4.85 Trading by the numbers

[Xoria]

I spent the past 3 hours this afternoon selecting about 450 more locations for prices that could be added into the economy. Before that can be done, the travel times between the consumption locations and production locations have to be pulled out of Freelancer Companion and put into this chart :
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p35...0upLc8IrY_HuRaA
After that is done, I can use those travel times to calculate prices.

I do not have time to do this all myself, so here's what you can do to help :
Distance in seconds can be calculated from the Authorship Tools button in Freelancer Companion. First make sure that the Settings are as follows:
Average Cruise speed 349
Average speed in trade lanes 1900
Jumpgate / hole delay 15
Trade lane docking delay 10
Base reaching and docking delay 20
Avoid Initially locked gates is Checked
The two other options are UNchecked

Then hit the Authorship Tools button and dump the data to a .csv file. Then open the file in Notepad (spreadsheets probably won't import the entire thing), and you can run CNTRL-F searches to find the distance from any single base to any other base. First type into the search bar the base code you are starting from followed by "," then the base code that you want to "go to". So a search for the time in between Planet Leeds and Planet New London would look exactly like this : br04_01_base","br01_01_base

Run the search. The time is displayed at the end of each line in milliseconds, so you have to divide by 1,000 to get total seconds (just ignore the last 3 digits and round up). So for the above search you should see : 198622
This would be divided by 1,000 and rounded up to 199, which is the number that would be put into the chart.

Obviously, you have to have 4.85 activated to get the correct distance times. If you don't, you'll be producing vastly incorrect data. I can also email you the file with all of the travel times calculated by Freelancer Companion, if you want to get it that way.

I will not be doing all of this myself, so if you want more prices in the economy, then this is how you can help accomplish that.

First, follow the steps I described, and write down the correct numbers for these rows in the chart :
Planet Leeds to Waterloo St
Planet Leeds to Kensington Shipping
Planet Leeds to Gateshead St
Planet Leeds to PL Gran Canaria
Planet Leeds to PL Malta
Then PM me the numbers, and your google account ID (you will have to have a google account to access the spreadsheet). If your numbers are correct, then I can safely assume that you know how to do this correctly, and I'll give you access to this chart to add in travel times.

Hopefully multiple people will work on this, and the project will get done fairly quickly, after which I can use that data to calculate the prices.

If you have any questions, ask them in this thread.

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Check out my
Trade Development Blog
for all the latest news on Nerfs and Final Nails, or to request trade changes.

An Interactive Tour of OSC Routes  | POB Supplies

[FraserTE]

ill be up the most of the night im dying for more trade routes ill see if i can get started on it and post it here give me some time to get it worked out i don't have a Google log in but ill get started tonight
if there's any thing extra just pm with what you already have done and give me a section to do at a time and ill get started on it.

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http://signavatar.com/15890_s.gif
First: You've got a picture in there that's 800x286 pixels. The maximum signature size is 700x250.
Second: Your other picture in the rotation fills the full 700x250 boundaries by itself.
With an image that big, you can't fit any text below it. Please fix this.
-Zuke

A sane man must become insane to look sane
In an insane world.

[Xoria]

First, follow the instructions, or I will not accept your data.

First, follow the steps I described, and write down the correct numbers for these rows in the chart :
Planet Leeds to Waterloo St
Planet Leeds to Kensington Shipping
Planet Leeds to Gateshead St
Planet Leeds to PL Gran Canaria
Planet Leeds to PL Malta
Then PM me the numbers, and your google account ID (you will have to have a google account to access the spreadsheet). If your numbers are correct, then I can safely assume that you know how to do this correctly, and I'll give you access to this chart to add in travel times.

---

Check out my
Trade Development Blog
for all the latest news on Nerfs and Final Nails, or to request trade changes.

An Interactive Tour of OSC Routes  | POB Supplies

[Grimly]

Niobium 499 190 247
Diamonds 595 195 228

hahaha so it ends the worst trade ****.


Well the 2 best routes I've found may be encouraging the power trader

First one is a pretty usual smuggling route but of course not with only 2 steps. It remains also pretty short.
Profit : 5073 c/unit/round
Average time : about 40min

Second on the top I've found is much much much more longer and use all parts of Sirius (except one I particularly hate so there is no problems for me:P)
The real smugglers should look for it since it's using more than half of illegal commodities and also the feared way between bretonia and kusary
Profit : 9357.5 c/unit/round
Average : about 90min

I give this last one for people goes in all Sirius while making money (or getting taxed:))

From Macon base (Burgundy), buy Scrap Metal to next step,
from Planet Marne (Champagne), buy Human Organs to next step,
from Atka Research Station (Sigma 17), buy Synthetic Marijuana to next step,
from Islay base (Edinburgh), buy NOTHING to next step,
from Perth Station (Edinburgh), buy Gaian Wildlife to next step,
from Isehara Terraforming Outpost (Okinawa), buy Plutonium to next step,
from Sunderland Research Station (NewCastle), buy NOTHING to next step,
from Battleship Grimsby (NewCastle), buy Nuclear Devices to first step.


Enjoy that new route. But if you encounter problems, you'd better pay cause the loss will be very important if you don't.
Also dropping cargo beat all and should not exist:), militaries, you're underpaid, get a bribe !

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Taking what's yours since 816 A.S.

[FraserTE]

you might as well forget even thinking about trading in the new system period point blank until the patrolls destructive ability is lowered a tad a transport with no cm's will die instantly.

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http://signavatar.com/15890_s.gif
First: You've got a picture in there that's 800x286 pixels. The maximum signature size is 700x250.
Second: Your other picture in the rotation fills the full 700x250 boundaries by itself.
With an image that big, you can't fit any text below it. Please fix this.
-Zuke

A sane man must become insane to look sane
In an insane world.

[Weedalot]

you might as well forget even thinking about trading in the new system period point blank until the patrolls destructive ability is lowered a tad a transport with no cm's will die instantly.

you forget one thing, the Galia house suppose to be hostile to outsiders.

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♠ Because we can ♠

[Elsdragon]

Honestly, The .:J:. Congress have a very good route.I get payed ~ 2 mil for running reacon for the smuggled goods. About 10 mil each way I think, More if you have more transports.

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No longer a slave to the man!

[MrCynical]

Wow, that's pretty fantabulous, thanks Xoria. Hopefully this will also reduce some of the complaining about the new trade system, or at least give us some numbers to throw back at the complainers.

One of the biggest complaints about the new trading system isn't about profitability (in my case I'm actually making more money per second/minute/hour now, if the calculations are right). It is instead about RP: most of the profitable trade routes require a lawful trader to cross the frontlines between Kusari/Bretonia or Rheinland/Liberty (or, to be more precise, most of the profitable trade circuits have at least one route with these characteristics). No amount of figures can change the fact that this is fairly hideous RP from a trading system designed to make trader RP better.

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No longer active online due to a dwindling amount of non-PvP (trading, pirating, mining, etc.) fun in the new version.

[Xoria]

One of the biggest complaints about the new trading system isn't about profitability (in my case I'm actually making more money per second/minute/hour now, if the calculations are right). It is instead about RP: most of the profitable trade routes require a lawful trader to cross the frontlines between Kusari/Bretonia or Rheinland/Liberty (or, to be more precise, most of the profitable trade circuits have at least one route with these characteristics). No amount of figures can change the fact that this is fairly hideous RP from a trading system designed to make trader RP better.

It certainly is not hideous role-play. In fact, it is totally authentic economics, and indispensable to creating good role-playing.
War creates shortages of valuable goods, and a black market for those goods quickly develops. Transactions that defy blockades/embargoes/laws are more profitable because profit increases as risk increases. That is why an aspirin costs next to nothing and the same amount of cocaine costs much, much more.

War is not going to reduce demand, it is going to increase demand, and the profits created by meeting that demand will be higher than they would be otherwise. You can take a look at any contraband you want. Prohibiting it never decreases the supply flowing in, and it always increases the price. If anything, space transporting across blockades would be much easier than smuggling over land, and smuggling over land is fairly easy.

And think about this : what is the point of role-playing a blockade if no one ever runs the blockade? In this case, Success = Failure, because Success is defined as being able to role-play in a multi-player environment, and to do that there must be multiple people in the environment to role-play with.

Saying that no trade routes should exist that would encourage people to run the blockade is the same as setting things up so that the Liberty/Rheinland jumpgates would not allow the passage of hostiles, and the battleships in the nearby systems are so uber that they don't allow access via the jump holes. So the war might be more "realistic" in certain terms, but it would also be a total waste of time because the opposing forces would never be able to meet each other in combat.

Success = incentives that create multiple opportunities to roleplay a conflict
Failure = removing those incentives, and therefore removing any opportunities for multiplayer interaction

Creating opportunities for role-playing conflict is the winning solution.
Removing those opportunities simply means that you will be sitting all alone in your ship playing with yourself.

This trade system is designed to create as many opportunities for role-playing conflict as possible, between as many different factions as possible, in as many different locations as possible. That is not failure, it is success.

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Check out my
Trade Development Blog
for all the latest news on Nerfs and Final Nails, or to request trade changes.

An Interactive Tour of OSC Routes  | POB Supplies

[Agmen of Eladesor]

I actually like the new trading system a lot better than the old one. Before, even when I was staying within corporate allowed routes, I quite honestly would start my trade route, pick up a book or go start some laundry, and just click and point, click and point...

Now I'm paying attention to where my ship is flying, I'm finding all sorts of new cargo runs that are still in character, and trading has become something that is a lot more fun because it's seriously into RP now. I'm also trying to figure out if we can justify attempting to run a blockade from a corporate standpoint, since we're not involved in certain wars.

As Xoria says, wars CREATE profit opportunities. You just have to find them - like I just found that route with Nukes... Those look very nice, and very much in RP for us to haul. Now to figure out the other two legs of that route for maximum profits.

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Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.