Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

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dark7np
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Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

Post by dark7np » Sun, 13. Jun 21, 13:37

I have been doing a lot of manual trading in my current save and would like to propose / discuss some ideas I've had to make that experience more enjoyable. I know how to setup trade stations, I have some auto traders now, and I have used repeat orders to automate parts, so please don't suggest that. I still feel like those do not quite do what I want to achieve with manual trading, and I'd like to keep this topic specific to manual trading, meaning directly ordering trade ships to buy and sell things.
  1. Automatically maximize the amount for buy/sell orders by default. Meaning: I have a trade ship selected, set my trade filters to whatever I want to trade. Now whenever I right-click on a buy order, I have to manually move the slider to buy the maximum amount. To sell things, I have to manually do the same. Both could be automated, so when I right click the buy order for e.g. Graphene, the default buy amount is not zero, but the max possible. That should be a fairly easy change, but would save a lot of time when manually trading things.
  2. Include a way to order multiple ships (meaning trade fleets) to participate in one trade order. Especially for Terraforming, I am constantly moving huge amounts of resources. Even with repeat orders, that is not convenient to setup. If I want to move 80k+ Graphene from two stations to my HQ in any reasonable time, I need to use a lot of ships. Setting up repeat orders for 20 ships is not fun. Granted, neither is ordering 20 ships to make multiple trade runs, but at least this way I know my ships are empty after those trades and ready for the next. I don't have to undo the repeat order, make sure they are empty and so on... My dream here however would be support for fleets. I take 20 or 100 or whatever M class Traders and put them into a fleet. That would also shorten my owned object list. Then I select that fleet, click on a trade order, and instead of only trading with one ship, I can use the storage space of the whole fleet for my buy and sell orders. One trade order could then move an almost unlimited ammount of Graphene between two stations, provided the trade orders offered are big enough and I have a bit enough fleet. And lots of trade orders, both player and NPC, are big enough for 20 L class Shuyaku Sentinels.
  3. Add storage space based sorting for trade offers, ideally add some sorting options. Currently, for higher zoom levels, at most 5 buy and sell orders are displayed. They seem to be ordered by the offered amount, and there is no way to change it. In practice, low value but high volume products like Food Rations or Medical Supplies are often at the top, since they only take one or two m³ or storage space on a freighter. High value items like station building or ship parts almost never make the cut, since they typically range in thousands, not in ten to hundred thousands. In my opinion, ordering trade offers based on their actual storage requirement would make for a more balanced sorting. Then again, for trading it may be more interesting to order offers based on their transaction volume (amount times price). So while I would like to see the change from amount to storage space right away, long term I would really like to see some sorting options added to the trade filters menu to influence this.
  4. Add option to put build storage and station supply orders to the top of the list. This is kind of an extension of my previous point. If I want to build stations or their drones fast they need to be supplied manually, but there is to really convenient way to see just their trade orders, or move them to the top of the pile. I have to manually search for them, or click them, or zoom in on them or similar. Having the option to put them on top, or filter for them exclusively would be nice. I know I could probably emulate this to a degree by setting my station buy/sell orders to be one credit short of the max. That would be a lot of hassle to do however, and for low price items like energy cells it is a big difference.
  5. Add a solution for the L class Freighter can't dock at supply ships issue. My Shuyaku Sentinels can't sell smart chips to supply vessels (can't dock at vessel). That is a bit of an inconvenience every now and then. Shouldn't such a trade be possible with cargo drones? Alternatively I'd like to see a filter to remove trade offers where L class ships can't dock.
  6. Bring back X Rebirth's trade offer computer thing that showed matched buy and sell orders. I kinda liked that feature to be honest. Selecting ships there was not convenient and it was by no means perfect, but it did show me my profitsss, which I miss with the current way. I read somewhere that this was tied to the Skunk and as such could not be transplanted. How about adding a room on Stations with a terminal that has a similar functionality? Things like this is what I'd like to see on an administrative module -- a number or terminals that I can use and that offer some additional management and administrative functionality. Currently, I spend much of my in game time sitting in the pilot's chair of some random cheap fighter somewhere out of the way, looking at the terraforming page, the Map, Build Plans, Logistical overviews and so on. I don't really feel like managing an empire is something that should be done from a pilot's chair. I'd like an office with a desk and a chair, pretty please. And SINZA optinally of course.
So, 1 and 3 should be small, easy to implement things, I hope? With a big quality of life impact for me at least, so I'm hoping to see at least those two in a future version. Any thoughts in general about my suggestions? Would that help your playstyle? Would you find them convenient?

Oloka
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Re: Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

Post by Oloka » Sun, 13. Jun 21, 16:29

I read all the post and to be honest I have some trouble to understand everything, below are my comments:
RE1 - I have no opinion on this - I mainly used repeat orders
RE2 - I support you with all I have:) I feel your pain and I think your description is very close to a feature I requested not long ago on this forum (viewtopic.php?f=146&t=439830)
RE3 - I am not sure if I got you correctly but there is an option to filter offers by storage (volume) amount of offers, large/medium and so on. And I think I am dealing with your issue by searching only one ware. See below if it is what are you looking for
https://i.imgur.com/COMlc6C.png
RE4 - I must say I do not get it clearly
RE5 - No opinion
RE6 - I was not a fan of X rebirth so I do not know its features but I strongly agree that my in game time is spent now mainly by "sitting in the pilot's chair of some random cheap fighter somewhere out of the way" and I am using map/property own screen or similar - I am not flying any more (somehow sad) so I know what you mean and I like to support your idea here.

garffield
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Re: Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

Post by garffield » Mon, 14. Jun 21, 11:03

1. great idea as more often than not I want to buy a full load of a product than less of it.
2. would be a big help. Also for repeat orders to apply it to multiple ships simultnaeously as you cannot apply the mimic commander order
3. I would also welcome a feature where you could alter the wares displayed - sometimes it is weired as fully zoomed out you get e.g. MedSup offers for 48Cr and if you zoom in closer you see offers for 32 Cr - so I would rather have the cheapest offers displayed than highest amount sold or wahtever it is. Or have an option to only have ship building or station building wares displayed
4. also a nice idea as sometimes I would like to deliver Turret Components to my build site but instead have my Wharf dipslayed in the list
5. not only for L class as sometimes the 3-dock pier is built before the M-dock. A logic that only such offers are displayed which suit the selected ship type would be very welcome
6. I'm wary of sitting on my station in a dedicated room would have a negative impact on my (and other's) ships as I would be IS. Especially when this station has a ship building module this might result in a full mess due to the friendly fire issue

Buzz2005
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Re: Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

Post by Buzz2005 » Mon, 14. Jun 21, 11:40

the first point is better in every way imo then how is it now, bc almost always you buy sell full

and when you want to insert manual numbers you need to move the slider for the numbers to show so you can click on it to type, so much unnecessary clicks for literally nothing
Fixed ships getting spawned away from ship configuration menu at resupply ships from automatically getting deployables.

Oloka
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Re: Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

Post by Oloka » Mon, 14. Jun 21, 12:34

garffield wrote:
Mon, 14. Jun 21, 11:03
6. I'm wary of sitting on my station in a dedicated room would have a negative impact on my (and other's) ships as I would be IS. Especially when this station has a ship building module this might result in a full mess due to the friendly fire issue
good point!

SamuraiProgrammer
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Re: Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

Post by SamuraiProgrammer » Mon, 14. Jun 21, 16:21

Great Post, OP!

#1 - GREAT idea. The vast majority of my trades are 'maximum amount' and I could still adjust it down if circumstances demanded it.

#2 - In theory, I like this idea. I suspect any UI to accomplish it might be more painful to use than what is happening now. Implementation of #1 will reduce clicks by 1/3 by itself. For this, the UI would have to manage 'which ships are involved' and 'which stations can be sourced from'. The first can be some kind of fleet designation. The second could be a nightmare.

#5 - I like the idea of having a filter to remove stations where an L ship may not dock.

#3, #4, and #6 - To me these are different facets of the same problem. The list of trade goods on the map don't always show the trades we are interested in looking at. I have a lot to say about this so I am going to break it into paragraphs for readability.


Let me start by saying the Map/Trade interface is great! It has its limitations, but I don't want to see it go away.

Changing the configuration of which wares are candidates to display is just a little clunky. On 1080p resolution, I have to scroll to the bottom of the list to press OK. Simply moving (or duplicating) the 'OK / Cancel' buttons to the top will make a huge difference to me. Alternatively, and probably better, make the wares list show up in two columns. Then the 'OK / Cancel' buttons can remain at the bottom where they naturally belong and I won't have to EVER scroll that list.

Sometimes, we are looking for trades of a specific ware. It is aggravating to have to remove all of the other 'trade candidates' when you know you are going to add them back again in a few minutes. Perhaps we can have an additional button on the 'trade filter' screen's list of wares that lets us say 'show this one at the top of the list on the map'. It could be a 'radio button' (i.e. only one can be active at a time). A further extension of this would be that while in this mode, the stations that are trading in this good are highlighted. Hovering over that stations would show the price and volume of bids and offers. This would facilitate decisions concerning minimizing travel time at the expense of price.

I would like to have a selectable mode in which the boxes holding trade information on the map are specifically displaying one sector at a time. I, personally, have trouble getting the zoom and scrolling right to have the multiple trade boxes showing things the way I want to see them. This mode would be useful in several ways. Sometimes the distance to one sector is much shorter than another based on where in the sector the ship is now. Sometimes, you might be willing to miss a little profit in order to curry favor with one faction or another. Sometimes you might want to avoid a sector that is temporarily a hot spot.

While we are at it, I would like to have a toggle that will cause the map to show which stations are being monitored by a satellite. This would be very valuable when setting up (and checking) the satellite network. (If anyone knows how to do this in a easier way, please post or message me. I really would like to be able to have this information at my fingertips.)

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Botschafter Von Den Glück
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'I want 5€ for each click i have to do extra' meta.

Post by Botschafter Von Den Glück » Tue, 15. Jun 21, 15:20

its not a improve, but is a 'trash it and do it from new' with first try failed in mind.

X4 will be a whole new game if the solutions mentioned would be in, because its vitally missing making it a X3,5.

I excuse much of the past as I like Xrebirth into the sky! no any complains from me! im just happy!

But in X4, the 1by1 trading every single freigther + bad automatisms because of not polished autopiltots AFTER X3 had best Autopilots ever, is a strong break.
A pilot is a more depth implementation, i can see that, but it breaks too much.
You should have Autopilot from X3 always working as before AND Pilots, pushing more intelligence, or giving a learning courve of excitement.
but the way of progress is ... tooo hard for a customer.
its more like the 'I want 5€ for each click i have to do extra' meta.
Botschafter von den Glücksplaneten: Zu 100% Doktor. Die vertrauen mir!

dark7np
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Re: Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

Post by dark7np » Wed, 16. Jun 21, 15:38

Oloka wrote:
Mon, 14. Jun 21, 12:34
garffield wrote:
Mon, 14. Jun 21, 11:03
6. I'm wary of sitting on my station in a dedicated room would have a negative impact on my (and other's) ships as I would be IS. Especially when this station has a ship building module this might result in a full mess due to the friendly fire issue
good point!
Not really? Why sit at that station then? I'm guessing you're sitting in a ship somewhere out of the way now? If you're got a shipyard, I'm guessing you have other stations somewhere where you could manage your empire from? Or at least the option to just build a small defense station somewhere out of the way for this purpose. No need to sit at that exact shipyard?

@SamuraiProgrammer: I honestly don't know if I have ever used that functionality... If I want to filter by a specific ware that does not immediately show in the trade menu I just type it's name in the search bar and hit enter. Sure, it is a bit sad that you have to write it's exact name, but it works well for me. That could be proposal 7 though...
  • Remove the exact match requirement for the trade menu search function and instead add all wares that match a given search string.Uh, then again that search bar is also used to search for objects, and that IS a substring search, not an exact match... We would need two search bars then, probably... Like one on the right for trade offers, and one on the left for filtering the object list?
SamuraiProgrammer wrote:
Mon, 14. Jun 21, 16:21
#2 - In theory, I like this idea. I suspect any UI to accomplish it might be more painful to use than what is happening now. Implementation of #1 will reduce clicks by 1/3 by itself. For this, the UI would have to manage 'which ships are involved' and 'which stations can be sourced from'. The first can be some kind of fleet designation. The second could be a nightmare.
I don't think so... Fleets are already grouped in the UI and if I click on a fleet I have it selected, so that part of the selection part is already done. I am not proposing to be able to somehow select ships in a new UI. I am proposing that the existing fleet mechanic is extended so that it can be used for trading. Just treat a fleet of multiple trading ships as one bigger ship, basically. That may require a new role for subordinates, but it's not really an UI change. It's not a simple change, as ships might get destroyed on the way and so on, so the big trade order would probably have to be split in individual trade orders for the individual ships (with the rest just following, maybe?), but the UI is basically already there.

SamuraiProgrammer
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Re: Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

Post by SamuraiProgrammer » Wed, 16. Jun 21, 16:05

garffield wrote:
Mon, 14. Jun 21, 11:03
6. I'm wary of sitting on my station in a dedicated room would have a negative impact on my (and other's) ships as I would be IS. Especially when this station has a ship building module this might result in a full mess due to the friendly fire issue
I have seen the suggestion that there be a room on the HQ that serves as a 'command center'. The key point is that if you are in this room, you are not In System anywhere. This would allow all ships in all sectors to behave as if you were Out Of System.

If that could be arranged, I might use it a lot.

Right now, I spend a lot of time letting my 'captain' fly me somewhere I can do something useful (missions, satellite drops away from the ecliptic, bolster defenses in a system being harassed by pirates, etc.) while I stand there like a doofus and manage things from the map.

Early in the game, I am very busy actively doing things with my ship.

As the game progresses, I am more balanced between doing things with my ship and managing from the map.

I can see that as the game progresses, I will spend more and more time on the map and less time actually flying anything.

SamuraiProgrammer
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Re: Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

Post by SamuraiProgrammer » Wed, 16. Jun 21, 16:13

dark7np wrote:
Wed, 16. Jun 21, 15:38

I don't think so... Fleets are already grouped in the UI and if I click on a fleet I have it selected, so that part of the selection part is already done. I am not proposing to be able to somehow select ships in a new UI. I am proposing that the existing fleet mechanic is extended so that it can be used for trading. Just treat a fleet of multiple trading ships as one bigger ship, basically. That may require a new role for subordinates, but it's not really an UI change. It's not a simple change, as ships might get destroyed on the way and so on, so the big trade order would probably have to be split in individual trade orders for the individual ships (with the rest just following, maybe?), but the UI is basically already there.
Yes, the fleet mechanic can be used and might not add any additional clicking to set this up - especially if you keep a 'convoy' fleet already.

The real problem would be in cases where you want to source from multiple stations. After rereading your posts, it appears you are thinking about trades involving only two stations (source and destination). I was thinking more of the situation where you were gathering resources from multiple stations.

dark7np
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Re: Observations and ideas to improve manual trading

Post by dark7np » Thu, 17. Jun 21, 13:27

SamuraiProgrammer wrote:
Wed, 16. Jun 21, 16:13
The real problem would be in cases where you want to source from multiple stations. After rereading your posts, it appears you are thinking about trades involving only two stations (source and destination). I was thinking more of the situation where you were gathering resources from multiple stations.
That would be my use case, yes. In situations where you need to source from multiple stations I'd assume that you don't have the volume for a trading fleet. Or that you're better off using a smaller trading fleet. My use case for this is to transfer 100k graphene from my production station to my hq. That's 45 Shuyaku Sentinel's worth of goods. Or to transfer 20k hull parts to some NPC shipyard (they have orders for 40k+ open in my game, currently). Not to gather 20k wheat from 3 stations, or similar. I'd probably use 10-20 Shuyakus or like 50 Mercurys, and I would use those fleets for point to point transfers that fill up like 75%+ of the combined storage space. Else I'd probably use smaller fleets or single freighters.

Even then, if the fleet acts like one big freighter, it shouldn't be a problem to source from or sell to multiple stations. I just don't think it's efficient use for a fleet, unless the stations are in the same sector or so.

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