[Feature Update Request] Trade filters

[Daggani]

There is one variable I wish I could filter in the trade results that occur. That would be a minimum amount of "buy/sell" amount.


Nothing is more frustrating than the current best price in the known galaxy being a buy order of 1. Many of the trade goods that need traded in bulk to make profit (Food rations, energy cells, etc) also will give lots of Best price results of small amount of 1-100. As a human, we can scroll in and manually hunt for a better bulk order.

However, this also interferes with the AI trader ability to effectively trade. When you hand over control to the AI system to Auto trade, it looks for the best price and lowest price. It will go and buy the EXACT amount needed for the buy order.


Example: Your trader is trading Food rations. They identify the lowest cost of 33 and highest paid price of 48. However it fails to check buy order amounts to compare what is best. So what does it do? Well, that buy price of 48 is a buy order for 3 rations. So your trader flys to the station, buys 3 rations for 33. Now it heads over to the sell location and sells 3 rations for 43. You made a total profit of 30 credits for all their efforts.


What's more frustrating about the AI trader... is the station next to it will have a Buy order for the 42 (or even the exact same 43) with a buy order amount of a few thousand. BUT it picked the buy order for a total of 3....



The solution to this issue would be the addition of a filter for minimum order amounts. If you could say "Only fill orders of at least XXX" then you can avoid the excessive waste of time of filling pointless order sizes.

[cyngve]

For trade filters it's already there, if you look where you can set how many items to show, you can also select the amout stored/needed to be displayed.
I use this for manual trading.

[Daggani]

For trade filters it's already there, if you look where you can set how many items to show, you can also select the amout stored/needed to be displayed.
I use this for manual trading.

I think I found what you mean where it allows to filter by "Volume" which is absolutely amazing for manual trade command.

However, the auto AI still seems to be unable to filter this... unless I am missing that somewhere as well? They just go for the best price, regardless of volume.

[Unclejack]

I have noticed my auto-traders were also falling for the trap of best buy and sale values without regarding total volume. I haven't checked in detail though and I haven't followed my traders for an extensive period of time. I did see case examples where my trader buys about 30-40 energy cells and sells them for a small profit somewhere else, granting me about 30-60 credits, but also a REP increase with the argon or teladi. I wonder whether a trader might get better with rank/over time? Regardless, I started buying only mining ships to start my trading empire for now..