O7 CMDRs A spreadsheeter here with some helpful information regarding Tritium orders and price setting. Scroll to the end for the TL;DR version.
I conduct a mining/trading operation on my carrier, using spreadsheets to track the highest prices of minerals, and factor that to determine arbitrage so that my carrier can provide a regular set of good prices. In addition to this recently, I began tracking player Tritium orders, in comparison to station Tritium prices to determine what the averages and peaks of tritium purchases, and sales look like.
Some of you may think this is simple enough, but newer carrier owners simply might not be sure where a good price setting point is, when they’re trying to get their carriers fueled, and tritium haulers might not be sure of what a good deal is, versus a cheapskate. This is for you to help you get a good idea of where things sit, and perhaps how to determine a reasonable price for your tritium.
Putting the math aside for a second, a good starting point when putting a purchase order for tritium up, or anything for that matter, is to consider the job itself. For all intents and purposes, tritium trading isn’t terribly different from your standard inara trade routes, except that there are other players involved. Your average trade route, usually nets about 30,000 in profit per ton. On rare occasion depending on bgs or community goals you will see peaks of around 60,000. When pricing your purchase order, it is important to consider a couple things.
Based on 100 days of data collection, the average lowest price of tritium is 44,928 Credits.
So as a rule of thumb, an easy, quick way to decide on a price is to add the 60,000 of a good trade route to that. 104,928. This will generally put you in the upper part of the inara tritium order page. (Please note, all prices are based on carriers presenting with open docking, at demands of 1000, or higher.).
Now especially for newer carriers, this might be a bit steep… You obviously have the option to haul your own tritium, but understand that anything below adding 30,000 to your buy price, is less than any regular npc trade loop a CMDR can do… So there isn’t much incentive there. So if you’re going to go lower than 60,000 consider that. Would you want to do a loop with lower than 30,000 profit?
We can then look at the data a little further and consider our competition with other players.
Based on the data, players tend to price their tritium at above 115,973 credits, about 50 percent of the time, and likewise below. There are occasional peaks up in the 250k range, but this is generally rare.
The point is, if you set your price in that range, with a decent demand, you can probably expect that to be filled within a day or two, and your hauler, is making a worthy profit. I’m not a regular hauler but I occasionally will fill an order and keep an amount of tritium available to occasionally take advantage of a good deal. This leads me to set my price at a value that occurs generally 20% of the time, so usually once or twice a week which is 155,378. If you’re in a hurry, and need tritium in an express, price is not a problem kinda way, this is where I would recommend you aim.
For information on how these conclusions were reached, peer review of my data, or general questions or suggestions, feel free to reply or message me.
So TL;DR cheat sheet version:
Recommendation based on in game NPC shipping rates:
44,928 Recommended (from station) purchase price
74,928 the absolute barest of the minimum this guy is doing you a favor price.
104,928 Good Trade deal for your average loop trader.
Recommendation based on player competitive pricing:
115,973 Credits puts you at average competition with other players, insuring a good rate of fill.
155,378 Express fill rate. Quick trader response, and anything higher than this, is a killing for the hauler.
I conduct a mining/trading operation on my carrier, using spreadsheets to track the highest prices of minerals, and factor that to determine arbitrage so that my carrier can provide a regular set of good prices. In addition to this recently, I began tracking player Tritium orders, in comparison to station Tritium prices to determine what the averages and peaks of tritium purchases, and sales look like.
Some of you may think this is simple enough, but newer carrier owners simply might not be sure where a good price setting point is, when they’re trying to get their carriers fueled, and tritium haulers might not be sure of what a good deal is, versus a cheapskate. This is for you to help you get a good idea of where things sit, and perhaps how to determine a reasonable price for your tritium.
Putting the math aside for a second, a good starting point when putting a purchase order for tritium up, or anything for that matter, is to consider the job itself. For all intents and purposes, tritium trading isn’t terribly different from your standard inara trade routes, except that there are other players involved. Your average trade route, usually nets about 30,000 in profit per ton. On rare occasion depending on bgs or community goals you will see peaks of around 60,000. When pricing your purchase order, it is important to consider a couple things.
- Is my price high enough to motivate a player away from a trade loop.
- Is my price high enough to motivate a trader to haul for me sooner than another player.
Based on 100 days of data collection, the average lowest price of tritium is 44,928 Credits.
So as a rule of thumb, an easy, quick way to decide on a price is to add the 60,000 of a good trade route to that. 104,928. This will generally put you in the upper part of the inara tritium order page. (Please note, all prices are based on carriers presenting with open docking, at demands of 1000, or higher.).
Now especially for newer carriers, this might be a bit steep… You obviously have the option to haul your own tritium, but understand that anything below adding 30,000 to your buy price, is less than any regular npc trade loop a CMDR can do… So there isn’t much incentive there. So if you’re going to go lower than 60,000 consider that. Would you want to do a loop with lower than 30,000 profit?
We can then look at the data a little further and consider our competition with other players.
Based on the data, players tend to price their tritium at above 115,973 credits, about 50 percent of the time, and likewise below. There are occasional peaks up in the 250k range, but this is generally rare.
The point is, if you set your price in that range, with a decent demand, you can probably expect that to be filled within a day or two, and your hauler, is making a worthy profit. I’m not a regular hauler but I occasionally will fill an order and keep an amount of tritium available to occasionally take advantage of a good deal. This leads me to set my price at a value that occurs generally 20% of the time, so usually once or twice a week which is 155,378. If you’re in a hurry, and need tritium in an express, price is not a problem kinda way, this is where I would recommend you aim.
For information on how these conclusions were reached, peer review of my data, or general questions or suggestions, feel free to reply or message me.
So TL;DR cheat sheet version:
Recommendation based on in game NPC shipping rates:
44,928 Recommended (from station) purchase price
74,928 the absolute barest of the minimum this guy is doing you a favor price.
104,928 Good Trade deal for your average loop trader.
Recommendation based on player competitive pricing:
115,973 Credits puts you at average competition with other players, insuring a good rate of fill.
155,378 Express fill rate. Quick trader response, and anything higher than this, is a killing for the hauler.