I'm not sure when you implemented the new system of instantaneous market tanking, but it's really hurt trade profits. I'm not saying that closing the loophole on large bulk sales is a bad thing, but rather, the market just tanks too damn fast.

You can lose a sizable amount of your profit before you finish selling your very first moth load, which effectively negates the purpose of having large trade ships to make bulk deliveries. It also makes any group efforts at trading completely futile, and reduces the immediate re-usability of any trade routes to effectively nil.. this further decreases player interaction as traders are spread more thin throughout the universe, rather than sticking to well-used and profitable routes prone to interdiction, and adds to the tediousness and boredom of moving from station to station in one system making multiple micro-transactions to keep form losing money on one bulk load. It's also made mining much less profitable, as a single miner can mine and sell enough rare ores to completely tank the economy across a system in less than half an hour, and it can take days to recover, so it's seldom that the prices ever recover at all, and miners are forced to sell off their valuable ores at a huge reduction in price, or travel multiple systems to sell each moth load at a different station.

ITT: We should halve, of even quarter the rate at which sale prices drop off with the size of a sale. Profits shouldn't make a noticeable drop until you're selling MORE THAN 200-300u of cargo, so that at least single trips in an XC mean something.

The rate of return between trading and escorting is way out of proportion. At present, convoys will pay 3-4x per escort for protection what any trader in an XC can make on that route. It just doesn't even make sense, and is like adding insult to injury to the traders who go through the trouble of hauling goods for so little return.

Currently it seems that weapons drop off even faster, enough that selling 100u of weapons will always tank the market so hard that you're selling them at a huge loss... either that or the built-in profit cuts of the stations on weapons compounds the problem. This should be fixed, to encourage more dangerous, but lucrative weapon sales in grey space.

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Everybody's been saying this pretty much since they did it. The devs have, in return promised a non-broken economy Soon. I think the problem is that they started to fix it and didn't finish, but the half-fix made things worse overall.

My suggestion would be to put it back to roughly how it was a couple years ago now, and fix the whole thing all at once when they have time.

i always seem to make some good cash with divinia spices

I proclaim traders are too lazy to find new routes often and just want a lazy way to make millions

Increase market tanking 30%!

As a trader / former trader. I don't really know what I like to do anymore tbh, I hereby proclaim myself to god damned lazy to fly across 7 or so systems for a trade or to find a new route after each transaction.

Leave things the way they are. Bitching on the forums is far more entertaining than playing VO anyway :p

Seriously though, this is still an aspect of the game that is in transition. A more robust and dynamic trading system well designed could make the wait more than worthwhile. Just think how silly it is that a player can still buy an unlimited number of items at the same price. The devs may be hard of hearing, but they do sort of listen. Besides Soon(tm) has to come eventually. Right? Its clear sailing once all the android work is done!

-1

I havent found much problem with routes tanking and frankly The current trading system is still way to easy to make money in. I can still usually earn 2 million an hour if I want.

I would add Pa, that just learning what sells well station type to station type, that a player can easily make a fortune wandering around without any need for further research.

I agree with PaKettle and Fluffy, though I believe something needs to be done with ore tanking.

To be fair Earthshine, I agree with much of what you are saying here as its been said many times over.

Yes, the drop offs are too sharp overall. However, I do disagree with you that 120-200 cube loads tend to lose money. I can average 70,000cr to 100,000cr for 120 cube station to station (my profits increase if I can be assed to fly an XC). Sure, some of them are going to be quite a bit less than that, but overall, that's what I expect to make doing the honey bee trade- and this isn't even looking for the plum routes that we used to find and milk to 200,000 cube. Just plain old average routes. I actually find this more productive than running porn from Odia to Itan or Sol II.

And yes, Escorts still pay too much for what is required.

I guess I'm just fed up with the tinkering that gets done when the frustration gets too loud, since I've yet to be impressed by any of it. Now, unlike some who have faith, I don't personally believe in Soon(tm), however, I do think that an expansion of crafting goods to include trade items, and a bit more dynamic trade environment are at least plausible. ;)

Edit: We used to spend days milking a trade run. If someone beat us to the sell, we would just sit on it for a while. hint <a hog 2 is often my most profitable trade ship> hint

You can still load up certain stations with 50k of certain items and make 2k per cu static profit.

Shut up and trade weapons/static trade routes.

They're far more profitable anyways.

I've been able to make a killing recently by just trading a few things between stations in the same system. Dunno what the problem is...

"You can lose a sizable amount of your profit before you finish selling your very first moth load, which effectively negates the purpose of having large trade ships to make bulk deliveries."

I cannot comment on the tanking rate, however I can say this: even if tanking is such a problem, the cargo space is still useful. Just carry smaller amounts of several goods instead of 200 of a single item.

At present, convoys will pay 3-4x per escort for protection what any trader in an XC can make on that route.

Really makes no sense, since escort pay is related to escort profit.

This results that stations pays much higher prices, without tanking, for NPCs. What is not fair.

How do you know escort pay is related to profit?

Maybe the escorts are run by the TSA?

@tarenty:
Are you serious? :-O
Mission text says that. Mission pay is related to cargo content, so for better profits many use a cargo scanner, and abort cheap cargo missions...

And since the bots pay 0 credits for their cargo, the entire lot is profit...

I haven't read escort mission text in fourteen months.