Oolite Bulletins

Within the oolite universe you can't tell market prices until you are docked. You also can't tell market prices in neighbouring systems. What about target a system on the map, and market prices reflects a prediction of prices at the targeted system.

Also when no system is targeted, targeting a dock-able and market prices will display predicted prices at that dock-able.

Whilst in flight you can pull up the current market prices for the system station by pressing F6.

As for targetting a system and getting a prediction, that could be do-able with v1.77 and above. Also the same with targetting any other station or ship that you can dock with.

Use the ASC to target? Do some tinkering and you can show prices for Rock Hermits with Rock Hermit Locator.

Tricky wrote:

Whilst in flight you can pull up the current market prices for the system station by pressing F6.

As for targetting a system and getting a prediction, that could be do-able with v1.77 and above. Also the same with targetting any other station or ship that you can dock with.

Doh! Of course I meant F8.

Couldn't it be precalculated base at least on the station's recorded marketdata? Take it straight from whatever OXP introduced the station?

In my experience, food, liquor and computers are the most profitable (legal) commodities to trade. I go by tech level and economy, and always buy at main stations: food and liquor in low tech level agricultural systems and computers in high tech level industrial planets. Then I sell at OXP stations, namely Seedy Space Bars, since I'm there anyway picking up the odd bounty head .
Edit: I actually prefer not knowing until I dock what the prices are

CommRLock78 wrote:

I actually prefer not knowing until I dock what the prices are

I completely agree.

!m!

Indeed half the fun of the game is never quite knowing what prices you will get until you arrive.
Of course you can access the market data as soon as you enter a system (you don't actually have to dock), and the price ranges are fairly predictable, so you are not dealing with total un-knowns.

Smivs wrote:

Indeed half the fun of the game is never quite knowing what prices you will get until you arrive.
Of course you can access the market data as soon as you enter a system (you don't actually have to dock), and the price ranges are fairly predictable, so you are not dealing with total un-knowns.

Absolutely. If you want to have a rough idea of what commodity prices are going to be in advance, check the economy type and make an educated guess. You get better at this with experience! There are always details you won't know, for example: rich industrials are often the best places to get top whack for gold, platinum and gems, but there's no way of knowing in advance whether you're going to be looking at a juicy 80Cr/kg for platinum or a disappointing 73 - you have to make the trip yourself and find out.

Rese249er wrote:

Couldn't it be precalculated base at least on the station's recorded marketdata?

Not really, because there is a random number in the calculation that is only set to a fixed value on entering a system. (You'll find that random number in your saved file so Oolite keeps the same value between games) You can't calculate what the random number will be when entering a neighbouring system. And there will not be any difference in this for 1.77

No estimates then? My uneducated guess is that price could be calculated within a margin of error.

Rese249er wrote:

No estimates then? My uneducated guess is that price could be calculated within a margin of error.

But you can make the estimates yourself, in your head - and you'll get better with experience ... There's always the risk that if you start giving numbers out to the player, even if they're explicitly named as estimates, when they don't match up to reality, the player might feel cheated. If a player makes a guess, and is wrong, that's part of the learning process; but when the game tells the player something, and it turns out to be wrong, it feels like a con.

Rese249er wrote:

No estimates then? My uneducated guess is that price could be calculated within a margin of error.

They can, but what good what that be? The calculation would show you that for instance in a poor agricultural the price for food will be at the lower end of the spectrum, and the price for computers at the higher end of the spectrum. In other words: it will be able to tell you exactly the same thing that you know already, once you've understood the basic mechanism behind all pricings, which is simple enough:

There is a progression between the economies, with poor agricultural and rich industrial being at the respective ends of the spectrum. Some commodities (namely the classic agricultural ones) are cheap in the former and get progressively more expensive up the ladder, until reaching their highest price in the latter. And some commodities (namely the classic technological ones) are exactly vice versa.

Any 'in-game price estimator' would be able to tell you exactly the same, nothing less, and nothing more.

"You're going into a poor industrial system, commander. Expect all prices to be somewhere close to their average."

That's not useful information, except perhaps for the newbiest of newbies.

Commander McLane wrote:

"You're going into a poor industrial system, commander. Expect all prices to be somewhere close to their average."

Lol that is funny though, it could be exapnded to other 'clever' and 'interesting' facts about systems:

"You're going into an anarchy system, commander. Watch out for pirates!"