Auto-trade

[werewolves?]

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.

Because a lot of people work at the meta-economy level, not individual trades: building more stations, Rebuilding the Terran economy etc. The spice must flow etc.

At the end of the day though, serious trade will probably follow the Rebirth style capship traders, not 100s of Mistrals or Springblossoms. The outlay for capship traders means even if autotraders exist the investment required balances the ‘infinite profits’.

[nemesis1982]

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.

Yeah because thinking and doing menial repetitive tasks is the same... Scheduling trade runs might be something you enjoy however that's not something everyone enjoys. I prefer to spend more time on the think stuff and let the AI do the menial labor

[MegaJohnny]

I think some amount of free-agent auto trading fits in the game thematically. Station worker ships are already quite set-and-forget, after all.

Could you balance auto-traders by limiting them to trades you can see? I think in X3 they could go to sectors and stations you'd never seen before - if they could only use trade offers available to the player, it would at least limit them to places where you already have influence.

[Skeeter]

If it's universal traders that this is about I'd personally not miss them, yes there nice to have as they make money while u do nothing but imo that's a bit of a cheat. Rather make my fortune by manually doing things for money not sending a trader to auto trade as that's no fun and sets bad habits.

[Alci]

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

TLDR: it's fun for first 50-100hrs and for 3-5 ships. Beyond that you rather do the decision making.

I call it progress. It's in most games. At start you collect every trash to get you few coins. But that doesn't mean you want to do it after 200h in the game.

In X2/3 it was always the same. Fly your own hauler. Then you buy few others and keep sending them manually. Then build a factory and assign more haulers to it. And since then only do the "thinking" part AKA decision making. Building factories, looking for good opportunity, good placement, getting enough resources for building it with all ships needed to make it automatic.

Not wanting to babysit 50 dolphins all over the place doesn't mean I dislike trade. You still control few to direct resources manually where needed. And when they are not doing anything because I do some other fun stuff they are best handled by Mk3. It's not endgame anyway, you could only have few of them. Having 50 Mk3 and all they did was trying to stock at single source because there was no coordination and they all were seeing the same opportunity.

Trading in general is about knowledge of the market, commodities and economy dynamics. Knowing the prices, helping others to being able not to care about it that much, etc. In X games there is only very little of "trading" really. And it can be fun for only so long. Then you move to other aspects

[Vandragorax]

As mentioned already, we've seen that Sector and Universe traders are still available in X4. We also know that with the removal of Jump Drives, things will be a lot less "cheaty" because said trader will physically have to fly around to perform the trades.

This makes them vulnerable to: being destroyed, sale sniping (another NPC gets there and buys/sells first), or simply being too slow to make a decent profit.

We don't know yet what percentage cut they will take either, I'd hope it's a significant chunk, but then they are kind of gambling with your money too and it seems possible that one might lose money in a trade if bad stuff happens (as listed above).

I feel that they will be a lot better balanced simply through the removal of JD's than they were in X3, but we will see

[LameFox]

As mentioned already, we've seen that Sector and Universe traders are still available in X4. We also know that with the removal of Jump Drives, things will be a lot less "cheaty" because said trader will physically have to fly around to perform the trades.

This makes them vulnerable to: being destroyed, sale sniping (another NPC gets there and buys/sells first), or simply being too slow to make a decent profit.

We don't know yet what percentage cut they will take either, I'd hope it's a significant chunk, but then they are kind of gambling with your money too and it seems possible that one might lose money in a trade if bad stuff happens (as listed above).

I feel that they will be a lot better balanced simply through the removal of JD's than they were in X3, but we will see

It's possible that they are an exception, but I'm sure it was said somewhere (maybe in one of the Q&A threads) that crews only have an up-front cost rather than pay.

Although personally I don't really see why there would be complaints over automated trading as compared to things like factories or mining. It appears to me that 'printing money' so to speak is far from a thing limited to trade ships, and that anyone who dislikes it in particular can simply not use it, as they are not at all required (or even able) to compete with players who do.

[DavidGW]

sale sniping (another NPC gets there and buys/sells first), or simply being too slow to make a decent profit.

Well, we don't yet know how trading works in X4. If it's like in X Rebirth, then there is no fear of sales sniping, as as far as I can remember, trade prices are negotiated at the initiation of the trade run, not when the goods transfer takes place.

So your auto-trader might be able to lock in a great, low purchase price, plus a tastily high sell price, all in a couple of moments, before even moving an inch. Depending on how things work, they might also be able to lock in one or two more lucrative trade runs, with pre-negotiated prices, to be executed in the near future, after the current ones are complete.

I'm hoping it's possible to build a large number of small, fast ships and group them all together into a trading swarm that will execute trades as if it was one larger ship.

[Vandragorax]

sale sniping (another NPC gets there and buys/sells first), or simply being too slow to make a decent profit.

Well, we don't yet know how trading works in X4. If it's like in X Rebirth, then there is no fear of sales sniping, as as far as I can remember, trade prices are negotiated at the initiation of the trade run, not when the goods transfer takes place.

Yes good point, I had neglected that it was changed to behave like this in Rebirth. Well even if that is the case, the removal of Jump Drives still makes a huge impact on how efficient at money making a Universe Trader could really be

[atavistuk]

And with no Jump Drive, you'll actually have to look after your Traders now, instead of just setting them up and forgetting about them. So it won't be mindless money-printing. So they will be far more balanced than in X3

[spankahontis]

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!"

Wasn't until you got the Ship Parts, Drones, Reinforced Metal Plates and Turrets/Missile Factories (Once they were fixed) that you started to make some serious money.

[DaMuncha]

Well I started building my first station, it got half way done, I poored the rest of my money into it, then the manager wasted it on things like meatstakes, and it never got built.

[Alan Phipps]

That would probably be because in X Rebirth you should pay or supply and assign ships to the Architect for building the station and not to the Manager.

[Solflame]

I think in one of the trailers, they gave a "buy this stuff" order, and then you immediately see the money get pulled from their account ala XR, so it might be the same way. Not 100% though.

[reanor]

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

That sounds like a hint to something interesting, right? If you have information that we don't, it is assuring, but on the other hand a bit concerning. Or you are just trying to stay positive, in that case its very concerning and not assuring at all. Considering the messy XR release, my faith into X devs balances on a thin line of rope between "they will deliver this time" and "another disaster". I will try to inch towards the first because I love X series games, ther is nothing really like that out there. But if they release unpolished and unfinished game again, and I have to wait 1-2 years for it to be finished, it will completely break my trust into egosoft... keeping my fingers crossed for a success this time, but yet again, considering their reputation having almost all release buggy, I just don't know what to think. It makes me sick in stomach .

[CorruptUser]

Eh, the real money printing in XR was to go to a sector that had a looped highway system, and just go in a circle accepting every last patrol and raid quest, and that's not including the stacked bonus for kills or if you had a Fulmekron patrolling the sectors to get a STACKED bonus for the kills.

[Combat Wombat]

I mean, didn't we see Auto-Trade (Sector) and Auto-Trade (Galaxy) in the map in one of the early trailers? I keep seeing people asking whether or not it is in for players but I know I saw it there! I'll try and find a timestamp.

EDIT: Found it! Very first large gameplay reveal too! XCON 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeYbb0hf10U&t=10m46s, pause as soon as the context menu opens!

And for anyone not able to open videos

[BlackDog]

Welp, id say that conclusively answers the question, auto trade is in.

Long live glorious meatsteak empires!

or perhaps Argon Whiskey bootlegging empires? Wonder if that stuff is still around in X4, and if its still illegal basicly everywhere but argon

[Tenlar Scarflame]

I mean, didn't we see Auto-Trade (Sector) and Auto-Trade (Galaxy) in the map in one of the early trailers? I keep seeing people asking whether or not it is in for players but I know I saw it there! I'll try and find a timestamp.

EDIT: Found it! Very first large gameplay reveal too! XCON 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeYbb0hf10U&t=10m46s, pause as soon as the context menu opens!

And for anyone not able to open videos (screenshot that shows Auto-Trade options)

Welp, there we (probably... good point made in the post below this one) have it. ^^

So now, the main question is what kind of knobs and dials will we have to control our auto-traders, like route whitelists/blacklists or preferred wares.

[sd_jasper]

Just because something is in the game's alpha footage, doesn't mean it'll be in the final game. IIRC there was a "multiplayer" menu in one of the videos also.