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[Avarice]

The last time I played this game all you could do was fly around one system and kill pirates.

I see a lot has changed, but now I'm lost on what to do. 



Trade:  How can you tell if a trade will be profitable before hand?

There seems to be information overload on the market/station screens, but not enough of it is being calculated for the player. Like supply costs for the trip+purchase price+sell price.

This should all be condensed and easily digested by a new player without them having to calculate it all by themselves, if it is I'm missing it entirely.



System Flight/Map:  There is virtually no information given here *still on anything in the system. Fleets just show icons w/ no information, planets/stations don't display mouse-over information etc.

There is no way for a new player to tell what the ship icons are, or if they can safely engage them or not without trial and error. No way for a player to tell what's being sold/available at a location without landing there. Hell you can't even tell what these locations are called without navigating towards them first.



The new event system is nice, but again without all the above being easier to digest it's wasted on me, I have no idea where to quickly buy things cheaply and jump on a trade event, or if my current fleet will be strong enough to hunt down a bounty.


I enjoy the complexity this game is striving for, but all the information needs to be simplified for the players. More information where there is none, and simplified information where there is too much. 

My 2 cents on the current state of the game, hopefully none of this will be an issue in the future.

If any of this sounds overly negative, I apologize, because I think this game will be the best of it's kind when it's finally done, but in it's current state the learning curve is out of balance.

[HELMUT]

Normal trade isn't profitable by design, to avoid boring grinding. Smuggling still works pretty well though. And for the information overload, i think Alex is planning to improve the whole thing a bit to make it easier to understand. Have to wait for the next update though.

For the fleet icons, it's intended to works that way. You aren't supposed to know the identity of a fleet with its transponder off, but you can guess depending on their behaviour. A "hidden" fleet just passing by? Probably smugglers. This other one is following another fleet or coming toward you? You found pirates.

For the locations in systems, you can hover your cursor over a star in the intel map. It'll show you the planets in the system, to which faction they belong to, the size of the market and if there's a military base that can sell warships. The bigger the market, the more stuff you can buy there. It's still not perfect though, you can't know the exact position of a planet before jumping in for example. It's the same thing to find cheap resources, the intel screen have everything you need. Go on the intel map, check the prices. Of course, after a while, you remember the good shopping spots. Sindria in Askonia sell a lot of cheap fuel, Chicomoztoc in Aztlan is the Walmart of harvested organs...

To determine the size of a bounty fleet, its size is relative to its reward. A 20.000 credits bounty is as small as you can get, and roughly contain 20.000 worth of ships (so two or three frigates), which is doable at the start if you can pilot reasonably well.

The learning curve may seems harsh at first, but after a few hours you finally understand how the whole thing works and it get easier. Starsector is more about knowledge than actual skill.

[Creepin]

Normal trade isn't profitable by design, to avoid boring grinding.

It's funny how I keep reading this sentence as if some kind of mantra. But actually it makes no sense if one think about it: if normal trade is actually boring, then average player would avoid it on it's own, without additional kicks and punches in the teeth from the game, right, because why would he do a boring thing in the first place? So, what you really avoiding is one of this: it is either not boring for at least some of the players, so not allowing them to engage the activity that is fun for them is a bad game design, or it's indeed boring, but player needs to suffer this boredom to fuel his more funny activities in the game, which he will be unable to fund without trade, which is, incidentally, bad game design as well.

Furthermore, why would you put the whole trade mechanics in the game and then make it useless, is not it kind of stupid and deceitful towards new players?

[Dri]

There is evil to be found in both simple space-trucking trading and then only event-based trading but, honestly, I'd prefer the option to space truck for a guaranteed profit to be included. It shouldn't be at all the best way to make credits but if a player wants to be able to reliably get some cash infusions then let him load up on Organics in Jangala and truck'em to any place that has a market mod increasing demand for Organics (which is what, light industry?) for a guaranteed profit. Events should still of course be present and the best way to make credits via trading but they shouldn't be the ONLY way to make a profit.

Sure its none too exciting but it'd solve a lot of current problems. Problems like a too-hard early game due to credit/supplies death spirals, pure freighters/tankers being underused and lacking value, 90% of trade goods being useless and market mods like mining/heavy industry/farming having little outward relevancy to the player etc etc.

[Megas]

I suspect many market mods will be like hullmods for the player's outposts once Industry and outposts are in.

[SpacePoliticianAndaZealot]

I suspect many market mods will be like hullmods for the player's outposts once Industry and outposts are in.

Yeah, can't wait to build up that cryosanctum or drag in a bunch of dissidents and refugees in. Oh, and make the majority of them Luddic. Hot stuff!

There is evil to be found in both simple space-trucking trading and then only event-based trading but, honestly, I'd prefer the option to space truck for a guaranteed profit to be included. It shouldn't be at all the best way to make credits but if a player wants to be able to reliably get some cash infusions then let him load up on Organics in Jangala and truck'em to any place that has a market mod increasing demand for Organics (which is what, light industry?) for a guaranteed profit. Events should still of course be present and the best way to make credits via trading but they shouldn't be the ONLY way to make a profit.

Sure its none too exciting but it'd solve a lot of current problems. Problems like a too-hard early game due to credit/supplies death spirals, pure freighters/tankers being underused and lacking value, 90% of trade goods being useless and market mods like mining/heavy industry/farming having little outward relevancy to the player etc etc.

Yup. Personally I still don't understand why was this done in the first place. To be honest, it was still complicated to newcomers (at least I've had problems until I've figured out what sells where) it was possible to repeatedly haul goods from X to Y (for example, Volatiles from Barad A to Jangala), but the profit margin was very low and not worth the effort on all but tinyest scale (being broke and in need of a quick buck). Nowadays, I don't trade at all, save for the occasional procurement mission. Also, selling prices from after-battle loot are so bad that I forgo looting anything but supplies and fuel until I aquire a destroyer-sized freighter (optionally, a Dram, though they are surprisingly rare for me.)

[Euphytose]

I also think that "basic" trading should yield some kind of profit. Then events yield better, and then illegal stuff even more, like harvested organs. But currently it's very hard to play like "an honest trader".

[Weltall]

I find it weird when people complain about trading, when in the current version is broken. If anything I am waiting for the patched version, because I can make tons of profits currently without much problem., Prices eventually plummet to Hades and you can buy things for literals 1 $pacebuck pet item as it seems. In my case I could buy supplies for 7 tops and sell them for 700+

Thankfully in the upcoming version the price per item is added, so you will not have to make complicated calculations. As for profit, this happens I feel because they are trying to make smuggling a better option. With 10% you would be stupid to not choose to trade fairly. With 20% the gain is not that enormous at times. With 30%.. I keep trying to find possibilities to trade in the black market. I think the whole think happened so the Black Matker would not just be just a rare choice to trade with.

[Dri]

I'm not complaining about how things are here and now (I have over 12 million credits in my current Ironman game) but rather I'm thinking about how I'd like the trade system to eventually take shape in the future.

[Gezzaman]

Early to mid game, I found trading to be pretty much non profitable when factoring in the supplies and fuel needed to cross systems to reach a decent market. Your ship's cargo hold just doesn't hold enough to balance the trip out.

End game when there is imperial blockades, Holy Crusades, alliances crapping on their target in ever corner of the galaxy you will find a lot of 0 stability worlds to monopolise.

This really sucks when you are new to this game and used to traditional 4X genres where heavy trading is a totally viable from the beginning of the game

[Avarice]

Early to mid game, I found trading to be pretty much non profitable when factoring in the supplies and fuel needed to cross systems to reach a decent market. Your ship's cargo hold just doesn't hold enough to balance the trip out.

End game when there is imperial blockades, Holy Crusades, alliances crapping on their target in ever corner of the galaxy you will find a lot of 0 stability worlds to monopolise.

This really sucks when you are new to this game and used to traditional 4X genres where heavy trading is a totally viable from the beginning of the game

I'd like the trading and random missions to be more like the old WC: Privateer games, while the rest of the gameplay is more Mount&Blade, if that makes sense.