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It also varies in how it's displayed depending on the situation. It would help if you said what specific ship or station's transaction log you are talking about.
Huh? No one here asked for any "proof". Lol no idea what you're talking about here. Well, I thought Grego was talking about how the transaction log doesn't show all those details. But if you want some help it isn't proof that is needed, it is just details about which log you're looking at so we know what to help with. Are you looking at the one in the Player screen or in the Logistical Overview screen or in the Ship screen...
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1696152886049346194/60DE013C35CA6BAE72214923577BDA508ADF53C6/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false
You are correct, this is one of the serious deficiencies in transaction logs. It very difficult to work out at glance how much actual profit your trader is making. The lines that you see are:
1. Trade order - this is money credited to the trader's account from your main account to which is passed to the NPC station when it strikes a deal to buy wares from an NPC station. to enable it to pay for the wares in question. That's why it's green, the trader has the cash now.
2. Trade purchase - this is the same the money the trader has just been given from your main account which it now passes to the NPC station in completing the deal. That's why it's in red, money going out from trader to NPC station.
3. Trade sale - what it says on the tin, the total money passed to the trader by the NPC station customer when it completes a sale deal.
4. Profit from trade orders - this is where the wheels fall off the wagon. It's just how much money the trader has left in it's account that isn't already spoken for by another trade purchase which gets passed back to your main account at the point the AI gets round to updating the transaction log. It is not profit, it's lying to you. It's in red 'cos it's money going out from the trader's account.
To interpret your example log from the bottom up
1. Trade sale 385k - this is the total proceeds (not profit) from a sale the trader made from using previously purchased wares accounted for before the time period of this log (if you extend the time period you'd see it listed).
2. Profit from trade orders 385k - simply transferring the total proceeds of that last sale (not profit per se) back to your main account
3. Trade order 316k - trader has struck a deal to buy some wares, the money is passed to the trader from your main account
4. Trade purchase 270k - five minutes later the trader arrives at the NPC station to pick up the load but for some reason neither you nor I can possibly fathom it now only buys 270k worth of it, not the 316k it had originally struck the deal for.
5. Profit from trade orders 46k - the traders passes the difference between the 316k originally earmarked and the 270k actually paid (for....reasons) back to your main account because it no longer needs it.
6. etc.......
Does this make sense to you? No, it doesn't make sense to me either.
Does this enable to you to work out how much money your trader is actually earning? No it doesn't, it's totally lying through it's teeth.
All it's doing is passing all the money it gets to your main account and taking all the money it needs to buy stuff from your main account without any real means of working out how much profit it's actually making on all these deals.
The only way you can work it out is to slog though the individual purchase and sale entries an open the +'s to match the detail lines, get your calculator and notebook out and tot it up manually exactly like you've done on your screenshot with the Protien Paste deal.
Are you telling me you think this is total pants? I would reply I couldn't agree with you more. Because it is pants. It works with standalone miner transaction logs because they don't buy anything so every entry is genuine profit, but not with standalone traders.
This is why you should build a trade station and assign this trader to it. The trade station transaction logs are still also pants (for a number of different reasons) but they do at least hold their own budgets which means you can actually tell how much money they are making overall from the log and the graph (although not which specific trade wares are making the most money, it's next to impossible to work that out).
I did a lengthy post on Egosoft's forum about all this some time ago. They haven't acknowledged it or done anything about it thus far. So yeah, my advice is trade stations are the way to go for number of reasons but one of them is that you can actually tell how money they are making for you.
I do think it would be great to have 2 columns on this report. One being cash flow (what is there now) and the other being P&L (profit and loss) that only shows up on the actual 'trade sale' lines.
In truth "cash flow" is totally irrelevant to a standalone alone ship 'cos they don't have their own budgets, they don't have their own money, it all comes from and goes to the player's main account. It's useless information and serves simply to confuse and muddy the waters.
You second idea is pretty much exactly how it should be IMO. You list each trade, both buy and sell parts, as one line transaction, including prices paid and total amounts, and log the net profit for each trade as a point on the graph and the log list. The log list can then display the total net profit earned over the time period the graph/log is currently opened for.
A third idea is simply to give each standalone trader and miner it's own budget, but no doubt there would be a lot of blowback on that from many players as each trader would require a substantial grub steak up front to do anything at all and the profits would arrive in the player's much later.
I'll use a simplified example then look at one of yours.
https://i.imgur.com/WHXXDfB.png
Notice that there are 3 different "Trades". Trade Order, Trade Purchase, Trade Sale.
There is also a Profit line. Think of all of these lines from the SHIP'S perspective. This is profit for the ship, not for you.
Here is what I think is happening.
1) Trade Order happens when the ship first takes the order before any goods have changed hands. It is assigned the order, goods are reserved at the buying facility, space and money are reserved at the selling facility. What you're seeing in the Trade Order line is a transaction between the Ship and your Wallet. In the example linked above, The ship is given a positive +10,936 balance it has gained that money from your Wallet. No goods are on the ship, but the ship now has money and you don't. That money is reserved.
2) Trade Purchase is the actual goods being bought and put into the ship's hold. What looks to be happening is that the goods actually cost less than the original Trade Order assigned so in the example the ship spends -8,172 of its money to buy 240 protein paste. Since that was less than the original money reserved, the ship then removes the remaining -2,764 and puts it back in your Wallet. This is -2,764 profit for the ship.
3) Trade Sale is the removal of the product from the ship into the buying facility. For this the ship gains +14,162. Now the ship needs to put that money back into your Wallet so it is a -14,162 from the ship when it gives the money back to you.
In your example you need to expand one more line, the Trade Order below the expanded Trade Purchase.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1696152886049346194/60DE013C35CA6BAE72214923577BDA508ADF53C6/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false
1) Your Buffalo is gaining +239,247 from your corporate wallet in reserve to have on hand for the order.
2) Your Buffalo is spending -206,622 of those funds to buy protein paste. Since this is less than the original money reserved, it has a profit of -32,625 when it gives that money back to your corporate wallet.
3) Your Buffalo then sells those protein paste to another station for +366,092. It then takes a -366,092 profit when it dumps that money back into your corporate wallet.
The problem here in Egosoft's information design is the wording (profit) and the grouping (those profit lines actually are attached to the line below them).
Most of what you've said here is pretty much what I wrote up above, but I can't see how this part can be true. This is because as far as I know all trade deals are struck as contracts in X4 and are final, unless cancelled altogether, so the price is fixed the moment the deal is truck.
Therefore their is no known legitimate reason why the trader should be given more money than it needs for the trade from player account nor is there any legitimate reason why the trader should pay less than the original contract price when it gets to the station to pick up the load.
Thinking about it what might be happening is that that when the autotrader strikes a deal it draws money equal to the number of units * the average price for that ware. When it gets to the station and pays the actual price the difference is refunded. This would actually reflect what you see on the dialogues when you do manual trades.
Presumably if the buy price is actually >= average price then the trader will be given all the required up front, or maybe they just don't do trades at all that involve buy prices higher than average.
Which would mean that the "profit" figures shown on the log would be accurate if and only if the the trader always sold every load at exactly average price, which of course they don't.
This is of course complete nonsense as no account is taken of the actual sell price obtained from the end customer so the "profit" shown is completely inaccurate. If this is the case then what Ego have done is be lazy and used an existing data point off the normal manual trade screen and dumped it willy-nilly on autotrader's transaction log without regard to it's inaccuracy and meaninglessness because they couldn't think of any other way to show an indication of profit at all without writing something bespoke for it.
In other words it would be half-arsed, if that.
But I walk away from that explanation for this reason:
Why not simply give the trader exactly the right money to buy the wares and then wait for delivery to be made and the sale money to be paid, then trasfer the whole lot back to player account? This way you would see trade wares bought for (say) 200k and then sold for (say) 250k and it would be a simple matter to deduce 50k profit was made on the trade.
This is so simple and so straight forward and so obvious that I cannot even imagine them going through this "average price" estimate shenanigans in a month of Sundays, it makes no sense - at all.
That's why I came to the conclusion it was actually done this way because......reasons.
Ahh, yep, I started writing this last night and posted it this morning. Didn't see you said almost the same thing.
Yep, this is almost exactly what I said.
The problem here is your word "average price". The Trade Order line makes a contract with a station at the CURRENT price at the station at that moment. Not the average. If the trader arrives to the station to pick it up, and the cost is MORE than the contract, then the ship buys the goods for the contracted price. If the trader arrives to the station and the cost is LESS than the contract, they pay the lower price and you see the Profit line where the trader pays any remaining funds back into the player's funds.
Two columns might help, where you could see the ship's current balance, but it isn't really necessary because the current balance is always what is in the Trader Order line. This would be simplified significantly if they better associated the Profit line with the transaction that caused it or reworded it. "Funds Transfer" or "Transfer between Player and Ship".