If any of you have played freelancer before, then you know about the trade charts. Everytime you visit a station, then everything that station sells is put on to your database, along with the price that they will pay for any item. That way, no matter what item you pick up, the database will tell you how much a station will buy your item for. Then you know exactly which station will pay the most for your cargo, very helpfull for traders. See Freelancer for details.

Oh yea, great suggestion, 'make it like in freelancer.'
Besides, prices are dynamic. They change based on how much junk you sell to a station.

Just play the game and figure it out for yourself. What's the point in playing if information like this is handed out on a silver platter.

Because it takes some of the tedium out of playing? Sheesh, guys, give this dude a chance, really.

So what about just general information, based on system class? For example, it'd have categories, with price generalities, not numbers.

Ores: Low
Industrial supplies: High
Luxury Goods: Low
etc.

hello! gosh apparently you guys aren't traders, because if you trade a lot, then it can be extremely annoying to try and write down or remember every flippin station's price for an item! And it doesn't matter if the prices are dynamic, make the charts dynamic too!

Great Idea,

The economy being dynamic means that what ever information you have will always be outdated right? "In theory at least"

So it would be great if you could select a station within a sector map and have list its needs at least "see ctishman's example" Traders will still need to get form point A to point B.

I think the obvious streamlining of the trading game play is clear, also this will help pirate's target the sectors where they will have the highest probability of a cargo heist, it will give convoy defenders a tactical basis for devising defensive tactics for certain trade routes and it will allow traders who seek the lower risk less lucrative trade routes to avoid potential danger zones.

What do ya think?

>>mutorcs<<

If anyone has read C.J. Cherryh's "Chanur" novels, in the books the information of what a station was buying and selling at what price was in itself a significant trade item; the value of this inversely proportional to how old it is.

The point of this is that information is worthwhile -- would be a nice feature to be able to buy and sell time-stamped lists of what other stations are selling.

Remember, the only reason that you're scribbling all these little notes down on paper instead of doing something sensible, like keeping track of them in a spreadsheet, is because your computer is currently occupied with *playing the game*...

Even better...I'm trade level 5 and I have no reason to level until Maud...which is quite a bit. So why not make a device you can get after Cent MK3 that is like this database. It would record what goods different stations have...which is useful to know if you can get xp or not. The system is dynamic right? Isn't there a max and min price of an item? So the device can track the min and max, or the min max you have sold the item for at said station, or the max you have sold it for at any station. After all, device slots already have heavy support. Why not make this a buyable device for a certain mid-range trade level?

I totally agree. Your ship should have some sort of computer that stores current market prices.

It doesn't have to be handed to you on a silver plater, Maelstrom. Visiting a station will update the current prices in your database, but you still have to do the work of visiting that station and downloading the data.

Plus, since it's a dynamic economy, the prices will change anyways, so you keep having revisit to get the updated prices.

Heck, the downloaded data doesn't even have to be stored on the server, it can be in an .ini file locally or something.

This is where interactive NPC's could come in, they could sell you information on different systems. Something needs to be done as i find it far more interesting reading the boards than playing the game unfortunately.

In some circumstances I'd be advocating the roll of probes for sending back vital stats from each sector... but for the realitys of an MMORPG you don't want or need to track thousands of objects left there from every character both on and offline to keep the game consistant etc.. although finding and destroying enemy probes could be a great way to pass the time.

I think a subscription to each stations list would be a better idea, you pay a fee (prehaps 50 creds an hour per station list) and the info is beamed to you every hour (and at startup).
We know subspace comms are available in game anyway as /msg, kill records and chat channels are all inter-sector so that fits in with the comms system in place.

Of course this may mean Waylon having to put up another antenna onto each of the stations :p

The lists need not just stop at trade either, the user could subscribe to the docked pilots list to see if friends or enemys were parked up somewhere at a close by station, moniter border station trafic, see the availability of weapons, Goods, Ships, Missions (if they became more individualised for each area), npcs ect.... ect...

*cough Still.. I have an uncomfortable urge to destroy all your probes then track you, whilst your in the dark *cough

You're all forgetting the second "M" in MMORPG. Build a trade network of acquaintances. Fellow traders not really competing with each other. A guild, so to speak.. ;-)

ie., ask "what's the price of Plastisteel in the Sedina area?" and if someone in the area wants to, they'll look it up for you. It would be hard to come up with an exact selling price, but if it is not available, then you can guess the price will be high if it's something that they'd need there.

(Does our economy take that into account yet? I don't think it does but it should. Selling civilian textiles to military barracks shouldn't pay very well even if it's not sold there.)

But I agree, you should have a "snapshot" of the stations you've visited recently, including the price inventory. This would help on repeated trade runs, if you try to diversify to prevent prices from dropping too much.