Oolite Bulletins

To help idiots, like me, who forget they are supposed to be delivering x tonnes of commodity to Wherever, it would help if there were something on the Commodity Market screen to remind us.

Any of the following would help:

• - a '*' or '✰'marker against the row for that commodity (better than nothing);
  - an extra column showing how many tonnes need to be kept in the hold (ideal solution);
  - an extra column for the user to record how many tonnes they want to keep in storage (horrible solution)

My ship has a computer installed. It should do the remembering, not the pilot. Me having to remember what needs to be delivered is micromanagement.

Had you considered using pOost-it notes?

Smivs wrote:

Had you considered using pOost-it notes?

SandJ wrote:

My ship has a computer installed. It should do the remembering, not the pilot. Me having to remember what needs to be delivered is micromanagement.

As above.

Yet another idea: whenever there is an active cargo contract and there is not enough of the commodity in hold, the number in the "in hold" column could be displayed in orange.

Good idea, when i do contracts i often had to check F5 to be sure i kept the required amount of goods.

There should be a high and low price? Now that there are potentially more than the one market place in each system it would be good to know how cheap/expensive a commodity is compared to the other markets,

Greyth wrote:

There should be a high and low price? Now that there are potentially more than the one market place in each system it would be good to know how cheap/expensive a commodity is compared to the other markets,

That's exactly the kind of thing the player is supposed to figure out for themselves. Trading means taking a risk. You may make a profit, or you may not.

Greyth wrote:

There should be a high and low price? Now that there are potentially more than the one market place in each system it would be good to know how cheap/expensive a commodity is compared to the other markets,

The good thing is that the "MARKET_RND" factor that is used in generating random values, is the same for all stations in a system. It is generated when the player enters a system. That at least ensures that the value of a commodity go into the same direction for all stations within a single system.

Hmm, when I've made planetfall (i don't do that very often) I sometimes have found extremely cheap or expensive items in comparison to the other markets in the system. So is the only way to know what prices are is to visit each market and note each price of each commodity?

Greyth wrote:

Hmm, when I've made planetfall (i don't do that very often) I sometimes have found extremely cheap or expensive items in comparison to the other markets in the system. So is the only way to know what prices are is to visit each market and note each price of each commodity?

>Fatleaf nods<

So there is no way to 'work it out' Well, that's cleared that up anyway! Cheers Fatleaf. Will no-one second the motion (and yes, I use the term motion for jocularity) to have hi and low columns? It's not like that would tell us 'which market' is the best market - just how good the one I'm currently at is compared to the others.

One of the best guides to go by is the Oolite Reference Sheet that comes with the game. Look at the high and low prices and get to know which stations alter which commodity and the way it alters that particular commodity. So then you get the feel of what trading is all about and the feel of exhilaration when you score it big with either an unexpected high or low price. If it was all there as soon as you jumped in system or even worse before you made the jump that would make trading very boring very quickly. You may as well alter the player file and give yourself a Graham's number of credits.

What I do with a fresh commander is write down what I bought and what price I bought it for. And I never sell anything for less than what I bought it for and never buy anything if it is over the Galactic average according to the reference sheet. I find trading rewarding when doing it that way.

In the original game market prices were advertised on entry to each system and I would pay a handsome price to cut an hour off my turnaround in each system. For me the trading is secondary really once there are sufficient spondoolies to go tool up and do some goon-hunting.

It's all about discovery then? That's, with hindsight, what Commander McLane was trying to impart?. Hmm, guess I'll have to join the assassins. Fantastic OXP! (I took a contract and then scooped the escapee capsule - and the OXP knew what I'd done!! Most impressive)

Thanks for your patience guys, taking the time to get me to understand the ethos, I appreciate it.

Greyth wrote:

In the original game market prices were advertised on entry to each system.

Main station prices still are - if you press F8 in open space, you'll get the main station manifest.

Fatleaf wrote:

You may as well alter the player file and give yourself a Graham's number of credits.

The upper limit on the number of credits you can have (which obviously requires cheating to get) is no doubt insignificantly tiny compared to Graham's number.

Were credits stored as a 32-bit integer (then divided by 10), the max could only be ~400 million credits. If it's a floating point number, it could be higher but imprecise at huge values.

Most I've ever had is around 7 million credits, thanks to abusing the heck out of gold/plat/gem cargo contracts. Without them, I'd probably have only about 1-2 million.