Commodities... how to fix??

[RobertHuntingdon]

I appreciated the efforts of Aaron and crew to make it easier to work with in 1.15, don't get me wrong. The commodities screen is a huge help, and I'm happy they did it. But I think they still stink like raw sewage. They just don't give enough profit to be worth the trouble.

First off, it's hard to get enough stock to make the trip worthwhile. I had to fly back and forth between three separate spacedocks in a sector about 10 times each to get half a cargo load.

Second, it's hard to find a route, and most of those you do find are so long they're not worth sneezing at. Six jumps just ain't worth it IMO. Even if the profit rates were quadrupled.

Third, after spending maybe half an hour flying back and forth between various spacedocks to load up on the commodity I want to trade, I then go three or four jumps away and start selling. When I calculate out my profit, it almost always comes out to right around 6,000 credits. I can get 150% more for a single mission and do two more missions at the same time!

In short, it seems waaay too hard to run commodities for barely enough profit to sneeze at.

So how do we fix that? I don't know -- at least not for sure. I'd like to make it so that commodities sold for less and bought for more, first off. Not sure how to do that. Second I'd like to make buying a more common event. It seems everybody and their brother is selling but nobody ever seems to be buying. But again not sure how. Finally, I'd like to make shipyards sell more per visit. Instead of 3 to 6 I'd say 12 to 18 available for sale... or more.

To prevent it from becoming overpowering I'd probably quadruple most product sizes, meaning you'd have to devote a good chunk of ship space to cargo holds to carry a full load in all three bays. It would become more risky since you couldn't carry as much equipment. That part, unfortunately is easy... but what about the rest?

RH

[Suicide Junkie]

Simply making the cargo large and more expensive per ton, would fix a lot of that.

You'd only need a few to fill your ship, and you'd make proportionally more money and everything.

And its not much mod work either. Just run down the list of commodities and multiply.

[RobertHuntingdon]

That would improve the sell price... but I think that would also increase the buy price, which defeats the purpose.

I want to decrease the buy price (your cost to buy) and increase the sell price (their cost for you to sell to them).

And I still don't know how to make more people willing to buy stuff.

RH

[RobertHuntingdon]

Hope I'm not being a pain... but *bump* anybody else have any ideas on how to do what I'd like to do? Or have any comment at all?

RH

[Suicide Junkie]

It is the simplest way, and although your percentage profit is the same, the big problem of money per time is alleviated.

You will be able to invest a lot more into each cargo run, and thusly a 5% profit becomes worth while.

[Q]

Please correct me if I am wrong but I believe that starfury generates randomly the sell and buy costs of commodities on the base of the initial component value.
Therefore it will not be possibly to make profits bigger on a percent base but only the absolute values as SJ pointed out.
I use commodities only as a additional income: I choose first my jobs and then check if by chance there is a profit to be made at the same time/trip by available commodities.

[RobertHuntingdon]

I believe unfortunately you are correct, which really does annoy me. This could be a nice extra benefit to the game -- the ability to put something valuable into the game for those who like running cargo before they have the power to clean up on enemy ship's leavings. But as it is there's nothing I can do to fix this.

Pity.

Oh well, the rest of my mod is going well. I really only have to deal with Main_Enemies.txt and I'll be ready for playtesting. Check back in a few weeks for the "Race Variety Mod" which will make the races significantly different in ways much more meaningful than what their ships look like.

RH

[Blueoriontiger]

Don't feel that bad.

I run commodites, but I do it this way to offset stuff.

I run them according to the listings as you should, but I offset it by doing jobs to the same system.

You earn money, but not a lot. But its a lot better than zilch. I love this feature, and run back and forth doing it for hours after I'm done with my mission.

I'm working on a mod for more types of commodites, including various canisters of liquids, foods, items and equipments, metals, and many more. Some of the items I have worked on:

Trioxylene Chloride Canister (Crop Pesticide)
Escape Pod
Gold Bars
Silver Bars
Mineral Resource Container
Radioactive Resource Container
Organic Resource Container
Underwater Observatory
Radiation Processor
Solar Panel Array
Solar Wind Array

Will post more later. Stupid sisters...