Maybe these are answered in the manual, sorry if they are but I can't find them ...

1. Can you trade between players? Or is there no point to this.

2. Is there anyway, in game, of knowing who's on and where they are?

3. I know this is a 'shoot first, ask questions later' 'twitch' style of game - but trade is there too and I figure it's how a lot of newbs (ie me) will start off getting experience so the question...
Is there any way to gauge what a particular station may need? Like, check on an area on the nav map, see a station, info says 'heavy industrial' so they may buy food for a decent price.
A bit simplistic I know, and totally scammed from Elite, but I did wonder about it.

Cheers!

1)
Trade between players as it is now is not very functional.
You could /givemoney someone and they could then jetison the cargo.
What's to stop the other person from simply flying away after you giving him/her money?

2)
Knowing who's on can be done via the IRC bot. I don't think someone will pay for an account for the bot after release tho'.
Knowing where someone is wil probably never happen. It would make it very easy for a pirate to locate a trader or a griefer to locate a newbie.
If you think about it, I'm sure you don't even want this.

3)
Stations generally want what they don't sell.
As I get the mood of the game there will also be a requirement for production equipment at an idustrial site and relations like that.

OR! You could use the more sensible 'active players' link over to the left. (duh)

doesn't work in game tho...

Or you could also in-game type /msg irc active players (like in a chat box)... if you dont like the length, you can also bind it to a key using /bind, or make an alias, using the /alias command, if you are unsure, look at the *sticky* in this forum, Its where i learned most my binds ...lol

Ok that pretty much answers all that - thanks!

My thoughts on the trade between players thing really linked with mentoring - perhaps I should have been a little more specific. Occured to me that a mentor could, if they wanted, choose to give some financial support to a potential new recruit to their cause. Or to help them get better equipment, or whatever.

You've definitely a good point about the not knowing who's on thing - didn't think of it like that.

As for the third I just thought it might make trade more of a part of the game - as a viable option to killing. In 'real life' (whatever that is) it's easy to find out what a country needs and supply it - without needing to visit the place. I wondered if such a guide to what certain stations or areas might require was a possibility.

Oh - and the active players link would work quite nicely thanks, I can run the game in a window and keep the website open in the background - if I really wanted to ;-)

I've starting taking notes for myself about what is a good purchase and what would be a good cargo to pick up to take along to the station I have to visit as part of a mission. I feel figuring this out is part of the fun of playing the game like a trader.

yeah, i reckon that's the way of it - had a huge list of stuff like that for both EV Nova and Elite! What to sell where etc...

As for trading between characters you can get cargo from someone else if you make them drop it. I went through a period where I was still learning that J doesn't mean "Jump". :)
Usually I was in a frenzy becuase someone or something was trying to kill me and I wanted to get out of the sector and I'd panic and start pushing keys. Ray thought it was cute that I "forgot" about the activate key, I maintain I was looking for a way to distract the predator...

Hehe had similar experiences. When the new nav system was introduced, I used to hit j for "j"ump in the nav screen all the time. When that didn't work I went back to the game view and tried it there. uhm jeah ...