Trade Chains (Suggestion)

[AnD4D]

A mate and I were chatting about this game the other day, and I thought I'd share it.

Say for example we found a really amazing trade route, but it was really long, say 100ly. Would it be at all possible for one person to start off at Station A, and the other at Station Z. Player 1 fills his cargo hold with the product (Let's say Gold), and then flies toward Z. Meanwhile, Player 2 fills his ship up with another product (Platinum), flies his empty ship toward A, and the two meet in the middle at the 50ly mark. The two then swap cargo, and go back the way they came.

Now, imagine a group of 5 friends got together and did this, forming a chain across the galaxy, passing cargo back and forth. I imagine this would work pretty well, and allow some pretty fast trading... but there's one issue that can't be resolved.

Player 1 returns to his station with a cargo hold full of Platinum, while Player 2 returns with Gold. Player 1 sells it for 18k a pop, but Player 2 only gets 10k for his gold. (These items are just examples).

Going back to the idea of 5 people doing this, only the people on either end of the trip is making any money. How would they pay the other 3 people taking part? Give them a piece of cargo? What if they have a small cargo hold, and doing so would break the chain? Would they fly off to a station to sell it? Also breaking the chain?

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to be able to transfer credits to friends?

 

[Avnas]

it'd be easier to fly in a fleet than scoop all that cargo 5 times. if you were all in type 9s that's (assume there are 5 of you, and that you carry 200T of cargo each.) that's 1000T together. if you make 1k/Ton then that's enough to make M/CR between you per run

theres no point in running less amounts of cargo across such distances - also, even if you were the best scooper, 1000T of cargo is going to take at least 1000s. wasted time. easier not to drop the cargo.


just to spell it out for you

----------
--'--'--'--'--

which line is longer?


exactly. you don't want to be dropping 1000t of cargo anywhere.

dont bother transferring credits unless you can do it with palladium. even then there's no point.

 

[Araviel]

is this a troll post or something? if not then i think you need to check your math again

if A and Z is 100ly apart but you stop at the middle to Z and fly back to A you are still going to be traveling 100ly

 

[FX2K]

is this a troll post or something? if not then i think you need to check your math again

if A and Z is 100ly apart but you stop at the middle to Z and fly back to A you are still going to be traveling 100ly

Just what I was thinking whilst reading it. Much better to have 'protection' and fly in a group.

 

[AnD4D]

is this a troll post or something? if not then i think you need to check your math again

if A and Z is 100ly apart but you stop at the middle to Z and fly back to A you are still going to be traveling 100ly

That's why I introduced the possibility of having 5 flyers doing this. Then they're only flying 40ly each.

Transferring cargo looks like it's far too slow...

Perhaps you should check your math, however Flying from A to Z may be 100 light years, but this is under the assumption that this is a trade route, meaning you need to fly back again, meaning that travelling from A to Z and then to A again is a 200ly trip

The more people you throw into the route, the less you need to travel. The point is, after travelling 100ly, you'll be delivering 2 sets of goods, Gold and Platinum. Just flying A to Z will only grant you one or the other. For example (a crazy one), if you had 200 people making this route, each person would only need to travel 1ly in total, meaning that you'd be selling platinum and gold every few minutes.

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it'd be easier to fly in a fleet than scoop all that cargo 5 times. if you were all in type 9s that's (assume there are 5 of you, and that you carry 200T of cargo each.) that's 1000T together. if you make 1k/Ton then that's enough to make M/CR between you per run

I've been flying a small hauler with 8 cargo space, so that would only take a minute to transfer cargo. I hadn't really considered the slow rate of transferring cargo between the larger vessels, however. Perhaps they should be able to dock one another... but that's a whole new mechanic, and very unlikely to happen. We still need tractor beams for the larger vessels, I feel.