Trade System Upgrades are a terrible idea

[Weylin]

The trade system upgrade should come standard.
It's borderline impossible to start the game as a trader because of the reliance on 1. Finding an equipment dealer that sells the good one 2. Even having the cash early on to get it.

Cargo space upgrades? Fine, great.
Cargo licenses? No problem.
Transporter modules? Ok.
Buying maps to help in finding trade routes? Nifty.

But why in the hell would you EVER think that being able to pull info from areas you personally explored or are in ACTIVE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DISTANCE OF should be locked behind some asinine trade system upgrade??

It's tedious and stupid. The only decent way to make money early-game is to sit around waiting for pirates to show up so you can get paid for helping get rid of them.

[gussmed]

I agree it’s unwise to lock UI information behind a ship upgrade. It does make early-game trading very difficult. You can theoretically do it by keeping paper notes, but in practice trading is pretty iffy until you get at least an Orange upgrade and can see the local economy summary.

Part of the problem is the economy makes trading difficult without a lot of information, since most goods have a very short list of consumers, and it’s common to have goods that can’t be sold to anyone within 10+ sectors. Between that and the UI limitations, trading’s impractical until fairly late in the game.

It’s not true that waiting for pirates is the only early-game way to make money, though. Selling mined resources and the occasional delivery mission come to mind. If you’re good at spotting claimable asteroids from the Tactical view - I’m not - that’s fast cash as well.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by gussmed:

It’s not true that waiting for pirates is the only early-game way to make money, though. Selling mined resources and the occasional delivery mission come to mind. If you’re good at spotting claimable asteroids from the Tactical view - I’m not - that’s fast cash as well.

Not to mention finding hidden caches while looking for sellable asteroids.

Personally, trading is never on my list for making credits. The profit margins never seemed to compare to just raiding for goods and you can generally start doing it just as soon as you can take down Swoks and get some Naonite. I've tried trading and might actually enjoy it, but raiding tends to be too profitable to want to.

As for requiring the upgrade... I'm not as sure if I feel it necessary to have baseline. Most ships built for a specific purpose have required upgrades to get the most out of them. Mining upgrades for miners, radar and object detectors for exploration ships, trade modules for merchant ships, armed slots for combat... Each ship type is often defined by its upgrade modules, Not really sure why trading needs to be different. If anything, just making equipment docks more common or less random would work fine. If they had every common tier upgrade always, that'd help get started. Possibly bump to uncommon a little later r leave it on common and let research do the rest.

[Cy]

agreed about ui stuff being Upgrade dependant. Nobody wants to waste an upgrade slot for that. Also trading is broken very hard. You can not really make profit with trading if a faction does not have excellent relations with you. The prices on stations also change so often that trading turned into gambling.

[gussmed]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Personally, trading is never on my list for making credits.

If you don't do it, maybe you don't know what's involved in making money with trading?

The trading system upgrade isn't like the mining upgrade. The mining upgrade gives you information you can't otherwise get, namely asteroids with concealed minerals. The trading upgrade tells you things you already know, and could track on paper if you had to. The mining upgrades are very useful even at the very start of the game, when you're mining iron and titanium. The trading system is arguably not useful until the Orange tier.

Maybe I'm overstating that a little. The White (basic) upgrade gives you two things: access to an entire sector's prices without visiting each station directly, and the relative prices of the current sector's goods. Both pretty useful for a trader.

I think my main gripe with the Trading System is that the "trade route" functionality isn't actually useful, because it doesn't remember enough systems, and it's making you pay for something that's a convenience. It's replacing tracking prices and locations on paper, which no modern game should make you do, and it doesn't do a good job of that.

What I want is for trading to be an easily-accessible, viable option from the start of the game. In practice I didn't really start making money with it until I had reached the barrier and had mapped something like 20% of the galaxy with my scouts.

The key thing is that most trades don't really work until you travel far enough to escape the influence of the producer of the good. If you've got a bunch of Plastic factories in a sector, no factory that buys Plastic will pay enough to make it worth hauling until you get 20+ sectors away and leave the area where Plastic prices are depressed by the supply.

For trade to work in the early game, when you're stuck with a 2 sector jump range, there needs to be at least a small profit margin within a market. In theory the price adjustment for factories that are short of supplies should do this, but in practice it's pretty rare.

[gussmed]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

The profit margins never seemed to compare to just raiding for goods and you can generally start doing it just as soon as you can take down Swoks and get some Naonite.

I've never done that. I think I understand the mechanics. You have to find a smuggler's hideout, and you have to be powerful enough so you can rapidly destroy civilian shipping. Presumably this means moving pretty far out into the Iron regions if you've just beaten Swoks. You also need a Stolen Goods license, which means a $2 million outlay for each friendly faction's territory through which you travel.

I'd really like trading to viable long before you can beat Swoks and can afford $2 million+ for a license. In practice, of course, trading's kind of iffy until much later.

Shortly after I beat Swoks I accidentally started a war with a faction, and I tried fighting because I'd heard raiding was lucrative. It wasn't workable because I couldn't blow up the resident warships up fast enough. They were replacing them at least as fast as I was destroying them.

However, this was in a region that was as far core-ward as I'd traveled. I didn't try and go out to find weaker stuff.

[gussmed]

Originally posted by Cy:

You can not really make profit with trading if a faction does not have excellent relations with you. The prices on stations also change so often that trading turned into gambling.

You can make money trading with Neutral factions, but it's more difficult. Basically you have to find a good that's cheap with an Excellent-relations faction, and expensive locally. I've done it, and it's actually one of the fastest ways to improve relations. I've had a single trade give me 30,000+ relations improvement.

No, trading isn't a gamble. Yes, stations do change their prices based on their local supply, but that's predictable. More to the point, it's a relatively small effect compared to the modifier due to local supply and demand.

It's something that's visible once you get the Orange trade upgrade, and much easier to see as a pattern once you get a Red upgrade. There's a local modifier from +30% to -30% that affects ALL stations in a sector. It's calculated based on the total regional production and total regional consumption. If buy goods in a -30% region and sell in a +30% region, that completely drowns out anything else.

Mostly. Some goods don't HAVE a high-demand area. Energy cells are pretty much never above +0% because there are so many energy cell factories. You have to find a station that sells them for -40% to -50% to be sure of making a decent profit. Most of the gasses like Chlorine and Oxygen are almost as bad, it's difficult to find a decent price.

Similarly, some rare goods are almost always priced at +10% locally or more because there's a lot of demand pretty much everywhere and few factories. Medical supplies can be a high-profit item, but they're almost always priced high enough that you have to know where to sell them.

I believe - but am not certain of this - that a factory can adjust its own price up to about 20% compared to regional prices. I've never seen anything priced below -50%, and never seen prices above +50%. Those can make for some super-lucrative trades if you stumble across them, though, since in theory you could sell a good for 3x your purchase price.

[Cy]

Originally posted by gussmed:

You can make money trading with Neutral factions, but it's more difficult. Basically you have to find a good that's cheap with an Excellent-relations faction, and expensive locally. I've done it, and it's actually one of the fastest ways to improve relations. I've had a single trade give me 30,000+ relations improvement.

Here is one example for you. On the current galaxy in a sector that has about 5 processor factories it costs roughly 10.5k to buy one processor unit. Trying to sell them to same faction stations in another sector that usually either need processors for production or trade stations. I was not able to find a possibility to make a deal out of it. Maybe difficulty affects this? I play on insane

Originally posted by gussmed:

No, trading isn't a gamble. Yes, stations do change their prices based on their local supply, but that's predictable. More to the point, it's a relatively small effect compared to the modifier due to local supply and demand.

I have seen it change really quick and I am not talking about little meaningless changes.

ANother thing that bugs me about trading is the constant low stock on every damned npc station. Oh, ofc except trade stations they are stocked really well often ... and the stock will stay low if the player does not decide to drop a ship into the sector for oos...

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by gussmed:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

The profit margins never seemed to compare to just raiding for goods and you can generally start doing it just as soon as you can take down Swoks and get some Naonite.

I've never done that. I think I understand the mechanics. You have to find a smuggler's hideout, and you have to be powerful enough so you can rapidly destroy civilian shipping. Presumably this means moving pretty far out into the Iron regions if you've just beaten Swoks. You also need a Stolen Goods license, which means a $2 million outlay for each friendly faction's territory through which you travel.

I'd really like trading to viable long before you can beat Swoks and can afford $2 million+ for a license. In practice, of course, trading's kind of iffy until much later.

Shortly after I beat Swoks I accidentally started a war with a faction, and I tried fighting because I'd heard raiding was lucrative. It wasn't workable because I couldn't blow up the resident warships up fast enough. They were replacing them at least as fast as I was destroying them.

However, this was in a region that was as far core-ward as I'd traveled. I didn't try and go out to find weaker stuff.

As long as you know where your smuggler is, there’s no need for the license at all. Just avoid dangerous goods and you’re set. Fly through empty space to avoid getting caught with stolen goods and you can unbranded them to make them safe to haul. Stolen goods yield roughly 50% of the value of the item, but you can also get salvage from the wrecks that is basically worth the entire value of said good. Get 20 war robots? The profit is the entirely of the sum of credits those are sold at. You can maximize by also playing the trading game and finding where those goods are worth the most, or you can just dump them on anyone buying since there was no initial investment.

As long as you dip into Naonite for some shielding, the weapon’s dropped by Swoks are usually strong enough to handle iron/titanium factions. You might have to farm him a few times, but I tend to do that anyway since his artifact is so good for multiple ships. Last time I was playing I had three solid combat ships with custom built turrets and 40 million spare credits by the time I was inching into Trinium. The overall playtime wasn’t really all that long either, so it’s not like I was spending 50 hours farming to get there. It felt like normal progression mostly.

I’m not necessarily saying that the game doesn’t need some sort of rebalancing or changes to the trade modules, just that I don’t think it should be removed either.

[gussmed]

Originally posted by Cy:

Here is one example for you. On the current galaxy in a sector that has about 5 processor factories it costs roughly 10.5k to buy one processor unit. Trying to sell them to same faction stations in another sector that usually either need processors for production or trade stations. I was not able to find a possibility to make a deal out of it.

You've not made any mention of what the regional price modifiers were. You really have to pay attention to that if you're going to make a profit.

"This station uses processors" is not, in itself, enough to ensure a profit. If you only jumped 5-10 sectors, it usually won't.

What you want is a region where there's a lot of production of a good, and generally not much demand, and then a region where there's a lot of demand, but no factories. They have to be at least 20 sectors apart, often more.

I've made as much as $30 million on a single trade. That was on Antigravity Units, if I recall correctly. But I had to jump 35-ish sectors to do it. My trade ship has a jump range of 42 sectors, between its hyperdrive cores and its hyperspace upgrades.

This is really easiest to visualize if you have a Red trading system or better, because then you can see the demand as a color map. Some goods have a very flat price modifier map, some have a very steep one, depending on production and consumption.

Next time I have a change I'll take some screen shots illustrating both.

[Cy]

once again, I know how trading works and made a lot of money in past. Trading has its mentioned flaws. When I say that it as a gameble then I mean it. Sure you made 30m with a trade once. That is not much at all either when we are looking at end game. but for early game trading is not an option while trading should be specially the early game way to make some money. When you have money already trading sux a lot in compmarisson to having factories. Sure there are exceptions to find lucky deals but they are just that, exceptions. It is really common to not find any profit in trade.

I am not saying this because I want to have a trading mechanism where getting rich is easy yet I want one where making some coin early game with is an option. Before the big economy rework that was very well possible. RIght now it is just a painfull fight that scares players away from using that mechanic.

Mining e.g. is perfect right now for making coin. In all game stages it allows the player to earn relatively good and well scaled money, unlike that dumb trading...

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Cy:

once again, I know how trading works and made a lot of money in past. Trading has its mentioned flaws. When I say that it as a gameble then I mean it. Sure you made 30m with a trade once. That is not much at all either when we are looking at end game. but for early game trading is not an option while trading should be specially the early game way to make some money. When you have money already trading sux a lot in compmarisson to having factories. Sure there are exceptions to find lucky deals but they are just that, exceptions. It is really common to not find any profit in trade.

I am not saying this because I want to have a trading mechanism where getting rich is easy yet I want one where making some coin early game with is an option. Before the big economy rework that was very well possible. RIght now it is just a painfull fight that scares players away from using that mechanic.

Mining e.g. is perfect right now for making coin. In all game stages it allows the player to earn relatively good and well scaled money, unlike that dumb trading...

Which is why I turn to raiding instead. When your investment is only 50% the value of the good (likely based on prices in the region, or occasionally nothing at all, the profit is guaranteed, regardless of the relative price in the region. It’s easy to make a profit when you don’t invest anything g to begin with.

[Cy]

@Chaoslink, well you see this discussion is about trading though. I surely hate trading and choose other methods instead as well for the most part because of how much of a gamble trading is.

The worst part about it is that the devs introduced all those factories of the same type appearing in the same sector mostly instead of a good mix of various types...

Seeing that it has been report alot as a bug in past. The current sector layout seems to be planned like that which I cant understand at all...

[gussmed]

You keep saying trading is a gamble. It’s not.

Given how the supply / demand modifiers work, concentrations of uniform factories is the way to generate maps. You don’t want a “good mix of various types” because then there will be no local shortages or excesses, and hence no way to make money trading.

[Cy]

yeah, you keep repeating your argument over and over again as well ^^

before economy rework it was easily possibly to find good trade routes some more profitable than others. Now I sit in sectors sometimes for a long time for that one short moment where the price spikes down for a good from a factory that I want to buy for profit or spike up at stations where I want to sell the bought goods. Now you tell me waiting to get the prices spiking as needed is NOT GAMBLE?

sorry, but I cant not agree that the trading system functions at all with such gamble included especially because profit can only be made when relations are excellent. I dont know if you play on insane difficulty. But thats how things behave there and it is f'ed up. Dont know if difficulty has anything to do with it as I mentioned before (you never said what difficulty you play on) It might matter you know.

Both of us already stated their arguments and we start repeating eachother over and over again. So if neither of us has anything new to say about it, we should pass in replying to one another XD

please dont take anything I have written personal. Everything I write is just my experience on the matter and simply nothing more than a disagreement to your experience/opinion.

[Gakm4]

So I have been playing on insane difficulty and this is the first playthrough where I got into trading much. I have done much of my trading with a low tier trading system.

I use the wiki and a trading system that gives me the % markup on the sales. I did some low-grade trading with steel and other materials such as that and sold asteroids until I became allies with my starter nation and bought the item to fully view their sector. Once you have done that it is pretty easy to find profitable trades even without a good trading system. I eventually found a good loop for selling mining robots and then getting many of the requisite components to make said robots.

Once you unlock a few nations fully you are bound to find some highly lucrative trades. Without using the wiki it would be hard to find such good deals without a good trading system yet even with a high-grade trading system installed on my ship i almost always just use the % markup feature which is obtained at i believe the green trading system level.

Yes the trading could use some work but even the high grade systems arent really all that useful for those amazing trade routes that you could make your many millions on since those rely on expensive components and likely selling them far further than just a few jumps which the trading system will log