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[gforce360]

Hey all!

I just updated to the new version and am anxious to check it out, but there's some concepts and mechanics that I am having trouble with. I apologize if these are covered elsewhere, I did some brief searching but couldn't find more than the theoretical discussions from the blog posts over the summer.

It really seems like being successful at trade is highly dependent on a good understanding of the intel and market info systems. Both are somewhat new concepts to me. When you trade with a station or planet, you can bring up Market Info. From there, I can understand that the most favorable items to buy are those that are being exported, especially where stockpiles greatly exceed local demand. When you click on a good from Market Info, a display to the right opens up that says what the top imports and top exports are. I assume that if you find a good where there's a lot of local excess being produced, then you can buy it and sell it to a planet that is one of the top importers?

The Market info screen seems only to be available when you are in a market, is that true? I wish there was a way of seeing this, perhaps as a tab on the intel screen. For instance, if I manage to score a haul of a particular cargo from defeating some pirates, how will I know where to take it?

Speaking of the intel screen, you can't open intel messages for price updates, and they don't seem to convey much. Price updated for lobster in Jangala? Great, does that mean that it's more or less expensive...?

While trade isn't what makes this game great, it is a newer mechanic that I'd like to explore some. I'm hoping you guys can help.

[Gothars]

Hi gforce,

I would reccomend to you these blog posts:

Trade design basics: http://fractalsoftworks.com/2014/03/02/on-trade-design/

How markets work:http://fractalsoftworks.com/2014/06/06/markets/

How intel works:http://fractalsoftworks.com/2014/08/25/trade-smuggling/


To summarize: You are not really supposed to take part in normal trade or find stable trade routes. Instead you should try to exploit prices that are extremely low or high for a limited amount of time, due to some kind of event or crisis. That is what the UI is trying to show you. Finding information about events is part of the challenge, though.

[gforce360]

Thanks. I re-read those blog posts, but they didn't cover the specific questions that I had. The forum threads on each blog post haven't had new posts since the actual release of this version, so while they talk quite a bit about the theory and the reasoning for each aspect of the game, they don't have any "here's how you use this to find what you need" info.

For instance, from the Market Blog Post:

Commodity Detail
Clicking on a commodity brings up detailed information. The specific contents of this screen are up in the air; the current incarnation shows the top markets this commodity is being imported from and exported to. What ultimately ends up here will be driven by what tasks the player most wants to accomplish when they’re looking at this screen – the information needed to plot a hypothetical trade run is different from that needed to figure out how to cut off the aforementioned fuel shipments. What these tasks are, in turn, depends on exactly how some other stuff shapes up. Speaking of that, back to coding!

From Commodity details in the actual release, does being a top Export mean that that planet or station Exports a significant amount, or that the market you are viewing the commodity from exports to the top export? Can you understand how that seems ambiguous?

I'll point out that while I don't post often, I do lurk around in the shadows frequently, reading forum thread after forum thread, and I read every blog post as well. I don't post unless I absolutely can't find an answer to my questions.

[Okim]

Actually these are some good questions. I for one didn`t play vanilla much (being busy modding), but I do remember how I got confused by quite everything in the 0.65a once I started a test run in it.