Ok played with the trade missions for a bit in the new universe, and i'd like to make a few suggestions.

1) how about an cargo capacity checksum of some sort. If they want 17 cargo delivered 6 systems away, and you are flying a ship that can only carry 14, they ought to at least give you that information.

something like "your ship isnt large enough to carry all of the items we need to transport, you would have to make multiple trips. are you still interested"

2) perhaps a marker of some form, or a differt picture, or something to identify what system a cargo is produced in.

3) More trade mission options at each station would also be nice. Especially with a universe this large, each station could have way more cargos needing delivered, giving traders more options.

Perhaps each sector with a station could generate a trade mission every X minutes that would be added to its list. as missions were taken the mission would be removed. If a mission hasnt been accepted in a certain amount of time, it is removed from the list. perhaps the reward for it is increased as the person fronting the mission gets more desperate, say the last 5 minutes before the mission is removed it gets a little flag or other marker indicating that there is an extra reward for completing it.

4) Can we please get some form of listing of the reward amount on the 'take mission" end. not neccesarily the XP value, but the cash compensation.

I don't know whether anyone else has noticed this but trading itself has become rather hard. Today I was doing a trading mission and added some of my own bought cargo. When I entered the station it was only worth about 100 credits more than when I bought it. This also was not the cheap cargo but 1k cargo that only sold for 1100 credit when traded across numerous universes.

which brings me to point #5)

how about adding a list of the station/system "types" like in elite II there were agricultural, industrial, commercial, etc. you traded ag to comm or indust, comm to ag or indust and indust to comm or ag. if you took industrial products to another industrial area they didnt sell for shit.


oh and as to the trade run not making more than 100 credits profit each. umm thats a 10% markup on a 1000 credit item, thats pretty good for a shipping company in the real world. Thats just about right. (tho you sold at the wrong spot since i have had a few much larger profit margins.)

well you expect that if people send you on a mission to get 9 steel and you have place for 14 that the extra 5 would at least sell for a profit...

But no :(, everytime I traded, I was losing money :(. It is going to be an expensive thing. I traded for 1 hour and made 12k. And that is only from the rewards for completing the missions on time. On all the cargo that I brought along, I was making a loss :(. I will have to trade 4 - 6 hours just to gain back my invested ship...

So please give us some indication of the units that get produced in certain sectors ... / systems ...

cheers

Yes, I'm revamping the economy. Trading should be more lucrative soon.

Vlad, get a Mac...soon (option+2) = soon™

I revamped it. (finished last night actually.) It'll be put into effect next time we update.

note to all traders out there look for a station that dosent sell a particular cargo find that missing cargo someplace else (can usualy be found one system away) bring it back and sell. Ive been doing that with a certian cargo in some systems and have bought for 700 and sold for 3300. making 100k in about 2 runs

Oooh, another thing! *Trading* should count for points in the *trading*/commerce skill... I prefer to do independent trading then missions, but it's sort of odd that I don't get any skill points for it. It's still trading... Perhaps have it be something like you get 5% of the profit in skill points?

Well.. you could leave the profits as they are now (i mean 10% is right) but you should dramaticly increase the amount of carto being shipped at once.. Or prices go dramatilcy up (for example one widget cost about 40.000) - then 10% income would be around 4.000 per widget, and suming that up (16 widgets) is 64.000 per run.. of course you could find better routes with higher profit (up to 100% even!)

But when you lost your cargo.. you are 640.000c thiner... that would make trading a bit more.. exciting. ;)

Pyro: how about: profit you made but in % * number of widgets * constant (0.5 for example). Then selling 16 widgets with 40% profit would give you 320 xp (40 * 16 * 0.5)

I like the last idea, Ciuciu... will make some -really- good traders out there. also encourages exploration of the systems :)

compared to the large number of sectors out there, stations are relatively rare; these sectors are going to be major hubs of activity when game goes final ; )