Auto-trade

[sd_jasper]

Micro managing your trade fleet gets REALY tedious when your in the middle of a war. Thats what station managers were supposed to be for... but we all know how that turned out.

I don't. My station managers in XR make me a small fortune, sending credits all the time.

To be honest, I never had much of an issue with the trade system in XR. By the time I had a "fleet" I also had several stations and made a lot more assigning ships to them than in manual trades. The ships I did keep for trading were usually just selling off surplus across Systems (or supplying construction vehicles for building). And I also got the 7 trip trade computer upgrade by then, so my ships didn't bother me for quite some time before I needed to set up another trade run.

Part of me thinks that there is this odd disconnect where folks claim they love trading, but to them trading should only consist of telling an NPC to go make them money... then never being bothered by them again. To me that means you don't really like trading at all, you just like having the game give you money. And for that, you should really be setting up factories. IMO trading should require a bit more effort than, "NPC, go trade!"

[DaMuncha]

I don't mind if it is from giving order to your commanders to "go find the best deals until you are attacked or i change my mind", from a software or any way you wanna put in the game. Just want the auto trade feature Automation is key for this kind of game. For the player as well as for the simulation.

Cant agree more. When I realized in rebirth that you had to manually send your trade ships from A to B and again from B to A, i instantly uninstalled and never looked back again. I dont need the crazy good customisation of trade like it was in X3 (of course would be great to have it), but at least some way to keep my ships busy on their own without giving them commands every 5 seconds.

Me too, quitted the game immediately for this reason

I never did trading because of this. As soon as I got the free ship I did the mission for it and sold it. It could only carry energy crystals so it was completely useless for anything else.

[fcth]

Mind you, the MK3 trader always was a bit of a controversial subject as many player think it's just a money printing mechanism, too easy, too fast.

That seems like more a balance issue though. If the devs felt that was an issue, it would be easy enough to simply bump the trader's pay to make it less profitable. And of course, if they were able to port the mk3 directly into X4, it would get a huge nerf from not having a jumpdrive anymore.

I'd imagine the technical side of things (as well as just having competing priorities) presents a bigger problem, though if they have freelance traders like X3/TC/AP, it seems like it shouldn't be much more work to let the player fund some of their own.

In any event, as far as automated traders go, I'm much more concerned about being able to furnish stations with ships that will intelligently buy resources and sell products (I didn't get far enough into Rebirth to see how that worked there, so maybe it is already taken care of?)

[Drewgamer]

Mind you, the MK3 trader always was a bit of a controversial subject as many player think it's just a money printing mechanism, too easy, too fast.

That seems like more a balance issue though. If the devs felt that was an issue, it would be easy enough to simply bump the trader's pay to make it less profitable. And of course, if they were able to port the mk3 directly into X4, it would get a huge nerf from not having a jumpdrive anymore.

As far as balance goes, I do always believe it's nice to have at least a semblance of balance. However, there is the best balance tool available to players of all single player games, just not using it. If someone finds the game is too easy, they are welcome to not use the auto-trading feature (or not use it as much)

[Cabrelbeuk]

Part of me thinks that there is this odd disconnect where folks claim they love trading, but to them trading should only consist of telling an NPC to go make them money... then never being bothered by them again. To me that means you don't really like trading at all, you just like having the game give you money. And for that, you should really be setting up factories. IMO trading should require a bit more effort than, "NPC, go trade!"

If i just wanna do some pure trade thingy to just make... trade (i mean if it my goal), or if i wanna do mining just to mine things... I would play Elite Dangerous.

When i play an X game (X3 Reunion), i do trade (and i do hours of it) with my little ship so i can i buy another one with the mk3, and another one, and another one, because trading is not the goal, it is not the aim.. I want to build a trade empire that don't need me to pampers their butt for each deal. So i can focus on buying station, destroy concurrency; and other stuff a big-ass space boss do.
And the number of hours of trading with my mercury was quite fair, especially when you got slowed down by damn pirates and stuff.

You do the trade yourself first to build your business, then you let your employee do the job for you while you do over things and expand it in other way. I don't see what's odd in this.

Efficiency and cost is matter of balance.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

An automated trader is still vulnerable to attack, or may find its desired wares unavailable/already saturated. Even after you tell him to go make you some money, you'll still need to pay attention to him from time to time to make sure he's still profitable and not in danger. Still a lot less input than a manual or player trader, but hardly a "go make me money and never talk to me again" button. ^^

[LameFox]

Part of me thinks that there is this odd disconnect where folks claim they love trading, but to them trading should only consist of telling an NPC to go make them money... then never being bothered by them again. To me that means you don't really like trading at all, you just like having the game give you money. And for that, you should really be setting up factories. IMO trading should require a bit more effort than, "NPC, go trade!"

Well... you could say that about almost anything. I like combat, but if I had to tell my ships 'attack this, then this, then this, then this' it would (and even did) get old really fast, so I prefer to set them up how I want and then automate them as much as possible. A big reason why I hardly had any fleets in X3 until I started playing LU.

When I play trade focused runs it's the same, manually sending them works in the beginning but scales very badly. Doesn't mean I don't like one thing or the other.

[Zetoss]

An automated trader is still vulnerable to attack--

This. So very this. X4 is the first X game with a non static evolving universe where stations can go away permanently and a hostile force can suddenly become the dominant power in a previously safe area. I love auto traders but I certainly don't expect them to be eternally stable money machines in such conditions, unless they get escort fleets worth a sum that would take them a thousand good trade runs to cover.

Thinking yet one more step you'll probably find the best trade deals in areas where trade wares are in high demand to replenish lost ships and stations, "war has no real winner except the guy selling guns". The closer you get to such a resource sink the more danger for your trader -- the further away from danger the less profit you'll get. This whole "controversy" of automated traders seems ridiculous to me, they're nothing more than calculated risks and investments just like stations.

[werewolves?]

Mind you, the MK3 trader always was a bit of a controversial subject as many player think it's just a money printing mechanism, too easy, too fast. So with respect to X4 we will just have to be patient and see what "equivalences" there "may be".

Cheers Euclid

I found the best thing about it in previous games was supporting the universe economy and keeping it running, hope it returns too, nothing cooler than entering a system and seeing one of your trade ships working.

If Ego sort out the fleet AI having escorts with you traders will be even cooler.

[Clownmug]

Trade, Fight, Build, and uhhh, what was the last part again? Forget it, I just want to sit back and let the game play itself. It's so immersive that way.

[Drewgamer]

Trade, Fight, Build, and uhhh, what was the last part again? Forget it, I just want to sit back and let the game play itself. It's so immersive that way.

The last one is "think"
I want to keep thinking the last one is "explore" but that is part of the 4x formula (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate). Which, to be fair, is very close (Trade = exploit, Fight = exterminate, Build = expand, and Think = ...explore?)

[Clownmug]

Trade, Fight, Build, and uhhh, what was the last part again? Forget it, I just want to sit back and let the game play itself. It's so immersive that way.

The last one is "think"
I want to keep thinking the last one is "explore" but that is part of the 4x formula (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate). Which, to be fair, is very close (Trade = exploit, Fight = exterminate, Build = expand, and Think = ...explore?)

Oh that's right, thinking is supposed to be part of the game. I don't know if that's the same as exploring though, unless by explore you mean letting my universe range traders reveal the map while I stare at menus.

[atavistuk]

I prefer not to use Mk3 Traders. Even my Commercial Agents tend to have short jump-ranges in X3 (I leave the stations at the default 9 jumps). Rebirth was great. So long as you didn't set up in Cantera. Well even in Cantera, but you'll be mostly trading with your own stations and their shipyard(/s if you manage to get the second one running) xD

[PudelHH]

Trade, Fight, Build, and uhhh, what was the last part again? Forget it, I just want to sit back and let the game play itself. It's so immersive that way.

What has "think" to do with tedious busy work? You have to stare more into menus if you want manage all your freighters by hand as if you would just send them on a simple autotrade and go actually play the game (missions, story, fights, stations etc.).

And as already mentioned, if you dont like it, you dont have to do it.

[Clownmug]

Trade, Fight, Build, and uhhh, what was the last part again? Forget it, I just want to sit back and let the game play itself. It's so immersive that way.

What has "think" to do with tedious busy work? You have to stare more into menus if you want manage all your freighters by hand as if you would just send them on a simple autotrade and go actually play the game (missions, story, fights, stations etc.).

And as already mentioned, if you dont like it, you dont have to do it.

Why would someone want to play X games if trading is just busy work for them? I don't get that.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

It is honestly hilarious to me that the "auto-trading is life / auto-trading is cheating" argument is still happening like 15 years after TCS MK3 was introduced.

Some folks like to set up some reasonably intelligent moneymakers while they go do other fun things in the universe.

For some folks, the act of trading is the fun thing so they do it manually.

Neither of those approaches is wrong.

[Sandalpocalypse]

naw, its wrong. There's plenty of depth to build auto-trade empires in the X series without mk3 traders. Players can identify areas with surpluses production and unsatisfied demand and then build trading or production infrastructure to profit. You actually interact with the game universe. This is in direct contrast with mk3 traders, where you have no concern except building more of them and occasional irritation from needing to blacklist particularly dangerous sectors.

Mk3 traders pretty much boiled down to pushing jump drives to their logical limits and therefore revealing all the gameplay problems they engendered. If this software exists- with the ability to scan the whole universe for deals - there's no in-universe reason that every single trader in the universe should be anything other than a mk3 jump trader. But that would be stupid and horrible gameplay because there would be zero opportunities for player conducted trade remaining. So they constituted a player only infinite money source that - and this is the kicker - actually reduced the players to find & conduct trades by removing regional overproduction and filling missing demand in regions that have no native ability to do so.

[Falcrack]

Micro managing your trade fleet gets REALY tedious when your in the middle of a war. Thats what station managers were supposed to be for... but we all know how that turned out.

I don't. My station managers in XR make me a small fortune, sending credits all the time.

To be honest, I never had much of an issue with the trade system in XR. By the time I had a "fleet" I also had several stations and made a lot more assigning ships to them than in manual trades. The ships I did keep for trading were usually just selling off surplus across Systems (or supplying construction vehicles for building). And I also got the 7 trip trade computer upgrade by then, so my ships didn't bother me for quite some time before I needed to set up another trade run.

Part of me thinks that there is this odd disconnect where folks claim they love trading, but to them trading should only consist of telling an NPC to go make them money... then never being bothered by them again. To me that means you don't really like trading at all, you just like having the game give you money. And for that, you should really be setting up factories. IMO trading should require a bit more effort than, "NPC, go trade!"

I like setting up my traders. I would like to have the ability to tell either give them a whitelist of wares to trade in, or a blacklist of wares to not trade in. I would like to give them explicit instructions as to which sectors to trade in, or avoid. After that, I do want to give them the command of "NPC, go trade!", and have them happily go make money and help the galactic economy function more smoothly because they are attempting to fill gaping economic holes based on the current state of supply and demand. I want to be able to be doing my own thing and randomly see one of my autonomous trade ships unexpectedly enter my sector and go about their trading. I want to amass a large fleet of traders, making me obscene amounts of money, so that I can build or buy huge fleets of capital ships and be able to afford to wage war against unsavory factions.

But at the beginning of the game, before I get to that point, while I do not have a ridiculously large empire to manage and can spare the time, I want to individually command my trade ship for specific deals to make the most profit.

This is the appeal of the X games for me. I would also like the NPC traders to do the same thing, even if it means more of a challenge to find profitable deals, because I like a challenge. And since this is not like X3, where it is a race to the factory to buy or sell from it, buying and selling is done before your ship gets there, then this should not be as much of an issue.

[fcth]

Mk3 traders pretty much boiled down to pushing jump drives to their logical limits and therefore revealing all the gameplay problems they engendered.

That's a problem with jump drives though, not with the mk3 itself. If they just functioned like the AI traders sans jumpdrive, that would still be plenty useful. It comes back to the fact that the jumpdrive should have been much more exclusive, either by virtue of being at least an order of magnitude more expensive, or by being a plot item you only got a small number of. Galaxy-wide, you indeed have that awkward question as to why every CPU trader doesn't have one.

It doesn't follow though that being able to hire general purpose CPU traders is bad though. There's no reason the player shouldn't be able to fund the type of trade that everyone else in the galaxy is using. Trading may be fun, but babysitting freighters unable to perform the most basic functions without instruction is just tedious.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

naw, its wrong. There's plenty of depth to build auto-trade empires in the X series without mk3 traders. Players can identify areas with surpluses production and unsatisfied demand and then build trading or production infrastructure to profit. You actually interact with the game universe. This is in direct contrast with mk3 traders, where you have no concern except building more of them and occasional irritation from needing to blacklist particularly dangerous sectors.

Mk3 traders pretty much boiled down to pushing jump drives to their logical limits and therefore revealing all the gameplay problems they engendered. If this software exists- with the ability to scan the whole universe for deals - there's no in-universe reason that every single trader in the universe should be anything other than a mk3 jump trader. But that would be stupid and horrible gameplay because there would be zero opportunities for player conducted trade remaining. So they constituted a player only infinite money source that - and this is the kicker - actually reduced the players to find & conduct trades by removing regional overproduction and filling missing demand in regions that have no native ability to do so.

Well... I can't exactly disagree with paragraph two. Because yeah, that's exactly what happens when you give an auto-trader vision AND instantaneous access to every location in the galaxy.

I strongly suspect the removal of the jumpdrive is going to do a lot to put (potential) player-owned free traders on a more even playing field with everyone else in the universe, since they'll no longer have that instant access to anywhere they want to go. It also makes them considerably more vulnerable to attack, so maintaining escorts/patrols and swatting pirates and Xenon become a LOT more important to keeping them up and running. Hopefully that would make them much less of an almost hassle-free money printer, and more or less as good of an option as any other for income.