1921

Not that they have mentioned. I guess they want the sweet 30 percent themselves.

1922

Now they nerfed rare goods I cannot figure out the trading in this game.

It does seem that “exports to/imports from” refers to some kind of bulk shipment by NPCs which means that prices are almost the same in both systems. Maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong.

Bounty hunting works well though (Although I don’t have a flightstick yet and I really need gimballed weapons to be any good at all!)

1923

For the most part, trading is pretty simple, unless you’re trying to min/max. Buy where there’s a lot of goods in stock and the price is well below the average, sell where there’s none in stock and the price is above the average. Typically this is driven by the system type - agricultural worlds will have low prices for food items and high prices for tools.

1924

It pays to fly a couple more lightyears when trading. Before I found the rare goods motherlode (which has been nerfed right?) I traded metals one way and manufactured goods the other way across a three jump route. Made about 20k per trip in my dinky little hauler.

1925

Is there any real dynamism being demonstrated in the trading economics - fluctuating prices based on supply/demand? Or is this just going to be one of the continual development things with regular and continual changes are effected to change up trade runs, etc?

I mean, I know that they will probably run story elements that will have local effects, but on the global scale, is the system dynamic and automated, or are we going to see shit manually nerfed constantly just because someone uncovers a lucrative run and it becomes common knowledge all over the net in a matter of days.

1926

That’s good advice. But you will often go to a Refinery system that exports metals and discover that they have Low Supply of every export item and are selling them above galactic average, and the problem is that you have no way of knowing this before you travel there yourself. Depending on where you are in the galaxy you might try a number of different systems and find the same problem with all of them. It’s not a rare occurrence to find items marked as “Imported” selling for better prices than they do in the system they supposedly imported it from.

Supply and demand jumps around a lot. I’ve seen a station go from having more than 11,000 gold to 0 within ten minutes before.

It’s been like this ever since they turned on the AI trading simulation. You can definitely still find good routes, but it can take a lot of searching and manually writing things down. The game really needs to make more information available to players to help with trading.

1927

Cool, so there is an economic simulation driving things (which I would hope), though it sounds like it may be a little more active than the supporting AI ship traffic you see around, so I wonder how connected those systems are, if at all.

1928

It’s been like this ever since they turned on the AI trading simulation. You can definitely still find good routes, but it can take a lot of searching and manually writing things down. The game really needs to make more information available to players to help with trading.

There are plenty of online tools which do this for you if you want. Personally I like the uncertainty - I feel like the space equivalent of an ancient Phoenician trader.

1929

Stop it with the pre-gamma advice guys.

The tools all now have to rely on manual data input and prices fluctuate much more so the tools are a lot less reliable.

Simple rules like “agricultural <-> high tech” and similar no longer seem to apply either - for example taking refining equipment from a system that makes it to a system that does refining can often result in a loss.

Nuclear Winter pretty much nails the current situation. Maybe I have to go further - the AI trading routine might be eating up all the profit in 1 jump routes.

1930

Fuck, missions are broken. I finally found the black boxes lave station asked for but now it throws a ‘failed to communicate with the server’ and poops on my head. I really hate this online cloud fad. Remember when you guys managed to put the entire fucking galaxy on one tiny 1.44" disc?

1931

Yeah, but but thanks to the power of the cloud you get graphics now too!

1932

They can still keep uncertainty in there (though there’s such a thing as too much uncertainty) while providing tools that help the players.

I shouldn’t have to write things down on paper or in an external tool to remember the prices in the ten stations I’ve checked in the past couple of hours. The least I would expect is for the ship computer to record the prices at the current station when I enter the commodity market and then allow me to compare with those prices when I’m at another station. Heck, just let me keep the price information for 24 hours if necessary and it would still be a big improvement to usability.

Right now if I’m trading then I’m spending more time manually recording prices than I am flying my ship, and that’s a problem.

The import/export data (that you have to pay credits for!) should update dynamically to reflect how the market really is. When a station flips from High Supply of gold to High Demand then the import/export information should update to reflect that, why else am I paying money to access that data for a limited period of time? Currently I’m paying money for data that has a good chance of being wrong and wasting my time.

1933

Hey jpinard, I got my chat working in ship, but by that time I couldn’t send you a message anymore; was getting some error about not being able to connect to you, even though you were listed as online. Not sure what that’s about! Anyway, I’ve gone back into open game, if you can get messaging working let me know and perhaps we can join a private group. I’m now “krayzkrok” in the game. That goes for anyone else too (I tried to PM you this jeff, but your pm allocation is full)

[edit] Ah, so that’s what the problem is, failure to communicate with the server for bulletin board missions as well. Sigh. There’s a great contract here for 2,066 CR which is TWICE as much as I own, and it’s easy, but I can’t accept it. Such a cruel universe.

1934

I shouldn’t have to write things down on paper or in an external tool to remember the prices in the ten stations I’ve checked in the past couple of hours. The least I would expect is for the ship computer to record the prices at the current station when I enter the commodity market and then allow me to compare with those prices when I’m at another station. Heck, just let me keep the price information for 24 hours if necessary and it would still be a big improvement to usability.

I do agree with this - it should cache the last known price. I seem to recall the original Elite did this.

1935

Yeah, they already have a system to store or buy trade data, it’s just not that fine of detail. I think it would be a good change.

1936

I’ve only had a tiny amount of time to fly this week so far, so last night I set a course for my favorite station in the game, my home away from home, Chango Dock. The route planner worked fabulously and with my hauler I only had to really stop once for fuel in maybe 10-12 jumps. Tonight I begin trading/missioning in earnest, and I can’t waaaaaaaait.

1937

Finally completed a mission to find rebel transmissions… lots of fun cruising around the system looking for unknown signals etc. Rush back to the station to turn in the mission… “failed to communicate with server.” Granted it was 5 minutes before a scheduled server reboot, but still, pretty annoying.

1938

Gamma 2.03. Bolded the parts that were of particular interest to me.

1939

And now, post-patch, I have the mission, I have the rebel transmissions in my cargo… but no option to turn it in on the bulletin board.

This shit is really getting annoying. Every time I start to get some positive feedback, the game kicks me in the nuts.

1940

Has Elite Dangerous actually been released or is it still early access? I have not been following to closely waiting for the full release.

But maybe worth getting for the Christmas break?