Having problems with your traders? Are they dumb as &^%@? Want to know why? Great! I don't have the answer. XD This thread (hopefully) will be about figuring this shit out and putting our heads together. And hopefully, this will be helpful for Egosoft too.
If anyone is having problems or if anyone is not having problems, please tell in detail. You can copy and fill out the stuff below if you want.
------------------------------------------------------------
What's your trader's loadout?
------------------------------------------------------------
Pilot skill level (overall):
Pilot skill levels (individual):
- Piloting:
- Moral:
- Management:
- Engineering:
- Boarding:
Ship Loadout
Ship:
Turret:
Shield:
Engine:
Thrusters:
Software:
-
Ship Modifications
-
------------------------------------------------------------
What command is the trader running?
------------------------------------------------------------
Default Sector Trading
Default Galaxy Trading
Custom Trading (please provide details)
------------------------------------------------------------
What's the state of your network system?
------------------------------------------------------------
Do you have satellites?
What kind are you using?
How many are you using (rough estimates are fine)?
How many sectors are covered or partially covered (roughly)?
------------------------------------------------------------
Anything else you can think of
------------------------------------------------------------
Are you doing a lot of flying around and/or exploring?
Do you have stations? How are those doing?
Are you running any game mods? If so, what?
Anything else that you think could possibly be affecting your traders (adversely or positively)?
------------------------------------------------------------
Testing
------------------------------------------------------------
Have you run any controlled tests? What did you find?
AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum
-
Shadowcub
- Posts: 21
- Joined: Mon, 18. Nov 13, 17:33
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
(Reposted from another thread):
I'm currently testing the galaxy auto trade on one trader (I've got all of my other guys empty and docked back at HQ). I dumped all but 1 million credits into the HQ. He'd been going for about two hours and has made 10 trades. I recorded these by hand.
The profits/loss are:
Run 1: +565
2: +863
3: +7279
4: +1989
5: +171
6: +254
7: +14,636
8: +143
9: +2,809
10: +482
Nothing to write home about, but it's creditsss.
Some other information:
The pilot is a two-star pilot.
My personal ship hasn't moved.
My satellite network is total crap right now (I have maybe 10 total satellites up, most of them marking anomolies to see if those are static).
The trader is not set to trade any specific ware(s), just all of them and isn't set to any specific sector range (just right-clicked the map and told it to auto trade the galaxy).
Ship loadout is as follows:
Ship: Hermes Vanguard
Turret: PAR M Bolt Turret Mk1
Shield: PAR M Shield Generator Mk2
Engine: PAR M Travel Engine Mk1
Thrusters: M Combat Thrusters Mk1
Software:
- Flight Assist Software Mk1
- Long-range Scanner Software Mk1
- Basic Scanner
- Trading Computer Extension Mk1
Modifications:
None
I've got a couple of things I'd like to try out as well:
1) Create a ship without the trading system extension and see what happens
- My recon dude doesn't have this, but I can still choose the command to trade.
2) Limiting trade wares
- Will probably limit it to 3 or 5 "crappy" wares like food and energy.
3) Limiting sector range
- Probably something like 1 min, 10 max.
I'm currently testing the galaxy auto trade on one trader (I've got all of my other guys empty and docked back at HQ). I dumped all but 1 million credits into the HQ. He'd been going for about two hours and has made 10 trades. I recorded these by hand.
The profits/loss are:
Run 1: +565
2: +863
3: +7279
4: +1989
5: +171
6: +254
7: +14,636
8: +143
9: +2,809
10: +482
Nothing to write home about, but it's creditsss.
Some other information:
The pilot is a two-star pilot.
My personal ship hasn't moved.
My satellite network is total crap right now (I have maybe 10 total satellites up, most of them marking anomolies to see if those are static).
The trader is not set to trade any specific ware(s), just all of them and isn't set to any specific sector range (just right-clicked the map and told it to auto trade the galaxy).
Ship loadout is as follows:
Ship: Hermes Vanguard
Turret: PAR M Bolt Turret Mk1
Shield: PAR M Shield Generator Mk2
Engine: PAR M Travel Engine Mk1
Thrusters: M Combat Thrusters Mk1
Software:
- Flight Assist Software Mk1
- Long-range Scanner Software Mk1
- Basic Scanner
- Trading Computer Extension Mk1
Modifications:
None
I've got a couple of things I'd like to try out as well:
1) Create a ship without the trading system extension and see what happens
- My recon dude doesn't have this, but I can still choose the command to trade.
2) Limiting trade wares
- Will probably limit it to 3 or 5 "crappy" wares like food and energy.
3) Limiting sector range
- Probably something like 1 min, 10 max.
-
rusky
- Posts: 458
- Joined: Sun, 4. Jan 09, 17:17
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
Wow! Considering i can get close to 100k profit per run queuing them up manually, that seems atrocious to say the least.
And you gpt lucky with no negative trades too which I've seen several times.
And you gpt lucky with no negative trades too which I've seen several times.
-
Rimak
- Posts: 13
- Joined: Fri, 30. Nov 18, 20:49
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
Great that you have started this thread.
So over couple of days I've been collecting and analysing some data.
I am not a power player so I don't have a massive economy, but I am an economist by education and love to dig in into data analysis.
I have:
1 Trader set on Auto-Trade by default action
2 Traders set to Galaxy trade
1 Miner to Ore
1 Miner to Silicone
1 Gas miner to Helium
So my first gripe was that I could not see the purchase prices for the traders so I could only estimate my profits and at first it seemed quite ok, but I was not happy with how big of variance I had in my estimation.
Thankfully this mod appeared on Nexus https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/26
So now I was able to get the acual data.
Then my second annoyance kicked in. The fact that you cannot sort your logs by the vessel or anything is soo freaking annoying, so I basically had to manually transfer logs to spreadsheet. A quick fix would be the ability to export that data, but generally I would love to see both logs and charts for each ship I own.
After analysis my findings were not very cheereful (Note that presented data is very rough and aggregated just for representative purpose):
1 Trader set on Auto-Trade by default action - Bought mostly shit wares and averaged to around 28k an hour
2 Traders set to Galaxy trade - did better, but still could be better with 72k per hour
1 Miner to Ore - roughly 100k an hour with constant of ~25k every 16 minutes
1 Miner to Silicone did double to that with 59k every 16 minutes
1 Gas miner to Helium did not deliver a single run he's just flying around lol.
So the costs for ships were:
Traders - TEL Vulture Sentinel 759k
Miner - TEL Manorina 627k
That means that the galaxy traders would break even in 10.5 hours. BUT!!! each trader also requires some buffer of currency to purchase goods and the more currency you have the better goods you get. I've found a good spot at around 300k, but maybe if it would be more traiders would buy better goods. But with 300 extra buffer break even is pushed to 14.7 hours of trading to break even.
Miners are ready to go right away and break even in around 2.9 hours with Silicone as the target (double that to ore).
So within my universe I with a high degree of certainty can claim that miners are strictly better than traders by a long shot.
Trading needs a serious adjustment. Mostly it is to do that a lot of traders waste significant amounts of time to deliver small amounts of goods like 100 energy cells by a transport that has capacity for 10k. Also constanly taking in account buffer money is super annoying as while with 2 traders keeping in mind 600k was ok having a fleet of 10 or 20 will bring it to total chaos as your current account will be jumping up and down constantly and just understanding how much money you actually have is really difficult. Yes there is a note stating how much you are due from trade, but it is still something you always need to consider and generally speaking not very conveinient.
So over couple of days I've been collecting and analysing some data.
I am not a power player so I don't have a massive economy, but I am an economist by education and love to dig in into data analysis.
I have:
1 Trader set on Auto-Trade by default action
2 Traders set to Galaxy trade
1 Miner to Ore
1 Miner to Silicone
1 Gas miner to Helium
So my first gripe was that I could not see the purchase prices for the traders so I could only estimate my profits and at first it seemed quite ok, but I was not happy with how big of variance I had in my estimation.
Thankfully this mod appeared on Nexus https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/26
So now I was able to get the acual data.
Then my second annoyance kicked in. The fact that you cannot sort your logs by the vessel or anything is soo freaking annoying, so I basically had to manually transfer logs to spreadsheet. A quick fix would be the ability to export that data, but generally I would love to see both logs and charts for each ship I own.
After analysis my findings were not very cheereful (Note that presented data is very rough and aggregated just for representative purpose):
1 Trader set on Auto-Trade by default action - Bought mostly shit wares and averaged to around 28k an hour
2 Traders set to Galaxy trade - did better, but still could be better with 72k per hour
1 Miner to Ore - roughly 100k an hour with constant of ~25k every 16 minutes
1 Miner to Silicone did double to that with 59k every 16 minutes
1 Gas miner to Helium did not deliver a single run he's just flying around lol.
So the costs for ships were:
Traders - TEL Vulture Sentinel 759k
Miner - TEL Manorina 627k
That means that the galaxy traders would break even in 10.5 hours. BUT!!! each trader also requires some buffer of currency to purchase goods and the more currency you have the better goods you get. I've found a good spot at around 300k, but maybe if it would be more traiders would buy better goods. But with 300 extra buffer break even is pushed to 14.7 hours of trading to break even.
Miners are ready to go right away and break even in around 2.9 hours with Silicone as the target (double that to ore).
So within my universe I with a high degree of certainty can claim that miners are strictly better than traders by a long shot.
Trading needs a serious adjustment. Mostly it is to do that a lot of traders waste significant amounts of time to deliver small amounts of goods like 100 energy cells by a transport that has capacity for 10k. Also constanly taking in account buffer money is super annoying as while with 2 traders keeping in mind 600k was ok having a fleet of 10 or 20 will bring it to total chaos as your current account will be jumping up and down constantly and just understanding how much money you actually have is really difficult. Yes there is a note stating how much you are due from trade, but it is still something you always need to consider and generally speaking not very conveinient.
-
Cptkwirk
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Mon, 8. Oct 18, 04:23
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
Hey
So I have been playing around 35 hours so far and I have 10 galaxy traders and 6 auto miners and the credit income is terrible unless you do manual trades and even then only on space fuel.
The problem I seem to notice is the is little demand that hasnt been met across the universe. Even when you have demand and no supply the price difference is terrible. You would think all wares would be like spacefuel with high demand and no supply which is like a 100% price increase whereas all other wares have 10 - 20% increase at the most with no supply and high demand.
Also the 10 - 20% would be ok but with med size rigs (about 8400m3) full you get a profit of 20k if your lucky and thats with some wares a full cargo hold of a risky 400k.
I learnt the hard way also if you dont change the behavior auto setting what to do if told to drop cargo by police they will willingly drop 400k of cargo sometimes way more instantly and you will loose a good amount of time it tookm your 10 or so auto traders to scrape that together
So I have been playing around 35 hours so far and I have 10 galaxy traders and 6 auto miners and the credit income is terrible unless you do manual trades and even then only on space fuel.
The problem I seem to notice is the is little demand that hasnt been met across the universe. Even when you have demand and no supply the price difference is terrible. You would think all wares would be like spacefuel with high demand and no supply which is like a 100% price increase whereas all other wares have 10 - 20% increase at the most with no supply and high demand.
Also the 10 - 20% would be ok but with med size rigs (about 8400m3) full you get a profit of 20k if your lucky and thats with some wares a full cargo hold of a risky 400k.
I learnt the hard way also if you dont change the behavior auto setting what to do if told to drop cargo by police they will willingly drop 400k of cargo sometimes way more instantly and you will loose a good amount of time it tookm your 10 or so auto traders to scrape that together
-
Cptkwirk
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Mon, 8. Oct 18, 04:23
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
I also just wanted to add that with the current performance issues for example I have noticed this game is majorly CPU intensive and only really utilises a couple of cores and i play allot of games on ultra settings and water cooled my cpu never really breaks 50c but with this game so far and only 10 auto traders and satellites over most stations my cpu radiator fans are screaming so I would hate to get 20 or 30 traders going just to get a steady credit income.
-
Accuracy
- Posts: 176
- Joined: Mon, 4. Nov 13, 19:03
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
The auto traders are honestly broken.
I bought myself a mercury M. I did a similar analysis as @Rimak (Seriously good job), but only using calculator and rough estimations and I figured using a miner is a lot more efficient than trading (At least from the roughly estimated profit from the hypothetical trade runs). Same applies to L ships. They are pointless to buy as 3 M sized miners make the same amount of profit as a one huge L sized miner, with the 3 miners costing around 1 million to build and fully outfitted L sized miner around 4 million to build.
Now to the point. I bought the Mercury willing to give autotrading a try and I was severely disappointed. With the default behavior set to auto trade, the trader was buying engine parts for around 570 credits and selling it to another station at a loss... for 550 credits. After noticing this, I spent some time on the forums and some people were suggesting to use galaxy trader instead.
So I switched the behavior to galaxy trader and it was not selling at loss anymore. Issue was that I was making an extremely small amount of profit, usually a few thousand credits, max 20k when lucky.
After this, I decided to specify only one single ware. I decided to roll with computer chips? (I think that is what they were called) which were sold for 1.4k by one station and bought by 1.7k by another. I specified the wares and the trader was at it right away.
Once it arrived to the sector (The sector had two computer chip manufacturers), I noticed in its command chain that it is not going to trade with the station selling the chips for 1.4k, but with the second station inside the sector, which is selling it for 100 credits more, 1.5k. Now this would significantly decrease the profit, so I decided to manually manage trading and never switched the auto trader on ever since.
Now I would like to talk about the miners.
Seeing how successful the miners are, making around 66k per run with silicon (Each 5 to 10 minutes per one miner), I bought a plenty more and I was swimming in millions in no time. I started stagnating at around 4 million credits, because the original buyer has decreased his demand, since he was receiving the silicone at a lot bigger rate, than he was able to process.
There is another buyer 3 jumpgates away, that has a high demand, and I would get around 70k per run again, issue is that the miners keep selling to the one in the closer proximity.
I tried using the "Import wares" command, which worked for the first run, but since this command is added to the queue, it overrides the default behavior and the miners would get stuck trying to sell their empty cargo and would never get back to mining. (I am honestly not sure if this command was even meant to be used like this).
Observations
From what I have stated, I think it is pretty safe to say that the trading AI has either no sense, or an extremely low sense of prices, and prioritizes buying at stations in closer proximity (Does not explain what happened with the computer chip trade run, since the other station was deeper in the sector than the first one).
And we either need a basic loop command, which would basically mean, buy here, sell here and repeat and similarly mine here sell here and repeat, or the trading AI should go through a serious overhaul, because right now, reaching the "Empire" state of the game is a chore and not possible without massive amounts of micro management.
I bought myself a mercury M. I did a similar analysis as @Rimak (Seriously good job), but only using calculator and rough estimations and I figured using a miner is a lot more efficient than trading (At least from the roughly estimated profit from the hypothetical trade runs). Same applies to L ships. They are pointless to buy as 3 M sized miners make the same amount of profit as a one huge L sized miner, with the 3 miners costing around 1 million to build and fully outfitted L sized miner around 4 million to build.
Now to the point. I bought the Mercury willing to give autotrading a try and I was severely disappointed. With the default behavior set to auto trade, the trader was buying engine parts for around 570 credits and selling it to another station at a loss... for 550 credits. After noticing this, I spent some time on the forums and some people were suggesting to use galaxy trader instead.
So I switched the behavior to galaxy trader and it was not selling at loss anymore. Issue was that I was making an extremely small amount of profit, usually a few thousand credits, max 20k when lucky.
After this, I decided to specify only one single ware. I decided to roll with computer chips? (I think that is what they were called) which were sold for 1.4k by one station and bought by 1.7k by another. I specified the wares and the trader was at it right away.
Once it arrived to the sector (The sector had two computer chip manufacturers), I noticed in its command chain that it is not going to trade with the station selling the chips for 1.4k, but with the second station inside the sector, which is selling it for 100 credits more, 1.5k. Now this would significantly decrease the profit, so I decided to manually manage trading and never switched the auto trader on ever since.
Now I would like to talk about the miners.
Seeing how successful the miners are, making around 66k per run with silicon (Each 5 to 10 minutes per one miner), I bought a plenty more and I was swimming in millions in no time. I started stagnating at around 4 million credits, because the original buyer has decreased his demand, since he was receiving the silicone at a lot bigger rate, than he was able to process.
There is another buyer 3 jumpgates away, that has a high demand, and I would get around 70k per run again, issue is that the miners keep selling to the one in the closer proximity.
I tried using the "Import wares" command, which worked for the first run, but since this command is added to the queue, it overrides the default behavior and the miners would get stuck trying to sell their empty cargo and would never get back to mining. (I am honestly not sure if this command was even meant to be used like this).
Observations
From what I have stated, I think it is pretty safe to say that the trading AI has either no sense, or an extremely low sense of prices, and prioritizes buying at stations in closer proximity (Does not explain what happened with the computer chip trade run, since the other station was deeper in the sector than the first one).
And we either need a basic loop command, which would basically mean, buy here, sell here and repeat and similarly mine here sell here and repeat, or the trading AI should go through a serious overhaul, because right now, reaching the "Empire" state of the game is a chore and not possible without massive amounts of micro management.
-
Shadowcub
- Posts: 21
- Joined: Mon, 18. Nov 13, 17:33
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
Quick update: a couple of people on my channel are reporting that low level pilots are the issue for profit loss for them. When those pilots level or when using higher level pilots, the issue is alleviated or erased.
With this info, I'll be trying out that mod on Nexus tonight: https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations ... ?tab=files
I'd like to find a complete turd of a pilot (like level 0, if that exists—I haven't been paying much attention to people in docks) and see how his level gains affect his trading. Might do a full on spreadsheet of the trades. If I do, I'll share it here so folks can see the results as they roll in.
With this info, I'll be trying out that mod on Nexus tonight: https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations ... ?tab=files
I'd like to find a complete turd of a pilot (like level 0, if that exists—I haven't been paying much attention to people in docks) and see how his level gains affect his trading. Might do a full on spreadsheet of the trades. If I do, I'll share it here so folks can see the results as they roll in.
-
BlackRain
- Moderator (Script&Mod)
- Posts: 7465
- Joined: Mon, 15. Dec 03, 18:53
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
Check latest beta vs1.21. They fixed sutotrader negative value trades
-
Scoob
- Posts: 11189
- Joined: Thu, 27. Feb 03, 22:28
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
Mine won't even trade!
I have two Auto-traders, one with an 18 sector range the other has 28. So, they can range far and wide with ease.
I'd been manually ordering trades for these two guys - exclusively Microchips - as there was always a profitable trade available. So, I thought allowing these ships to just trade Microchips would have a good chance of ensuring a profit - they'll not be picking up duff wares.
However, since issuing the order, each ship just wanders about near where I issued the command. They're assigned to my HQ, which has a budget of 1 million credits, which should be enough to get them started. I know there are fixes in 1.21, but they're more for low profit runs rather than not doing anything.
If anyone has any tips, or perhaps a checklist, I'll continue to test. I thought I might be on to something, limiting them to a known good commodity, but nope lol.
Edit: Perhaps I was being dumb. Right-click: Autotrade (Galaxy) does nothing, but setting the default behaviour to Autotrade works. Just need to monitor profit now. Question: Can I assign this M-Class trade ship to a Station and have it continue to autotrade? X4 doesn't let us simply assign a ship to a station, it seem to want to force it to a specific job, not the one I've picked.
Scoob.
I have two Auto-traders, one with an 18 sector range the other has 28. So, they can range far and wide with ease.
I'd been manually ordering trades for these two guys - exclusively Microchips - as there was always a profitable trade available. So, I thought allowing these ships to just trade Microchips would have a good chance of ensuring a profit - they'll not be picking up duff wares.
However, since issuing the order, each ship just wanders about near where I issued the command. They're assigned to my HQ, which has a budget of 1 million credits, which should be enough to get them started. I know there are fixes in 1.21, but they're more for low profit runs rather than not doing anything.
If anyone has any tips, or perhaps a checklist, I'll continue to test. I thought I might be on to something, limiting them to a known good commodity, but nope lol.
Edit: Perhaps I was being dumb. Right-click: Autotrade (Galaxy) does nothing, but setting the default behaviour to Autotrade works. Just need to monitor profit now. Question: Can I assign this M-Class trade ship to a Station and have it continue to autotrade? X4 doesn't let us simply assign a ship to a station, it seem to want to force it to a specific job, not the one I've picked.
Scoob.
-
Shadowcub
- Posts: 21
- Joined: Mon, 18. Nov 13, 17:33
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
Right on! Thanks, man. For anyone looking for info on how to get into the beta: https://steamcommunity.com/app/392160/d ... 098554541/
If running from Steam, enter the beta code: IBackedUpMySaves
...And back up your saves? XD
I am still going to do the testing. I found a spectacularly crap pilot (0s in everything) and really want to see how their levels affect trade locations and profitsss.
If anyone wants to check out the results as they come in, the spreadsheet is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
-
Ramokthan
- Posts: 107
- Joined: Fri, 22. Apr 16, 21:25
Re: AutoTrader Testing, Results, and Issues
I don't have very precise values but i kept track ab bit of my bank account while playing.
I currently have around 8 Demeter Trader working on galaxy trade, each of them started in another sector.
Every Demeter ship is equipped with at least 3 star pilots. (I made the ship buy/sell game lol)
Well as i already often notice, even tho they are set to galaxy trade they are unlikely to leave their starting sector and rather wait for another trade within the sector before moving to do trades in another sectors... very weird.
My satellite network is full cover, means every station i know has a satellite around. I guess around 200-300 stations are currently monitored.
I played a bit fighting in xenon sectors without making any direct money going to my bank, so all changes to my bank account would have been traders only.
After about 3 hours there was a profit of about 1 million (22 million to 23 million approx. including the outstanding trades.)
Breaking that down its approx a income of 40k per trader per hour.
Well pretty ****** in my opinion, they dont seem to be good in finding good trades and do a lot of micro trades with like 1000 credits and less instead of moving to another sector to do better trades... which are there... i monitor some wares and even within the same sector there are very good trades available, for example energy cells sold for 10 cr and bought for 14 in a station of the same sector.
I wish the old good trading script from x3 back
They made good deals all the way, and traded over sectors without a hassle.
Thinking about moving back to X3 again and play that again. XD
I currently have around 8 Demeter Trader working on galaxy trade, each of them started in another sector.
Every Demeter ship is equipped with at least 3 star pilots. (I made the ship buy/sell game lol)
Well as i already often notice, even tho they are set to galaxy trade they are unlikely to leave their starting sector and rather wait for another trade within the sector before moving to do trades in another sectors... very weird.
My satellite network is full cover, means every station i know has a satellite around. I guess around 200-300 stations are currently monitored.
I played a bit fighting in xenon sectors without making any direct money going to my bank, so all changes to my bank account would have been traders only.
After about 3 hours there was a profit of about 1 million (22 million to 23 million approx. including the outstanding trades.)
Breaking that down its approx a income of 40k per trader per hour.
Well pretty ****** in my opinion, they dont seem to be good in finding good trades and do a lot of micro trades with like 1000 credits and less instead of moving to another sector to do better trades... which are there... i monitor some wares and even within the same sector there are very good trades available, for example energy cells sold for 10 cr and bought for 14 in a station of the same sector.
I wish the old good trading script from x3 back
They made good deals all the way, and traded over sectors without a hassle.
Thinking about moving back to X3 again and play that again. XD