Trading with Wings question, x3tc

[Glutes]

Started X3:TC awhile ago as a merchant. I've acquired a couple Novas and am tooling around the universe. I have 4 or 5 trading ships in different sectors, doing their own thing with the Mk3 system.

My question is: if I put, say, 5 trading ships in a wing, with the wing leader having a Mk3 system, do ALL the other ships require an Mk3 system as well in order to trade? or Will they follow the wing leader around and do what he does?

Is it more effective for ships to trade within a sector as a wing? or on their own?

Basically, I want to centralize my traders in one sector/group of sectors instead of having 5 traders, each in a different location.

Thanks for any help/advice you can give about trading in general.

[Bill Huntington]

Very interesting, Glutes! A very new idea, indeed!

I can see a number of problems with it, though.

First, if you were ever in the same sector, your ships would collide with each often, probably often.

Then the following ships would not get the same opportunity as the first to land. The first ship might take it all. At a minimum, the price would raise. Then the last ship might not be landed before the leader is going elsewhere. After a while, you would have unsold goods clogging the cargo bays.

You could accomplish some of what you want by making them Local Traders, not UTs, and limiting the number of sectors of their range.

Wings are actually hard to get to do what you want. You will want to learn them, like everything in TC. But this is probably not going to work for you.

Good Luck.

[Snafu_X3]

IIRC there's no 'trade' command available to a wing, so even if you order an individual ship to use Trade3 its wingmates a) won't follow it & b) won't do anything even if they did follow it. You have to give each individual ship Trade3 & set them off as autonomous traders - no cheap way out here, sorry

The whole point of Trade3 is to make the ships autonomous: they'll make their own descisions about which trade run is most profitable, & when they're levelled up a bit will start communicating with each other to avoid them all heading for the same deal. This is one reason why you shouldn't have too many Trade3 traders in one sector: their orders will clash!

[pjknibbs]

Not to mention, even if they *DID* play follow-the-leader, it wouldn't work very well--when the second ship docked at the buying station, the price would no longer be as cheap because the leader had just bought a batch, and the reverse would happen at the selling station; it would easily get to the point that the 4th and 5th ships were actually making a loss on their trades!

[drkpendragon]

I like putting them in wings to keep track of them, but I make them do their own thing. I wish it was easier to make groups. CAGs, UTs, Mines and so forth.

[Glutes]

So the best way to trade without making them UTs is to have one ship to a sector or group of sectors? I read a post about Aldrin being a good trading spot, but one would need at least 5 ships in the sector because it is so large. Just wondered how I may be able to compress my trading strategies, but it seems like one ship to a sector is the way to go.

[heratik]

One way is to take a bunch of UTs and set them to STs with a jumprange of 3, with each one overlapping others by one sector to cover an area, ie

One in Argon Prime, one in Ore Belt, one in Three Worlds, one in Paranid Prime etc etc.

This way the are less likely to enter hostile space and get destroyed whilst still covering good ground in profitable areas...

[Snafu_X3]

I read a post about Aldrin being a good trading spot, but one would need at least 5 ships in the sector because it is so large.

I tried 4 Springy STs in (unconnected) Aldrin for several game weeks. After levelling up, they started to clash with each other - mostly filling up with Cloth Rimes, IIRC. Slower traders may alleviate this somewhat, but for Springys I'd recommend 3 in Aldrin, unless you're willing to put up with interruptions & manual intervention every few game days