Questions about Auto Trading

[Isqander]

So I have managed to build up a nice little trading fleet , 32 ships of different sizes and they are all set to Auto Trade Galaxy . I have satellites covering all stations I have discovered to far to keep trade info up to date at all times . Everything was good until I bought my first freighter , I decided to check in on it after it was trading for a few hours and I noticed it was only using about 5% of its cargo hold , can I change it so it has to use at least 50% , its not really making cash if its not full . all my ships only have the mrk 1 trading computer , will this stop being a problem when I eventually get the mrk 2 ? . all my other ships have the same problem but because they are a lot faster its not as big of an issue , I don't want my freighter traveling for 30 mins to only make me 5000 credits , also I see there are some sort of trading licences for sale off faction reps , what exactly do they do ?

[respaekt]

Its seems right now its more a problem that the automining/trading system are still buggy.
You can see the amount of credits all your ships make in the menu on the top left ( Number due from trades = worth of all trades deal your ships are doing right now), as long thats positive you earn money, thats important. i got 100 Ships and i get 2mill credits. They also doe 50$ runs, cant do anything abpout it.
Dont forget this is a realtime sandbox game, it can take days to build a multimillion and weeks to build a multibillion $ company.

[Ranix]

The freighters don't take large batches when autotrading, I found it more useful to use small ships for autotrading. You can field more of them so they can head to multiple locations simultaneously with small loads. It costs me about 300k for a Magpie.

I have two Mercuries doing sector trading within 2 jumps of Argon Prime and Grand Exchange or wherever that sector with

Spoiler

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the phq in it

is called, several mining ships maybe 5 or 6? And I have seven Magpies selling energy cells and sunrise flowers out of my headquarters. I'm just starting to pull enough income to expand.

I'm prioritizing shipping even the small wares because it stimulates the economy. You might get a ****** payout for energy cells but you get microchips or teladianium or whatever later for dropping them off and enabling production. Hence the sunrise flowers

[pref]

It usually pays off better to have small fast ships do autotrading, even in x3 springys made more cash on average then high capacity freighters.
Its not easy to balance the unknown factor of future trade offers vs a lower but sure income. You are making money that way, even though its a low amount - while waiting for a high volume buy and sale offer that match might get you less profits in the end overall.

The faction subscription should get you live trade offer updates for the faction. Better to pay 15m when you have enough cash then placing the sats for each station (though obviously you cannot monitor traffic like that so depending on how you play sats might still be the better option).

[Cerulius]

The problem I run into with auto trade galaxy is having the demand shrink to a loss before my trader reaches the station where they will sell. So, they end up sitting in space with nowhere to go since their hold is full of a product I cant profit on.

I have plans to create my own supply to fix. I figure a little creativity will get things moving, but auto trade does need some tweaks for sure

[digitist]

I let two Vultures go at it for ten hours straight. Though they were set to trade in Galaxy, I don't think they ever left the systems they started in. Total value in trades, almost 9 million, total profit for me, 500k.

That is staggeringly bad.