Automated trading - Left out on purpose?

[DaMuncha]

20% of a 1 million is still 200,000

What I miss about trading in X3, was I could Find a derelict cargo ship the pilot had bailed out of after getting attacked by pirates, I would get it repaired, upgrade it, give it some better shields and software, and some drones for defence, then I'd tell the trading computer to do some runs in a sector while I go do a mission, either being a taxi for a VIP, or making more money selling salvage.

In X rebirth, you have to either pirate a cargo ship and send out bording parties to take it over, or buy it as one whole unit from the shipyard. Then once its yours, u have to manually go find the best deals on every station so you dont get ripped off and tell it to do each trade buy and sell your self. and you have no time to do anything else.

Of course I had to do manual trading in X3 when I started a new game, but after I had made enough cash for the trading extension I could leave the system entirely and go off and explore the rest of the universe while my trade ship worked on its own.

[BigBANGtheory]

If ES don't want to write the content for that then they must as a bare minimum give the player the tools to playout the late game as they see fit. It really isn't ok to have a sandbox game which actively encourages you to build and expand but doesn't support you in the post build and expansion phase. Do ES want you to build a commercial organization in space or an Empire, what is the vision here?

These are features that probably the 10-20% of the playerbase would use.
Also having to spend 10s of hours to learn a game is most often avoided in modern industry.
If it takes more then 1-2 hours, you already lost half the players likely and publishers might just laugh in your face.
Making art or anything creative often takes time to be appreciated, and usually is mutually exclusive whith any system where popularity (few hours playtime reviews) and short term profit (sales figures on release) are the most important measurment factors.

I do not agree with that, I think a lot of players come to X Universe to play a certain type of game and then give up quickly when they discover they can't. In fact I'd go so far as to say the players that take an interest in a deeper economic simulation and running a corporation in space are the 10-20%. Egosoft's risk is not recognizing what most players want from a space sim and satisfying a niche. You might be right in your assessment but I truly think ES are in for rough times if they focus on corporations at an economic and sustainability level instead of action and strategy. Its not my risk though all I can do is offer an opinion... You said it yourself what is more flyable ships really going to add?

[Santi]

Automated traders are ok, do not see anything wrong with it, if it is something that is available later in the game and for a price. Early game they should be a no.

X Rebirth still adheres to the principle of Trade/Build/Fight/Think, changing the focus to one style of gameplay, instead of expanding on those 4 aspects of gameplay will be detrimental to the game in my opinion.

Combat fleet commands need an overhaul, so does trading fleets and managers, but little point to it if they are not meaningful in terms of creating your own corporation or faction within the Universe.

[Snafu_X3]

If players want a space shoot-em-up with small additions of economics etc to keep things varied, X:R already has that

If players want a deep economic/trading/building game X:R is getting there. There are still glaring holes (in the management system, for ex) but it's a lot better than it was in earlier versions

If players want coordinated fleet combat.. go elsewhere or reach for mods such as CWIR

(I'm not denigrating CWIR: it's superb work, but the basic manoeuvring systems used there should have been in the vanilla game)