What you paid for XXX

[Alex Fury]

In the separate resource trading screens where you actually buy/sell, a value in there for 'what you bought this resource for' would be HUGE. (kind of surprised its not already in there).

As of right now it just shows average of everywhere visited. Which, while helpful, is limited in that helpfulness

Perhaps an 'average' if it could be done (such as when one location needs weapons and I hit 5 places on the way there at differing prices to get FAR more for the sale).

This is also key for times when I buy up a lot of something on my way to a big sale, but the rumor has ended before I get there.. So I can see if I want to sell it, store it nearby, or can haul a few more spots over to somewhere that it wouldn't be a loss to sell

[slayernz]

Hi Alex, awesome thought but unfortunately due to game constraints, the game doesn't store all of the individual buy/sell values for your transactions. It would put a much higher data demand given the amount of times you transfer items to and from your hold. Think about this scenario.
On planet A, you Buy 12 units of spice at $219
On planet B, you Buy 14 units of spice at $214
You were boarded, and 18 units of spice was stolen
On planet C, you Buy 15 units of spice at $285
While enroute to planet D, you looted 3 units of spice (but your ship sustained a little damage)
Further along, you encountered a space hive, and dumped all but 4 units of spice in favor of weapons (you took 87 units of weapons).
At planet D, you Sold 57 units of weapons, and bought 27 units of spice.
On planet E, you transferred 27 units of spice into a cache and took 86 units of WF out of the cache
Back on planet D, you sold 82 units of WF for $980 because of a shortage situation.

The above is just a very cut-down list of what you would actually buy/sell/take/lose during your travels. Your caches (and you may have many) could have literally hundreds of individual transactions worth of goods stored. In a few decades of game play, your data just from goods stored could be more than all of the other metrics tracked in the game combined. In many other games of this nature, the individual buy prices aren't tracked, and in fact, the "average buy price" isn't tracked either (so profit isn't tracked).

[fallen]

Alex Fury - you'd like a separated price listed for, potentially, every unit of Water-Fuel you are carrying? They could have all come from different Exchanges, looting enemy ships, gathering resources on planets, or pulled from a cache three years old.

slayernz - thanks, my reaction exactly

[Alex Fury]

lol..

First.. no, not a list for each and every one. But its not uncommon to just buy bulk in one area.. to have an idea of what you paid would be good. It's better to get even a 50 cred per unit payout as opposed to losing that much or more. It can be tricky to go through the list (when it's there) to try and double or triple check prices (assuming you remember the name of the planet you bought them at).

In the buy/sell screen it shows the 'average' (of what's on your list from what I can tell) for the buy/sell price...

slayernz -I hear where you're coming from. I have known some that did track it and were able to giving an 'average value' And yes, in theory the scenario you listed can happen. Though honestly I don't keep that much variety on the ship 99% of the time. And with the current build being smuggler/merchant build.. I basically RUN from everything and only really buy/sell in bulk amounts unless I'm headed to a shortage and buying up what I can on the way (especially if the current locations all have pittances for amounts of the rumored shortage resource)

For a combat-oriented/pirate build.. I don't see buying that much, and so 90% of the values would be '0' as they're all looted, and hence it's all profit.

Oh, and as so far, I don't really keep Caches, simply because I haven't had enough surpluses to buy up to store worthwhile, and as I'm doing a hardcore one, the cargo hold is small. so my 'bulk' are usually 30-40 units tops (54 is max cargo atm)

Trust me, I'm NOT asking for a detailed thing of every unit of spice has its own separate price-tag, etc, etc... But each time you gain more of a type, the value-per-unit could automatically average.

ie:

buy 10 spice at 200
buy 20 spice at 220 ~ 30 with value averaged to 213.
looted of 15... have 15 with value averaged at 213 (wouldn't change, you just wouldn't have as much, unless you wanted to go for pure total value. in which case would obviously double)
Manage to loot 15 back.. and 30 with averaged value of 106.....

So i go to sell 30 at 300. and I can see I'm making approx 290 per unit.. or.. if you went with total value.. it would be about 213 again, and hence profit of about 85 per unit..

I realize it might be asking too much.

But perhaps an an alternate wish-list request.. a 'reorder' of the list of locations to most recent where purchased from or visited? As right now I have no clue HOW the list is ordered.

ie: if I ping-pong between two planets... let those two be the top of the list for whatever resources I'm trading between them.

---------------------

And in terms of pulling from a cache '3 years old'... I'd assume that would be cached from a major loot/harvest/explore/surplus.. so the prices would be fairly low.. But yes, i understand the trickiness to it.

[slayernz]

Caches are the best thing since sliced Steel Song! ... Once I'm cash-comfortable, I'm constantly feeding my caches with little bits I pick up here and there. That way when I do get a shortage rumor, I don't have to traipse around half the frickin planets in the quadrant to pick up enouch to satisfy the rumor

Also ... you're seriously only flying a merchant with a small cargo hold? Yikes - there are a number of small sized ships that can get close to 100 units of cargo with the right upgrades. Depending on the planet, selling more than 40 units almost guarantees the shortage is ended, so my philosophy is "why sell 40 when I can sell 100". You can even leave some larger ships in dry docks around the quadrant just in case one of those shortage rumors pop up. You go pick up the big ship from the nearest dry dock, go to the nearest cache that has the good stuff, then fly off and make a killing Sure you can quibble about how much you paid for something, but when you sell it for 5x standard prices, you're almost always going to make a profit.

[Alex Fury]

slayernz - Working on the Hardcore unlock at the moment, so can't swap up quite yet.. and playing on hard or crazy, so hoarding xp until i can blow it all out at once and I don't get slammed by Murphy's law.

For later on with a true merchant class, or one I plan to use as such.. then yes, that's the plan. just not there yet on this char (and this phone as I'm having to restart all awards as the google cloud never backs up properly for me)

[HateSolstice]

The game tracks each market's price of the item in question since your last visit to said market. I do not know if there is a limit to how many markets the game will track for you, but I know it will keep quite a few.

The biggest problem with keeping individualized values is that the game's economy shifts constantly. What you paid for spice on Cadar Prime 20 AU ago won't necessarily(and highly unlikely) be the same price on your next visit.

Honestly, just using the already included tracker should be sufficient. It may not be optimal, but then again you are playing a huge numbers game as a trader/merchant.

[Alex Fury]

HateSolstice - yes, and was trying to do some of that. But not always easy to remember which planets I got stuff from, and then had that bug that I posted where the list got cleared on me, which didn't help.

[HateSolstice]

Nov 7, 2013 10:56:43 GMT -5 Alex Fury said:

HateSolstice - yes, and was trying to do some of that. But not always easy to remember which planets I got stuff from, and then had that bug that I posted where the list got cleared on me, which didn't help.

Oh yeah, that was you. Completely forgot.

I still don't fully understand what you are asking for though. Like I said, the already tracks buy/sell prices for each good type and from which exchange. In my experience, remembering which planets had which goods for what prices isn't entirely necessary. Again, the in-game economy fluctuates so much, keeping price reminders helps very little. On top of that, there is no trending to speak of, so estimation and manipulation is nearly impossible.

Regardless, I don't find it too hard to keep track of planets visited. Maybe because of how long I've played. In all honesty, though, you as a merchant should be following surplus/shortage rumors almost exclusively.

[Alex Fury]

HateSolstice - well, technically smuggler, but merchant for money. And the problem I've had is 4-5 out of the 6 factions have embargoes on each other, and trying not to kill rep (re-unlocking all awards/achievements) And what VERY few shortage/surplus there are, are on the double-embargo planets.. so.. staying away from those

[HateSolstice]

Good point. Double embargoes suck, and it feels like a complete waste selling records to Indies. There's no rep to be gained for it, which is all I use records for anyway. They rarely sell for much unless you're manipulating a shortage.

Weapons, electronics and artifacts don't feel like as much of a waste, since you may not always have a trade permit. Besides that, they're pirate magnets, and you don't always want that hassle.

Something I think could work, and would rely solely on your already obtained info, is perhaps adding the highest known value, and lowest known price for each commodity type.

For example, let's say you have visited 20 different exchanges and gathered the current prices. On the cargo screen, there can be an extra line of text telling you what the best deals are for each item, and at which exchanges. Because this is based purely on info you have had to personally gather, there are no extra calculations that are required.

This, I think, would help save some time and effort for captains looking to get in on the trade business.

Another addition to help could be just a simple reminder icon on/next to items that are attached to a known surplus/shortage rumor.

Yeah, I know, this is the wrong section.

[Deleted]

I like to keep an eye out for deals whether I'm playing ST or filling up the car. I keep a notepad on the console and every time I get gas, I write the unit cost down. Now you can do something similar here, but if it were me, all I'd be looking for is the unit cost the last time I purchased and thats all. Resource harvests and piracy wouldnt come into it.

[neddapirate]

I do tend to keep pricing in mind, even in my IT gigs.

[eskimoform]

A small idea, what about a log that only records how much you have payed if you buy atleast X amount of an item at once(excluding WF). Starting at maybe 20 as default and being adjustable in the menu. Instead of it tracking and averaging everything it would just record these specific purchases on a list with just where you bought them and for how much.

[Cory Trese]

That is a great idea, but it ranks in at about #800 on the to-do list for ST.

Long, long after a similar log for all toasts has been added.

Added a sub-item under 'Improve Player Economic Tools'

"Adding buy and sell logging temporary, game-safe, all Android version support"