Trading and the background simulation Issues [ Backwards Trading ]

Juffa

Juffa
Has anyone else noticed how the demand for certain products goes higher when you buy another product? Like, if you buy performance enhancers, the demand for coffee, tea, animal meat and computer components goes higher.

Also, I found an agricultural system which produces almost nothing but fish, fruits and mineral oil... but had a demand of almost 7 Million units of biowaste.... And they were paying over twice the galactic average for it.

Does this ring any bells?

...

Maybe we (or npc's?) are supposed to actually also freight in the low-paying articles that are used to make the high-profit products. If they have not enough raw materials, of course their "products" are going to cost more, and your profit drops.

Maybe it's profitable to import food to farming world, if they cannot produce food themselves because of the lack of fertilizers (biowaste)?
I would test if it works like this, but I'm not going to haul 7M tons of biowaste just to see if it they actually start to grow their own food.. :)
 

{SAS}Stalker

{SAS}Stalker
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=79175&page=2&p=1283072&viewfull=1#post1283072

Edward Lewis said:
Hi Stalker

Thanks a lot for this - the detailed examples really help. I thought I'd just let you know the dev team really appreciate it and are looking into sorting it right now. They intend to be watching this thread all afternoon for this sort of thing - they've got eyes and ears everywhere that lot.
Click to expand...


Ed has acknowledged it, he thanks me but its FX2K that has done a lot of work on this so I'm bouncing it up to him :)
 

Epicurean Dream

Epicurean Dream
FX2K said:
Just two more examples but with much less detail from different systems which I posted in another thread, however they are relevant to this situation:


This shows another commodity with over 1 million high supply yet being imported.
The second half of the image is from Gamma showing the identical problem which still exists today.
HBbwJBy.png


This shows a commodity with medium demand and no supply, being exported:
igeeu9e.png
Click to expand...

With respect to the 'imported from' and 'exported to' listings on the right. These are retrospective indicators. It means that said commodity has been traded to that system, or that that system has traded said commodity to this system, in the recent past. It does not represent present/real time connections. what we do not know is the time window that defines how this information is populated (active import or export).

The same goes for the trade line indicators on the galaxy map. They are retrospective and they indicate trade volume, not profit per trip. If there is a big bright line, that market will almost certainly be saturated already. The trade lines are accessible for 24 hours at the time of purchase, but we still do not know the time window that is defining the weight of the trade volume indicated.

It is very likely that we are seeing the very trade relationship indications (import/export/volume traded) that has in the recent past created the current market states we are experiencing within the stations we are observing this information.

When looking at it this way, things begin to make more sense, at least to me.
 

DocStone

DocStone
Excellent, I think that something as simple as upping the Commodity Decay rate for certain items would get the economy rolling again. Once food is in demand again, then Agricultural machinery will go up in demand, and then the precious metals will be in demand for components, which will increase the demand for ores, which will increase the demand for Extraction machinery. Economies will prosper, populations will increase, luxuries will be in demand, and so on and so forth.

And most importantly my Type 7 will begin to pay for its blinking self :D
 

Jupitus

J
DocStone said:
Excellent, I think that something as simple as upping the Commodity Decay rate for certain items would get the economy rolling again. Once food is in demand again, then Agricultural machinery will go up in demand, and then the precious metals will be in demand for components, which will increase the demand for ores, which will increase the demand for Extraction machinery. Economies will prosper, populations will increase, luxuries will be in demand, and so on and so forth.

And most importantly my Type 7 will begin to pay for its blinking self :D
Click to expand...

Are you George Osborne? I thought you'd have work to be doing!! ;)
 

medwyn

M
I've seen it too - how I work around this is the same really: ignoring the supply/demand indicator and the "official" trade routes. But I check the prices and follow that trail to make it profitable :)
Although I needed to dead reckon when I picked up a mission towards x planet and I tried to fill up the cargo hold accordingly using the supply/demand indicator. These are my losses :)
 

Talarin

T
So what do we know?
.
We know that NPCs were trading too aggressively, effectively fulfilling demand for goods across inhabited space (and resulting in high demand disappearing and consuming stations carrying excess stock). This resulted in the erosion of margins and weird situations like those described by FX2K.
.
We know that earlier this week, FD tweaked variables which should have reduced the NPC activity (and presumably would have led to a gradual improvement in market conditions when compared with expectations.
.
The market has failed to react to those changes.
.
Is it possible that NPCs are still trading export commodities to import locations, despite there being no demand and/or profit due to the prior over supply? (So effectively, the market has stabilised in it's current state.)
.
(This would make sense if the NPC trading is as simple as moving stock from exporters to importers to satisfy some demand, irrespective of price.)
 

{SAS}Stalker

{SAS}Stalker
DocStone said:
Hah! you still trying to pass off Dog Eggs covered in old Easter Egg foil as gold? Don't trust him FX2K, he has previous :D
Click to expand...

This is outrageous, you will be hearing from my solicitor!

Talarin said:
So what do we know?
.
We know that NPCs were trading too aggressively, effectively fulfilling demand for goods across inhabited space (and resulting in high demand disappearing and consuming stations carrying excess stock). This resulted in the erosion of margins and weird situations like those described by FX2K.
.
We know that earlier this week, FD tweaked variables which should have reduced the NPC activity (and presumably would have led to a gradual improvement in market conditions when compared with expectations.
.
The market has failed to react to those changes.
.
Is it possible that NPCs are still trading export commodities to import locations, despite there being no demand and/or profit due to the prior over supply? (So effectively, the market has stabilised in it's current state.)
.
(This would make sense if the NPC trading is as simple as moving stock from exporters to importers to satisfy some demand, irrespective of price.)
Click to expand...


I sort of suspect all of the above + other stuff we don't know about. Part of me thinks the AI does nothing but move stuff from an "export" station to an "import" station irrespective of demand, price or supply volume at destination and it never stops, ever!
 
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FX2K

FX2K
{SAS}Stalker said:
I sort of suspect all of the above + other stuff we don't know about. Part of me thinks the AI does nothing but move stuff from an "export" station to an "import" station irrespective of demand, price or supply volume at destination and it never stops, ever!
Click to expand...

Same, and for what its worth I did see an improvement overall, so whatever they did had a positive effect, but perhaps there is more to it than just the frequency.
Perhaps the logic which determines what is traded and when or as posted previously (by DocStone), something relating to the consumption... of course nobody but the dev's really know the details of what is going on so we can only make assumptions based on what we see as the end result.
 

{SAS}Stalker

{SAS}Stalker
indeed, whatever it was they did, did something in the right direction and I genuinely thought/hoped that by the end of this week we would have gone through the bottoming out period (that's still to come btw) and would be seeing things sort themselves out by now. Unfortunately it got so far and sort of stopped.


I said this in the other thread, I would like it to work like this (in a way);

1. A forth demand setting which is NONE where they simply refuse to buy it off you.
2. The AI trader / simulation should only kick in within a system when demand reaches high and shut down when demand drops to medium and it should be limited to the same constraints as we are (volume and time to destination).
3. Natural wastage of "demand" stock of around 10% per day (or similarly approved)
 
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Talarin

T
FX2K said:
Same, and for what its worth I did see an improvement overall, so whatever they did had a positive effect, but perhaps there is more to it than just the frequency.
Click to expand...

If it's as basic as I think it is (simple instant stock-transfer - which isn't a criticism, by the way) then I'd expect the market to revert to the expected level over a long period. The problem is that that period might be measured in months, which wouldn't be very acceptable.
 

Tunis

T
the problem is that npc is just a timer in each station that refill an amount for x commodities(or decresed it).

they lower it so that it changed more slowly but the damaged where already done so now all the thing are in bad proportion and until many player decide to loose money in bringing them back on the good path it will not move...

if only they just have reset all commodities market in the same time that they released their fix...
 

Duckfather

Duckfather
I noticed that the station I normally traded in at the time of the trading server side fix had ~400,000 surplus superconductors. After the fix, it had ~200,000 surplus, with a consummate change in pricing.
.
The fix they put in definitely made a difference, just not enough it seems :(
 

Jupitus

J
As they've asked for feedback, I'll echo what others have said in that I too noticed an improvement after the 'tweak' was applied, but still get these apparently inverted demand /supply situations.
 

DreamlnCode

DreamlnCode
NPC's are still trading too much IMO.

Make this a player economy not a NPC one. NPC's have the advantage because every systems prices are already available to them from anywhere.

while your discovering a new route, the NPC is getting a headstart on filling its bay, ruining it for everyone else.
 

Talarin

T
CTBM said:
NPC's are still trading too much IMO.

Make this a player economy not a NPC one. NPC's have the advantage because every systems prices are already available to them from anywhere.

while your discovering a new route, the NPC is getting a headstart on filling its bay, ruining it for everyone else.
Click to expand...

Basic commodities wouldn't get traded and you'd end up with economic crashes all over the place. (Plus I think price has no factor in what the Npc trades.)
 
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