as quickly as possible.

 

[Alien]

So, no-one (who uses Slopey's tool) thinks to use the Galactic Map's view tab?

Interesting.

 

[Ben Ryder]

So, I have been using slopey's and I must admit I love it. My only issue with it is, I am a bit old skool and am used to traveling to stations, writing down the prices for things and building up a trade route. When I played EvE I did the same thing and did a lot of analysis on great trade routes. Even using C# and MSSQL to build up great spots to sell items to people going into Low Sec.

Now I do not want this game to be EvE so lets get that straight. And I am not so sure that I dissagree with Slopeys. Anyone cold argue... if you want to roleplay then don't use Slopeys.

But I wonder what you all think about having this information handed to you so easily and really ending any sense of building up a secret trade route.

Thanks.

I dont use slopey's tool and I am having an incredible time. I've been to almost every single black market station and had contributions from other players to do some research around the black market and have only recently set-up a player meet to do a drugs deal outside chango dock. No way I would have had half the fun or learned so much about the game, game play and player interaction from a spreadsheet. I now really know the markets and the areas. So Slopey's tool for me is not my thing. It add to the grind and takes away the fun. It's good if you are just starting out but so is exploring and working your own trade routes out. The galaxy map is a great and fun tool and I'm glad it's not accurate.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=34610

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=34610

 

[StayFrosty]

So, I have been using slopey's and I must admit I love it. My only issue with it is, I am a bit old skool and am used to traveling to stations, writing down the prices for things and building up a trade route. When I played EvE I did the same thing and did a lot of analysis on great trade routes. Even using C# and MSSQL to build up great spots to sell items to people going into Low Sec.

Now I do not want this game to be EvE so lets get that straight. And I am not so sure that I dissagree with Slopeys. Anyone cold argue... if you want to roleplay then don't use Slopeys.

But I wonder what you all think about having this information handed to you so easily and really ending any sense of building up a secret trade route.

Thanks.

This tool was just bound to happen in a multiplayer game anyway, it always does when you try to limit the communication of information between players, they end up circumventing this limitation and making it available to all.

Worst thing is how third party tools can grow to become essential to remain competitive against other players, so the game better support them and make them usable by everyone, rather than leaving it to some other player only. So I'd rather see the game allowing you to pull this data yourself rather than see an external tool doing it.

Still, there are many things that are going to be changing things: simulation will shift prices around, your own faction standings will affect prices too, and then there's always the legality of your goods, the existence of contracts, black markets... Suddenly this tool won't be that useful anymore, so it's not like using it will change your experience of the game anyway.

 

[Dunk]

This tool was just bound to happen in a multiplayer game anyway, it always does when you try to limit the communication of information between players, they end up circumventing this limitation and making it available to all.

Worst thing is how third party tools can grow to become essential to remain competitive against other players, so the game better support them and make them usable by everyone, rather than leaving it to some other player only. So I'd rather see the game allowing you to pull this data yourself rather than see an external tool doing it.

Still, there are many things that are going to be changing things: simulation will shift prices around, your own faction standings will affect prices too, and then there's always the legality of your goods, the existence of contracts, black markets... Suddenly this tool won't be that useful anymore, so it's not like using it will change your experience of the game anyway.

Sort of.

Yes, all the people using it will flatten out the market on the initially better routes. They'll also eat up the supply, which will mean that people have to go elsewhere to find something to trade. Essentially, the best prices will be further away from the most populated player areas, as those will be the least flattened market.

These tools will only work in the locations covered. So it would be best if FD don't allow access to the whole database. So, however big a third party database gets, all they will succeed in doing is to flatten the market in those areas. So rather than the best option for traders being to use the tool. The best option for them would be to glance at it to see what the best profit margins are on it, then to go searching off-grid, knowing that something better will exist elsewhere.

As to the people saying that this makes trading a grind, it really doesn't. Trading is grinding regardless and tools like this just helps traders grind with a slightly higher profit margin. Since the recent pricing change, I have used the tool to help me create an A4 sheet of all the single hop trades I can do in my Cobra. I know that theoretically, I could potentially do mathematically better by considering mutliple hops. However, the pricing model doesn't seem to vary that much from planet to planet at the moment. Commodities generally have a similar cheap price at a few locations which can be sold anywhere there is a demand for a similar profit margin.

 

[flexy123]

>>
had contributions from other players to do some research around the black market and have only recently set-up a player meet to do a drugs deal outside chango dock.
>>

Here is one problem (?) of the game right now...I personally don't/didn't even know you can trade with players? Let alone how to set-up a "drug deal" with/together with other players in this game.

"Interaction" with other players so far, for me, is "G'Day Commander" and flashing ship lights....

The game at the current stage does not exactly encourage/promote player <-> player interaction...respective doesn't make it obvious it IS possible.

Rest assured, what you describe there sounds a lot more fun than grinding LHS3262 <--> Ithaca all day long.

 

[flexy123]

>>
to the people saying that this makes trading a grind, it really doesn't. Trading is grinding regardless and tools like this just helps traders grind with a slightly higher profit margin.
>>

In the old game there was a big element of discovery, YOU discovered prices and routes and then were happy you find a profitable one. This is a MAJOR difference.

It *IS* a grind when a tool finds that, for instance, LHS 3262 <--> Ithaca is "the best" route for certain goods and it stays so for several days. I would be a fool NOT to grind this up and down. YES OF COURSE I CAN do another route...but I will make less money! And take my word, grinding one particular route for two days straight is not exactly the most fun thing you can do.

The argument "if you don't like it don't use it"...doesn't count (IMHO), because this game (a big part of it)..is making money in the most effective way...and if such a tool tells you the most effective way its hard to refrain from using it. I mean I am telling it how it is.

 

[Georgio]

What would be cool is a marriage between Slopey's tool and the galaxy map ingame. Add in some form of personal logging and there you have almost a game in itself.

 

[Dunk]

>>
to the people saying that this makes trading a grind, it really doesn't. Trading is grinding regardless and tools like this just helps traders grind with a slightly higher profit margin.
>>

In the old game there was a big element of discovery, YOU discovered prices and routes and then were happy you find a profitable one. This is a MAJOR difference.

It *IS* a grind when a tool finds that, for instance, LHS 3262 <--> Ithaca is "the best" route for certain goods and it stays so for several days. I would be a fool NOT to grind this up and down. YES OF COURSE I CAN do another route...but I will make less money! And take my word, grinding one particular route for two days straight is not exactly the most fun thing you can do.

The argument "if you don't like it don't use it"...doesn't count (IMHO), because this game (a big part of it)..is making money in the most effective way...and if such a tool tells you the most effective way its hard to refrain from using it. I mean I am telling it how it is.

Like I said, trading is a grind either way. And as I went on to imply, the dynamic universe (as long as it is implemented as FD have stated) will make using such 3rd party tools disadvantageous in the final game. ie A trading route that lots of people can see is the best, will stop being the best very quickly. So these tools will cease to be useful so long as FD don't grant access to their pricing database.

 

[kb_Nomad]

Why do we have yet another thread on this?

It's been covered folks - many times!!

 

[Fly_Mario]

Why do we have yet another thread on this?

It's been covered folks - many times!!

Well, we are covering it again

 

[myngos211]

So, I have been using slopey's and I must admit I love it. My only issue with it is, I am a bit old skool and am used to traveling to stations, writing down the prices for things and building up a trade route. When I played EvE I did the same thing and did a lot of analysis on great trade routes. Even using C# and MSSQL to build up great spots to sell items to people going into Low Sec.

Now I do not want this game to be EvE so lets get that straight. And I am not so sure that I dissagree with Slopeys. Anyone cold argue... if you want to roleplay then don't use Slopeys.

But I wonder what you all think about having this information handed to you so easily and really ending any sense of building up a secret trade route.

Thanks.

I would assume that in the future, there would be an easily accessible database of who is selling A for X amount and who is buying A for X amount. I dunno though, I see and understand your points. I figure since I'm stuck in a Sidewinder for awhile, I'll use it to maximize my profits.

 

[Sagittaryus]

I use the trading tools because they well...just make sense. To me, it's immersion breaking that they don't exist.

I mean, you're centuries in the future flying through space at FTL, it'd be pretty damned odd if you didn't have something that was basically equivalent to the internet that would let you see what was being sold where at what price.

The very fact that you can see a galactic average price in the commodity trading screen necessarily means that, in the ED universe, every single station is able to see the price of every single commodity in every single other station in order to work out the average, so it stands to reason that everyone else would be able too.

To deny people this would be a very bizzare contrivance that would in itself be immersion-breaking. It would almost be akin to saying in the ED universe the technology that is money has not been implemented and everyone must barter, and in order to get a nice C5 gimballed pulse laser I need to turn up at Aulin with at least 332 tons of fish in trade.

 

[Prestidigitator]

Thoughts on this:

1) Ships may be able to travel FTL, however if 'non-physical' (i.e. EM-based) communications technology hasn't been able to achieve something similar then it makes complete sense that stations in systems that are separated by many light years can't directly communicate.*

2) In a fluid market Slopeys is massively useful. But as it relies on scraping from players' clients to update prices I personally have wondered though whether it'll remain quite as powerful when the players are potentially spread throughout the billions of systems and the 'footfall' on stations might be a lot less frequent. At that point I suspect that maintaining 'local' (even pen and paper) prices will become much more viable.**

* Yes, there could be a vast army of hyperspace-capable drones constantly shuttling between systems with price information (however as we can already see, the smaller the ship the less the range... so just how 'big' the communications drones would have to be might be interesting...). Also the fuel costs versus the billions of systems/journeys might not be viable...
Star Trek addressed this with the concept of 'subspace' - but even that had both range and latency issues (for example Voyager could not directly communicate from the Delta Q. and there were many references to messages taking long times to get to Starfleet HQ and back etc)

** One might ask though, how the 'Galnet' news and financial information is gathered... - perhaps that only requires more 'periodical' exchange of communications...***

*** (perhaps that could be a mission for CMDR's in the future(!)... check the Bulletin Board and you may see that there's a mission to transport a Galnet communications 'parcel'...

 

[Sgt Doom]

To be honest, unless a miracle happens and trading becomes fun, i'll use whatever tools are available to ensure I need to do as little of it as possible. X3 and EVE didn't succeed in making me find trading fun, and there's doubtlessly many more games that had a crack at it.

 

[Johnny Cyclops]

I tried the Slopey tool the other day, and another web based one that seemed slighty more user-friendly and intuitive. Yes, I could find an extra few credits per ton on some routes, but that was about it.

AFAIK these tools are getting a direct data feed from FD. If FD didn't want external tools to exist they would not provide the data. That said, the Galaxy Map (pretty as it is) needs a functional overhaul, and I'd hope some better advance market data.

Someone posted above there's no need to check the map if using Slopey's tool. Unless I missed something there's a need to check distances, number of HS jumps, and maximum cargo for the distance (in my Hauler, anything above 6.5Ly seems it won't be done with a max 16 ton cargo).

I got wiped out (from a Cobra) about a week ago, and have been rebuilding slowly. I've been diligently noting each system/market into a spreadsheet and can start to see patterns emerging. I would not have got this level of insight just plugging into an external tool. I can now see which system type trades better, and can link system-to-system routes..."If I go to system type A first, then on to B, then C, then D, and back to A". It makes it a lot more enjoyable for me. I don't decry those finding a few extra credits per ton per run using a tool such as Slopey's, but the benefit is at best marginal.

I also fail to see how external tools will scale to 400 billion systems when the game properly starts.

I'm also not so sure how a tool like Slopeys advances the testing (I supposed such a tool might have depleted the iBootis fish stocks recently, so a test in itself of the market replenishment rules).

 

[Slopey]

So, no-one (who uses Slopey's tool) thinks to use the Galactic Map's view tab?

Interesting.

They do, but it's not quite as accurate as most people might like, and there are several bug reports as to where it's just plain wrong.

And everyone else who thinks I am the destroyer of the economy (I need T-shirts with that printed up)!

By FD's own numbers there are 30,000 people playing the Beta. There's never more than around 500 (and largely the same judging from IPs) people using the BPC, from my stats, so that's an awful lot of people who don't use it (like x60 more). So the deficiencies in the economy are down to the economy itself, rather than the BPC (as proved several times previously when it's been offline, but people have still said it's the route of all evil over that period, the longest being around 5 days).

 

[DaveB]

...AFAIK these tools are getting a direct data feed from FD. ...

Nope. Slopeys tool for example leverages the back end of the "marketdump" utility by andreas. That utility uses a debugger to hook the display of the commodities screen, every time anyone using marketdump opens the commodities screen, the online back end is fed an update on prices and supply at that station. Slopeys tool runs marketdump and works in one of two ways. In local mode, it populates a local database that holds only data that you collected yourself, in online mode it queries an online database that is updated from EVERYONES marketdump data. That "last update time" in Slopeys tool is the last time any trader running marketdump passed through that station and looked at local prices.