X3TC - How much money do my universe traders bring in?

[Symont]

Hi, i have 5 UT going around and i'd like to know how much money they're making. I know they do bring some sort of profit because my credits are increasing. I would like to know how much each one is making. I want to know if it's really worth it to invest in more of these. A fully equipped mk3 UT is quite expansive and i've already lost one to pirates so i want to be sure my investment is more profitable than my loss.

I found a script in the script forum for logging the activities of my mk3 ships, but it doesn't work for me.

I bought the X superbox on gamersgate and i'm playing Terran Conflict v3.2 downloaded from steam.

Thanks for the info.

[Crustyfur]

I can't speak for individual UT income, but they do make good profitssss. I had about 40 before I started working on CLS stuff and factories, I've only lost 4 in about 30 game days, every so often one needs sorting as its come to a standstill somewhere. I had one tell me it had made 1000+ trade runs with a profit of 76m cr - that's just one. I'd say they are worth it

[Nanook]

A common technique players use to keep tabs on their UT's profits is to assign them a homebase to a non-functioning station. I like to use a small ore mine on a worthless (0 or 1 yield) asteroid, and then give it, say, 1,000,000 credits as seed money. I then give it a 'bank' name to distinguish it from my working mines. I generally assign all my traders to one such bank, since they move around so much there's not much point in tracking each individual trader. I've found that over time, their profits are pretty much similar to one another, assuming I'm using the same ship types.

[Timsup2nothin]

A common technique players use to keep tabs on their UT's profits is to assign them a homebase to a non-functioning station. I like to use a small ore mine on a worthless (0 or 1 yield) asteroid, and then give it, say, 1,000,000 credits as seed money. I then give it a 'bank' name to distinguish it from my working mines. I generally assign all my traders to one such bank, since they move around so much there's not much point in tracking each individual trader. I've found that over time, their profits are pretty much similar to one another, assuming I'm using the same ship types.

That was my tracking method, though I always use a complex made of two cattle ranches. Doesn't cost much more than a mine, and it makes a good parking lot for unique ships.

[Bill Huntington]

Symont, it isn't the question you asked but you need to know. UTs are AIs, not that smart really. If you leave them loose for long, they'll get themselves killed.

A lot of us accept level 20 instead of 25 and assign them as a Local Trader to a particular area with a range of 3 or so, with no pirate or Xenon sectors included. This also has the effect of keeping the stations in that area active and therefore not subject to being deleted by the hand of God. You can cover the whole of the TC universe this way.

[Symont]

A common technique players use to keep tabs on their UT's profits is to assign them a homebase to a non-functioning station. [...]

So i guess the UT will not take and give money in my account then? Nice, thanks for the tip.

[...] A lot of us accept level 20 instead of 25 and assign them as a Local Trader to a particular area with a range of 3 or so, with no pirate or Xenon sectors included. [...] .

Another usefull tip, thanks.

While we're taking about UT. What happen when my UT trade with my own stations? Do the UT pay for the wares (from my account to the station's account)?

[Ormac]

Yes the money goes from your account to the station account when it buys from your station and from the station account to your account if it sells to the station.

If the UT is home based you can transfer funds to your player account when needed (leaving enough fo the UT to operate (seeding capital). Transfers to the Player account can be set to occur automatically so that there is always some credits left in the station account.

-- Ormac

[Honved]

I run very few UTs, but typically have a LOT of traders set up as so-called "Local Traders", Sector Traders with a range > 0. One UT for every 5-10 LTs is probably the norm in my games, and I eventually end up with more CAGs (using the official bonus pack) supporting my factories than UTs, LTs, and STs combined.

When your Sector Trader reaches Level 6 (instead of waiting for L7 for a UT), if you restart them the game will prompt you for a "range". At first, the options are 0 or 1, but that can be increased by 1 for every 2 additional levels of experience. Normally, I'll keep the vast majority of them at range 1 or 2 for the sake of control, so they can't stray into Pirate or Xenon sectors, but a Local Trader homebased in Argon Prime with a range of 3 can cover the entire surrounding Argon region and never stray out of it.

The advantage is that you can put them wherever you want, and they'll continue to operate in that area, rather than chasing half-way across the universe for some "ultimate deal" that will be gone long before they reach it, or taking a shortcut through some really scary real estate.

[zazie]

A few years back I have collected systematically all "one of your traders need help"-messages and made a xls-spreadsheet with those values.

The total were several hundred trade runs (>1000) and several dozen of millions. The average net profit per trade run was ~19'000 credits.

Please consider that I played pure Vanilla and that at that time, Stock-MK3-traders sometimes got trapped in "buy 3 Bofu and sell it at the Trading Station in the same sector"-loops.

I remember one MK3-Trader though making >2 mio in incredible SEVEN trade runs (in Empire Edge iirc).

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

In my experience, UTs running the bugfix by gnasirator for UTs and their use of the Blacklist Manger (bugged in vanilla) are profitable and don't get killed. Main reason being the fixing of vanilla bugs that would have UTs travel through black-listed sectors in certain circumstances.

gnasirator's bug fix for UTs is in my signature.

Edit: Link in signature may be down. The original location is here:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=314455