Elite: Odyssey

Sakashiro
20 Oct 2021, 4:17pm
ArtieYes, with the right prices, it can. For example - you have a trade route A->B->A with a profit 20k per unit. Let's say you have a ship with 500 units of cargo capacity and you are able to make 4 runs in an hour, which is 40 millions credits of profit. With a fleet carrier nearby, which will provide just 17k of profit per unit, but you will be able to make 5 runs in an hour, your overall profit is 42.5 millions. Definitely interesting for the trader. When balanced on both ends (selling and buying the commodities), you as a fleet carrier owner can have a profit based on the price differences.

As you said, the spread between minimum buy and maximum sell prices must be wide enough to make this work on both ends, otherwise you'll still be doing half of the hauling between station and carrier yourself.

Let's look at silver for an example. Minimum buy price is 3,033 Cr, maximum sell price is 49,426 Cr. So the total profit per unit is 46,393 Cr. Loading silver into your carrier takes about the same amount of time as unloading it, and you want to pay someone else on either side to do it for you. This means your buy offer can't be higher, and your sell offer can't be lower than the median price of (49,426 + 3,033) / 2 = 26,230 Cr, or you will take a loss and/or do half the hauling yourself.

And now look at this from another player's perspective: You have the choice between hauling silver to a station a few systems away and make 46,393 Cr per unit, or hauling it to my carrier (or from my carrier, depending on where you are) for only half that profit. Trading with my carrier makes sense only if it cuts your travel time in half, or you will take a loss.

Due to the upside down relationship between long and short distance travel in ED, most of the time of a trade run is spent in supercruise between main star and station/settlement and on docking/undocking. Hyperjumps make up only a small fraction of total travel time unless you're flying some E-rated build. This makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to generate passive income from commodity trading with a carrier. A carrier in the middle of a trade turns a single trade run into two, and has to be competitive on both ends. I've done trade runs for a while now and have never seen an attractive trade opportunity involving a carrier on either end. So it's really just for fringe cases like the aforementioned CGs or the booze cruise with Rackham's.
Burstar
20 Oct 2021, 4:26pm
Why are you fixated on Silver? OFC that's not going to work because its base value is too low to be worth it. Nobodies suggesting to set up a silverware shop... We're talking high end goods where the base value is at least 60k. The higher the better. Also if you think mined only ores then that shaves the base price off the deductions. Think Palladium, Gold, Osmium, Platinum, Core mined only ores, etc., not silver.

"I don't get it, no matter how I do the math, you can't make decent money trading water! Essential for life even! What gives?!"
ZEN Industries
20 Oct 2021, 5:10pm
To return to carriers... Two main reasons for they existence:

1. Secondary one (but promoted as main one) is for traveling far and exploring.
2. Main one is for managing your Minor Faction.

Just think about it... I'm trying to find 10 decent people to create Group/Squadron, so I can apply for Minor faction and maybe Frontier allow me to create Minor Faction which will elevate game purpose for me. Without carrier you hardly can compete with other factions.

Oh I do love exploration, and carrier will help but to prepare solid expedition you need lots of credits and time, so that returns us to carrier basic function... just another trade station.

In 1984 when I start playing Elite game was based 80% on trading and 10% piracy (again for trading) and 10% rest, BUT all based on flying spaceships. Now we have mix of Simulations (flying, driving, managing)/FPS/Strategy (Powerplay/Minor Factions) and with bit addition of RPG (during CG's). Freedom of Elite isn't for every player, someone will love it, someone will hate it and call it pointless game, but even those who love it, half of them miss just a bit of goal (that was why they invented Community Goals).
In basic game is cold as space leaving you to do whatever you decide to do without any benefits or punishment. You can go to anarchy system and have fun killing belugas with tourist, and no one will judge you, except maybe some other player, but game mechanic won't moralize your acts. And that is what people basically don't like... 99% of people need at least bit of guidance toward some goal, or they are lost in freedom.
So we can judge FDev's for making exceptions promoting Odyssey, since they release it too unfinished, not even talking about unpolished, but we also should understand why they do that because they know what community thinks about game now.
There was major mistakes in May this year whit release of alpha, so big that I quit playing till August (patch 6) and I paid Odyssey in February to support company not rushing anyone to release unfinished game. I wouldn't mind if they release Odyssey now or in 2025... but working one, not this half payable product. Buying Odyssey was a way to support FDev's and community, not wish to play another FPS.

That my 10 cents... my 2 cents is free!
Artie
20 Oct 2021, 5:25pm
Sakashiro
Let's look at silver for an example. Minimum buy price is 3,033 Cr, maximum sell price is 49,426 Cr. So the total profit per unit is 46,393 Cr. Loading silver into your carrier takes about the same amount of time as unloading it, and you want to pay someone else on either side to do it for you. This means your buy offer can't be higher, and your sell offer can't be lower than the median price of (49,426 + 3,033) / 2 = 26,230 Cr, or you will take a loss and/or do half the hauling yourself.

Well, let's take that silver example and the 46,393 Cr profit. Under the ideal conditions, assuming there is a high supply and the target station is close, so travel time is negligible (you will travel between these stations a same time as to the local fleet carrier) you are right - it doesn't make sense. BUT, when you are able to make even a single run per hour extra, things will get interesting:
  • Let's say you are hauling just one unit of Silver at a time, with a profit 46,393 Cr and you are able to make 5 runs per hour, with a total profit 231,965 Cr per unit.
  • Now, let's say there is a local fleet carrier, but relatively distant, so you will get just an extra run per hour (6 runs in total), which means that for the overall profit 231,965 Cr per unit your profit per unit needs to be just 38,661 Cr to be equal with a profit of the distant regular station. This is the range where your margins are - you can set the sell price somewhere between 41,694 and 49,426 Cr and it still will be at least equally profitable for the seller, for the same time, just with less jumps. That's ~7.700 Cr difference you can operate with.
  • Let's say you will cut just 2,000 Cr from the profit difference as your margin and the remaining 5,600 Cr will be used as an extra incentive for traders to trade with your carrier. If you will trade in large, let's say you request 10,000 units of Silver, you will have 20 millions of profit extra for nothing, assuming you will be able to sell that Silver at the target station for the price mentioned (you can do a similar thing for unloading the Silver at the destination). It's beneficial to both participants - you will get profit for just a little work, traders will get a better profit per hour than they will get when travelling to the distant stations. It's a win-win. Why I should, as a trader, fly to a relatively distant regular station when I get much better overall profit from a fleet carrier right under my nose?


Last edit: 20 Oct 2021, 5:38pm
Burstar
20 Oct 2021, 6:41pm
Artie
Sakashiro
Let's look at silver for an example. Minimum buy price is 3,033 Cr, maximum sell price is 49,426 Cr. So the total profit per unit is 46,393 Cr. Loading silver into your carrier takes about the same amount of time as unloading it, and you want to pay someone else on either side to do it for you. This means your buy offer can't be higher, and your sell offer can't be lower than the median price of (49,426 + 3,033) / 2 = 26,230 Cr, or you will take a loss and/or do half the hauling yourself.


Well, let's take that silver example and the 46,393 Cr profit. Under the ideal conditions, assuming there is a high supply and the target station is close, so travel time is negligible (you will travel between these stations a same time as to the local fleet carrier) you are right - it doesn't make sense. BUT, when you are able to make even a single run per hour extra, things will get interesting:
  • Let's say you are hauling just one unit of Silver at a time, with a profit 46,393 Cr and you are able to make 5 runs per hour, with a total profit 231,965 Cr per unit.
  • Now, let's say there is a local fleet carrier, but relatively distant, so you will get just an extra run per hour (6 runs in total), which means that for the overall profit 231,965 Cr per unit your profit per unit needs to be just 38,661 Cr to be equal with a profit of the distant regular station. This is the range where your margins are - you can set the sell price somewhere between 41,694 and 49,426 Cr and it still will be at least equally profitable for the seller, for the same time, just with less jumps. That's ~7.700 Cr difference you can operate with.
  • Let's say you will cut just 2,000 Cr from the profit difference as your margin and the remaining 5,600 Cr will be used as an extra incentive for traders to trade with your carrier. If you will trade in large, let's say you request 10,000 units of Silver, you will have 20 millions of profit extra for nothing, assuming you will be able to sell that Silver at the target station for the price mentioned (you can do a similar thing for unloading the Silver at the destination). It's beneficial to both participants - you will get profit for just a little work, traders will get a better profit per hour than they will get when travelling to the distant stations. It's a win-win. Why I should, as a trader, fly to a relatively distant regular station when I get much better overall profit from a fleet carrier right under my nose?

Except this means the carrier gets filled with 7k/t profit materials. Nobody is going to buy that Silver to resell for 5k profit/t (-2k for carrier profit) when a simple search on your, or many other site's, trading tools will get you 4x that. So as a tutorial to explain the math involved it works but is still a poor example case. Both trade directions need to have a profit ~ >30k/t or it is beat by other alternatives.
Sakashiro
20 Oct 2021, 6:55pm
BurstarWhy are you fixated on Silver?

I can do the same calculation for any other commodity. The point is, if you don't want to end up unloading your carrier yourself, you have to offer a good price at both the source and the destination. The more you offer to the miners, the less you have to offer to the haulers at the other end. At both locations it will take only a few clicks to find out which carrier offers the best rates, so there will be a race to the bottom.

I'll give it a shot, but I doubt it'll work. I will likely end up unloading the cargo myself.
Burstar
20 Oct 2021, 7:22pm
Sakashiro
BurstarWhy are you fixated on Silver?
At both locations it will take only a few clicks to find out which carrier offers the best rates, so there will be a race to the bottom.


Unless they fixed the market logic for FC's you can't trust the information sent to Inara for valid pricing when it comes to this. The reason is that quite often the carrier's setup will create a transaction it can't process (not enough credits to cover the order due to fees after the setup for example) so even though it looks like a Carrier is trading something the transaction won't go through. They 'may' have fixed this issue before Oddity release because I haven't had to trade at other's carriers since before then so I'll defer to someone else if they know better.

If you are proximal to the mining location/selling station and your ore buying price is close to the average in the system and the selling price gives >30k/t profit to the trader at the station it will complete. Eventually. It's a matter of when not if at this point. My guess is that you play enough that you won't want to have your carrier stuck in 1 spot for a long time so this may be a significant issue ofc.
Artie
20 Oct 2021, 8:28pm
Burstar
Except this means the carrier gets filled with 7k/t profit materials. Nobody is going to buy that Silver to resell for 5k profit/t (-2k for carrier profit) when a simple search on your, or many other site's, trading tools will get you 4x that. So as a tutorial to explain the math involved it works but is still a poor example case. Both trade directions need to have a profit ~ >30k/t or it is beat by other alternatives.

I meant this profit for a fleet carrier owner, without almost any work (7k was a difference of profits the carrier owner can operate in with his margins, whilst the traders selling from/to carriers will get same or better profits than in the regular stations (depending how the fleet carrier owner sets his margins within the range mentioned)). Of course, there are much better commodities with a better profit even for the middle-man, but as the Silver was brought in, I used it as an example that even this commodity can be profitable.

Burstar, Saka: Ah, forget it, I really need some sleep. My calculation was utterly wrong and you are right. It was not really the best example.

Last edit: 20 Oct 2021, 8:39pm
Sakashiro
20 Oct 2021, 9:22pm
BurstarUnless they fixed the market logic for FC's you can't trust the information sent to Inara for valid pricing when it comes to this.

I was thinking of the in-game tools in this case. Once a miner docks at any of the carriers in the system, they get up-to-date export/import data from all the other carriers into their galaxy map and can easily pick the best one.
Burstar
20 Oct 2021, 10:24pm
Sakashiro
BurstarUnless they fixed the market logic for FC's you can't trust the information sent to Inara for valid pricing when it comes to this.


I was thinking of the in-game tools in this case. Once a miner docks at any of the carriers in the system, they get up-to-date export/import data from all the other carriers into their galaxy map and can easily pick the best one.


Yes, well the issue isn't the tool being used in or out of game. It's that a Carrier's listing may falsely exist in the first place for reasons I already mentioned.
Sakashiro
20 Oct 2021, 10:51pm
I'm currently checking out systems with stations that buy minerals at top prices. Example: Celsius Hub in HR 6828 pays between 736,761 and 825,557 Cr for musgravite. If carrier-based commodity trade is a thing, one might expect a few carriers to show up there and sell. As of now there are none.

I'll keep looking...
ZEN Industries
21 Oct 2021, 4:35am
Anyone notice that in Odyssey in Asterope system is zero nonhuman signals and in Horizons there is bunch of them
Louis1970
21 Oct 2021, 4:45am
SakashiroI'm currently checking out systems with stations that buy minerals at top prices. Example: Celsius Hub in HR 6828 pays between 736,761 and 825,557 Cr for musgravite. If carrier-based commodity trade is a thing, one might expect a few carriers to show up there and sell. As of now there are none.

I'll keep looking...


Hmm.... Not sure if that would be a thing for me when I'm mining... I did not find a spot where I can get enough musgravite to make it count fast enough on a reliable base.
So for me it's platinum and osmium. If you park your FC close enough to the hotspot I might show up for prices of 200k+. But then you still need somebody to unload it....

Anyway - I would guess that getting enough musgravite to make the carrier trip profitable takes too long to be efficient...

I could be wrong of course...
Aunty Sledge
21 Oct 2021, 7:19am
ZEN IndustriesAnyone notice that in Odyssey in Asterope system is zero nonhuman signals and in Horizons there is bunch of them


I believe this has been a thing for some time. AXI people have reported it I think but as they fly in Horizons it's not been much of an issue.
Iwao Kishiro
22 Oct 2021, 8:30am
SakashiroDrew says space legs take the game into a wrong direction, so he wouldn't care about EDO even if it was technically solid. That's where I disagree. Odyssey could have been amazing if implemented properly. On-foot pew-pew is optional. It adds gameplay options without taking anything away, just like CQC did. The poor implementation is the problem. And of course the player base fragmentation that has resulted from it.


I mean, this is why I repeated a lot of times that space legs was unnecessary despite part of community wanting it, because Elite has always been about the STARSHIPS. There hasn't been any new ship for years now, therefore no new tools to play with for bounty hunters like me. I want more ships and more weapons developed from Thargoid and Guardian technology. The latter especially, because after SLF I expected that Fontier is preparing us for a new Ram Tah shipline. Not that given there has been a fanatical reverence of Thargoids and now-forgotten Human-Thargoid ship event that also made me wondering if we would get had onto such ship abominations (akin to The Blobs ships mixed up with three other factions in certain Star Realms expansion sets).

Odyssey was pretty much a bad luck name, because remember it took Odysseus ten years to get back home after a lot of misadventures.

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