TC - I think my trade rank is broken...

sadron · Post by **sadron** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 07:19

It's been at 0% Opportunist for a while now and I know for a fact I've bought stuff since starting. What the heck is wrong with it?

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 08:26

Trade more...

sadron · Post by **sadron** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 08:33

Mork your advice is completely worthless. In BOTH of my topics.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 08:42

sadron wrote:Mork your advice is completely worthless. In BOTH of my topics.

Sorry, I'm only trying to give answers appropriate to your questions.

The fact is that you have to do more than just trade a few times to start to raise your trade rank.

Individual instances of trading can raise your Faction with the species you are trading with. However, Trade Rank is based on credits traded. You can't just buy an item and sell it back and raise your trade rank, thinking its the instance itself that matters. (Though, you can do this with factions and buying one cheap item from a Pirate station and then selling it back at a slight loss is a viable way to raise your faction with them.)

Trade more. Buy a freighter, use it to trade goods, automate it, buy another, do the same.. Continue doing this and you'll start to see your Trade Rank rise. Or, you can do it yourself, flying your own ship.

You're frustrated and, perhaps, not a very pleasant person. But, I'm answering your questions appropriately and attempting to give you some help, regardless. You can accept that help in the spirit in which it is offered or not. I don't care.

sadron · Post by **sadron** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 08:48

You don't seem to understand. I'm at Opportunist, the absolute bottom rank of Trade rank. I've spent hundreds of thousands of credits by now, and it's STILL at 0%. It's broken.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 08:53

sadron wrote:You don't seem to understand. I'm at Opportunist, the absolute bottom rank of Trade rank. I've spent hundreds of thousands of credits by now, and it's STILL at 0%. It's broken.

Perhaps if you phrased your questions more appropriately and gave the information necessary to answer to your specific problem, you wouldn't be so hasty to interpret responses as "worthless." It's your questions that are the problem...

Are you running any mods? Have you SOLD anything? You say you've purchased goods worth hundreds of thousands of credits, but have you actually traded anything?

Did you get your game from Steam? If so, do a file verify. If you're running modded, check the appropriate thread for your mod.

zazie · Post by **zazie** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 09:48

sadron, you will not get trading rank-points for buying stuff, but for selling. Same mechanism for race reputation btw: you get better rep if you sell stuff to one race or if this race buys stuff at one of your fabs.

sadron · Post by **sadron** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 09:53

So completely different from AP then. But yeah, AGAIN, I've sold hundreds of thousands worth of credits as well. You mean to tell me that not even that is worth 1% of OPPORTUNIST RANK? It's not me, the game or at least the save is broken.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 11:45

@ sadron: If your game is vanilla TC w/wo BP then upload your save to a fileshare site and let others have a look at it and test it using their vanilla gamefiles and installation.

Lord Kellmar · Post by **Lord Kellmar** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 11:49

Trade points are earned when you make profits. I.e. when you buy below the average price and/or sell above that price.

You can spend millions of credits but earn 0.0 points because you didn't make any profit in the trades.

Kirlack · Post by **Kirlack** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 13:00

I suspect sadron has a broken installation, based on a pirate themed game I played recently in which I was not allowed to trade with the races at all, but could barter on occasion. I went from rank 0 to rank 9 making one barter deal. You can't tell me that after trading hundreds of thousands of credits worth of goods he's not increased his rank at least as far.

pref · Post by **pref** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 13:47

'Buying stuff' does not ensure trade rank increase, there are more conditions regarding price, and buying/selling parties.

sadron · Post by **sadron** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 18:57

Well after much paranoia I FINALLY got some trade rank experience from buying energy cells on Mars. Honestly, I'm glad the system in AP is so much more lenient.

89James89 · Post by **89James89** » Thu, 7. Feb 13, 19:43

I'm not sure what you were doing wrong I managed to up my trade rank with one shipment of e-cells on the humble trader start.

Were you originally buying and then selling the products for a profit?

I think the rank increasing is based on the profit margin but I could be wrong.

Cheers

James

Condonis · Post by **Condonis** » Fri, 8. Feb 13, 03:53

This thread gives some info on how the trade ranking mechanism works:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... sc&start=0

Seems that you *should* gain one trade rank point for every approx 800cr profit made either buying at less than average or selling at above average.

Not sure if it applies to both TC and AP though.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Fri, 8. Feb 13, 09:29

I would assume that there's a random factor involved--there certainly is in the case of fight rank gains for blowing ships up, so there probably is for trade rank increases too.