Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

I have used a lot of 3rd party trade tools and I would now like to talk about the tool that I find by far the most powerful one: Trade Dangerous by kfsone

In order to explain the main difference between TD and other 3rd party tools - consider this scenario:
You are at a station, high tech, and you finally get a mission in order to move up the federation/empire rank.
You are to deliver a letter to another High Tech system as fast as possible.

Now in most 3rd party trade tools you would fill in current and destination station and have them calculate a best profit scenario.
Since we are going from a High Tech station to a High Tech station there will not be much profit.

With TD you can tell it that you want to go from x --> y but to find a station z in-between x and y in order to maximize profit.
TD will then calculate maximum profit route that goes from x --> z --> y.
Going from High Tech to High Tech can make you maybe 50k profit. Going from Hight Tech --> Extraction --> High Tech can give you 600k.

If you want to do this in most 3rd party tools you will have to search the Galaxy Map your self for extraction planets and then have the tool to calculate x --> z and z --> y. TD does this for you and this makes it really powerful.

I find my self a lot of times getting missions to bring x amount of goods to/from a station. With TD I can maximized my profit run when doing missions like this.

So what is the catch? Well there is a catch!
TD is written in pyton and has no GUI- yeah that's right- there is no GUI. All is done through a CMD window and you have to type all the commands your self. This is cumbersome, but in my opinion its all worth it. Being an old fart that used computers before even Windows had a GUI this is no problem for me, but I can see that it can be daunting for those that have hardly seen a CMD window before.

For hardcore traders though there is, in my humble opinion, no other trade tools that can match the power of TD.
Check out the wiki and test it out your self- It can be daunting. It took even me 2 - 3 days before I got the hang of it.
Now on the other hand I export system data directly from eliteOCR. Calculate trade routes like a pro and grin every time I see my cash balance

CMDR Seantier

As a Linux user who is forced to run M$ extortionware to play ED then a cli tool is second nature to me, thanks for the post, will give it go.

I must be an older fart since I used DOS long before Windows, but the problem I see with these tools (at least for me) is that using them would take out all the fun part which is discovering things by myself. I use a little program called "Commander's log" where all the data inside has been entered by me ( no prices, only high/med supply and demand ) only for places where I've been already.
Elite has never been for me about "optimizing profits", and being told in advance by an external 3d party tool where to go would be extremely boring.
I start thinking I'm weird...

INARA, developed by Artie, you can find it at the top of this page under TOOLS

Hi,

I use Inara and Thrudd's Trading Tools, but when I found the TD, I fallen love

I have media-linux-pc where local database is. There's 3 cron jobs to pull newest updates on maddvo. I am keen user for command line for years, so I don't need any gui on TD. I always update the market prices with EliteOCR to EDDN and TD, so the Inara and maybe Thrudd's can benefit the fresh data too.

Example: I have about 200Kcr bounties on Alliance and I want to collect those. The nearest star controlled by Alliance is Alignak. I have somewhat high moral feelings against the slavery. And the station must be max 1500LS from the Star

I can command:



I got nice 7 place "navigation plan" with 106 550cr profit. When use --towards option, the TD gives you straigt path where you want to go. If use --to Alignak, it makes several jumps between two places for maximum profit based your --hops and then head to where you want to go.

Just love it!

--avoid 'slaves, imperial slaves'

I dint know about this one. Though --avoid only worked for system/stations
You can imagine how many stations I put on avoid trying to avoid slave runs lol

Corsaire31 wrote:I must be an older fart since I used DOS long before Windows, but the problem I see with these tools (at least for me) is that using them would take out all the fun part which is discovering things by myself. I use a little program called "Commander's log" where all the data inside has been entered by me ( no prices, only high/med supply and demand ) only for places where I've been already.
Elite has never been for me about "optimizing profits", and being told in advance by an external 3d party tool where to go would be extremely boring.
I start thinking I'm weird...

I don't think you are weird at all. There are a lot of players who think just as you do. We all play the game as we see fit. As an example when I play RPG's I have to check each stone and every corner of the game.. you never know- there could be a hidden treasure somewhere. While my friends just run through the game as fast as they can.

However in ED my focus is to get cash fast and to that end the 3rd party trade tools are great

Arda wrote:I don't think you are weird at all. There are a lot of players who think just as you do. We all play the game as we see fit. As an example when I play RPG's I have to check each stone and every corner of the game.. you never know- there could be a hidden treasure somewhere. While my friends just run through the game as fast as they can.

However in ED my focus is to get cash fast and to that end the 3rd party trade tools are great

After writing this reply, I guess it's a bit of a rant, so ...

Checking each stone and every corner of the game is one thing, but, imho, trade tools are like using a walk through guide. I remember they used to sell these in the game store (back in the 90's). I ended up buying some when I got stuck, but then just relied on the guide so I could see the new reveals, rather than solving the problem myself. It ended up just being a waste of money to buy games just to be done with them in a day. That may be why I always preferred simulators. I do want proper documentation, and will rely on tips and instructions when it is lacking, but once I understand how something works, I don't want to be told what to do.

I wonder if liking things like trade tools or using other exploits has something to do with a persons political leanings? I'd bet that people that live in a nanny state and expect the government to provide everything are more likely to use trade tools and exploits than people that want the government out of their lives and are more self reliant.

Maybe they should just have a check box so everything will be free and then people can get instant gratification. I'm just waiting for the computer to play the game for you. It will watch you for a little while to get your play style, and then just say I got it and take over. It could send updates to your phone so you can keep track of your credits accumulating. It might even let you take back control, but then I think of movies like WarGames & Close Encounters ...

... Rant Over

Corsaire31 wrote:I must be an older fart since I used DOS long before Windows, but the problem I see with these tools (at least for me) is that using them would take out all the fun part which is discovering things by myself. I use a little program called "Commander's log" where all the data inside has been entered by me ( no prices, only high/med supply and demand ) only for places where I've been already.
Elite has never been for me about "optimizing profits", and being told in advance by an external 3d party tool where to go would be extremely boring.

DOS! You were lucky! In my day we had to go out and find our own beads before we could build an abacus.
Perhaps is an age thing, but I agree with you completely. There's no fun in being told all the answers.
I still use pencil and paper for my log.

Funnily enough, I used Unix before I learned DOS... and was in 2nd year of University when Windows 1.0 was around. I think you'll probably find that there are a lot of us oldbies around here. Ah, the fun I used to have with PDP-11s. And remember the old saying... Nothing sucks like a VAX - they weren't talking about vacuum cleaners.