Why isn't there an ingame galaxy wide market trader/track?

[Leo Sagan]

I gather you are upset because it doesn't show exact details of which, and while I agree it could be improved, we all know what happens, people min/max, they won't take certain routes unless they are most profitable, and some are upset because they can't see with current system if route a or b is most profitable.
The whole economy system could use a bit of a retool, though not that much honestly, just the way players are given information, because the information itself is there..

Yup, I see what you mean.

Personally, I'd like to see side quests allowing you to improve your margins inside each major power, each PP faction and each minor faction.

Like ... You take part to a CG / solo mission chain and you gain a (temporary) % bonus over such or such product in a station / power / superpower zone of influence. This is just one suggestion out of many to give traders something to do to improve their game play besides the meaningless "Elite" trading rank FD trivialized to death.

But this is one idea (not even mine) out of MANY I read over the time. To be honest, I'd be willing to try any changes they could muster at this point. Time will tell what they have up their sleeve : I don't expect it to be perfect, but I surely hope it will bring some complexity to what we currently have.

 

[Leo Sagan]

Look what happened when the third party dev's went on strike, and then tell me that Frontier isn't relying on them to make the game playable.

Good point.

I don't see that as a bad thing though : I think that more mods / 3rd party tools would be good for the game : give us a sandbox, but let us bring our own toys since you don't supply any. The journal is a step in the right direction for me.

I know not everyone agree on this though.

 

[CMDR Ellegon]

This is why I play with steam instead of the standalone. I have the overlay browser's homepage set to http://eddb.io. It's not quite the same screen, but it's better than alt-tabbing out of the game.

Alt-tabbing is not needed if you run ED in a borderless window. Very useful if you have a second screen, you simply need to move your mouse over to the second screen with your web browser - I have eddb.io open in that fashion all the time while trading.

As to the OP: this discussion is as hopeless as a fight against windmills. So I simply use eddb and forget about the shortcomings of the in-game information

 

[Minonian]

Actually the original elite had a trading computer but don't ask why it's not present in the 4th incarnation of the game.

Edit; Hehh! Actually there was an exploit with the trading computer at the c64 version. I used it to trade with Alien artifacts without the need to leave the station.