Any well working (reliable) trade route finder?

[Everhard Dawnwood]

Im all new to the game here, I tried eddb for finding trade routes, but only half of the routes actually work for making a profit. :-/

It seems a lot of the prices there are heavily outdated, as right now, I have a route suggestion from it from CD-61 6651 > Oswald Hub to LTT 9387 > Hire Gateway where it tells me to transport 96t of Thermal Cooling Units for a profit of 240,384 Cr

In reality however, the profit is a negative 14,400, meaning im not even making any profit, im actually losing credits on that trade.

Ofc I gave eddb a fair chance, trying several different routes and while a few worked descently, meaning I at least had a profit (rarely anywhere near what it promised), most of the time I ended up with cargo I couldnt sell anywhere without taking massive losses (no I didnt try the whole galaxy, I spend only a few hours going to different systems and stations before I gave up). :-/

[Yaldabaoth]

Trade data is only as good as the amount of people flying around using third party tools. That's why it tells you on those sites how old the supply/demand stats are. You also need to know that the price of a commodity goes down if you bring more than 25% of the demand to a station. You are crashing the market. So if they only wanted 40 units of Thermal Cooling Units and you bring 96t, there will be no profit.
If you are dead set on being a trader, try Boom Time delivery missions instead. Find a system tat is in Boom state and has a faction that offers trade missions. A) You don't have to buy and sell b) the profit is guaranteed c) it's never far away.

[Everhard Dawnwood]

Thanks very much for the info, I did expect that market dynamically adapts, but didnt know how much change to expect within a given period of time and/or in relation to supply/demand ratio.

I did look in to the boom missions and did a few, but I was always atttacked and either ended up dumping cargo or get blown to pieces before I could even dump it. lol

I guess the way to go must be upping my defenses on the ship and do missions then. :-D

[Yaldabaoth]

Originally posted by SizZLeR:

I guess the way to go must be upping my defenses on the ship and do missions then. :-D

No, just evade the interdiction. It's not difficult vs npc. If you are flying with mouse/keyboard, switch yaw and pitch controls, then learn to roll with q and e because pulling the nose up is fastest on any ship. I can evade interdiction on a type-9 without fail with a bit of practice.

[Everhard Dawnwood]

Agree, evading NPC isnt too hard....once I got the hang of it :-D

[Agony_Aunt]

The most reliable is learning how the BGS works and then seeking out trade routes that haven't been uploaded to EDDB yet. Anything that gets published is quickly swamped.

There are systems where Tritium is cheap and you can fill up your FC for 4000/t as opposed to the usual 40,000/t. But once someone uploads the data and its public, say goodbye to your find.

This is why if you are seeking out your own routes, don't upload to EDDB.

[Everhard Dawnwood]

Sounds reasonable, I have been using the starport UI "compare" feature to seek out best routes, its just a rather tedius process in the long run as it takes a lot of clicking around, but at least its very reliable. :-)

[Harag]

I've just done a look on EDDB at that station you mentioned, it does say it's 8 days old. so it might not be reliable. Also, did you go to the correct station at the end point, one station might have a different price from another station. I've made that mistake before by simply not thinking and just went to the nearest station.

[Myrmidon]

The more people linked into the tools the better they function. Unfortunately most people fall into the ignorant (don't know about them), lazy (want something for nothing), selfish (only care about themselves) or paranoid (omgz buhhh mah private data) camps.

[Planewalker]

Real simple trick: find stations that regularly offers missions for specific cargo.

Buy the cargo nearby and then take & turn in the missions.

-an extention to this is learning what states triggers which needs.


No need for eddb. At all.

[Everhard Dawnwood]

Originally posted by Harag:

I've just done a look on EDDB at that station you mentioned, it does say it's 8 days old. so it might not be reliable. Also, did you go to the correct station at the end point, one station might have a different price from another station. I've made that mistake before by simply not thinking and just went to the nearest station.

Happened to me too, that I went to the wrong station, but not this time though. X-)

I did notice the 8 days there, however I had no idea what effect 1 day has, like how rapidly the market fluxuate in this game, for what I knew, it could mean barely any difference or a world of difference :-)

[Everhard Dawnwood]

Originally posted by Myrmidon:

The more people linked into the tools the better they function. Unfortunately most people fall into the ignorant (don't know about them), lazy (want something for nothing), selfish (only care about themselves) or paranoid (omgz buhhh mah private data) camps.

Yes it would be nice if eddb website had a "Support us by sharing game data" with a link to the app for it, I only became aware thats how they gathered data as I acciudentally stumpled upon it in some other forum. :-/

[Harag]

Originally posted by SizZLeR:

Originally posted by Myrmidon:

The more people linked into the tools the better they function. Unfortunately most people fall into the ignorant (don't know about them), lazy (want something for nothing), selfish (only care about themselves) or paranoid (omgz buhhh mah private data) camps.

Yes it would be nice if eddb website had a "Support us by sharing game data" with a link to the app for it, I only became aware thats how they gathered data as I acciudentally stumpled upon it in some other forum. :-/

Excellent 3rd party tool:

https://github.com/EDDiscovery/EDDiscovery/wiki

Both for updating the markets and for personal use as well for log info and seeing where you have been on the 3D map.

[Myrmidon]

Originally posted by SizZLeR:

Originally posted by Myrmidon:

The more people linked into the tools the better they function. Unfortunately most people fall into the ignorant (don't know about them), lazy (want something for nothing), selfish (only care about themselves) or paranoid (omgz buhhh mah private data) camps.

Yes it would be nice if eddb website had a "Support us by sharing game data" with a link to the app for it, I only became aware thats how they gathered data as I acciudentally stumpled upon it in some other forum. :-/

The ignorance camp is the only one I don't mind so much, if a person doesn't know about the site or hasn't heard about it then.... Fair enough. But so many people know all about these sites and apps, some even use them but don't contribute to them despite it taking seconds. The amount of deep longevity explorers that don't use even EDSM... Or rather do use it but don't share their data with it.... Is astounding.

[Everhard Dawnwood]

Thank you all very much for the great info, its nice to join a game that has such a fast responding and helpful community :-)

[ShelLuser]

Why not use the galaxy map though? I find that one to be quite reliable, the only "issue" is that you'll need to have been in some systems (either scanned the NAV beacon or actually landed) but that's very little effort.

Heck, you could also do this smart and only check a few central systems which will then also provide route info for other systems around them. I often use this method before I really get into the game and then simply look for good trading routes in the galaxy map overview.

May take a little more time than checking websites, but you'll always have the most recent data and IMO this is also more fun (I try to avoid using 3rd party websites myself).